Guild Wars 2

Lopez.7369:

If you guys look at the metrics and see Skyhammer is clearly avoided once people can vote on it, will you consider doing something about it?

We’ve already done multiple things to the map based on community feedback, including making changes to the map, removing it from the tournament configuration rules, and from team arena.

If you’re asking if we’ll remove the map entirely? Probably not, not so long as some people prefer it.

cheese.4739:

It’s that we believe Skyhammer is not fit to be used for ranked PvP. Not while it allows players to get kills while dealing 0 (or very little) damage with a bunkery build.

There will be a limited set of maps available during the season. All maps will only be available during off-season play.

John mentions that in his post, but doesn’t specify the maps.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-improvements-to-pvp-and-the-ladder-test-season/

To fill in the missing info, the limited maps = tournament configuration maps… meaning not Skyhammer or Spirit Watch.

TwanBr.8340:

Are you planning on making HotM a more exciting place to be at to compensate?

I can’t speak about priorities, future plans, or promise changes, but it’s on our radar.

TwanBr.8340:

Aren’t you also afraid that you are limiting people of a certain skill level overly much? Or people who play primarily at less populated times of the day?

Yes, I am worried about making people wait too long, especially outliers. We have several settings we can change to reduce wait times at the cost of match quality. It may take some time to find a sweet spot.

Checkout http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm for more details. Though the current configuration values on that page are from our dev environment, we haven’t decided on final numbers for Dec 2nd.

TwanBr.8340:

I don’t see how a map enforcement will help battle 4vs5.

This was one source of trouble with the old servers, we’re determined to not let it be one with the new servers. We might be a bit over-zealous right now. If so, it wouldn’t be wrong to relax restrictions in the future.

style.6173:

Why does ANET continue to push skyhammer when the majority of players do not like it?

Because if we only cared about what the majority of players like there wouldn’t even be a PvP mode?

We know some players like Skyhammer and some don’t. After Dec 2nd will know the exact numbers, but don’t expect to be surprised. We try to be inclusive as possible.

zELEVENz.6937:

1/6 + (5/6 * 1/5) + (5/6 * 4/5 *1/4) = 1/2

Ugg, you’re right… what was I thinking.

facepalm

But there you go… 50% chance of map showing, with 50% chance of being selected… assuming no one on other team votes for the map, and the troll team all votes for it.

Dondagora.9645:

If that were so, I wouldn’t be troubled, however from the wording and from Justin’s response, it sounds like ANet is putting “duplicate professions” in a very all-encompassing box and not differentiating by profession or build.

As much as I would love if my servers had constant and perfect understanding of the meta, it just isn’t possible. I’d have to put in a lot work and of hacky code to make these sort of exceptions, just to have them possibly change with each game build.

Also, a lot of people are just as annoyed by full mesmer teams because of all the clones. So making exceptions like this will always displease someone.

Dondagora.9645:

Why/How does this new match-making punish a single-profession team?

We reduce matchmaking score for duplicate professions, whether intentional or not. Do you think there are many others like your team?

The Golem Banker from the gem store is not experiencing this issue, only the one from the CE/DDE upgrade.

I hope to have an update for y’all on this tomorrow when more folks are in the studio. Thanks for your patience!

Aaron.2413:

Great! This is awesome!!! My team (we win every team q) will play and some mid tier team is gonna run 5 engis … They know they can’t win in any other circumstance…. They build only for Skyhammer … Gj anet. This is what we meant when we said we wanted more competition in high lvl play

As Frenk.5917 mentioned, they won’t even have the ability to vote on Skyhammer every time there is a vote. If there are 6 maps, and 3 slots, the odds of any map showing is about 62% (1/6 + 1/5 + 1/4), so their cheeze comp is already out of luck 38% of the time. Then add to that they’re only going to win the vote 50% of the time. That means they’ve got a 31% of getting skyhammer during any vote.

Oh, and running 5 of any professions is also going to hurt them on matchmaking, so it’ll take them longer to find a match, and that match likely isn’t going to be a good one. We’ll probably toss them in with other cheeze comps.

Do you think they’ll still want to risk it?

Edit: Cleaned up language because I didn’t mean to call out Aaron.2413 on his theoretical post.

manveruppd.7601:

Justin, can’t you just make the time people get to respond to the match ready prompt longer so they’ll be able to click it after their cutscene or load screen finishes? 30" should do it for loading screens. As for cutscenes and cinematics, tbh you should be able to make a pop-up dialog that overrides them…

There are certainly many ways we can work around the issue, but right now our first priority is do everything possible to combat the 4v5 problem.

Acinonyx Rex — you make good points, as have others, about a “known issues” thread. It could be a tricky thing to make work well — even just determining what’s included — but after I’ve gotten a few other forum projects completed I plan to investigate the options, because I can see this doing a lot of good.

Pixelpumpkin, thank you for all this valuable info! And you posted just after I shot off an e-mail to our QA leads to ask them about the four issues. I have a process for getting updates, and it includes providing a link to the thread/threads about the subject at hand. With the additional details you’ve provided, the team will have a lot to work with.

Thanks again!

NNYinsanenature.5684:

Lol sorry didnt mean to come off like that but even when he brings up the collection its not even in the right section.

S’ok. You’re not the only one asking questions. We’ll figure it out, no worries at all.

NNYinsanenature.5684:

If you watch the video. He had some in his bank that he accessed.

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Fractal-weapons-7/page/3

There.

Thanks!

No harm in asking, I guess. It’s an interesting read when the subject comes up.

anabasis.7346:

Here’s the thread on reddit about the Fractal weapon collection, and a video uploaded by the guy that discovered it.

Thanks, watched the video and reviewed the thread. However, I want to make sure if you believe that collection is bugged/broken?

Nevets Crimsonwing.5271:

The fractal weapon collection is broken.

Edit:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fractal_Master

^This says it is hidden, though many have unlocked multiple weapons and it does not appear. Here is a thread about it, posted months ago:

Searching, will edit when found

Thanks, this is helpful, too!

I have these three to refer to the team:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hero_of_the_People
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fine_Wining
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Brewmaster

I cannot locate notes about fractal weapons. I’ll keep looking.

Acinonyx Rex.8609:

Usually Sticky treads are used by moderators to summarize important informations for players. Since here, players have to summarize informations to moderators, players should be ale to create stickies.

I’m sorry you misunderstand what is happening. Let me explain: No players “have to summarize informations” for anyone, including me. Someone reported a bug. I asked for details, if that person or anyone else cared to share it. This is an efficient and provably useful synergy for forums, since those involved in the thread are well informed and may be willing to provide the info that is needed to follow up on their request for information. Those doing so are offering detail in the spirit of helpfulness and a willingness to contribute, and we appreciate that very much.

Thanks for that info, Maddoctor.

Are you all aware that some of the collections are unlocked with a specific item?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Basic_Collections
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Collections#Unlocking_Collections
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Talk:Collections#Not_all_collections_unlocked_after_update.3F

Does that information address what some are reporting as a bug? I want to know if things are not working as intended, or if some players don’t understand how things are intended to work.

Ah ha! Thanks for the details there. Having a specific name is great. I’ll see if I can find out about this.

Djinn.9245:

I’m not really sure how people know that the broken collections even exist since they don’t appear on my collections tabs, but I’ve seen screen shots of them. What we don’t know is whether these collections were shown by accident or if they are actually broken. Were they meant for a future content release or are they bugged?

When they were first listed I started saving items for the “broken” collections but I don’t know whether I should be. And if they aren’t going to be released or fixed any time soon I can get rid of some of the items and get them again later.

I have trouble taking this to the team, Djinn, when I don’t have details. “Umm… some collections are broken.” You know they’re going to what to know specifics, and that makes sense. You can’t show me a screenshot from your UI, I understand, because you don’t have the collections that you’ve seen reported as broken. Do you know where I can get at least names or images for these issues?

Update: I see that another player listed “Hero of the People” as a collection that seems to be bugged. (Thanks for pointing that out, AP.) If anyone has other names — the title did say “collections,” plural — please update let me know. Does anyone know if there’s a wiki page? (I will go look but I’m just asking in case you know of such a link.)

Player-to-player trading is not against the EULA or RoC; however, players engaging in this type of trading do so at their own risk. The Support Team does not sanction nor do we condone trading in this manner, but should someone not meet their end of the bargain in these types of agreements (gentlemen’s agreements, as they’re called), we do not take measures to ensure that all parties receive the agreed upon goods. The Trading Post exists to prevent potential dishonesty in trade agreements.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Edit (a few hours later): I see the Stickies are back! Yay! Thank you so much. =)

Thank y’all so much for all of the help y’all provide in here! =)

Marcos.3690:

They can make a premade group that is insanely op at skyhammer and win half of their matches..

Less than 50%, probably closer to 30% if they don’t adapt. You’re given 3 maps to vote on, and which 3 is chosen randomly, so there’s chance any map won’t even be a choice.

MarkPhilips.5169:

Probably stupid question but can i do Hotjoin or private custom arena or i have only to stay in the hotm running around?

Not stupid, but no, you’ll need to stay in the HotM.

The alternative is to let people be anywhere, and risk them having a queue pop they can’t do anything about because they’re loading into another map. Which means not only would they no longer be queued (with possibly no notification), but they would also get a timeout and dishonor for queue dodging.

The new UI is also very obtrusive on purpose, so can be very annoying if your fighting something and it pops up.

If wait times are a significant issue, making waiting in HotM very boring, we can try to find alternative solutions. So be sure to share that opinion if you have it after Dec 2nd.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Gaile Gray.6029:

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

I find the problem with the dev tracker is that 90% of the posts are from customer support and ticket responses that have no bearing on the game itself.

Is there a way that posts from the customer support section could be removed from the dev tracker? I think that would make it much easier to find information.

I don’t think there’s a way to weight responses, to analyze “This is about the game” and “this is about an account/technical issue.” And what one person might feel isn’t of interest another might find of value, like the response to a technical support problem that affects them, as well.

I can investigate if we want to get more granular on tracking as far as support versus non-support, but I believe we’ll find that it’s not practical nor possible.

I do appreciate the idea, though, and the chance to think it through.

lvis.3824:

So you say, ( and Anet ) , the chance that someone will go AFK while in the queue is higher if he is actually playing the game in another part than standing in the mists while doing nothing ????
Interessting…

No, staying in the HotM is to prevent players from getting dishonor for failing to respond to a match confirmation because they’re loading another map. It also takes care of people who forgot they queued and went on to do something else in-game because it will remove you from the queue as soon as you leave.

Black Frog.9274:

Paul.4081:

I am a pigeon – Here is a hole (Coo, Coo)

I am the Walrus, coo coo ca choo

Exactly what ran through my mind.

Love the name, BF!

KkIenJuju.9406:

If i understood this right: you que up with a spesific class( eg. Warrior) but then you see that your team needs a bunker guardian to win. So you relog to your guardian, but you get minus points for leaving the match, even if this desition may have won you the game?

Correct.

Guhracie — I think your tone was very polite and constructive, and thanks for that, and for your suggestions.

I think what you’re suggesting is that we have a dedicated page in the News and Announcements Forum that listed external updates: a blog post here, an interview there, that sort of thing? So you’re thinking public information provided elsewhere might be gathered in a sticky post in that forum?

As to trying to provide links to informative forum posts, well, that’s precisely why we offer the Dev Tracker. In the Dev Tracker, forum members who are interested in learning the latest from the team can see what was said in whatever timeframe — the last day, the last week — they want to review. Maybe you mean something different, I’m not sure.

Valuable threads can be stickied in the appropriate forum. But perhaps my team could be more active in making threads sticky, and in removing them from sticky status. There’s nothing that demands that a thread that was stickied in 1998 needs to be stickied today. Maybe a thread is relevant for a week or a month. After that, it can be unsticked. Others that remain relevant forever — like the “Tickets for Review” thread in the Support Sub-forum — should be left in stickied status forever.

Fact is, we don’t want a sticky-fest, where half of the front page of each sub-forum is filled with stickies. On the other hand, being more active with stickies could be very helpful and would keep the forums more current. Let me brainstorm with the team about this idea.

Thanks for a good topic of discussion. Feedback is welcome from anyone who’d care to offer it!

The moderators had to do a whole lot of cleanup in this thread. I think this is a valuable discussion and we’d like it to keep going, but it needs to be on topic, and participants need to be respectful to one another.

Lopez.7369:

Justin ODell.9517:

That said, I think character swapping mid game should be discouraged. Does anyone have an opinion on that?

Every single high-rated, competitive player knows this should be the case. Not thinks. Knows.

That’s what I figure, but I was opening it up to any options to the contrary.

Teutos.8620:

reset=“2014-02-01”

1.) I thought the rating is not going to get reset?

Sorry, I’ll put a notice on the wiki. The current configuration is straight from our development environment, and does not contain the values that will be set on Dec 2nd. Also, if we kept this value, your MMR would not reset if you played after Feb 1st 2014.

Teutos.8620:

Profession max=“2”

2.) Maximum of two players of the same profession per team?

Profession/@unique is scored for every profession under 2 (meaning only 1) the potential roster would add to the team. Profession/@common, which is negative, scores for every profession at or above 2 (meaning > 1) the potential roster would add to the team. This includes professions already selected in other rosters for the team.

I should clean up the code, config, and the wiki to make this more clear. When I wrote the XML parsing code, I wasn’t yet sure how exactly I wanted it to operate. This won’t happen until after Dec 2nd though.

Teutos.8620:

<Dishonor distance=“-100” stack=“-50”/>

3.) How should we read this pseudo-code? Is the dishonor distance the distance you may still play together? Can a player without any dishonor stacks play with a player with 104 stacks?

These numbers are exaggerated, because they are test values. Yes, someone with a lot of dishonor can play with someone who has no dishonor. The scoring will just make that less likely. If you are are in a party together, you will definitely be able to play together, assuming there is no active timeout.

manveruppd.7601:

I’m with the people who posted above on this. There is no reason to disallow profession swapping. It’s a perfectly valid tactical choice to punish an enemy team which has invested too heavily in an easily-countered profession. It seems that you’ve only chosen to disable it so you could enable your MMR-by-profession feature. Well, MMR-by-profession a neat idea, but I don’t think it’s necessary. The other improvements you’ve made to matchmaking should be enough to make matchmaking better. I confess, as someone who gets slaughtered every time I try a new build (because I get matched against people who are as skilled as I’ve gotten on my main), it would be nice to be able to slum it at a lower rank when playing something new, but since you’re introducing an unranked arena, that should be enough for people like me who have only started playing a warrior last week. I don’t want this enough to want to disable profession-swapping, and I doubt many other people do either – I don’t remember anyone raising this issue on the forums, so it’s not like this is a feature that many people think is necessary.

You may be right, but we’ll wait until we have actual data to look at. If the cost of having the feature out-weight the benefits we’d definitely be willing to change it. The new systems make this sort of thing much easier to do.

That said, I think character swapping mid game should be discouraged. Does anyone have an opinion on that?

Dalanor.5387:

@OP

Post your build. Maybe we can help to polish it a little.
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/

And that is how a good community member responds. Not with negative or insulting comments, but with an offer to help. ~hint, hint~

Seriously, Delanor, thank you!

Serophous.9085:

Gaile Gray.6029:

eekzie.5640:

~snip~

This is very, very helpful. Thank you so much for this info. I’ll see if I can find out anything about this. (But please know next week has other things on the charts, and there’s a four-day holiday coming up so it may take a bit of time.) Thank you again for these details.

OK, I do have one question. Just one I want to ask while your attention is here!

Can you ask about (doesn’t have to be today) on any word on tribal armor making a comeback to spvp? Just a simple “working on it” or “no”.

It taunts me every day when I look in my wardrobe and hate RNG more :’(

I can’t take a request from this thread. Would you please post a separate thread, or better still, post in an existing thread on this subject, so I have detailed context?

Thanks for understanding.

eekzie.5640:

~snip~

This is very, very helpful. Thank you so much for this info. I’ll see if I can find out anything about this. (But please know next week has other things on the charts, and there’s a four-day holiday coming up so it may take a bit of time.) Thank you again for these details.

Tachenon.5270:

Gaile Gray.6029:

That’s not in the cards.

Time to throw away those cards and invest in a new deck. I recommend the Rider-Waite pack. A tried and true classic.

And here I was going for something entirely different.

Ok, I kid, I kid. It’s ok to share a little joke, even while I understand the requests are not seen as a joking matter.

Justin’s matchmaking documentation is now live on the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm

Phil.7903:

Disappointing to see thread discussing level 80 content being ignored by moderators.

Phil, forum moderators wouldn’t provide information about game content. Forum communicators would do so if info was currently available. And certainly dev team members would do the same if they were able to provide a substantive answer right now. I’m sorry you’re disappointed, but please know we’ll get some info out there when there’s info to provide.

Zoso.8279:

We have all been waiting for this and it looks like it is finally on the way! HotM FINALLY gets a bank!! Happy days!

I think this is going to make a lot of players very happy!

Sytherek.7689:

Gaile,

Don’t let the obsessives and forum warriors get you down. There are millions of people enjoying the game and playing. Happy players are playing, not posting.

Well, I’m posting as a counterpoint (probably lost in the rancor) to the incessantly unhappy. Nothing ANet does will satisfy the hardcore dissatisfied.

I’d love to know what’s coming. I understand why you don’t tell us. People have unrealistic expectations of software companies that they do not apply to car makers, TV shows, authors, construction, or other industries. No one (almost) demands Ford have a public detailed five-year plan, or that an architect make detailed plans available to everyone who might someday walk into the new building.

This is the internet; rationality is in short supply.

ANet is one of the most responsive game developers I know, and I’ve been an avid/active player/dev since the days of Wolfenstein 3D (yes, I’m in my 50s). Guild Wars 2 is a game, free-to-play after initial purchase, and it’s great for most of your players (at least the ones I know personally).

Thank you for being communicative.

Let’s put it another way: Were I young, whole, and on the West Coast, I’d be thrilled to work on GW2. No, not a job hunt, I’m happily employed in another industry. But I do appreciate what you do.

I really appreciate your point of view and your supportive comments.

Lady Elvea.2847:

Gaile Gray.6029:

I believe I understand you’d like to know if the Personal Story can be “reset” to a previous state. I have sent an email to ask about that and will let you know when I get some info for you.

More or less. It could still be in the new chapter format, just with the individual story steps back in the order they were in, including those currently missing.

I really do appreciate your efforts.

Thanks for the info. (And your kind words. <3 )

Play at home and read at work. Oh wait…

Ok, ok, Play at home and read at work… and sometimes at home, too.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Are you saying that if a ready check pops up, and for some reason out of sudden I decide to cancel my match by clicking the “cancel” button in the prompt, I get immediately “dishonored”?

Yes, this is how it works. Otherwise people would just grief the queue over and over. The amount of dishonor you get for declining the match is minor, so it really shouldn’t affect well-intentioned players. We’re talking about minutes here, not days like in the old system.

Dwaynas Avatar.1562:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Your current timeout is now inside the PvP panel, and players are warned with exactly how long their timeout will be when they try to decline or leave a match.

Is dishonored now changed in any sense, so for example that you don’t need 3 stacks of it that it really punishes you?
So how exactly would it play out if we say you get a dc, and in the game after that you get another one and so on. How is the scala?

There is no ‘3 strikes and you’re out’ anymore. The timeouts all happen immediately, they just get longer each time. Your first match disconnect is about a 15 minute timeout. If you disconnect immediately a second time, the timeout is about 45 minutes. However the more time between disconnects, the less harsh the timeout will be because the dishonor is slowly wearing off in the background. If you consistently leave back to back at every opportunity, the timeouts can get very extreme.

Ok, I think we have two threads on the same subject: The personal story bugs introduced with NPE. If that’s correct, then Leah Hoyer, our narrative director, provided a tad of information in a post in the thread about “My Greatest Fear.”

Leah said, “Thank you so much for your comments. We realize that the changes that were made have impacted the personal story, and we are working to fix this. This requires a good deal of resources, so we do not have a set date for when these fixes will be implemented. We appreciate your patience and will update with more information as it becomes available.”

Errant Venture.9371:

@Evan, do you guys have plans to use the map selection feature to get some hard numbers on what maps players like and dislike for the first time? It’d be really cool if you guys could rank maps by how often they got voted for at the end of seasons.

Map selection will absolutely give us delicious metrics.

Serbianwolf.1652:

sorry sir, but Im afraid I didn’t understood Dishonor system well. How do you mean slowly fades off and gets longer? Can this be described more clearly?

Thank you in advance

There are two different infraction types: Queue Dodge, and Abandonment.
Each one gives a certain amount of dishonor (queue dodge less that abandon).
You also get a timeout that has a duration based on your dishonor.
That dishonor remains on your account for relatively long amount of time, well past your timeout period. This way the next time you queue dodge or abandon, your timeout will be longer because you have leftover dishonor from before.

Kicker.8203:

In any case people should be notified about their punishment because lots of players dont read the forum posts and have no idea that they were punished for their behavior. I am telling you this because thats what happened when you removed the rank point gain for capping a point: in hotjoin people still wait on the capture points in groups of 5 because they think they get something out of it. But it only hinders their rank point acquistion

Your current timeout is now inside the PvP panel, and players are warned with exactly how long their timeout will be when they try to decline or leave a match.