Guild Wars 2

I’m happy to see more responsiveness from the devs today. This is a big change. I hope it lasts.

I want to ask. How do you test new ideas or maps etc? Why are they so close looped? Why aren’t more people invited to test changes? The current method which lacks communication is counterproductive. If we knew what your big plans are we can tell you way ahead of time if it’s a bad idea or how it could be better instead of quitting or raging in the forums. My guess is that the pvp side may not have as large a dev pool so why not open it to more input from the people who are still in pvp.

SPVP’s a complex objective to tackle, lets do it together.

ColinJohanson.2394:

savov.3712:

Sorry Colin, but at this point, no matter how hard you guys try to delude us with such “empty” news, it’s just wont work anymore.
Basically, since one of the very first State of the Game episodes a whole year ago, we have heard Every. Single. One of your “coming soon” changes.

Nothing has changed. You are yet to make PvP more rewarding and fun. You are still looking into new game types. You are yet to support the competitive scene(or whatever has left of it). Though, one thing have changed – A lot less people are listening to your communication and a lot more just quit..

If you go back and read the January state of the game, and July state of the game threads, you’ll find most of what you said above actually isn’t true. We have delivered on the things in those threads we said we would do. It’s totally reasonable to say you’d like us to do more, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re saying we’re going to do X and haven’t delivered on any of it. We’ve only recently made any promises about actively working on building game types, and everything we’ve said we were going to do back in January, we have already released.

I just want to say I get the frustration with wanting to see more done, we absolutely would love to see PvP get everything immediately as well. We have however very specifically listed what we’re building, and so far have delivered on all of those things in the timelines listed. It may not be everything you’d like to see, and my hope is as we continue into next year you’ll see everything on your list get checked off, but when raising concerns let’s at least be on the same page with timelines. I can be fair and say we need to do more, I’d ask you be the same with respect to what we’ve said we’re going to do.

As a reminder:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

By much cooler do you mean more AI and what you devs think are cool builds for pvp? because its been how many months and necromancer’s are still absurd? sword/dagger thieves are still absurd, and warriors are pretty crazy. also are there plans to ever change rangers away from auto-attacking 80% of the time for maximum efficiency in pvp?

silvermember.8941:

I remember one of the Red names (devs) mentioning templates, is there any information about that?

I hope for this much, it would make my life in the mists so easier….

The whole concept of developing/trialling new game modes internally is flawed. They should be throwing them out in the wild using the custom arena system to see what players make of them, then iterating from there.

All of the good PVP games: counterstrike, team fortress, the entire DOTA genre all came from players, not designers. Point being that the best design outcomes come from players and designers collaborating.

In this game, I feel like game design is being rammed down my throat. eg: downed state – hated by most but added to the game solely so they could sell gimmick finishers in the cash shop.

ColinJohanson.2394:

savov.3712:

Sorry Colin, but at this point, no matter how hard you guys try to delude us with such “empty” news, it’s just wont work anymore.
Basically, since one of the very first State of the Game episodes a whole year ago, we have heard Every. Single. One of your “coming soon” changes.

Nothing has changed. You are yet to make PvP more rewarding and fun. You are still looking into new game types. You are yet to support the competitive scene(or whatever has left of it). Though, one thing have changed – A lot less people are listening to your communication and a lot more just quit..

If you go back and read the January state of the game, and July state of the game threads, you’ll find most of what you said above actually isn’t true. We have delivered on the things in those threads we said we would do. It’s totally reasonable to say you’d like us to do more, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re saying we’re going to do X and haven’t delivered on any of it. We’ve only recently made any promises about actively working on building game types, and everything we’ve said we were going to do back in January, we have already released.

As a reminder:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

For anyone confused/interested in what they are talking about,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/GW2-January-PvP-Promise-BROKEN/first#post3004095

Dear ANet,

I think one thing which upsets PvP players is, that it is dificult to sell them on a credible way, that you need months for every new thing in sPvP, while it is possible for you to add new PvE stuff every two weeks.
Not to mention, that you even doubled the speed of PvE-Updates from a 4-weekly into a 2-weekly cyculs.

If you want to get more players into PvP, why don’t you focus all of your ressources for one month onto sPvP.
I suppose, the average “casual” player is already realy busy by trying to complete all of this living world achievement stuff you throw at them biweekly.
If those players have to chose between content only available for a short time period (containing “exclusive” rewards) versus low content PvP which is always available, why should they chose PvP?

SPVP Concepts.

Arena Style : can be organized into categories preferably 1-5 and you can make your own arena team or rep your guild as a arena It is a organized team death math.

Capture the flag – A oldie but a classic to have.

Free-for-all – Map where for a set amount of time you have to survive and score the most kills.

FrownyClown.8402:

I would kill for smaller-sized arenas where you did 3v3 death matches.

And I would kill for gladiators 1v1 arena with separate maps, rewards and achievements :P
Maps like Hall of Ascension or the arena from Gunnar’s Hold in GW1 would be best

ColinJohanson.2394:

Though I think we likely would want to sit on really huge balance updates to occur between major seasons competition wise for PvP/WvW along the lines of every 3 months or so in the future. We made this mistake once in Gw1 and did a huge balance update in the middle of one of our major competitions and set the entire PvP community into an uproar, and we promised we wouldn’t do that again.

I don’t think you need to worry about that, as the ranking system in GW1 was far too different:
1. Guild rankings in GW1 reset between seasons, whereas in GW2 they’re a. individual rather than guild-based and b. persistent rather than season-based
2. GW2 tournaments from what I’ve seen are open registration, whereas GW1 championships that ANet organised (at least the early ones, I quit GvG before the automated tournament system came in) were based on who came on top of the leaderboards.

As such, a major balance patch in the middle of a GW1 season could conceivably completely changed who ended up qualifying for the end-of-season tournament by making some builds unviable. In GW2 it wouldn’t really affect anything, as your rating didn’t affect whether you could sign up to join the qualifying tournament. The only way in which a player or team might have cause to feel like they had been screwed over by a balance patch is if it came in too close to the date of the tournament for them to be able to adjust their builds. Of course, you might be planning to change this and make future tournament eligibility dependent on your place on the leaderboards, but since the system is still individual rather than team-based I don’t think you’ve got such a plan in the works for the short term

So yeah, the tl;dr is patch away dudes! As long as you don’t bring in something earth-shatteringly upsetting 1 week before a tournament I don’t think anyone will mind!

ColinJohanson.2394:

savov.3712:

Sorry Colin, but at this point, no matter how hard you guys try to delude us with such “empty” news, it’s just wont work anymore.
Basically, since one of the very first State of the Game episodes a whole year ago, we have heard Every. Single. One of your “coming soon” changes.

Nothing has changed. You are yet to make PvP more rewarding and fun. You are still looking into new game types. You are yet to support the competitive scene(or whatever has left of it). Though, one thing have changed – A lot less people are listening to your communication and a lot more just quit..

If you go back and read the January state of the game, and July state of the game threads, you’ll find most of what you said above actually isn’t true. We have delivered on the things in those threads we said we would do. It’s totally reasonable to say you’d like us to do more, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re saying we’re going to do X and haven’t delivered on any of it. We’ve only recently made any promises about actively working on building game types, and everything we’ve said we were going to do back in January, we have already released.

I just want to say I get the frustration with wanting to see more done, we absolutely would love to see PvP get everything immediately as well. We have however very specifically listed what we’re building, and so far have delivered on all of those things in the timelines listed. It may not be everything you’d like to see, and my hope is as we continue into next year you’ll see everything on your list get checked off, but when raising concerns let’s at least be on the same page with timelines. I can be fair and say we need to do more, I’d ask you be the same with respect to what we’ve said we’re going to do.

As a reminder:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

actual its a lie.. u should go and watch the on of the first state of the games stream from januar/februar. in that stream for the second half of this year was changing to rewardsystem promised.

all that other stuff where u are so proud of is actual just basic stuff that should ingame from the start.

ColinJohanson.2394:

If you go back and read the January state of the game, and July state of the game threads, you’ll find most of what you said above actually isn’t true. We have delivered on the things in those threads we said we would do. It’s totally reasonable to say you’d like us to do more, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re saying we’re going to do X and haven’t delivered on any of it. We’ve only recently made any promises about actively working on building game types, and everything we’ve said we were going to do back in January, we have already released.

…
As a reminder:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

Actually, to be fair, my post sounded a bit more dramatic then it was intended.
You guys delivered custom arenas, team and solo matchmaking and ladderboards. That is something I should have mentioned. So my apologies for that, it was not intended.

But that does not change my point one bit. To have a solid argument, I opened GuildWars2Guru’s twitch channel and re-watched the first 2 episodes from November 2012 and February 2013 and as anyone can see and hear, every single feature mentioned ~24 minutes into the first episode from November. Basically, at the 24:40 mark, Chap is taking a list and mentions every single feature. Yes, to this point, you have delivered more then half that list. Some of the features have been scraped, like the major daily and monthly tournaments. And some have been bring as new and exiting in forum posts just days ago.

The problem? Mostly it is the time taking to release these features. I really don’t want to count the months, because we all know that you “do not give out dates until it’s solid enough, so we don’t get disappointed”, but to prove my point I’ll do just that.

I’ll starting with that famous PvP blog(tip of the iceberg) that took a month or so of "soon"s to get posted. The blog post went up in early October and it mentioned almost everything we are talking about here. So, starting from October 2012, we are going through six months to get the first sights of matchmaking and ladders, released in late March 2013. Then a month later custom arenas and spectator mode are released in late April 2013. And after another 4 months the final touches to ladderboards and solo matchmaking are available.
That’s more then 10 months needed to release these features. And not to mention most players think that half of these feature should have been in the game from the start.
And now, since the august patch, that bring soloQ, there are exactly Z-E-R-O changes to PvP what-so-ever! (not counting the 3-5 skill changes to rangers and, I think, necros, because they were so badly needed, half the players would have quit if it was not temporary fixed)
Even the sooo awaited balance patch, have been delayed for months after PAX. And it better delivers A WHOLE LOT next week!

So, by the end of the year, we may or may not get something on reward/progression. And then in January’s blog post, we will be teased with exactly this “new” reward system and we will be told to expect it by the end of the first half of the year.

Your support about PvP is so slow, it borders with non-existent. In the whole months on end of production of these features, whatever we ask you about, all we get is “sorry guys, we can’t talk about it at the moment”. And then suddenly you ask for more communication? Like, what can we possible communicate about, when we already know the answer to all our questions?

It feels like all you do is tossing us small bones so we don’t starve to death, while promising us there is a big meaty steak in the making.

Also, I want to mention another big contradiction. All this time, the PvP team in every form of communication have said that they want to make small and little changes to the overall balance. And now, as I’ve said, we are waiting month after month for a big balance sweep. Doesn’t that feel wrong?

In the case that this post stays unanswered, I will be sure to start my own little crusade in these Collaborative Development threads.

dont forget to mention the state of the changes.. actual working as intended does only custom arenas i guess. maybe its a reason its the only one who brings in cash.

dont forget to mention that there are a lot of possible little rewards like https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Another-PvP-Killer/first#post3006659 that could be implement in a very short timeframe.

the problem of spvp starts already in design or developing new features. so magicfind was reworked, but nobody in anets-developerteam got to think about maybe giving pvp-daily essence of luck too like they did with laurel.

Because my post was too long, I will add this here:

For anyone confused/interested in what they are talking about,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/GW2-January-PvP-Promise-BROKEN/first#post3004095

As I want to be fair to everybody, I had no idea that such thread/discussion existed. And with that said – I DO NOT accuse anyone for “breaking their promise(s)”!
My both posts here are all based on my personal experience as an non-stop Guild Wars player since 2005 and as an silent(for the most part) reader of the Dev Traker.

ColinJohanson.2394:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

I would like to point out that of the things listed as “complete”

leaderboards- are not working at all as intended and have no relevance in the competitive community at the moment…i wont go into detail we all know about the “top ranked” players playing 1-2 games a month to hold there spots rofl

custom arenas- implemented correctly but caused the skyhammer farming fiasco (which to my knowledge is still a problem)

spectator mode- again implemented correctly for the most part but really only providing a means for the “world” to see how boring conquest+passive/ai driven gameplay can be.

What i dont understand is that there has been no balance?? My team and i quit just about 3 months ago due to the horrific meta and style of play that Anet seemed intent on forcing down peoples throats. Now 4 months down the road it is still the same kittenty meta? I do not in anyway understand this why is this not being addressed?? a revamp to the reward system that took the entire pvp team 6 months to complete is not going to do anything for a game that is as horribly balanced as this game is.

I have said it before i will say it again PASSIVE/AI DRIVEN GAMEPLAY IS NOT CONDUCIVE TO COMPETITIVE PLAY IN ANYWAY GET IT OUT OF HERE!!!!!!! also conquest is not the right choice for an “e-sport” just look at dominion(League Of Legends) does no one on the dev team know what happened with dominion?? ill explain Riot put lots of time/money into dominion (a conquest style map) they had top players and the media praise it and talk about how good it was then they released it to the general public….2 days later 90% of players had tried it and decided it was crap end of story.

I am sorry i do not mean to be negative but what this game has become blows my mind. Guildwars 1 set the foundation for a truly great game to be created but somewhere along the way someone (or a group of someones) was given too much creative freedom and took the completely wrong direction. Look at SC2 they had a great game in the original SC and they knew it so all they did was improve the graphics, add some new units/mechanics, improve the ui and other small changes like that. That was all you needed for gw2 sure you can add some new things such as the dodge mechanic, jumping and maybe a new combat system (all of which are done well in GW2…very well) BUT CONQUEST MY GOD WHY!?!?!? and this whole taking out monks and replacing them with dedicated bunkers….stupid just plain stupid. I would rather watch a monk managing energy, kiting and keeping his team up while watching for dshots, diversions and migraines while his team is keeping up there mid/front lines to prevent enemys from getting through and warriors are back lining when needed, than watch a guardian stand on point and pop boons that are overshadowed by huge amounts of condi coming in.

I will stop there because if i dont i will keep going for hours. But i will say one more thing

If a dev reads this i have two questions i wouldnt mind being answered

- WHY FORSAKE GVG AND HA FOR CONQUEST WHY!?!?!? Yes conquest was apart of ha but a small part that combined with all the other game types/the HA system of fighting your way to halls made it exciting.

-Do you honestly like where the meta is/has been for forever? Do you honestly think passive low risk/high reward AI driven gameplay is really the way to go for an “e-sport”?

I think another feature many players would like introduced in the near future would be a template system for builds.

Spelling B Champ.3264:

-Do you honestly like where the meta is/has been for forever? Do you honestly think passive low risk/high reward AI driven gameplay is really the way to go for an “e-sport?”

That’s the one question I’d love to hear the answer for. Colin mentioned that they were working on making the PvP scene more casual friendly, yet at the same time he stated that they are attempting to continue to grow the competitive scene. In state of things, these two goals seem contradictory.

GW2 sPvP has been losing its most competitive and top tier players because of the fact that the PvP is too casual friendly at this point. There are some builds and matchups in which a complete new player can literally press random buttons on his skillbar and succeed or come close to succeeding in being more effective than, or beating, a rather seasoned player with hundreds or thousands of hours invested into the game.

Unfortunately the solution to this problem isn’t very simple as the problem itself isn’t very simple. The facts are, though, that it’s the main problem contributing to the death of the competitive scene, and that saying, “Improving the game and experience for the core base in general to make it more fun for more casual or casual-competitive gamers to play PvP,” is not indicative of progress in the right direction. Seeing those words is personally quite discouraging and hope-crushing as someone who would enjoy seeing sPvP truly become something solid on the competitive level.

Colin, what is your/aNet’s vision of what you want sPvP to be? At this point you seem to be trying to push the game to become competitive while it’s still in a state that’s too casual-friendly to do so, and without making much progress (in regards to balance) that push it to be more competitive.

I’m not trying to downsize your numerous achievements and additions to PvP over the past year, as I’m sure the community appreciates them, but it seems that the general state of dismay and disappointment is a result of confusion that could be resolved with an answer to this perseverant issue.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’ll absolutely still keep doing smaller balance updates and patches when we have a major bug/balance thing we want to address.

Though I think we likely would want to sit on really huge balance updates to occur between major seasons competition wise for PvP/WvW along the lines of every 3 months or so in the future. We made this mistake once in Gw1 and did a huge balance update in the middle of one of our major competitions and set the entire PvP community into an uproar, and we promised we wouldn’t do that again.

That’s our thinking currently, though as we continue to grow PvP and establish our process for Gw2, it’s open to change based on player feedback and suggestions.

I would strongly suggest that you treat balancing like software development, with “stable” and “experimental” releases:

- If the balance is in a relatively good place, then by all means freeze it for WvW season, tournaments, etc. Continue to develop changes internally (and maybe allow public visibility and discussion of your internal beta changes) and release when the season is over.

- If the balance is universally being panned as un-fun, (especially by players currently participating in the tournament/season!) then you MUST release changes as soon as you can develop and test them. I’m pretty sure competitors would much rather have to adjust to a better meta than compete with a bad one.

- Feel free to consult with tournament/esports players on upcoming changes. Will a particular change improve their tournament experience? Or will it greatly inconvenience or annoy them? You can make decisions on which changes to implement immediately and which to hold for later in response to their thoughts.

Maybe after this patch they will inform us a little more of what is to come

lilz shorty.1879:

Maybe after this patch they will inform us a little more of what is to come

Dont count on it , but they said a SOTG is coming soon so hopefull :P