Showing Posts For Cons.7694:

Policy: 3rd-Party Programs; Multi-Boxing; Macros

in Guild Wars 2 Discussion

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

Guild Wars 2 players are permitted to use macros as long as the macros are programmed with a 1 key for 1 function protocol.

  1. This means that if you program a macro, it must require one keystroke per action. You may not program a single key to perform multiple functions.

A key is the physical switch on a keyboard, while a keystroke is the action of pressing and releasing a key on a keyboard. They are not the same. Which is it?

Am I allowed to program a single key to do multiple actions if it takes 1 keystroke to do one action? For example, can I program a single key to output an escape keycode on press and output a control keycode on press and hold? They keycodes would never output simultaneously.

Matchmaking Factors

in PvP

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

That’s true, though when I mentioned experience, I didn’t mean the same thing as skill. Regardless, the matchmaking system uses rank, even if it is most likely rated less heavily. Personally, I would prefer if “experience” (not skill) estimators were dropped completely from the algorithm, which might have happened already if the algorithm on the wiki is out of date.

(edited by Cons.7694)

Matchmaking Factors

in PvP

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

While I personally dislike using games played as a rough estimator for experience, it wouldn’t be worse than using rank — which is being used in matchmaking now — because the people playing in guild arenas only would have neither matches played nor rank. However, games played should (not entirely sure) be a better estimator than what is currently being used as it is less correlated with hotjoin farming.

The same concept applies to the offensive/defensive score (I think…). It shouldn’t be worse than what is available now, which is duplicate profession deemphasis.

(edited by Cons.7694)

Matchmaking Factors

in PvP

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

From what I have gathered from the matchmaking pseudocode and documentation on this site: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/PvP_Matchmaking_Algorithm, there are a lot of things that go into the matchmaking scoring algorithm. Currently it’s set up so that it factors in:

1. Team size
2. Rating
3. Rank
4. Ladder position
5. Number of unique professions
6. Number of duplicate professions
7. Time in queue

Rather than trying to complain about the current efficacy of matchmaking, I wanted to add some ideas to improve the matchmaking algorithm. I realize that adding more factors may dilute the weight that the current factors have. Regardless, here are several of my ideas:

1. Match on offensive/defensive score
If you have access to each player’s stats from traits and amulets, you could roughly approximate whether a player is a dps role or a bunker role. One way to calculate it would be to use a function like this: <scalar> * (-|<offensive> – <defensive>|). This could be a replacement of the duplicate and unique profession matchmaking factors, as it works somewhat better than simple duplicate counts in the case where you have multiple players of the same class playing different roles (e.g. Meditation guardian and AH bunker guardian).
This is somewhat susceptible to abuse if people switch stats during the matchmaking phase to stack a particular type of role, but do so to the detriment of their own team. I’m not exactly sure how to defeat this potential degenerate behavior from players, though a median filter of previous match builds could work at the cost of a lot of server/database space.

2. Map based rating
After watching WTS, I realized that some team compositions work better on different maps. If you could record rating on specific maps, in addition to rating based on profession, you could figure out which maps favor which team compositions.
Maps like Temple of the Silent Storm favor compositions that consist of many well balanced builds rather than a gamut of bunker and dps roles. Using the dps/bunker heuristic from above, you could match better based on map. However, this type of matchmaking factor will preclude map selection unless some sort of match abort capability is added. This type of scoring is also not scalable if you intend to add many maps.

3. Number of arena games played
This heuristic is intended to be a replacement for the rank factor. Some time ago, people were playing hotjoin and farming ranks. With this unexpected behavior, people that were relatively inexperienced with arena play had abnormally high ranks for their skill level. Using the number of arena games played or perhaps number of arena games won would be a better gauge of player experience (which is different from skill).

If anyone else has any other ideas to help improve matchmaking, feel free to add on your thoughts.

3rd party program for injury.

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

It may be expensive, but have you considered buying peripherals that you can use with your feet? It may allow for you to adhere to the one key press one function rule. StinkyBoard is one peripheral that comes to mind.

Just a easy QoL UI change

in PvP

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

That sounds good, but might be difficult to see if there are buffs on the player. What if we moved the icon to the left of the health bar, or made a cut out in the lower left of the the portrait?

Just a easy QoL UI change

in PvP

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

Rather than place the information inside the health bar itself, why not add some sort of frame around the character portrait (or class icon in simple mode)? It would be similar to the way veterans, champions and legendary NPCs have different portrait frames.

Why do the wvw titles even exist?...

in WvW

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

It is possible that they put such a high limit on the achievements as an ad hoc way to keep track of WvW stats. So, instead of implementing a brand new system for it — with a GUI and database — they most likely decided that folding it into the achievements system would achieve the same results for less effort.

Logitech G600 - 8200 DPI Delay in Movement

in Account & Technical Support

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

It’s a known issue with the G600 and pretty much any laser mouse with 8200 DPI. The issue is that these mice use the Avago ADNS-9800 laser sensor, which has about 25-50ms increased input lag compared to older sensors (particularly in comparison to the Avago ADNS-9500). Logitech may have put out a firmware update that resolves most of the issues, but I’m not sure you can flash the firmware onto that particular mouse.

Is it too hard? Respect the awesome work

in Super Adventure Box: Back to School

Posted by: Cons.7694

Cons.7694

Congrats on designing one of the most blatantly obvious (but still devious) money grabs I’ve ever seen implemented in an MMO cash shop.

Cranking the difficulty all the way up to “insane” for world 2 NORMAL mode, implementing an hard mode based on trial and error, reducing lives from 5 to 1, brutally reducing the amount of baubles with which you used to be able to buy continue coins, AND introducing the infinite continue coin which can only be purchased from the shop.

I’m assuming you already have the “real” world 2 normal mode ready to go live as soon as the bean counters think they’ve gotten enough money off all of this.

You’re brilliant, Josh. In a different way from what most of the people here are meaning it, but still brilliant

That’s not how things work here. I don’t tell the commerce team how to do their job and they don’t tell me how to do my job. My goal is to make a really fun and compelling experience for players. Insofar as W2 is not fun right now because of the crazy difficulty, that’s on me because I made some poor judgement calls. I lost the forest for the mechanic-trees. I liked this tree and this tree and this tree and this tree… and jammed them all in without taking the big picture in often enough, especially near the end when everything comes together and starts interacting in unpredictable ways. Last time we were just excited to get 8-bit UI, a bounce mushroom and turtles you could knock over for platforms. Now we have projectile enemies, ice, moving platforms, water spout platforms, spin flowers, push blocks, several cooperative puzzles, etc. Now I know next time to give the elements time to breathe, and go hands-off earlier, and if a last minute fix is required to make a new mechanic work (what happened to the water spouts that ended up making them terribad) it should be cut and saved for next time. These are the reasons World 2 is too hard. If the reason was to sell coins I would not be here and you would not see a huge suite of fixes we put together over the last couple of days come out tomorrow.

As to the Infinite Continue Coin I’ll repeat what I said several pages back. I think it’s a great item because it expands the number of people who can experience SAB. There’s probably a good-sized portion of players who don’t want to play it like a real stand-alone old-school game where you have to really learn the levels, find the secrets, earn the resources to get the power-ups etc. In that way it’s like a Game Genie. It also gives people who are really into SAB a chance to vote with their money and support future development.

We decided to do Tribulation Mode in the platform hell style back before we launched the first SAB. Before the idea of an ICC was ever thought up. It matches our personality and humor. We knew there would be people who were really really good at SAB and would wrack up huge numbers of extra lives, and thought Trib Mode would be a great way to spend them.

As to a ‘real’ World 2, that will have to wait for next release when we have time to make the major renovations necessary to put it in the proper context between Worlds 1 and 3. In the mean time, check out the changes we made and see if it’s more fun for you.

The second system effect is strong with this one.