Guild Wars 2

There was a discussion on rerolling characters here which got a little developer attention, but has not had a reply back on the final opinion.

The basic gist is that if unlocking skills is character based even for sPvP, then it would significantly discourage deleting and then remaking a character for sPvP. The other announced updates have been extremely alt friendly so far, particularly the dye and wardrobe system as well as the WvW levels.

Is there any chance that skill unlocks would become account based unlocks for sPvP? If not, then why? Do you think the number of other alt friendly updates help mitigate this alt unfriendly update, or that the costs of acquiring skills will be negligibly small?

And a little bit broader, what other areas of the game has anet considered changing to be more alt friendly that we are not seeing this update, or was decided against?

So I haven’t been following GW2 too closely after so many disappointments, but I do have hope with the upcoming updates so I’ve been coming back. I remember the announcements regarding sPvP in the past, but I’m having trouble finding information on whats happening with glory in the upcoming april update.

I know I can’t earn glory anymore, but I’m wondering if I should spend what glory I have already with the rank 10 (almost 20) vendors, or if I’m better off just holding onto it and going for the higher ones.

Will glory vendors be removed with the feature update, or will they stick around a bit longer?

This is ok as long as we can earn the transmutation charges through sPvP in a reasonable fashion. Although for sPvP I would love for it to be free and unlimited similar to GW1, that may just be my greed.

If they are still planning to unify sPvP gear and PvE gear into one pool of transferrable items, then I doubt it will be similar to the GW1 system. But thats fair enough. Again only as long as the sPvP is just as rewarding as other areas of the game for gaining the transmutation charges.

I know there was some hate for the idea of unlocking skills/traits in another thread. To me that is a little ridiculous thing to get up in arms about. Looking back on GW1 that system worked just fine, and there were tons more to unlock.

But again looking at the GW1 system, I think it would be a huge shame if skill and trait unlocks are character bound, rather than account bound like GW1.

We’re seeing a bunch of changes so that things are account bound in other areas of the game (Dyes just released today, as well as armor and weapon skins.) So while it may not be account bound planned at this moment, I do have hope that Anet would keep the system of account bound the same across the game.

It would be reasonable to have account bound for sPvP at least, and not so for PvE and WvW. Those being so much more profitable than sPvP I would be fine with that. Working to unlock things for sPvP can be slower so long as you only have to ever unlock it once to be used in sPvP.

EDIT: Also, I hope the decision isn’t made purely based on how often people reroll characters now for sPvP. The system already discourages rerolling with the current system for skins and dyes.

Once the recently announced armor/dye system goes through, people will be far more likely to reroll what would be just sPvP characters I believe, so using the data for rerolling now may be significantly different later.

Something I want comment on is that if Legendary weapons are obtainable through PvP, then it is important that players have to do a broad range of different actions to acquire them. In PvE you can’t just farm one area of the game, you have to clear maps, farm numerous different locations, do quests for glory, basically you have to do a little bit of everything to acquire legendary equipment.

If it takes ~200 dedicated hours to acquire legendary in PvE, then acquiring it in PvP shouldn’t simply take ~200 dedicated hours of farming out glory or whatever it is. I realize glory is being removed, but it is the idea of farming out in a single game mode or whatever it is in PvP.

I can easily see it being tied to “reaching first in your ladder division” or something, but that would be boring too, as the appeal of legendary items largely comes from being able to consistently work at something and seeing progress towards it over time, rather than just a rush to reach some goal within a single ladder season.

Don’t get me wrong on the last point though. Some items being exclusive to doing well in a ladder season is fine, but it is nice to also have some grand goal that spans across multiple seasons without losing progress over time.

There are many other things to say about legendary items in general that has already been mentioned, from the flashy and possibly distracting effects, the exclusivity of PvP vs PvE versions, etc. But that is something to be left to other discussions.

(TL;DR) Simply if there are some super legendary skins players can work towards, simply have it require play of different kinds, with different things to “grind” towards obtaining it. Likening it to GW1, you shouldn’t be able to simply grind out a billion balthazar faction to obtain it.

Josh Davis.6015:

New skills being added to the game will be unlockable via skill points. This also applies to new utilities and elites. For PvP specifically, this means you’ll need to purchase Tomes of Knowledge to level up your character and unlock skill points.

This isn’t perfectly clear so I may be misinterpreting it, but it sounds like in order to unlock more skills for a class, I have to have that class at an appropriate character level in order to unlock it? Or is it just simply acquiring skill points (such as if I ran around and did skillpoint challenges and such without necessarily gaining levels)

I guess it doesn’t make much of a difference, but it would be troublesome if I desire to delete a character for whatever reason and come back later to that class as something else. Deleting a character would effectively reset all of the skills unlocked.

Instead a system like that in GW1 would be better where once you gained a skill it is unlocked for the account as a whole permanently.

A lot of people are misunderstanding what is happening. People who have earned their rank emotes and finishers will get to keep them as they are. This is making the sPvP community look incredibly foolish that we’ve had people complain when it was in the print originally, have a dev point that out, and then people still complain. If we’re to be taken seriously it helps if our complaints and arguments actually start with what is true rather than rantings based on incorrect beliefs.

Don’t get me wrong, I still feel like we’re getting thrown under the bus here a little. The game has been out for a little over a year and sPvP has consistently received the short end of the stick compared amongst the 3 areas of play (WvW, PvE, and sPvP). Hell I feel like costume brawl got more attention than sPvP in the last year.

And it would now seem like those who didn’t cheese/cheat/whatever you want to call it the rank system with skyhammer farm basically get left out. But even that isn’t the core of the problem. Its been historically the case that those who don’t abuse get left out of things like this in many MMOs. Rather I feel like those who stuck with PvP in general will just get shafted. Being left with just the /rank emote and finishers isn’t enough. We’ve heard of getting to transform glory into levels, but that doesn’t really help those who either have the 80s characters we want, or just don’t care about PvE.

Most succinctly, whatever glory spending, ranks, whatever are given out in the new one, should be reflected for those who have already put in the time. If it takes ~1,000 games of play to get some reward in the new system, then those who already have ~1,000+ games should get those rewards or something of equal value. Simply leaving it at ranks emotes and finishers alone is not enough.

You’ve buffed several of the skills which were 5% of stat X buffs stat Y. Some of these were buffed from 5% to 10%, although for others it was buffed to 7%. Maybe I’m just misreading or mixing up my traits, but why is this the case?

On another note related to such skills, what is the current opinion of them in anet? They’ve always been such boring traits to take as they don’t really add a whole lot of change or uniqueness to a build. Unfortunately a lot of the traits fall into this category but these stat X boosts stat Y ones were always particularly the worst for their blandness. Is there any chance of seeing these replaced? Do they have a certain role that isn’t quite so obvious to us?

Building a Super Weapon
I hate to steal blatantly from another game, but I wouldn’t mind calling attention to a game mode in Multiwinia. The important and most basic premise is you have to hold certain locations which gives you resource, and once you’re maxed out on resource you have a countdown until you liftoff in your rocket and win. During this final countdown your enemy (there are usually 2 or 3 others trying to do the same) can come and attack you, potentially breaking your rocket and causing you to lose a lot of the resources you accumulated.

In guild wars 2 the basic idea is a couple (maybe even only one) resource point that the players have to capture, similar to a supply camp in Wvw. They bring the supply back to their base and work on building up whatever it is they’re building, and at a certain threshold the enemy can attack to reduce its current supply total. Make it simple like your team is building an alliance cannon that can wipe out the enemy team instantly/permanently or whatever, the lore isn’t important, but rather the idea of the gameplay.

Giant Robot Fight!
A very similar idea with a lot of overlap could be a golem designer map. Each team has a golem they build up over time. To differentiate this from the previous, the goelm is already finished, they just move it around the map and have skirmishes. Around the map are bonus powerups for the golems however that each team tries to accumulate. Golem vs Golem damage is very high, while player vs golem damage is significantly reduced. The abilities of the golem would be different from those in WvW, as they aren’t meant to be siege weapons. The goal is mainly to take down the enemy golem, keep your own safe, and improve on it by bringing it to certain location that randomly spawn over time on the map to receive specific upgrades (whether it be unique abilities, boons, stat buffs, etc)

Tug O’ War
A dolyak or some slow cart spawns at the center of the map, and the team that surrounds the dolyak will have it follow them slowly. Victory to the team that gets it to their side.

There is a lot to this idea though that can really flesh it out. Map design with the dolyak taking a slow long roundabout path, while the enemy can cut across quickly to get ahead. Provide the ability to (conditionally?) kill the dolyak, but that causes it to wait 2 minutes to respawn, rather than walking it back right from where it currently is.

There are also some pretty glaring problems. What stops the team with the dolyak from keeping 1 person on it, and just rushign straight to the enemy to keep them too occupied to bother with the dolyak? It would quickly turn into a simple death match. Should there be conditions on when or how to kill the dolyak? There is a lot to go with this idea, simple enough yet requires a lot of forethought.

Football/Soccer
There is a ball on the map. Use knockback skills to hit it into the enemy base. Really I don’t know why this isn’t already in the PvE minigames already it seems so obvious

I’ll keep this post strictly to discussion, and do another post some other time for suggestions.

I’m glad to hear the devs clarify the issue of having game modes that have more or less than 5 people in games. It was something I tried to bring up in another thread but it didn’t get too much attention/discussion.

Promoting Group Play, aka promote zerg…
One thing I would like to see most in the game mode is having the players stick together more as a group and zerg. I know this is an absolute sin and blasphemy to suggest such a thing, but really I wouldn’t mind seeing more team fights in PvP. In the current mode we see people splitting up and doing their own thing way more. You might have 2 people roaming who backs up someone camping a point or something, when I would love to see something a bit more traditional 4v4/5v5/8v8 we saw, with a small handful splitting off of 2 or so.

Individual play in current meta is very important, and I’m glad GW2 has that now, as it was something rarely seen in GW1 PvP. The most you got was 1-2 man squads breaking off to rush the guild lord or run flags. It just would also be nice to see/have what we’ve had in the past. We get a bit of this in WvW, but it is a little too random/lopsided

In hot join you see this a lot unfortunately still, but thats just a mob fight usually. I would like to see and participate in a more organized team fight (although this may come naturally with many game modes beyond conquest, it is something I just wished to mention specifically)

More than 2 Teams
Similar to what Kentrey mentioned, I wouldn’t mind seeing 3-5 way fights, with more than just 2 teams competing (although more than just a team of 2 or 3, but a standard team size of 5.) That was an extremely fun part of heroes ascent and added a really unique strategy. Although one of the biggest problems with such systems is it favors a team that finishes the opponent quickly and moves onto the middle section, or a problem of teams waiting around, relying on the others to make the first move. For the former problem it can be good to reward those most dominant, but it can be difficult to balance so that they don’t get too much of an advantage, not to mention it disfavors more defensive teams. That and it can be very luck based if a decent team goes up a weak team and gains an advantage that way rather than through skill alone.

I’ll make a separate post for more specific ideas that aren’t like the ones we’ve currently seen, and some promoting the things I’ve mentioned here. I detest long posts a mile long and cover 10-15 different things. Hopefully we can start seeing discussion on more than the vague “more GvG” or “MOBA”

DevonCarver.5370:

Waypoints are being evaluated currently. There will be changes to that aspect of WvW that we look at in the upcoming tests. Based on how that works out, we would then move any of those changes into the live game once they had been tested. We aren’t discussing the specifics just yet, until the test is live.

Will these tests be things we might see in the mentioned WvW overflow map first? Or are these things that would have to be introduced into the main borderlands/EB to be really tested?

I wouldn’t mind seeing the boons on the normal skill normalized. Popping the heal in the middle of a battle and getting swiftness is always such a letdown compared to if I get protection. Unless you’re running an HGH build, I think most people go with either the turret or the kit anyways. It would be nice if it just gave all of the boons rather than a single random one. Although that may be a little strong, it is the weakest of the heals without HGH and/or 409 traits, although the kit has the advantage of being “use a heal skill” when swapping to it, and the turret creates a waterfield and provides the biggest flat heal when properly chained if I remember correctly. Once you include 409 and HGH it is slightly comparable, but just barely behind healing kit IMO since the 15point trait of recharge toolbelt skills.

The toss function can be just as bad, although at that point I’m usually relying on it for the 409 or HGH functions. It would still be nice if both the base and the toss skills were normalized.

If some kind of normalization were to occur, I would like to see it occur for toss elixir B as well. At least that main skill is consistent unlike Elixir H.

DiogoSilva.7089:

Strategical solutions to mitigate player segmentation

3. Remove the official servers from Hotjoin, or alternatively, make them randomly choose the game mode for each match;

4. In addition to the option above, or alternatively, add a rated queue option, or modify the current Solo Queue option, to randomly choose a game mode;

I hinted on this in the original post, but I think this is one of the biggest problems to be faced.

If we roll different game modes into the same random map pool as every other game mode, then wouldn’t they all be restricted to the same amount of players? If I have a team prepared for conquest with 5 people, and suddenly we’re thrown into a capture the flag which may require 8 people, then what? Bite the bullet and deal with it and play with those 3 randoms on your team?

A bigger problem is the reverse, you have a team of 8 you want for CTF, and suddenly the game wants to put you into a death match or king of the hill meant for 5 people. Does the game simply exclude you from such map rotations?

I don’t see how they could reasonably just lump the map rotation and mode rotation into the same pool to be randomly drawn upon. This is easily solved by just having different queues for each system like GW1, but then you get the segmented player base. Is it just an inevitable evil?

If there is ever anything like Heroes ascent with a tournament style series of different maps in a row against different teams, I would like one significant change from GW1…

That those who lose aren’t necessarily booted out immediately, but rather dropped down to fight another team who lost recently. Basically have a losers bracket for HA so they aren’t booted back to lobby immediately. Make it like any standard tournaments these days, where despite losing they can potentially work their way back in and keep going.

In any PUG for GW1 90% of the time the moment a team lost they would disband right then and there, making team formations all the harder. Something like a losers bracket would help keep teams together, and give people a chance to play against a different team who also lost, hopefully leading to a slightly better pairing.

So I’m not sure where I implied more game types is a bad thing, just that it brings new problems that we’ve seen in the past. I just wanted to start a discussion about how to handle this, hopefully before it becomes a problem. I didn’t say even once that more game modes will make things worse than they are now, so please do not put such words in my mouth.

With new modes we’ll inevitably see an initial surge of more players. Great. Over time more modes will be introduced, and surges will happen with each.

I just mean that when things have settled to a standard amount of players, they will be split across a handful of different modes, and each new standalone game mode that is released will draw some players from other modes potentially if they don’t draw from the same pool of players. How can we solve or mitigate this?

With the other topic, I wouldn’t mind having a topic for discussing one of the most obvious and sometimes but not often enough mentioned problems with new game modes. That Development topic will have any specific discussion drowned out by people just posting more game mode ideas, people posting the same game mode ideas we’ve seen, and 4-5 different discussions trying to gain attention.

How do we handle new game modes potentially splitting the player base

In GW1 we had hero battles, team battles, random battles, HA/TOPK, GvG, fort aspenwood and jade quarry, alliance battles, etc.

There were several reasons, and while it is certainly not the biggest contributor, one of the obvious ones that we can try and solve more easily than others is simply how to deal with players being split across so many game modes. GW1 helped reduce this problem most with the double reward weekends.

How can GW2 avoid this problem?

• Are the alternative game modes simply something rolled into the same map rotation as the current maps? This would either limit build variety as people have to bring a build that is broad enough, and can’t attempt to specialize for a map too much. It would limit map variety as well, as each map would have to support the same amount of people as other maps
• Do we simply have certain game modes out of rotation and cycle them in? What happens for the people who only enjoy 1-2 of the game modes but nothing else?
• Design some kind of weekend special to get more players into certain game modes at times? This doesn’t really solve the problem the rest of the time, and has a habit of drawing in “weekend warriors” from other game modes who simply want easy bonuses, and others having a problem with a huge influx of newer players. This may not be a problem for all, but I can already see people complaining about such things. Similarly I can see players of WvW or PvE complaining and wanting their own weekend bonuses, creating even more work.

What other options are there? is this just a necessary evil that will come alongside new game modes? Any other thoughts on similar problems?

The subject of a map a lot like Fort aspenwood has come up several times.

To me this is awesome, but I suspect that the recently announced WvW overflow map will fill this role quite closely. This is just based largely on rumors and my own readings into what some of what they’ve announced will entail.

Although just to speak in general about what such a map would be like for sPvP, I just imagine it being similar to WvW with a series of points of interest which accomplish specific things (gates, guard posts, some kind of siege camp, etc). But with a lot more PvE like elements with dynamic events which change based on what each team manages to complete.

This would be awesome, and again is what I sort of expect from the new WvW map so I don’t have that high of hopes for seeing it in sPvP. I guess there is a question of whether sPvP would make use of game modes that are very similar to things we might see in WvW with series of events and capture points with lots of NPC guard like entities

Because of this I don’t have high hopes for seeing something like fort aspenwood, but I would still love to see it if only because having a more structured version of that is appealing. I prefer sPvP specifically because when I lose I know its purely because of the build or skill of the other person, rather than how much they’ve grinded for WvW levels, PvE gear, or bloodlust buffs.

So even though there may be some overlap between a PvP map like fort aspenwood and WvW content, I would still love to see it for sPvP, but I realize its only advantage is for the sake of fairer competitive play.

I realize that many of the numerous PvE runes would probably be grossly overpowered as they are now, if they were implemented into sPvP

So with that in mind I can understand if it would take a while to properly balance them for sPvP. What I am wondering is if we can ever expect some of those other runes, or new runes at the least in sPvP

Or more specifically, if there is any work being done to introduce these other runes into sPvP, or if all of the focus is going elsewhere currently.

EDIT: And sorry if this has been asked before, the search function didn’t turn up anything related when searching for pve or runes.

So I see that this could be a very serious potential problem, but it is one that anet seems aware of as they’ve mentioned it a couple of times when discussing handling different game modes.

This is not a thread to whine and beg for different modes, as it is so obvious that they’re coming, they just need more time to develop and design it. Rather, I’m more interested in hearing (hopefully from some devs) what are some possibilities on how to avoid splitting the PvP community.

The most obvious would be a semi-tournament ladder with a series of games, where you fight on random maps, and each map/objective will vary from map to map. Something that is basically Heroes’ Ascent in that they fight through a series of different map/game types.

However that hardly seems like an ideal goal. While it is good for very small tournament style with the best rising up, there are many problems. Casual players can’t necessarily devote the time necessary to play it through its entirety, how can we provide experiences to this crowd? Should we allow build swaps in the middle for a team? What about character/class swaps? etc? What about map types that allow for a greater or lesser amount of players, such as 8v8, how could we fit such map types into that?

So while something like HA is a decent idea overall, it still has some holes in the design. What alternative possibilities are there that wouldn’t split/fragment the community too much? Or is fragmentation of the PvP community not a problem, or at least not as much of a problem as people have been making it out to be?

Ok what the hell, I was typing up pretty much this exact suggestion when I decided I better to a search for fractals, only to find someone else beat me to it…BY ONLY 4 HOURS?!

That reeks of witchcraft good sir.

Either way I had pretty much the same idea just a moment ago, but I don’t think it has to be limited to dungeons.

Refight the ancient karka re-adjusted for a dungeon sized team, dive through the flame and frost dungeon that has been slightly shortened perhaps, etc.

I assume the holiday dungeons will return with their respective holidays, but if they are changed significantly to be different each year, then perhaps throw in some of the older versions into the fractals as well. I wouldn’t mind seeing some of the temporary jumping puzzles thrown in, but I can see that being something some people would hate.

Yeah I tested in game, and the toolbelt skills is not usable.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Self-Regulating_Defenses

I was basing that claim on the notes from the wiki. I’ll try and get around to testing whether it currently interrupts skills (I was going on memory, and it is rather hard to test it on the fly)

So in the upcoming patch engineer (and a other classes with invulnerability abilities) will lose the ability to heal while under the affects of elixir S.

What I’m wondering, is how this will affect self regulating defense, which has you automatically drink an elixir S once you reach 25% hp.

Presumably, we will not be able to heal/use other skills during this period. But a question is if I’m in the middle of a heal animation, will it cancel that? I think it actually already does, but you’re then able to re-activate it at (currently, and i’m not 100% positive on that, it is a little hard to test this)

According to the wiki, the trait does permit use of the toolbelt, does this mean we’ll be able to use our F1 heal if using healing kit? Or will this be changed/fixed?

Should an exception be made to this skill, considering it isn’t exactly within control? I’m all for the regular elixir S restrictions, but if the change affects this one as well, the trait can actually be disruptive and hinder players if it comes at an inopportune time (it already does a little, but it would be even worse with the change). Maybe this is OK, but it is something worth considering.

Orb flew in a straight line, travel time from the keep to the garrison took about all of 5-10 seconds. Anvil rock has been struggling for so long, and when we finally get a foothold this kitten happens.