Guild Wars 2

If you’re gone for more than 2 minutes, you get dishonour. I think it’s working as intended and it’s fair.

It sucks for you, but it also sucks for your team if you do disconnect. 2 minutes is a long time and can easily be the difference in a match. It may or may not be your fault that you DC, but it’s definitely not your team’s fault. I don’t think they should be punished for it. (Edit: and of course somebody does need to be punished, or else people would leave matches to save pips with no consequence)

As for AFKs… Yeah, that part is broken. The report system needs to be able to deal with that more appropriately (but somehow still prevent abuse).

They’re introducing a new ranked system next season. Whether it’s better or worse we’ve yet to see; but it’s different.

In the mean time all I can say is try finding some people to play with; it will reduce the number of variables which could be occupied by toxic players.

With this season they’ve matched up teams to have equal MMR. What this means is that while your team may have some terrible players, the opposing team also has some players that are not as good. You can often identify these players and exploit them. This is totally anecdotal and doesn’t happen 100% of the time, but I can often point out 1 or 2 poor players and good players on each team. If you’re losing consistently, chances are the better players on the other team have already done this to your team mates.

I’ve won games because of this. I’ve also lost games because of this; I may win every encounter I engage in but my seems to lose every encounter I’m not in. And I’m not being arrogant either, some games I’ve been that person, and I get repeatedly outmatched and outplayed.

The decision will often depend on the circumstance, and you’ll probably learn with experience.

Disclaimer: I don’t play thief, but here is my brief take on it (I watch what thieves on my team do, and I can tell which actions pay off and which don’t). You should always be wasting more of your enemy’s time than your own. You should also see where else you can be productive. Decap if: there is a high chance that an enemy will show up within a few seconds of you capping the point, or you can see that your help will obviously benefit the team elsewhere (and you can make it in time; ex., +1’ing). If there is a low chance of the point being contested right after you cap it, or you can’t see where else you might be useful, then full cap it.

At higher levels of play, the second instance may be less frequent, but that doesn’t mean it’s never a good idea.

I don’t think the issue lies in the downed state mechanic, the issues lie in the ressurection mechanics.

There’s so much stability, aegis, aoe stealth, and aoe CC that can keep stomps away and keep you ressing without a lot of punishment.

The amount of cleave damage you can do never matches res speed, and 2 people ressing a downed ally can beat out pretty much any stomp. Ressurection speeds, especially when stacked, are too fast. Quick-stomping got nerfed.

Not a bad idea, but I’m also okay with the no-pip-loss rule. I personally think the bigger issue is players going AFK in base, since you’re still fighting 4v5 and lose pips.

I would actually really enjoy this. But I think it may be a little risky, from a development perspective, so I don’t see this happening any time soon. Stronghold was their first take on a “GvG-like” mode and it failed to take off. I definitely feel like they should play with it more before giving up, but there are other issues with Conquest / PvP in general that should take precedence.

Interesting observation. I haven’t looked into this but this would be something to look out for. Similarly, some skills track you even if you stealth, like ranger LB2.

HardRider.2980:

Doesn’t show Red was a team, Just shows they all worked together and won.

Not sure if I’m misunderstanding your post, but you can tell that the five of them queued together because of the brackets beside all of their names.

Great find. How are you guys adapting to this right now? Always popping stab before head butt, swapping runes?

Them being invisible is part of their mechanic. As mentioned above… They are traps, you’re not supposed to see them.

That said, you can often clue into where traps may be. If you see a dragon hunter placing the traps, you know where they are. If you see a dragon hunter just capped and left a point, you can suspect that there may be some traps there, etc.

Note that you can dodge over traps to evade their activation effects. Ex., if you dodge roll onto a point that you suspect has a bunch of traps, you can avoid a lot of the damage. Or else use skills that can mitigate this damage or allow you to quickly blink out of the traps.

Thanks for the well-articulated post.

I definitely agree with point #1. The league system isn’t exactly reflective of my skill level, so I’d like to know what my MMR actually is (for all the reasons you’ve stated).

I’m indifferent about #2.

While I agree with point #3, this has the balanced between similarity of player skill level and Q times… Different people have different concerns, so this will always be up for dispute.

As for point #4, I don’t think there’s much you can do. Should your MMR be reset for each class? Good players will pick up new classes 10x faster than newer players, they also have knowledge of all the map mechanics. Should a good player playing a new class have their “MMR” bumped down (how far)? I don’t know of any competitive game that does this.

Other than that… Yeah, play unranked until your defeats aren’t as spectacular and grind hotjoin (try dueling rooms to work on your mechanics).

Glad you’re having a good time in PvP though. Hit me up in-game if you want someone to play with (NA time zone)

You don’t lose pips if a player has disconnected for more than 2 minutes in a ranked game, which is a decent consolation. The games are also relatively short (i.e., not 30 minutes) so you aren’t losing that much time.

I can’t really see a way of balancing the game around a 4v5 that would be fair to the team of 5. It’s not their fault that the person disconnected.

… I would say that the bigger issue is people intentionally AFKing in game to avoid “disconnecting” but also don’t contribute to the game.

Zaxares.5419:

I had a new idea. So apparently Ranked is open again, but any matches are actually Unranked instead of Ranked, right? How about we change it so that Ranked matches will all be Capricorn (or Unranked is all Capricorn, either or)? That allows players who want to play only Capricorn to pick a queue that’s just for them, and players who dislike Capricorn or prefer to play the old maps to stick with them. This might be easier code-wise than creating an entirely separate category for Capricorn.

If anything, the opposite is already available. If you don’t like Capricorn, you can do ranked queue. It makes more sense that way anyway, since a lot of people are choosing Capricorn in unranked for the achievements.

Not sure how much visibility this will get, but I’ll toss a few thoughts out there.

The new map looks great visually, but as far as map balance it definitely favours the stronger team-fighting team.

- The map is really open, so you can see enemy player movement very easily (vs. maps like forest, kyhlo, or temple which have environment elements which block your view of enemy movement). This also makes spawn camping much easier.

- The secondary mechanic feels like a steam-roll mechanic rather than a come-back mechanic. It’s in the middle of the map which makes it very easy to rotate to if you already control the map. On Capricorn, it’s hard to “over-commit” to capturing Bell, since it’s the closest point to all 3 capture points on the map. So if 5 people rotate to Bell and we win a team fight there, we can easily rotate off and maintain a 2- or even 3-cap at the same time as getting Bell.

This is in contrast to the the Lord on Foefire or Tranquility in Temple (or even skyhammer). These are very rewarding secondary mechanics but also effectively take you out of the capture-point game for up to several minutes, so there’s a risk vs. reward. These mechanics are great for forcing opponents off points to respond.

- I personally prefer “channel” secondary objectives versus “sit on capture point” mechanics. The game already revolves around capture points, so builds that can effectively sit on point are already favoured. Especially when the bell capture point is so small, it can become a game of stacking AoE, and spamming knock-backs/fear.

Hey Stalvros,

1. My understanding is that the ranked season needs to be in effect. Since they just recently introduced the “off-season” ranked matches, I’m not sure whether or not they are supposed to count. That said, it’s no small undertaking; I would focus first on getting comfortable in the PvP environment before thinking about the achievements.

2. Anet has shifted a bit away from “bunker” (i.e., hard to kill builds). However, some builds are more forgiving and less “twitchy” than others. I would suggest necro or guardian. Take a look at one of the “meta” builds here: http://metabattle.com/wiki/Conquest

For now, just copy the build and get comfortable with the playstyle and learn what all the traits do. Don’t worry about making making build variants until you really understand the class.

3. PvP has special gear. If you travel to the Heart of the Mists you will notice that all your skills, traits, and equipment are set to “PvP mode” (your PvE gear and stats do not matter). You will have to construct your build in Heart of the Mists, even if you choose to queue from outside. Click on the helmet in the top-middle of your screen to open up this panel. Instead of “armor,” the PvP system uses only amulets with a few selectable stat combinations. That said, you will still need to have armor equipped or else you will take a lot of damage (the actual stats on the armor don’t matter, you just need to be wearing it). You will also set your traits here.

4. That’s right. In Amber, you will need to complete 5 tiers, each with 3 bars (“pips”). You get 1 pip per win, 2 pips on a win during a win streak (3+) and 2 pips after winning after a losing streak (3+). As you progress through divisions, you’ll find that you can lose pips and even tiers (but you cannot lose divisions).

Add me in-game if you need anything else.