Guild Wars 2

I agree, these are very good suggestions.

Phantom Master.9582:

Make Solo Q rewards significantly better depending on your position.

Can you clarify what you mean by position?

fodem.2713:

The main problem is proud… Imagine if you create something that is complex and you think it’s very nice in theory but it doesn’t work, would you let go ? Would you stop the MMR system on solo queue and let it random ?

Well, no one on the team created the MMR system. It would pretty simple to make solo queue just a pure queue with no matchmaking at all, but then it would not be much different than hot-join except it would have a leaderboard based off something, probably wins.

fodem.2713:

solo arena is supposed to be SOLO, so it should be random, play with noobs, veterans, medium players, whatever, just enter and play… The best solo player is the one that can win more, regardless teammates or enemies…

A leaderboard based on wins is going to have most of the same problems as a leaderboard based on MMR, namely that your progression would be heavily influenced by the teams you get. This would mean, at best, your progression would be simply be a measure of who plays the most.

Does anyone want a leaderboard based only on the amount of time played?

pedrst.3127:

Justin ODell.9517:

We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

Any of these plans are aimed into balance correctly? active play instead of passive? conditions not replacing direct damage n’ so on?

Sorry, I know the skills and balance team has some great things planned but I don’t know what is likely to be release, or what their timetable is.

Mrbig.8019:

Snip.

We absolutely agree with you, Mrbig. The transition into PvP for a completely new player can be fairly jarring until you get acclimated. Making PvP more welcoming is something we want to do.

For now, we’re going to be focusing our resources on reworking rewards and other infrastructure. After all, if we bring these new players in and there’s no reason for them to say – what was the point?

I’d love to see a thread on tutorial/new player ideas, if someone is up for it. We should keep that discussion separate from this thread.

@Average HP – Stats on amulets are heavily weighted to make up for the lack of gear-stats and jewelery. This will vary based on spec and profession. You’ll generally see builds that range from 14k-22khp.

@Cosumables – The only consumables usable in PvP are limited-use finishers and glory boosters.

@Objectives – The points themselves work just like the ruins. Each map has three points. Each point gives 1 point every 2 seconds. Here’s a link to the wiki: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Conquest

@Gear – All gear in PvP is cosmetic! You will have the same stats as someone who has been PvP’ing since launch.

For super basic information, the sPvP wiki might be a good place to start: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Structured_PvP

Here’s the first video in a series from WoodenPotatoes that might be a good start as well:

PvP for Dummies, Pt1

Jayne.9251:

Wow fantastic guys! Thank you.

Was browsing the builds and didn’t see anything close to mine (I’m terrible, I covet it like Gollum and his ring) … Will be interesting to see how it translates.

Make sure to check the replies to the thread I linked in my original response. I know Supcutie has an updated variation of his build listed in a reply.

We’ll be doing a few things to reduce the amount of players who AFK in matches.

• We’re going to reduce the amount of dishonored stacks a player needs before they’re prevented from queuing for tournaments. The amount we have set right now is too high, and it isn’t weeding out enough people. At the same time, we want to make sure we’re not harshly punishing players that are not intentionally AFK’ing out of matches.
• We’re going to reduce the amount of time someone can be AFK in a match before they’re kicked for inactivity. This won’t prevent 4v5 games itself, but it will give the player dishonored stacks more consistently, hopefully preventing them from ruining future games.
• We’d also like to add a category for reporting players in PvP. For the time being, like Justin has mentioned previously, report the players for botting.

Personally, I think 4v5 matches aren’t caused as much by people wanting to grief, but rather because people get frustrated in a loss and try to find better things to do with their time. Hopefully with our upcoming reward changes we can increase our player base, thereby evening out the distribution of players across the ratings spectrum, thus reducing the amount of lopsided ‘rage-inducing’ landslide losses.

/Goesbacktodoingweekendstuff

Hotjoin is your best bet if you’re starting off. I’d recommend jumping into 5v5 rooms rather than 8v8 as this will ease your transition into Solo/Team Queues later on. Once you’ve learned the map layouts and objectives you’ll be ready to graduate into Solo Queue.

As a note, many of the rune and gear options you were accustomed to in WvW will not be available. I’d recommend taking a peek at this thread to find something suitable. I’m sure your WvW build will work well enough, but that link should help you find the runes and sigils that will work best.

If you have any specific questions, ask away!

So during the November 12th release, we rolled out a couple of changes that significantly reduced skill lag. One mostly targetted PvP and WvW, whereas the other was more high creature concentrated PvE areas.

Curious to see if you, as players, have noticed the impact (or haven’t noticed it because the game feels as it should). Of course WvW will still see occasional spikes during large 3-way encounters, but those a significantly shorter and the server can now recover from them almost immediately.

Needless to say, more improvements are well underway.

-Bill

Carzor Stelatis.9435:

BillFreist.1527:

Some other assumptions I’m seeing is about our server hardware and inefficient use of communication between them and the game’s database. I’ll go ahead and put these assumptions to rest. Our server hardware was actually purchased new right around the launch of the game, rest assured its not out-dated.

The hardware can be as new and as powerful as you like. The problem for EU players is that you chose to locate your ‘EU’ servers in Texas, and no matter how powerful the server hardware you’re going to get more lag if the data has to go from (say) France to Texas and back than if it had to go from France to the Netherlands and back.

False. They are located in Germany.

How did you come to this conclusion?

Edo Tensei.8254:

I gonna start to make a blacklist and go AFK if i ever play again with newbies in a Match.

Please report people that do this.

Edo Tensei.8254:

i rather wait for 1 hour for match before i play with newbies.

This may be one of the options we allow in future matchmaking changes, but I’m hoping the other systems we’re working on will eliminate the need for this.

Ixl Super Ixl.7258:

Can we get a permanent leaderboard decay just for symbolic please? pretty please!

No. You’ll get something better, but you’ll have to wait to find out what that is. Sorry, it’s outside my control when the news will be posted.

I’ve gotten a few PMs about this, so I’ll post what I was going to say to each of them here.

There are only three things being considered in the current matchmaking; 1) your MMR, 2) how long you’ve been waiting, and 3) who is available to play with.

1) MMR is not broken, it works exactly as it should and I’ve personally verified this. Yes, we want to place new players on the curve better, but simply lowering the default rating will only work if the curve has already been established. As a reminder, everyone’s MMR is being reset on the 29th, so that takes changing the default off of the table.

If you’re trying to gauge the correctness of the MMR based off the leaderboards, you will very likely fail because decay makes things much less predictable and consistent. Even more so now that we have increased the frequency of the decay calculation.

For details on the MMR system we use, please go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

We’re open to suggestions regarding other ways of handling MMR.

We’re discussing ways to place new players more appropriately, and we’re open to suggestions in this area as well. The only thing that is off the table right now is splitting the user base, we can’t do this until it gets larger. We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

2) When we scan through the queue to find matches, we use your ratings deviation. As time goes on we gradually increase your ratings deviation to increase the odds that we’ll find a match for you. This does lead to lower quality matches, but its very common to do this on the assumption that a lower quality match is better than no match at all.

If you’re on the outer edges of the ratings curve, this is very likely the culprit for why you’re being matched with players with a much different skill level than your own.

3) Related to #2. During low concurrency you will likely need to wait a longer amount of time because there are fewer people around your skill level, increasing the odds #2 will kick in and you’ll get a lower quality match.

That said, a few people that are on the high rating side are upset because they are now being grouped with lower skill players. Before the matchmaking change these higher rated players would be grouped together and they would just stomp the other team. Now they are being shuffled around on teams, which means no more lopsided matches in general. You can still get a lopsided by chance just because of who was available at the time, but even when this happens the match is still much more even than before the changes went in.

Nike.2631:

So, beyond highs and lows of specific Living Story episodes, and some brainstorming on future Living Story/Living World content (I use the two terms very differently) is there anything else you’d like to hear from us? You certainly have our attention .

Hi Nike,

The current conversation is perfect really. Things will spin up up again soon when we publish the thread for discussion about how to evolve best working practices and process around the CDI on Monday. Until then have a good weekend and thanks everyone for the contribution and continued discussion.

Chris

Leaderboard rank = your order when sorted by MMR – decay.

The decision to not show MMR was made before leaderboards were a thing. I’d guess it’s related to how people treat rank, and Glicko is even harder to explain.

Personally, I’m all for transparency. I’d rather have a transparent system that’s documented than hide potential mistakes. Though an transparent system may mean less flexibility when it comes to making iterative changes because they’d need to be announced ahead of time.

That error is a timeout and has nothing to do with dishonor, or PvP.

The fact this happens is why we don’t ban people after getting a single dishonor stack.

Oblivion.8307:

you can’t normalize where people start on the leaderboards after a reset. it’ll look exactly the same as this leaderboard just with higher/lower mmr numbers.

Oblivion is right. Just adjusting the numbers won’t do much, if anything.

I hope by the next time we reset, if ever, we’ll have a much nicer way to deal with the problems Acandis.3250 mentioned. This is one of the reasons we were very resistant to the idea of an MMR reset.

My understanding is we just want to gate the number of custom arenas because it’s a non-negligible cost to run. I don’t know if we ever expected this to be a major way to monetize PvP.

This isn’t my area so I’m probably wrong. :P

We will be changing this. Expect news soon-ish. (I honestly don’t know exactly when.)

The recent change to decay was to make the current system a bit more appealing to a broader audience.

I hear your frustrations, Morf. In early December the PvP team will be able to preview what we’ve been working on and what we’ll continue to be working on in the new year. I think you guys will be happy with what we’ve come up with – I know I am.

Have a good weekend, all!

hooma.9642:

whats with ppl who switch profession?

We know when you do this already.

hooma.9642:

btw im playing in the most time 2-6 gmt at night, so i dont want wait longer than now.. already long enough to wait 30mins

We could factor in concurrency to selectively disable some matchmaking rules, we can also disable them by max or average wait time.

Smiley.5376:

Justin ODell.9517:

As a Messer, I love that my clones are cluttering up your UI and annoying you.

Dear Justin,

Please take some of the suggestions in this thread more serious. I understand this isn’t a matter of life and death but some people(including myself) suggested some nice improvements that could probably be easily implemented.

Cheers

I do take them serious, but this one isn’t a server programming issue. So don’t take my attempt at humor as a serious reason why we wouldn’t change this.

This discussion is a pretty good example of why I’ve been suggesting we factor in play style and profile information into matchmaking as well.

Wouldn’t it be awesome if you could say how serious you were about competition and be matched accordingly? I want to make that happen.

Sayjimwoo.1652:

I created a ticket 3 days ago (request #69855) because I need to reset my password. Support responded immediately and I forwarded all my details as requested by support and then I was totally ignored for days. I created the second ticket (request #74802) and pasted all my previous emails into it. I received the usual automated response but nothing more.
It has now been 3 days since I have heard anything from support and I am locked out of my game. How long does it take them to reset my password? They either do that or they can issue me with a full refund. Why am
I being ignored?
I am using Gmail and all emails come through correctly.

This does not appear to be at all related to the topic at hand: e-mail receipt issues.

Please be patient and please do not make new tickets because that slows the process of responding to you. The team will get back to you as soon as possible.

Our payments team responded today. Please update the ticket if you still need help.

Thanks for your continued support of our game!

See above for instructions about reporting a player for any sort of harassment or offensive behavior directed towards you in the game. You can click the “report” button here on the forums if someone crosses the line.

Solstice.1097:

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Unfortunately that runs the risk of closing the barn door after the horse gets out. The economy is not something we like to take those sorts of risks on and we wouldn’t be adding rewards until we are more certain of their effects on all of the game.

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

As do we. We will be testing this out in the new map to see how it works, but if that goes well, we will transition the current maps to this model.

This is really awesome Sensotix. Thanks for putting it together!

Wreave and IC – Thanks for these insights. I’m following the discussion with interest. We don’t have much insight into Yahoo as users, so your experiences are of value to us in what works, what doesn’t work, etc.

Draygo.9473:

Yeah, it might not fully solve it but it should help. And of course it takes a while for mail servers to react to changes like this and you still have to fight your way off spamlists/blacklists.

I’m positive it will lead to the removal of the fraud flag from the Microsoft servers at minimum.

And that would be a very good thing and would help a lot of people get our mails.

Thanks again for the review and suggestion.

Volrath.1473:

who cares about town clothes in PvP… I prefer a better pvp experience that is rewarding and balanced. after we have that, I’m fine with whatever cosmetic changes you what to implement.

Seriously… there are far more important stuff to attend and to spend time and resources on.

But what if getting town clothes IS rewarding? Unless you mean the satisfaction of winning.

Thedenofsin.7340:

Can’t someone just make “PvP Town Clothes” skins?

Hey Evan – on another note: how does ANet determine how much money tPvP is making them from the Gem Store? For example, how do they know players are buying finishers for the sake of PvP and not PvE, or skins for the sake of PvP and not PvE?

“Just”. People keep using that word… :P The answer is no, we can’t just make pvp town clothes. Our goals are not to split the game even more with separate equipment.

Side note: Numbers. Lots of numbers.

hooma.9642:

so instead implementing a report function, that actual works and places dishonor if enough of teamplayers had report them u think its better for all players at night to suffer by 2 trolls?

We’re working with custom support to get additional reporting functionality. Adding a stack of dishonor for being reported isn’t off the table either.

Romek.4201:

justin – dont let players with same ip go in same matchup

fixed

No. We have lots of players that share the same external IP. E.g. colleges, homes with routers, etc.

I knew this was a possibility, and hinted at it in a previous post.

I can’t do much to prevent this, but this is something they can only do for so long before they are no longer queuing with each other because their MMR has diverged too far. They could still queue in the middle of the night, but then they’ll be limited by long queue times and an MMR that increases much slower.

Please report people that do this.

I’m going to lock this post for 2 reasons. 1) This topic has been discussed ad infinitum and we have given our reasons for the system as it currently exists. 2) There will be more information about changes to the Wxp system in the next few weeks.

We appreciate the passion you all have for WvW and GW2 and we are doing what we can to align the systems in the game with our core philosophy. We completely agree that there is an inherent lack of alt-friendliness with the system as it is currently set up, which is why we are working on making changes to it. As we have more information to announce about those changes, we will share it with you all.

Tl;dr: We are working on making the Wxp system more alt-friendly and we will have more to share in the coming weeks.

wookiee.4631:

Bonefield.9813:

One thing that I very much enjoyed about the monthly-ish cadence was the idea that the story could continue at any time, with new stuff being dropped in as a surprise. With the two-week cycle, it seems like there’s much less opportunity for that sort of thing, and so the progression of the story doesn’t feel as organic.

Having guaranteed updates every two weeks is great, but I’m not sure that it’s great for the story. I don’t want to speak too far from under my armchair developer hat, but I think it’d be better overall if the story pacing had more flexibility and didn’t have to be tied to things like gameplay polishing and basic feature additions. Those things are great to have on a two-week schedule, but maybe not having to make stuff fit thematically would give everyone more freedom?

That’s something I liked about the old “phase” system they had with SotMK and Lost Shores. Things could happen in the story without needing a set deadline for an update. Maybe they should revisit that system?

Some folks seem to appreciate the option to “catch up” with the story when the releases are additive.

Directly allowing the use of town clothes in PvP or any combat situation may sound trivial, but its quite a complicated problem with how the inventory and equipment are structured. That being said, a version of this isn’t off the table. The amount of work for the gain just isn’t something the PvP team has bandwidth to tackle anytime soon. Keep the suggestions coming!

Was that your first time doing the instance? You’d have to complete ‘Tower Antitoxin Injector’ before you can do ‘Tower Hybrid Master’ as ‘Tower Antitoxin Injector’ locks the two Hybrid achievements.

As a Messer, I love that my clones are cluttering up your UI and annoying you.

Good catch. We should do something about that so it’s less annoying. Or make it so the extra temporary uses are worth something.

Found the particular sound. Got introduced recently, but it’ll be removed as soon as possible.

Thanks for the reports leading to a speedy fix!

((Best. Thread. Ever.))

infantrydiv.1620:

It’s definitely nice to see red posts in the sPvP forum (which, curiously enough started happening right after the spam attack after Xeph quit haha).

Justin does a good job of responding like a human, rather than an excuse making autobot

We programmed him well, didn’t we?

Err, I mean…

I know Symbolic, unfortunately. I don’t know Tage that well, but everyone from EU keeps telling me how amazing he is.

#Tagehasfanboys

I would like for you to try repairing your Guild Wars 2 installation:

First,

1. Hold down the Windows button on the keyboard and hit the “R” key.
2. Paste in the following line:.C:\Users\%username%\AppData\Roaming\Guild Wars 2
3. Click “OK.”
4. Delete the local.dat file located here.

Next,

1. Navigate to your Guild Wars 2 installation folder.
2. Right-click on “GW2.exe” and select “Create Shortcut.”
3. Rename this shortcut to “Guild Wars 2 Repair.”
4. Right-click on this shortcut and select “Properties.”
5. Edit the “Target” line to include -repair at the end. Note: Please make sure -repair is outside of the quotes
• Correctly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe” -repair
• Incorrectly Formatted Example: “C:\Games\Guild Wars 2\GW2.exe -repair”

6. Once completed, click “Ok” to save your changes.

If you get an error trying to save, your target line may not have the correct format. Please try Step 5 again.

7. Right-click “Guild Wars 2 Repair” and select “Run as Administrator.”

Allow the repair to run and once completed, rightclick" “GW2.exe” or your Guild Wars 2 Shortcut and select “Run as Administrator.”

Once completed, please try starting Guild Wars 2 again.

Hope this helps!