Guild Wars 2

If you think wintersday is fun, you just wait. The valentine’s day event (which they are working on now, fervently) will be redonkulous.

People, people, people. Patience.

I’m sure that right now folks are hard-at-work getting ready for the valentines’ day event, and also the easter event. sPvP will get fit in somewhere, likely be addressed sometime between the cinco-de-mayo event, and the Tyrian unity event in July. If you bought this game last August, you should have known that the focus would be largely on mini’s and mini-games for the first year or so. In the meantime, go buy some gems and get some adorable mini’s. See if you can get a mistletoe focus skin, or the giant candy-cane staff skin. Maybe go grind some ascended gear so you can be more competitive in WvW, or just wait out of the next tier of gear to be introduced sometime during the easter event to keep you grinding. Not to mention all the other wonderful adorable cutesie things coming out between now and July.

sPvP doesn’t get people buying gems. Until it does, sPvP will take a backseat role to mini’s, snowball fights, and baby quaggans.

The top three articles on the gw2 reddit right now are, and I’m not joking:

1) picture of “Adorable” minis
2) baby quaggans
3) snowball fights

The game has morphed from expectations of a great PvP experience, to My Little Pony™. Sadly…

I’d play the game again if there was such a mode, and some of the balance work that is needed was done. Myself and two friends might be incentivized to come back for that. Or 3v3 free tourneys. Ideally, 2v2 as well. Essentially, if I join a tourney with 3 party members, 2 party members, whatever, we get matched vs. another 2some or 3some or 4some. WoW arenas did this, and while the gear-grind there made arena’s unpleasant, it would be way better here. We don’t tourney now because we’re turned off about picking up 2 pugs who may or may not have voice comm etc.

MindlessRuff.1948:

You cannot claim ANY statistics from hotjoin sPvP are actually indicative of balance, I’ll give a few reasons here:

1) Rank Diversity: If you ever look at the scoreboard after the game and take a look at the ranks, you will notice a HUGE difference. This is extremely important since ranges of ranks with their professions would likely see variations. Such as the range of 30-40 the stats of professions would probably be much different than 1-10. I would like to see these statistics broken up into level ranges.

You mean, of the players I saw, what were their ranks, etc? I can get that…I have all the screenshots. I don’t have scores at the end of the game (took the screens at the start), but I do have rank info I could do something with, not sure I feel up to more work on this though heh. Is your theory that thieves are mostly casuals, and will have lower ranks? Rank is account based, so it wouldn’t tell you anything overly conclusive I don’t think, or would it? Like, a rank 40 ranger could normally play a thief, and be messing around with ranger, or vice versa.

MindlessRuff.1948:

2) Hotjoins aren’t serious: Myself and I am sure many other people jump into hotjoins to test builds and mess around. Have I ever tried warrior in hotjoin? Yes I have back in the beta when no one had any idea how to counter 100 blades (some still don’t) but I would never play warrior in tPvP, only to have some quick fun in hotjoin.

sPvP is all a lot of players do. tPvP requires more time than most casuals have. My stats aren’t reflective of tPvP at all.

MindlessRuff.1948:

3) Most hotjoins are 8v8s: This makes them a zergy mess so it would be apparent that the more mobile classes with more burst damage could get high glory scores, this does not mean I haven’t seen bunker eles running staff in sPvP, it just means people like quick and fast action, tPvP is completely different in this regard since people don’t usually go there to get some quick fun out of it.

Dagger/Dagger ele is slippery and can burst. Almost every class can be bursty and slippery. Why are they not as omnipresent?

None of your reasons discount the stats gathered, or any inference you might draw from them, not inferences regarding sPvP anyways.

The only reason I don’t have stats like this for WvW is because it isn’t possible for me to get them, but my perceptions were that thieves were way more common in sPvP, and my observations proved it. My perception is the same for WvW. So…can you not balance on WvW stats either then? Must everything be balanced on tPvP? What makes one part of the game more important than any other? This game is turning into Thief Wars in sPvP and WvW and anyone who complains about it, or merely points that out is blaspheming. Meanwhile the populations of both seem to be in decline.

I’m not out to see people get nerfed whether or not they should; I’m not dumb enough to think I could. I just want to see a more diverse experience in sPvP and WvW. I’m no alone in these feelings, but I’m being, erhm, “vocal” in the hopes that it might incite some sort of ideas on how it could be improved. Maybe cap a given structured hotjoin match to no more than 4 players of the same profession? That would really only impact, well, thieves from my stats. Might encourage them to play something else when they have trouble finding a server, but it wouldn’t affect tPvP. No idea how you might address WvW, but I’m not sure its as bad there as it is in sPvP anyways.

It is un-fun and borderline ridiculous, in my mind, that a quarter of any given 8v8 server is going to have 5 thieves or more…a quarter. Another full quarter will have them as the most populace class, albeit under 5. This isn’t speculation, this is observation, documented. I’m sure Anet has far better stats and is aware of it. I just hope they see it as something to work on, and eventually do something to address it, somehow heh.

Anyways, I think I’m done working on this. Hope you enjoyed the spreadsheet, if you didn’t see it the link is in the OP and has been updated constantly since the OP.

Best

I crunched the numbers a bit more. Out of 51 samples, 27 of them the thief was either the most popular profession, or tied for most popular. Warrior comes in second at 15 times out of 51 samples, Mesmer third at 12, and guardian fourth. Over 50% of the games I played during this period, thief was the prominent or tied for the prominent class, 29% warrior, 24% mesmer and 16% guardian, ele 8%, ranger 8%, engie 6%, and necro but 2%. This stat may be the reason people think sPvP is filled with mostly thieves. Even though they represented 22-23% of all players encountered, they were the most prominent class 52% of the time. See the attached graph.

24% of the samples had 5 or more thieves. 5 or more…

QSpec.4298:

Moreover, and this is certainly not great evidence but it is a metric, look at pre-launch class polls. Class distribution was relatively normal. Thieves weren’t actually all that popular (because they were seen as UP during the final BWE). Mesmers ran somewhere in the middle of the pack, and Rangers were actually quite popular.

There could be dozens of reasons for the shift, but at the very least it is an issue that is worth considering.

I really wish I’d have done something similar at launch, because I think you are dead on. I don’t remember being this frustrated in sPvP then, not with thieves anyways at launch. I think at launch people played what they thought they would enjoy, and now I think they play what they know will bring them giggles.

Agreed, but to ignore the disproportionate representation or not consider that balance is a factor is naive. “because thieves are cool” cannot possibly be 100% of the reason. I suspect it is that, combined with spam able kill buttons like HS, and also easy to use kill sequences like steal, C&D, backstab, HS, and warriors frenzy HB. Few other professions have sequences as well known, documented and proven to work in sPvP. All counter able by skilled players of course, but effective vs the majority in sPvP. Ranger classes in other games are fairly popular in PvP (hunter and druid in WoW), but not here. Why? I can see Engie being “different” than usual classes in a fantasy game accounting for a lot of the popularity hit. Though I would think that popularity in that sense applies more to PvE. And the Mesmer guardian Engie comment doesn’t make a lot of sense. You will run into more thieves and warriors in sPvP than those three professions combined. Read the spreadsheet I linked.

I didn’t say buff specifically. I said make more appealing. Make Rangers and Engies more appealing to sPvP players. And yes, your assumptions are silly, until you do them 50 times and document the results, as I did, then you can make empirical statements as opposed to your subjective example. As it stands, and this is subjective, sPvThiefWarrior is not fun unless you are one of them, or have an awesome build to counter them. You do not need yo make a build to counter an Engie as you are unlikely to encounter one. There needs to be better diversity. You seem to prefer keeping sPvThiefWarrior as is.

Rika.7249:

DeeTooDee.3972:

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each.

No, you shouldn’t.
Are you expecting people to spread out evenly across all professions, simply because they’re equally balanced?
That’s the silliest assumption ever made.

Who cares if all classes were 100% balanced, if Ranger for example, is just a horribly boring profession with a boring playstyle?

You are agreeing with me while trying to disagree with me. If that were the case, Rangers need to be improved to be equally effective and desirable, as I said.

Lukin.4061:

everything else is an interpretation without any data to back it up.

I know But what is not in question is that thieves are more appealing and more popular. The rest is subjective. They need to make the other classes more appealing.

Lukin.4061:

Thirdly – you should have tested not spvp, but tpvp, then the numbers would have been a lot different.

That would have taken forever. And it would have probably been different. Someone else is more than welcome, as it is it took me silly amounts of time in sPvP.

MindlessRuff.1948:

Obviously you will see more thieves in hotjoin matches, they are the “assassin” class and everyone likes getting kills and racking up points, not that this shows thieves are OP, just because something is effective at killing in a cluster kitten of mostly 8v8, does not mean that it is imbalanced.

And engies, necros and rangers don’t like getting kills and racking up points? I don’t buy that. The assassin class part I think may carry some weight though. That from an RP perspective people might be more drawn to that.

My point is that class diversity in sPvP isn’t great. 3 classes make up 50% of sPvP, one of them alone accounts for almost a quarter. That means that if you are not making a build to counter them you are in double trouble, literally, where under ideal distribution you might accept being vulnerable to that 12.5% of people.

My personal opinion is that the distribution directly reflects the effectiveness in sPvP. Not talking tPvP, talking chaotic pug filled sPvP. My opinion is that players gravitate to the builds and classes that are more powerful, hence the distribution.

Several friends and I had perceived that certain classes were disproportionately represented in sPvP. The problem with perceptions like that is that you are more likely to remember encounters with classes or builds that you have trouble with. So, was it that we were having trouble with some builds/classes? Or were our perceptions real? I decided to test.

I joined 50 sPvP servers over the course of two days. I would join, immediately screenshot the scoreboard, play the round, then go back to the mists. Next, I would tally up the scoreboard in a spreadsheet, wait a bit, then join a different server. This took place at all times of the day with the exception of from 2am to 9am EST.

In the process, I saw just under 700 players, excluding me (as having the same class in every match would skew the results). Here is the distribution:

Engineer: 47
Necromancer: 67
Ranger: 69
Elementalist: 80
Guardian: 86
Mesmer: 88
Warrior: 102
Thief: 157

In an ideally balanced game, with 8 equally effective and desirable professions, I should have seen 87 of each. Some interesting stats:

You are twice as likely to see a thief in sPvP than you are to see an elementalist. You are 3.3 times more likely to see a thief in sPvP than you are to see an engineer. Thieves represent over 22% of sPvP players in my sample. In an ideally balanced and desirable hypothetical, you should see 12.5% representation from each class. Thieves are nearly double that, and engineers are well under half of that.

Of the 50 samples, engineers were completely unrepresented in 17 samples, followed by Necromancers with 11 unrepresented samples.

See all the gory details in the spreadsheet here: http://goo.gl/3Q6WC

Dagger/Dagger gives you shocking aura, two knockdowns, and well…RTL. It does not require you to do anything overly fancy (like root your target before dropping tooth on them) to get DPS, it compliments well with an auras build, has great self-healing, etc. It is most versatile, and lowest skill ceiling to achieve strong dps. Plus…with GS/100 blades warriors abound, shocking aura is almost required. Would be wonderful to have greater diversity, but we’re pigeon holed. I’d love to go scepter focus, it is my view of perfection, but losing RTL, a knockdown, and shocking aura is unfortunately not as effective as gaining a reflect, invuln., daze and a projectile destroyer. It should be…but in practice it isn’t. Game is all about DPS in its current form, and defensive abilities consume time and do not produce DPS. My ideal theorycraft is an ice mage, inflicting perma chill and whittling down an opponent. But in practice all that time spent chilling is just time not doing damage. Unfortunate. Wish there was more feasible class/build diversity. Honestly the game was more fun in September before everyone figured out what was ideal.

Take all that aside, and instead of arguing over its effectiveness, take a look at the frequency with which it is played in sPvP. Out of the hundreds, if not thousands of possible class/build makeups, bola/bulls + frenzy + gs is disproportionately represented (thieves are as well, and certain mesmer builds). And since players tend to flock to what is proven effective, well…I think you get the point. It could be because that build is super-duper fun over all else. I think it is…because it is very effective in unorganized sPvP (kill buttons tend to be powerful in chaos). Counterable? Of course. This sort of disproportionate representation hurts theory-crafting and creativity though, because you need to build to combat 100 blades warriors, as you’re next to guaranteed to encounter them (often several) in sPvP. As an ele, I feel compelled to either bring shocking aura, spec deep into air, or make sure I always have stun breaks off cooldown, preferably ones like teleport that get me the heck away. Not a bad practice, but it means some nifty creative builds can’t see the light of day.

Cookie cutter builds like this make for a less diverse sPvP. Less diversity = less fun.

Multiple rails apps running under the same domain, some setting cookies on a sub domain level, others across the entire domain = confusion and weird csrf prevention problems.