Guild Wars 2

They don’t deserve your faith. They deserve accountability and a trip to a college algebra class, because the numbers they put out with the Specialization patch are horrifically incompetent.

Ditch this joke of a game and go FFXIV Heavensward. Best MMO expansion in years, better than any WoW has made and will certainly be better than Heart of Thorns. Look at the body of work of the last 3 years from Anet… it’s one disaster after another, and now they want to charge a full game’s price for an expansion that they still haven’t fully explained?

GW2 is just a shiny kitten and a brazen cash grab that cashes in on the hipster gaming demographic, which make no mistake GW2 players are. You don’t want to do trinity or pay subscription because you simply can’t handle group mechanics and want something great for little investment.

You whine all day on here because the game simply doesn’t have enough for you to do. Anet spends more time and money on Fox News style PR livestreams and advertising than pushing themselves to the limit on content pacing and quality like FFXIV does.

FFXIV is a categorically better game at this point, and the gap will only get bigger between the two games. It’s arguably better than WoW too, altho WoW fanboys are waaaay too entrenched to ever admit that.

This is a peasant tier game made for instant gratification hipsters. Graduate from the trough and join the most skilled and competent MMO community in the world.

SlayerSixx.5763:

Dude says the game for PVE carebears. You link a PvE video to show what? That point and click is hard? If you’re trying to prove that a game that took a second launch to not completely suck is better than what GW2 is now, then you’re going to have to lay down a stronger case.

PvE or PvP, nothing Guild Wars 2 has can challenge a raider in FFXIV. There’s a datacenter wide MMR Season based Arena rotation coming fairly soon, although I will admit people are too busy with the mountains of other content to commit to PvP at the moment.

I really don’t have to prove anything the people leaving this game and saying they’re glad they left GW2 do it for me. I’ve met at least 15 people just on Exodus that feel that way about GW2. If it isn’t how easy the PvE is, or how slow Anet makes content, it’s how incompetent the Skills and Balance team is.

If you did any research about FFXIV other than the 2nd launch and a subscription price tag you would see that the only real competition we have at this point is WoW and even WoW players are leaving for FFXIV. GW2 has been out longer and makes less per quarter than FFXIV already and that will only continue after the masterpiece that is Heavensward.

GW2 is a pawn shop MMO for instant gratification players. The PvP just got broken to all hell with the Power Creep Patch, Anet still doesn’t make any instanced content, and they’ve taken much longer to put together a smaller expansion than Heavensward. The size and very likely the amount of content in the new area in HoT is the size of one of the 6 new zones in HW, and they made the Jobs more well rounded balance-wise, making PvP a lot more interesting.

FFXIV is just better. At everything.

mistsim.2748:

FFIV is a game for PVE carebears. this is a pvp forum. GW2 is good at that too. its combat system is also dated and kitten y, so its pvp is silly.

You wouldn’t last 10 seconds in Ravana Extreme. The trinity is dated, but FFXIV has mastered it to a degree WoW never has.

Also imagine 7 of your friends and you getting completely rekt listening to this

Anet and NCSoft have proven with this HoT debacle that they are completely untrustworthy and greedy pieces of kitten.

I wish I never bought this game or spent money on these disgusting people and this disgusting game.

Guys Heavensward comes out on the 23rd and that is a REAL expansion, not this pathetic attempt at a cash grab.

Anet isn’t going to do that. They’re going to take their trademark lazy approach of throw a bunch of stuff at the players and let them figure it out, waiting 6 months before they fix any balance issues.

This implies there ever was any build diversity. There hasn’t been and never will because people will always find optimal ways to play that rule out other “options.”

This game is never going to be balanced, matchmaking will suck until GW2 has defined roles that players have to choose and limit what is available to them to build with.

It’s lazy and hasn’t worked on Arenanet’s part to just throw a bunch of “options” at players and let them balance the game. It’s delegation of gameplay to people who are going to do the following:

a) run nonsensical, idealistically driven, scrub builds (The Scrub)
b) copy builds that work and play them decently (The Follower)
c) theorycraft and test their builds with and against good players to make superbuilds (The Leader)

What ends up happening is a pyramid of builds that can be run which is mainly composed of fecal matter, but with a golden triangle on top. This is why GW2, which on the surface looks like a game with a bunch of building choices, is anything but a game with a bunch of building choices.

So how do you fix that?

You reinvent the Holy Trinity into something that fits into GW2 and use it to govern what players can run and how groups are composed. After all this time, can any of you honestly say that GW2 has provided a legitimate alternative to the Tank-Healer-DPS conceptual model in PvP, organized PvE, or large scale groups?

What exactly has “role-less building” accomplished besides market GW2 on Twitch in a less successful way than an attractive female with a low cut tanktop streaming World of Warcraft?

I play FFXIV, which is an objectively better game than this and will continue to exceed any of the accomplishments this game achieves, so I could care less about teaching you as players, or developers, or the publisher of this game exactly what you should do to make the game more sane.

I wanted to drop this in here so at least you guys can have some semblance of intelligent discussion.

If you want counterplay, balance, better overall matchmaking you can’t just let people play however they want. There have to be rules.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Public_relations

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_propaganda

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-disclosure_agreement

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illuminati

4 out of 5 of these are useful to answer your question.

It really is astonishing how insane the OP’s “evidence” is. I only played this game for a couple months and realized that Mesmer is just a DPS with some cool mechanics that work better in a group than solo.

Class balance in this game is actually pretty good considering how unworkable the system was designed to be. When people can build however they want with very little in the way of rules, it becomes much more difficult for developers to balance.

Of course, it’s still a bad joke, but not at all for the convoluted gibberish “reasons” the OP states.

(snip)

Ok I follow your argument better. You’re right Celestial trivializes the concept of building condis as a priority of damage dealing.

Build diversity is the single most deceptive word in MMOs right now. It simply doesn’t exist. If there’s any MMO where build diversity SHOULD exist it’s GW2 and there is none. Why? Because players just play what works the best. That’s why there are maybe 10 total builds people will play in GW2 PvP when there are MILLIONS of possible combinations.

GW2 is a PvE game too, except about 1/4 of the quality of FFXIV. There is also a considerable amount of effort going into improving Wolves’ Den, which is Arena PvP.

A quote from a Famitsu interview:

“Patch 3.1 and 3.2 will see improvements to the Wolves Den system. First, 3.1 will add matching based on points/rating. But there are bigger plans as well, such as season-based ranking that resets with each major patch. The highest ranked players will get special titles and items. Wants to end up with a similar system to LoL. This would probably be in patch 3.2.”

Now here’s the critical difference between when Yoshi P and FFXIV say they’re going to do something and GW2 – when Yoshi P says he’s going to do something it gets done. Arenanet makes promises and doesn’t deliver upon them. This is the “Honest Trailer” motto of GW2 – we talk big, and we deliver small.

Furthermore the class overhaul coming in HW opens up a large number of options that make PvP to be more of a thing, particularly for how Tanks play. Instead of being stuck with PvE specific cooldowns centered around threat generation, Tanks can build to be just like a DPS, which has synergy with PvP more because threat doesn’t exist.

The infrastructure is actually already there for FFXIV to make elite PvP, but, like any big MMO, there are other priorities that come first. But since FFXIV is absolutely swimming in cash and, more importantly, decides how it will spend it (unlike slave developers working for big publishers) this kind of PvP overhaul is possible.

Yes I’ll admit that FFXIV is currently a PvE only deal. But as incredible as FFXIV ARR has been in 2 years, it was just exposition. This is the “WoW Killer” and PvP will be objectively superior to GW2’s by the end of the year.

Guys that video is Anet flying a white flag saying they’re never going to be an esport like companies that actually invest into it. They’re clearly stating that GW2 is and will continue to be about PvE and “the Living World” which is a marketing gimmick more than anything.

Furthermore they’re admitting publicly that they are not getting anywhere near the resources necessary to get their PvP to the kind of level they want to approach esports.

They want to get you to spend more money on PvP, attract more casuals, and give hardcore players something to keep their minds off of the better options out there…

Basically nothing is going to dramatically improve any time soon. Stronghold is their hail mary, which isn’t going to work either because, like with everything else in a game with no defined roles, the players will trivialize the challenge of the content with a standardized meta that will be static rather than dynamic.

As innovative as GW2 is in its combat system, Anet is utterly oblivious to why their competitive area doesn’t work – there has to be defined roles that players have to master, rather than mastering the character building system that ends up trivializing the “choices” that end up just being a pyramid made of dog crap with a golden nugget on top.

Without some kind of trinity system or even just the healer-everything else role division that existed in GW1, the players are just going to centralize all the builds into super builds that defeat the purpose of an “open-ended” system.

Anyway, back to playing a superior MMO and letting you guys chew on the reality of the situation XD

Puck I really feel sorry for you. Your passion is wasted on this game. The people who make it frankly don’t have the capacity to listen, acknowledge, or implement these ideas or build the culture you want.

It is sad that this game falls so short of achieving its potential, but eventually you’ll see that you’re banging your head against the wall and Anet will just disappoint you. That’s what they specialize in – disappointment.

There are greener pastures out there man.

Do yourself a favor and play something that is actually designed for PvP or an MMO from a company that publishes its own developed games.

Junkpile.7439:

Alexander.9810:

Play Smite, LoL, SC2, Dota 2 or other games that have greater dev support for the PvP…

Say dude who play some cheap animu wow clone.

Rofl don’t hate. Nothing cheap about FFXIV. GW2 on the other hand…

Play Smite, LoL, SC2, Dota 2 or other games that have greater dev support for the PvP…

Yall need to read this and ask yourself if what you’re complaining about is proof.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Natural_selection

The facepalm is so strong with this thread.

Might as well recruit some of you obviously disgruntled ppl to upgrade your MMO experience XD

Rofl it looks like I won’t even need to consider HoT now.

www.reddit.com/r/ffxiv/comments/37e1y5/notes_from_famitsu_interview_at_nantes/

FFXIV is going to have seasons, ladders, and prizes for top PvP groups with a MMR based matchmaking system and, of course, cross server queues. Each season resets ranking and the best get titles prizes and probably international recognition b/c thats just how we roll.

They just had a conference in a kittening French chateau in Nantes btw XD

ROFL

If you know that then you would have also known that you could have just done Leviathan Extreme with competent friends and had a higher ilevel weapon than the atma farmers.

That was a nearly half year old “argument” too /golfclap

Anyone who can’t make friends or group up to do content instead of depending on random people SHOULD have to grind like a slave to get decent gear.

Just like how Solo Q heroes SHOULD have a rougher time in PvP than those evil horrible premade groups if they’re grouped together, which shouldn’t happen, but it’s Arenanet so what do you expect lol.

I came in with the same optimism and that was when turret engis were still plaguing the game that they didn’t do anything about for months.

This is not a good PvP game. It’s not even decent tbh.

Freedom of speech? Here?

LOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

Arenanet would be advised to pull of a Squaresoft circa 1997 vs. Nintendo and look for any way they can to break off of NCSoft and publish their own games. Squaresoft got lucky and ended up making a fortune off of the Playstation launch, so Anet’s journey would be a lot harder though. Save up money, talk to publishers from other companies about what it takes to do it, go to school for accounting/marketing, among other things

Until they have control of their own destiny, they’re just assembly line slaves in NCSweatsoft

Good intentions, but there are some fundamental problems with making esports in GW2

• Arenanet does not want to do specific solutions. They want one size fits all solutions that are cheap and easy.
• What you suggest is “too expensive” for Arenanet. That’s why they’re forcing Stronghold into the same queue system as Conquest when HoT comes out even though its a fundamentally different game mode.
• You also need a large population to get that kind of competition and incentive to get to that top tier and keep competing. Neither exist and it’s doubtful that it will.
• They balance for all 3 game modes at once, not the PvP separately from PvE, which is a fundamental flaw that prevents competition from happening. Its like adding an RTS to League and saying they’re going to balance both the same way.
• Their QA testing is abysmal. Their track record is pitiful in this regard.
• NCSoft is particularly demanding with their labor costs and this is very well documented on Glassdoor. The reviews for NCSoft are pretty bad, so these kinds of suggestions, which would be listened to and actioned upon by FFXIV’s great dev team, are not acted on here.

TLDR; Anet aint gonna do it. They want to but they can’t.

Nothing’s going to change – they’re understaffed, they’re trying to make one size fits all solutions as usual, and with Blade and Soul coming out I doubt GW2 is getting any extra investment from NCSoft to do ambitious projects like ladders or revamps of the competitive matchmaking system.

Yall need to stop ragging on Arenanet so much and blow up NCSoft’s corporate “Contact Us” emails to show them that people care enough about GW2 and that they’re willing to go to the source, not just yell and scream at the messenger and the understaffed worker bees.

Reality: Nexon has almost 15% share of NCSoft

That said, I think NCSoft and Nexon are indistinguishable from one another. Neither make anywhere close to quality games.

You guys can cling to your hipster dream world all you want, but the organization and order of a Trinity-like system would benefit the game more than take away from it.

Anet realizes this. Why else would they have put Taunt into the xpac as a condition?

Never said anything about copying the Trinity into GW2. I meant taking the combat system of GW2 and figuring out 3 roles that each class can fill and balancing around that.

Examples being Spike, Support, and Pressure or Damage, Control, and Support.

briggah.7910:

I used to eat, sleep, breath FF until I bought FFXIV.. That game failed horribly and just took money from their fans.. They recreated it into a realm reborn, I got closed beta access but it still wasn’t enough to convince me to pay a sub fee for that game. Seeing as they robbed me with the first one.

So while you might think it is a better MMO, It was the ending to all FF for me.

RIP FF you died after FF11

If you saw how it is today compared to the original launch it would totally blow your mind.

I’ve come to the conclusion that this game, despite its innovation, pretty aesthetics, and unique combat system rates about 6 out of 10 for an MMO.

I’m going to name some of the biggest flaws that I’ve seen and chunk deuce because, like my signature says, I am already committed to another MMO, FFXIV, which is significantly better and has an expansion on the way.

• Bugs, bugs, and more bugs. I mainly played PvP while I was in the game, but I think this applies to everyone. Arenanet please look at your bug report section of the forums, there’s cobwebs growing there and it would behoove you to at least pretend you’re paying attention to them.

• Toxic community. The PvE players seem to be much more positive than the PvP community, which is all well and good, but overall the vitriol coming from WvW and PvP players, which are the game modes I would have committed to if this game was worth committing to, pushed me away. Big time.

• Obvious short-handed staff is obvious. I don’t know if it’s because you guys pay a lot of overhead, NCSoft’s shareholders are too demanding, or your management doesn’t have the stones to spend more money in problem areas, but the rate of work and releasing content is abysmal. FFXIV ARR came out in 2013 and within the period of time it’s been out the sheer amount of content they’ve created is staggering. I don’t know what the excuse is for GW2, but it doesn’t really matter. You guys aren’t giving your players enough to do, that’s why they’re complaining on your forums so much.

• I know you’re in “testing phase” for your PvP leaderboards, but getting to the top of them just requires playing the game more. When you average out how many games per day the “top” players play, it makes you wonder if they have taken a shower in the last 2 months. There have been sub .500 winning percentage “elites” in the top 25. One time I counted four of them, but that was a while ago. That’s just embarrassing.

• The fact that you have not committed to a release date for HoT and still hype it up while it’s in early beta shows that you guys do not have the confidence to set a date, do not have enough staff to have that confidence, and will probably release the expansion “unfinished,” which might be a subjective word to you, but, again, FFXIV Heavensward will be a “finished” product. They’ve already gone into detail about what you’ll be getting, a lot more than your cute little “we’re nowhere done yet, even though it’s been 3 years to work on an expansion, but here’s where we think we are and where we think we’re going.”

• Your PvP balance is trying to make anarchy cool. It’s not working. There needs to be order and organization in how players build and how groups form, which is why Trinity MMOs will always outperform GW2 in PvE and PvP. Is it a stale, “boring” system? Maybe. But it works. Ultimately, as in life, that’s all that matters. If it works. Ultimately, one day, one or some of you will realize that you need to have archetypes or roles that all players are made aware of, and a system in-game that directs them to build in a way that the group needs. In a Trinity game, you have to have a Tank, 2 DPS, and a Healer. GW2 needs something similar to that if it’s ever going to have good competition in all competitive levels of PvP.

• All your business model promotes is new players, new players, and more new players. You very obviously are not focusing on retaining your most committed players, because there is nowhere near as much incentive to. That’s one of the many failures of a non-subscription MMO and proof that it’s just a fad that is of benefit to younger, weaker studios who need the obnoxious dress up customers instead of the ones willing to pay you 180 dollars a year plus 50-60 for an xpac guaranteed. You actually have to work for those customers, but if you get them they’ll promote your game everywhere and say almost entirely positive things about the game.

Hope you guys read this and at least consider looking into some new approaches, like having an optional subscription, building a role system for PvP, templates, or any number of the suggestions pouring into your forum every other day.

Deuces, and enjoy this preview of an actual expansion.

The community of an MMO reflects the ongoing efforts of the people making the game. If you look at FFXIV’s forums and Reddit you’ll find overflowing positivity with a little trolling and QQ.

In GW2…

Hate to say it but I’m starting to think I wasted my money when I got this. The combat system is fun, but what does it matter if the community is so bitter and it takes these developers you want people to be nicer to so long to release content that is heavily bugged upon its release.

Since I’ve joined there has been no action taken on the invisible player bug, floating turrets, and going through the reported bug list is pretty shocking. That’s a lack of effort or manpower on Arenanet’s side, which is not crossing their T’s and dotting their I’s.

The PvE in this game is not impressive at all, the WvW scene is a festering QQfest, and PvP seems like it’s on its way to esports but with so much negativity and drama in its competitive tier that they manage to keep their community small despite their hopes for growth.

GW2 seems like its just a clever cash grab disguised as innovation and achievement, when it’s really just lost potential.

Sorry folks for the negativity, but I think I’m going to keep myself in FFXIV where there’s so much more going on, a much more friendly community, a more competent development team, a better business model, more content, a better story, and a bunch of other reasons.

Deuces.

Timston I feel sorry for you.

OP overly sensitive.

If people spent the time they did watching and copying other players toward building a team and thinking of a team strat…

Idk there’s a hierarchy in all PvP games for a reason

One of the things that actually works very well, despite the “inconvenience” of it in Trinity MMOs is how queue times increase for certain roles and reduce for others.

DPS classes/roles are a lot more plentiful than Support roles because most people are selfish or want to see big numbers on the screen. In WoW or FFXIV, those people will have to wait a lot longer to get into a dungeon or raid than the much less plentiful, but just as important Tank and Healers.

I think in GW2, there should be a way for the Specializations to be tagged for Support or Damage, and when queues are made for a PvP match in Ranked, that a non-premade group of should be composed of 2 Support and 3 Damage. I am spitballing here, but my guess is that the vast majority of players do not run Support builds – this would appropriately reward people who do play unselfishly and provide incentive for people to queue up with the team in mind so that they don’t have to wait 15min while a Support gets insta pops.

Ex. Tactics would be necessary for a Warrior to be tagged for Support, since most Warriors who run that are going to use Shouts, Soldier Rune, etc. Even if they don’t run that they’ll have minors that improve Res speed and team play. Simply picking that would put Warrior in the Support category when they queue.

Specialization builds that do not have any Support tags, like a Deadly Arts, Critical Strikes, Trickery Thief, would fit under Damage and encourage people to run aggressive builds.

This would also serve the purpose of giving Anet a guide to their classes and think of ways for all classes to be able to Support or Damage relatively effectively. For example, Necros have Wells for Support, but are they anywhere near as effective as Shoutbow? No. So they would need to be buffed so that Necros could queue as a Blood Magic Support and provide an appropriate level of value, or Shoutbow and other support types nerfed to Wells’ level so that there is choice for who can run Support.

This would also closely resemble the 2 role system they had in GW1, where there were healers and everyone else.

As far as Hybrids go, these generally fit into the Support category – Hybrid has more to do with how they inflict damage than whether they Support or focus on Damage.

Without a way to lock people into builds, or establishing a more orderly system of roles this will never end.

That’s why I’ve been saying that GW2 needs to have a more “trinity-like” system for how classes queue and what types of builds they can run.

Guys they said Elite Specs are going to replace the previous Class-specific Core Spec. That means when you switch to Chrono, Illusions is replaced by Chronomancy / Time Magic / LOL2Fast4UNERD / #ESPORTSCLOCK

Don’t let it get you down. PvP is Darwinism happening in real time. You haven’t been a part of it, don’t know how much faster it is, how matchups work vs. certain classes, rotations, mechanics, or how stow weapon is one of the most important hotkeys you can make yet.

I would personally stick to Unranked Queues, go to Twitch.tv/Romoncoke when he’s streaming and ask questions, and laugh off all the kitten kickings you’re going to get because if you keep at it, improve, and make friends to queue up with you’ll get to push their faces into the dirt at some point in the future.

Have fun and don’t give up

I think it will depend on how the Chronomancer can affect damage output overall. If it’s too easy to win team fights with a Chrono, then it will be because the coordination it takes to pull it off is too easy, like having too large an AoE or too long a duration on these Shield skills.

That said, Chrono looks like an excellent team fighter, a role that Mesmers pretty much suck at right now. Slowing down a Thief’s animations would mitigate their burst capability, and this would be the first time a Mesmer could actually kite a Thief long enough for their team to squish him.

I’ve actually been thinking about Necros more and with the new Quickness and Resistance boons it brings to question how much their boon ripping (best in the game) is actually getting buffed.

Berserker Stance, for example, might be giving a long Resistance boon instead of how it currently works, which means a Necro can proc Spinal Shivers, use it, or Corrupt Boon to negate that otherwise huge counter to their condi build. Quickness could be turned into Slow, which would indirectly add another condition Necros can use.

I think Amulets should have an Offense / Defense ratio that, at most, reaches 75/25 in Offense.

For example Berserker amulet has 89% offense stats and 11% defense stats. Clerics has 78/22 on the defensive side. I wouldn’t let these be a part of the new system if I was in charge of it.

If that Offense/Defense ratio is tiered according to a primarily offensive approach, then Amulets would promote a lot more active play just by eliminating the possibility of Bunker builds as we currently understand them.

Example of 3 amulets balanced that way with a pool of 2800 stats

Berserker

• Offense 2100, Defense 700 with a 75/25 ratio.
• Power 1000
• Precision 500
• Ferocity 600
• Vitality 700.

Celestial

• Offense 1820, Defense 980 with a 65/35 ratio.
• Four hundred fifty five Power
• Four hundred fifty five Precision
• Four hundred fifty five Ferocity
• Four hundred fifty five Condi Damage
• 327 Toughness
• 327 Vitality
• 326 Healing Power.

Clerics

• Offense 1540, Defense 1260 with a 55/45 ratio
• 1000 Power
• 540 Ferocity
• 630 Toughness
• 630 Healing Power.

Believe it or not Four hundred fifty five is censored….

At this point being that high on the leaderboards is more of an indictment than a praise. Anyone who plays PvP that much probably has issues, especially since many of them played turret engineer more than just for trolling.

I think it’ll still be a strong choice for hybrid builds. My hope is that pure condi / pure zerker / pure support builds can be viable too.

At least you have to dodge sometimes and don’t get a large percentage of your damage from airborne AI that you don’t have to micro in any real sense of the word.

And here I was ready to come back to do ranked queues now that Turret Engi has been properly humbled.

/waitsummoar

Haha. I mean Necro does counter the current Engineer pretty hard, so in theory you would think this is the time to stack Necros, but I think its obvious how that ends up. People like me will just go Hambow or Mace/Shield, Longbow and laugh our way to downed state Necro.

Funnily enough people are more afraid of Necro autoattacks than their actual mechanics, the most deadly of which is when they have been cut off from all their utilities…

I can understand, albeit from a distance, the frustrations of the Necro community. It’s not enough to just counter the FotM in a 1v1… Necro needs to not have a neon flashing sign around their class icon that says CARRY ME, CARRY ME anymore.

I hope Arenanet is paying you something for doing their job Gates

I won’t mind actually having a choice of what to use in the healing spot for Warrior. Right now there is no choice.

Also boons are easy for certain classes to remove, but not all of them.

Maybe need is too strong a word, but I think its clear that Necromancer has problems being able to keep opponents within their most effective damage range. Taunt seems like a very simple solution to that.