Guild Wars 2

Get a potty chair, or wear nappies. Sorted.

Love the pop up personally.

Riots. Everywhere.

I’m personally hyped for it… I will be honest, I would be disappointed if it is not an expansion – but I still have plenty to do in the game (I just like exploration/discovery a lot).

A few possible solutions would be to:
- Prevent “match spectators” from joining a game after the clock reaches 1min in the game, but do not prevent people coming from outside the game to join randomly,

- Force people to join randomly when they come from spectator (i.e. they cannot chose their side after the game has started),

- Generally, force people to join the lowest team

At least one of these must be easy to do.

azyume.6321:

Also, I have to disagree when someone says PvP is all about skill when in truth is the same builds everywhere, everyone using a bunker meta copied from metabattle and doing the same rotation, never changes. As much as boring as PvE…

This makes little sense…

If all players have the same builds and same gear out of the gate (as is possible currently), the only deciding factor for a win then is skill.

The skill to execute the said rotation and use the said builds. So it’s all about skill as people compete on an equal footing.

On topic, I think it’s mostly fear of the unknown.
There are people saying the exact same thing about PvE and dungeons, where people get kicked from groups because they don’t have gear, being insulted because they are noobs in a dungeon, etc.

Truth is: there is always a proportion of players that will be a PITA, and this is true in PvE and PvP (and probably WvW although I imagine the responsibility is so diluted there between 100s players that you can’t quite play the same blame game and finger pointing in WvW).

If you like Axe (as I do), you can try this build…

You’ll be swinging that axe like a lumberjack, and there are some nice hidden synergies.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQRBHbhG2IHN122SjNNs3moWok+IihAG6EIAmBqmDA-TZBBwAAOBAF3fAdZgNHBgAPEAA

Cons:
- 1v1 build, mostly, with limited AoE capabilities
- Easy-ish to counter and fairly static in combat (you’ll be gutted when someone dodge your axe 2)
- Frustrating at times

Pros:
- If you can lock someone, they will go down fast with axe 2
- You will be very hard to kill
- Very good burst
- Axe!

Explanations
- Dagger/Horn for mobility only: just use horn 5 locust to run around and try to root the opponent using dagger 3,
- Swap to axe and axe 2,
- If things get hot, pop your “death shroud”
- Barbarian amulet for extra vitality
- Hold points forever with wells, death shroud (with “plague” instead of “flesh golem” you can hold a lot longer)
- Dagger is your secondary trash – only switch to it on downed enemies (111111), when you want to stop an enemy (dagger 3), for heal interrupt (horn 4) or to when you want to blow your trumpet (horn 5), or to troll the enemy (dagger 2)
- Do not hesitate to go into death shroud to fear your enemy to prevent a heal

Fun stuff:
- When you channel axe 2, get extra toughness (+400) from trait dark armor, get extra strength (10%) from trait, get +20% dmg against enemies at 50% health, stacks of vulnerability (lots)
- Protection cast by 2 wells, spectral armor

Keep your consume conditions (heal) for the right moment though, you don’t have a lot of condi removal, but conversely you’re not very vulnerable to it with massive health pool.

I don’t think it’s a bad suggestion, although here is at least one possible limitation/problem if you want to hear some cons:
Imagine a 4v4, both teams fight hard. Score is now 300v150, so one player quits in team #2. Two new players joining, both go to team 2 with these rules and team 2 now gets the win because they have more players. Players of team 1 are frustrated.

Then again, it depends on if you care about winning or not, capping or not, etc. I’ve seen it all in hotjoin.

On a side note, I think this problem was actually less of an issue when hotjoin was 8v8.
The player difference was comparatively less: with 5 players, 1 player is 20%. With 8 players, 1 player is suddenly only 13% so it’s more forgiving when you’re missing one player – you can compensate.
Also, even with players leaving all the time, you always had at least 5-6 bodies to cover your 3 bases and objectives.

Are these 8v8 still available for random servers? I don’t think so.

ResJudicator.7916:

I think it’s an issue that could be resolved by adding different (easier to follow) game modes and adjusting respawn times.
…
A true CTF-like game mode would also be pretty easy to follow, b/c you know where the combat will be focused ahead of time.

I’ve always loved CTF, and I would love to see this mode implemented in GW2 – even if it never becomes a competitive mode for balance reasons.
But yes, I agree that new game modes could definitely help.

This thread is about trying to understand why the PvP as eSport reception has been poor/difficult for the game for an external audience (audience not necessarily committed to the game).

I was just watching the “Guild Wars 2 – World Tournament Series Finals, Beijing” earlier.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g1xGvbYnmbo

I personally enjoy watching it – but I couldn’t help noticing some of the comments below the video: people saying it is boring to watch.

I see where these people are coming from. I don’t think it is boring in the sense that the players are doing very little… On the contrary, they are always busy, always running somewhere and always trying to shift the situation in combat.

And I think this is in fact the problem: there is just too much happening all the time. Even though the game are in fact quite fast paced (you can see the two poor hosts – who do a great job – are still struggling to keep up because the game is so fast).
But because it never changes pace it actually seems “boring” and “repetitive” for an external viewer who cannot appreciate all the different nuances and intricacies in each fight.

In music, you put a drop for your audience to rest, before going full on again to generate some excitement for the next bit coming. GW2 is always “fast paced, full on” and thus fails to generate this excitement.

Compare it to eSport games like DOTA or SC2. These games have “building” phases, where you collect, gather, etc. Generally the pacing is more obvious (regroup/rebuild/attack).
There is very intense combat for a few seconds where the pacing accelerate and spectators are on the edge of their seats.
People feel they’ve watched a defining moment in a game.
Then it drops/slows down again, and get people can get all hyped up for the next phase of the game.

Now, it’s not a criticism of the game as such, as I understand MMORPG and current mechanics make it more difficult to pace a fight.
One of the mechanics that perhaps goes in this direction of “pacing” is the Lords in foefire, where a decisive, higher stake fight can happen there.
The other mechanics (orb, trebuchet, miniboss) are a lot less defining than this.

Well, any thoughts perhaps?

You shouldn’t let this bother you and should mostly ignore them/block them/report them.

They are a bit very similar to those angry drivers calling you [colourful name] and sounding their horn constantly when you’re driving a bit slowly in front of them for whatever reason.

Personally, I rarely talk/answer to anything in PvP – except for the odd “well played” when I felt the game could just have been won by the opponent as much as us.
Everyone gets upset now and then, usually it’s time to take a break. People in this state are just ready to take it out on someone else.
You can call them out if you want though, I’ve had entire teams telling some guy to stop. Usually they leave in the next 10s because we’re “bad anyway lol!1!!!” and their ego can’t take it.

If that helps at all keeping your cool, keep this in mind:
These people will probably end up worse than you in terms of skill as they are blaming it on others instead of themselves, and so won’t seek to improve and find what they are doing wrong.

I want to apologize about the way these people act. They give a bad name to the whole community.

Great change.
The simple fact that it lays the ground for other modes should be enough, but the scoring system also works better this way for Gw2 PvP.

QUESTION:
The scorecard at the end of the game… will it still show your “performance” based on points?
I think it is still useful to have these metrics/rankings, and perhaps new metrics even:
damage, kills, deaths, caps, healing, damage taken, cond dmg dealt, distance run…

Oh, and please display it for at least 2 minutes so that we have enough time to see it.

Well, Anet said they were already working on new game modes, so they should at least be happy that most people selected this as a “collaborative development” topic – it means they and their player base are on the same page.
This also means that the ball is already rolling too and that some of these questions already have some answers (at Anet, at least).

Now, I think they should give more freedom to the players and see what trends emerge.
I really want to see custom arenas being more accessible so that people can start creating their own servers, their own map rotations, etc.
Then you can start the number crunching and see the trends emerge, and which maps are liked and disliked, if the new game mode is popular or not, etc.

With this kind of freedom to customise your experience (offered by improved custom arenas), I believe you will see clusters of players interested in the same stuff.

Still, I think if they introduce more game modes, then they should seriously think about implementing “skill & stuff templates”.

Otherwise, for the “competitive crowd”, only reward a specific map on a specific week maybe.

Only real mode I’ve read in this thread that got me excited (and which isn’t already covered by custom arenas) is the “bomb run” where you push your cart (or golem).

Please, Anet, make custom Arenas purchasable for glory point so that everyone can create their duel room and 3v3 room to their content and so that you do not waste valuable resources on something that is already in game by just tweaking a variable or two (just add a checkbox to the custom arenas: “disable point capture” and everyone is happy).

I mean, how much cash have Anet made from custom arenas in total anyway?

Nobody told me I had to press keys to win with warrior.
I’m going back to my ranger… At least I can just click auto attack and pew pew enemies with my furry companions.

TheWalkingDead.7298:

yeah, no. The point of being conditions is that you have to be tanky because your damage takes time to get the job done and can be removed unlike physical damage.

This.

If it takes 20s to kill with condis VS 10s to kill using direct damage (using glass canon that dies in 10s), then logically condi-guy has to be able to survive 20s to stand a chance.

Keep in mind that condi is:
- Dispellable
- Moderated by regen over time

He’s right, though. It is frustrating.

HJ is definitely not incentivising people to play the “right way” (assuming the right way is the way listed in the “objectives” shown at the start of the match).

What it should say, instead:
- Try to join a zerg and kill as many people as you can for higher score and points.
- If autobalance pops up, click “I volunteer” for extra bonus score points.
- Do not step on capture points, you will waste valuable time for very few score points and as you might end up on the opposite team in 30s and would regret your decision.
- To increase rate of what is defined as success by the hotjoin mode standard, we advise you to farm the Skyhammer map (click link below to join now!).

It’s not a big deal though, that’s true… Just a bit boring.

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

And the most funny is, although I become worse and worse, my leaderboard rating somehow went 20% higher for last 10 games. Now I meet better opponents and this makes things even worse.

There are several factors to this (and it happened to me too).

In a hotjoin game (with mostly bad team mates or people not playing seriously), the better player you are the less points you are making. Because you won’t be joining the people already fighting 4v1, because you will be leaving when 3 idiots come to cap the point on which you are currently standing, because you will be holding a point for the whole game and people will just run away from you after you kick their ace (meaning that you get no kills and no point for capture either).
The way points are allocated is really counter productive (especially if you are playing guardian).

The other thing is that guardian hasn’t really improved or changed much as a class. It’s been fairly stable, and some other classes have changed a lot more and become more powerful and fairly tanky too.

Also, people’s average level of knowledge of the game will improve mechanically, over time – meaning you get a better challenge (especially true in soloQ where your rating supposedly sends you better opponent).

I’d say: try to see what classes kill you so quickly that you can’t react, and maybe look at the list of skills they used that killed you (press the “i” icon when you die). You might find out that the few things that killed you are easily avoidable/dispellable.

There is a lot of information to take in (despite all the people saying that pvp is easy, etc.) and it is a bit overwhelming at first.
When you start playing PvP, your initial focus is your own characters, your own skills.
But when you start trying to react to opponents, it takes 8 times the same amount of knowledge to react appropriately.
It will take some time and practice to be able to know what tricks a specific class might pull against you (and yes playing other classes helps).
But then, you will be able to outplay people who focus only on their own class combos (without reacting to their opponents) very easily.

asherchill.7314:

I main my ele in tpvp, I do get the reroll a diffrent prof a bit. But ele is alot of fun to play and i think its a good support and can bunker fairly well. Shame its a bit tied to a few ways to play it but its good fun and i do quite well in tpvp.

As I understand it, it’s not that ele is useless, it is that it’s usefulness is only 60-80% of other classes in a mode that requires extreme specialisation. A less better choice due to the jack of all trade-iness of the class.

Here is what (if I had time to waste) my response to OP would be:
- I make a video of 2 warriors fighting each other by recording from each side,
- Open two topics in parallel: “Lol warrior is OP and wins fight – see proof” and “Lol warrior OP is myth – see video proof” using appropriate footage.

How OP could think for a minute that this is proof of anything is beyond me.

Yep, a bit pointless to show it at the end of the match, but it just means that you pressed “I am ready” at the beginning of the match.

Icetrinity.3804:

Also, when traited with Axe Training, the axe holds the highest Life Blast damage (it becomes stronger than staff, which is typically considered the best), so axe certainly isn’t a terrible option, it just can’t hold a target down and deal the raw DPS of a dagger.

I wish they increased the Axe auto attack damage a bit to make it more viable, or maybe make the AA a “mid-range cleave” attack.

Here is a build you can try:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fQAQRBHbhG2IjWxelm2G/eCA6Rv16cMDkPm+Q5A-TsAg0EBpCyFkJIZQ2gGUsKYTwkAA

This build packs as much Power/Attack as you can pack (almost), and is still fairly resistant (using Last Gasp, Spectral Armor, Plague form and DS + weakening shroud).

Your main weapon set is Axe/Focus (secondary dagger/horn), and Axe 2 does a lot of damage, especially for enemies below the 50% HP threshold, if you have packed vulne on them (you get around +40% damage then – often more – coupled with high power/high crit).
Dagger AA does a lot of dmg too, less bursty than Axe, but consistent dmg when your enemy is immobilised, down, etc. (axe hits will connect more though, because it is ranged).

The build has a lot of synergies for offense (e.g. “signet of spite” + target the weak = +12% damage, not using the signet gives you power and using it too, can stack vulnerability quite easily with the “well of suffering” + axe AA + Focus 4).
The rune set stacks some more power and gives you -20% condi duration (always useful, and with the heal consume condis, you have basic condi removal).

For mobility, you switch to Dagger/Horn (Horn 5 to run from one point to another).
You can prevent enemies from coming your way with Dagger 3, Horn 4, etc. + fear and this way you can often decap a point 1v1 and then hold your ground for a while, particularly if you turtle using DS, spectral armor, DS again and then plague form.

You will use Death Shroud defensively mainly (extra HP, weaking shroud) and offensively too (Furious demise for fury, path of midnight for faster DS skill recharge).

All in all, this is a well rounded build that does a lot of things decently but it might not be suitable for a tPvP setup if you are needed in a specific role (works OK for soloQ though).
I still think that power builds with necro lack in “oompf” to be honest, and it is a lot of effort to play.

Vulnerability is good for power builds if you can apply it quickly, and frequently.
There are many master traits that will increase your damage by 10% with a specific weapon and a sigil that increases damage by 5%.
So an extra 5-10% vulnerability is not negligible.

Also in group play, everyone benefits from vulnerability.

The con? When you need to switch targets quickly (eg pvp) then it loses it’s efficiency a lot as you have to re-apply it from scratch on each target.

zhi.3918:

Flamfloz.6732:

Is it the best format to communicate with the already busy ANet developers?

I let you be the judge, but as I see it, these videos seem better at communicating with the player base (and getting a following of players) than communicating ideas concisely for the developer.
Having (good) players talking to a large portion of the player base in an accessible and amusing format (the “video rant”) is needed and there definitely is a market for this (thanks Helseth, you did this very well and I enjoyed watching them), but again apparently the developers have another preferred channel if you want to communicate with them.

I’m not sure why you expect the community to be going out of its way to ease the communication with the devs.

The opposite is what you should be expecting.

But I precisely don’t expect the community to go out of their way at all – in fact, they shouldn’t go out of their way and do videos, or websites, or posts on GW2 guru forums. This is way too much effort, way too much work. And for what?
They should just use the tools proposed by ANet, namely forums and the ventrilo chats to potentially optimise the chances of reaching a developer.
Everything outside of this is going out of their way and is just a bonus (this is a good thing, I like variety, but not the preferred/most efficient thing).

Reesha.7901:

It could also be as simple, that a top player (after using the preferred channel for the developer’s), does not feel heard. Therefore, he makes several videos in order to get the feedback and backup from the rest of the community.

That is certainly one of the reasons why people make these videos.

But (I quote my previous post here), I think you are missing the main point:
The other truth is that ANet simply don’t have enough manpower to implement all the excellent ideas we hear from good or not-so-good players alike – so rest assured that the 90% don’t feel that ANet is listening to their ideas much more than you feel they don’t listen to you as a “good player”. It is what it is.

I’m pretty sure ANet are well aware of the various things they need to do to improve the game, and they have a todo list probably longer than your arm.
The problem isn’t even to know who should talk for who and how, the problem is with ANet and is a problem of resource allocation, as in: not enough resources are allocated to the development of the PvP features.
(on a side note, you should have noticed that they are actually prioritising issues differently now – by listening to people’s feedback, with the “Collaborative Development- Request for Topics” post, so go and cast your vote if not done yet – and they do the same in other subforums as well… will resource allocation follow? Time will tell)

So in other words, I don’t believe “Sensotix’s new video” is going to change the situation. Nope. And to be frank, I’d like to be proven wrong too, so by all means keep going guys and keep doing this stuff if you have the time and energy. Diversity is always good.

And I don’t even pretend this resource allocation thing is a new idea, here is a quote from Helseth’s rant (linked in my previous post):

And I blame, I mean whatever toilethead who decided to not give any of the resources to PvP. Because it’s clear that PvP nowadays is a superb source of revenue. Both in popularity, I mean, in selling more copies. I mean, while PvE tends to fade out eventually in many games, the PvP scene stands forever, as long as you have the forum to compete in, there’s going to be people competing. As the examples could be from Quake, DOTA, Starcraft 1 and 2, Counterstrike, all sorts of things. But whoever it is, he’s not putting priority on it.
And that’s the core issue of Guild Wars 2 PvP. Like, this is the issue: The development team has nothing.
[…]
But I want to genuinely present my concern – what I mean – I wanted to present what the potential can be and how it’s being squandered. And it’s being squandered because of this. Like, the developers are getting so much fire for this. But in the end we can’t really put it all on the developers.
[…]
The developers are like, “We know, it’s on the list” but in reality it’s a very very long list which has the slowest work process ever.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I’m not asking the designers, I’m asking you. These are all questions that we ask ourselves internally, and are a huge part of development. I’m trying to help you analyze this situation without bias, and with the overall health of the game in mind. This is what we do.

It feels like you’re saying there will always be leavers, so we should just let them run rampant and stop caring. Is that wrong?

I’m not denying that disconnects feel bad, but other players are being punished by people leaving these matches. If this is one step in the direction of reducing the amount of leavers, should it not be taken?

Here’s another interesting question: If this change was something that was always a part of the game since launch, would it still be bad? I know it’s hard to think without bias, especially when many of us have been playing the game for a very long time, but try to imagine what it would be like if this were always the case.

First, I think you believe that the “big issue” of HJ is with leavers. I think it is incorrect to say that.
The fact that people are leaving HJ is a consequence of other factors. Addressing these other issues will mechanically make people leave less during a HJ game.

If you want to know why people are leaving a game of HJ, you need also to know why they joined in the first place (funny, eh!).

I can only talk from my own point of view and can only guess what the reasons for people joinin HJ are for the rest of the people but I see 3 types of players in HJ (excl. custom arenas):
- Tweak a build when testing a new builds: want to hop in and out frequently to tweak builds, will probably not play very seriously
- Wait for a game of soloQ: want to hop in and out once only when the solo game pops up, will probably be play decently
- Serious play aka playing the game outside of leaderboards: want to stay in a game but will hop in and out if the team is really horrible or if the map isn’t to their liking, will probably play well

Here are the first “issues” that cause people to leave HJ:
- Where should you test builds and tweak parameters?
- What will people do waiting for soloQ?
If I was to take a guess, I would imagine these people represent 20% of HJ players (no idea frankly)? These people won’t care about leavers.

For the other people, the ones that want to play a serious game outside of leaderboard:
- How can the team not be horrible?
- How can they like the maps they are playing on always?
For “serious HJ”, a balanced match is what is generally “fun”. If the winning team felt winning was a challenge, and the opposing team felt they had a good chance to win the match, both teams are happy.
Number of players and leavers might be a part of the HJ issue, but for me the big issue is teams imbalance – not in terms of numbers, but in terms of ranks, as in a game opposing “5 ranks 10” vs “4 ranks 50”, the ranks 50 will win for sure.
For me, Autobalance taking care of the teams composition would solve 80% of the issues for “serious HJ”:
- From spectator mode, you press “join game” and are assigned to a specific team automatically, Autobalance takes care of the team for you.
- Someone leaves during a game, autobalance will try to keep the teams roughly balanced in terms of rank.

I don’t have a solution for people leaving HJ because they don’t like the map they ended up on.

As others have said, otherwise, you create a new “normal” mode unranked – where serious HJoiners can go.

Sensotix.4106:

Knote.2904:

Flamfloz.6732:

Knote.2904:

They could always flip on helseth’s stream and look at his rants. Buffet of information there.

Yeah… if you’ve got the patience to listen to the thing in its entirety to find the few gems hidden in 20 minutes of rambling.
How about a f’in powerpoint with 5 bullet points?

Joking aside… “Videos” as suggested in this topic have been done already, and quite well I might add.
I suppose Anet have got a long, heartwarming list of PvP suggestions that will keep them busy until year 2048 by now!

Few hidden gems in 20 minutes of rambling?

Have you even watched them? The whole thing is constructive.

If the devs can’t even bother to watch 20 minutes of an expert player who knows what they’re talking about, how do you expect these players to do the same and go out of their way to tell the devs what’s up?

It’s not the players’ job to make the game good, it’s the devs’.

i can’t believe it either….
that’s why so many people have given up..because they feel like everything they do is senseless and people like this guy just prove that..
every word helseth said was right and worth being listened too

How did I prove that “everything [people] do is senseless”?
Furthermore, I would ask you: “what do you think is the purpose (the sense) of the video in the first place”? Was the purpose of the video to talk to the “developers” or talk to the “player base”?

If the goal of the videos is to talk to the developers, then my point remains the same: the videos are not concise, are formulated as “rants” (i.e. generally negative and criticising, without offering many solutions to the issues pointed out), moreover the developers have (apparently) offered other channels to discuss issues with them (skype calls or whatever).
If I ignore the channels preferred by the developers and chose to send my views using my own chosen channels (email, letters, videos, website listing all the complaints), then surely it is the developer’s right to ignore my suggestions.
As an analogy, you do not raise a “support” ticket (e.g. my account has been hacked) for GW2 by doing a video. There is a specific channel to do this, use it, or risk being inefficient at solving your issue.

So my whole point is that, arguably, people at ANet have better things to do than watching videos all day and spending all their time on the forums. They have better things to do like their actual “job” (and no, watching videos by players isn’t in their job description either). Which is why they (seemingly) offered specific avenues for good players to talk about the game – a place where the right people will be here at the right time, available and listening to the feedback, interacting with the player.

Anyway, here is a transcript of one of Helseth rants kindly provided by a fellow GW2 player (the 4 first posts are a transcript of the “rant”):
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Helseth-s-Rant-of-the-Week-PVP-Development/first#post2771165
Is it the best format to communicate with the already busy ANet developers?

I let you be the judge, but as I see it, these videos seem better at communicating with the player base (and getting a following of players) than communicating ideas concisely for the developer.
Having (good) players talking to a large portion of the player base in an accessible and amusing format (the “video rant”) is needed and there definitely is a market for this (thanks Helseth, you did this very well and I enjoyed watching them), but again apparently the developers have another preferred channel if you want to communicate with them.

To wrap things up, since I’m sure that the developers (at least some of them) have been watching Helseth’s videos, and since posts from people like me (“no names” forum posters) are probably lost in the myriad of other forum posts, that makes you wrong Sensotix.
The truth is that the voice of good players like Helseth who made the effort to make a video is heard more than the voice of the other 90%.
The other truth is that ANet simply don’t have enough manpower to implement all the excellent ideas we hear from good or not-so-good players alike – so rest assured that the 90% don’t feel that ANet is listening to their ideas much more than you feel they don’t listen to you as a “good player”. It is what it is.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Growing hot join is bad, why? Because of the way the format is? What if changes were made to the format to alter your opinions of it? Or are you saying that there is no possible way that hot join could ever be good for the game?

If hot join is a mode to ease players into PvP, why is it a bad thing that we are discouraging people from leaving the game in the middle?

I think the current HJ format is perhaps a bit too “random”.
Growing HJ as it is is bad from a “competitive PvP/rules/skills” standpoint, but good from a “population” point of view (so overall, I would say it is still a positive thing if HJ is growing, as more population = more fun).
I would like to see some changes to HJ, I’m not sure about the priority over other changes though.

When you have experienced the more “intelligent” soloQ/tPvP, HJ feels a bit of a let down sometimes.
I still play HJ from time to time, though, but the best HJ games are the ones ending with the teams scores very close to each other, when there was an actual challenge winning.

People should be allowed to leave the game in the middle of it (and get points for leaving during a game as well, frankly), as I don’t think that because 1-2 people left or joined that the game becomes imbalanced and that you lose 100-500.
I think that the main problem with HJ is that teams aren’t balanced by player level (as people can chose their teams, this can create huge imbalances) – people “hot joining” isn’t the problem, for me the dispatching system is the problem.

Maybe it is desirable for people to be able to chose their team manually so that they can play together? I don’t know.

Even though HotJoin is not taken seriously for many reasons, too often it feels completely random, zergy and imbalanced.
And while a little bit of these can be fun, you are drowning in it so much while playing HotJoin that the whole experience is often more frustrating than fun.

If this is supposed to act (to an extent) as an introduction to the game for people new to PvP, it is a very messy one.

HotJoin should mean “fun to take a break from competitive games – and you can hop in and out”, and not “imbalanced and frustrating PvP experience – of which you can take a break when playing soloQ or tPvP”.

The Grump.3209:

It’s not about skins. Why does anyone think this is about skins?
Why does nobody read through the thread before responding?
Christ…

How about you respond to this first (mostly quoting myself here):
- Population split
- Imbalanced system
- this suggestion would for sure make a larger portion of the already wounded PvP population angry = pure loss in terms of number
- if PvE players care so much about PvP, then there are already skins you can obtain in the mists by doing PvP

=> how about they implement all these skins [normally] in PvP instead then? (and for the rest, there is always WvW)

There, nice and easy read. Please proceed.

EDIT: Actually, I agree with this suggestion IF we can loot player corpses. There.

Mammoth.1975:

Blaming your team – it’s always been the clearest sign you are bad, and it always will be.

Very true.
Good video!

Knote.2904:

hooma.9642:

Darkdanjal.3401:

hooma.9642:

i has talked with allie and they invite players across the board who give constructive feedback to chatrounds via ventrilo with other devs. they said that not all ppl even the one “who care” take the invite. so i see no positive voice to the player community via youtube.. would be nice if the person would take the invite.

Some top players are just getting tired of giving feedback and seeing on a next patch it failed for THEM, some are just to ranting on it which is understandable as it takes so long, I actually do understand the devs for implementing stuff and then give everyone time to adjust to it but the thing is top players are almost instantly responding to it while casual players are just taking a longer time to adjust, again there needs to be a SEPERATION on balance, you need those top players to balance out things fast and to see what is wrong, you cant balance for both, that is just not possible because if you try it fails for either TOP players or CASUAL players.

And again leave balance to TOP players, leave all the rest you can have an input on on casual players, some TOP players are well known here, they spended so much time on the game, way more time then the devs itselfs.

u make me sick and your arrogant behavior. do u work for anet as network administrator or how do u know how many time the devs play?

against your tired argument.. so anet invites players top and casual to chats with devs where nobody is streaming or anything for balance talks and so and the players invited dont care to even go to the chat? hasnt u read what allie wrote?

what do u think should anet do? drive to the players home and talk to them, cause they give a kitten to talk direcly to the devs via ventrilo?

a monkey who smashes his keyboard more times than a human and cause that has a higher ranking hasnt the exclusive right to suggest balance.

They could always flip on helseth’s stream and look at his rants. Buffet of information there.

Yeah… if you’ve got the patience to listen to the thing in its entirety to find the few gems hidden in 20 minutes of rambling.
How about a f’in powerpoint with 5 bullet points?

Joking aside… “Videos” as suggested in this topic have been done already, and quite well I might add.
I suppose Anet have got a long, heartwarming list of PvP suggestions that will keep them busy until year 2048 by now!

Nuka Cola.8520:

Now that we can rent server with OUR money and set the rules, why not allow us use pve gear if we want to?

Also, we could choose to use tanks and planes. This is OUR money after all!

Ok, here is why this is a bad idea:
1) Population split – you would divide further the already divided PvP population (HJ, soloQ, tPvP) over something as trivial as skins and a few back pieces. So no.

2) PvP gives the same opportunities to everyone in this game. What you are saying is essentially: introduce something that creates an imbalanced system. So no.

3) Since when hardcore PvE people care so much about PvP that they want to bring their skin in the Mists? (frankly I doubt more than 0.001% of the player base cares about this idea, but this suggestion would for sure make a larger portion of the already wounded PvP population angry = pure loss in terms of number)
And if PvE players care so much about PvP, then there are already skins you can obtain in the mists by doing PvP. But PvE want to look cool the easy way in PvP. So no.

PS: how about they implement all these skins in PvP instead then?

runeblade.7514:

Brando.1374:

silvermember.8941:

Brando.1374:

make this sig heal for 200 every 2 seconds instead of 400 each second.

With your suggestion, I am so glad you are not a developer.

why?
Warriors have some of the highest armor/hp in game even in zerkers, can deal tons of dmg, able to be immune to dmg for a decent amount of time.

they need to nerf this PASSIVE healing signet or at least make it like the ele or theif sig where you have to do something to heal.

Before Healing signet buff, healing signet healed for 200 seconds per second. No one ran healing signet except in PvE because it sucked.

Healing signet doesn’t need a nerf because it has a weakness. It’s weakness is that it’s active healing sucks.

If passive heal is really a problem, not sure how it would fit in the grand scheme of things, but perhaps the “passive healing” of signets could be activated?
For example: press healing signet, get 20s of 400HP/s, then goes on CD for 20s (and you get nothing during the CD period).
You could add a big burst of healing (e.g. +3000 HP) (or condi clear or whatever )at the end of the period of healing.
(signets still need a passive effect though)

This would make timing the “passive heal” an active player decision:
- Entering a big fight = activate heal,
- Getting low, and burst heal in 10s, run away and wait for your burst to happen,
- Enemy can “counter” you by waiting for your signet to expire once you have activated it before they start damaging on you, or could apply poison tactically

I agree with all of this.

Would probably need to be a separate server, but aside from this it would be just perfect.

Yes. Or even stacks of 250 everything actually.

It would help opening the chests and sending everything to storage without having 99% of the stuff staying in your inventory.
Then, when you’re ready, take a stack and a few kits and harvest….

Are you leveling or level 80? While leveling, you should mostly go Power/Crit.

Otherwise, You should check a few good builds in the necro forums and trust the experts over there.

Here is a new thread, just check if this is what you need:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/New-Necromancer-1

Personal story is quite good actually – always do it when your progress slows down. Then top up by doing some random events in the world + your dailies to reach the next stage of your personal story.

Go underwater or in unfrequented areas, you get a massive bonus to XP when you kill mobs who haven’t been killed in a while (underwater = constant bonus since nobody likes it).

You can start every profession (leather, armor, weapons, cook, etc.) at a very low level – for example, level them all to 50 or 100 (if you have been farming the low level zones, you should have the low level mats or they are cheap anyway).

Use speed bonus and explore all the lower levels map and find the teleports, this gives XP too (don’t bother with the hearts, except if it is really easy to complete).

Level two characters at the same time for your own sanity and for the sake of variety. Change zones when you get bored of one zone.

Make sure you build your character around Power/Crit/[Tough or Vit] and have one or two powerful AOEs in your build. Upgrade your weapons/jewels from time to time.
This allows you to kill your ennemies faster and you will make more XP overall.

You should be leveling quickly with these tips and you have enough variety to not get bored.

PvP or PvE?

In PvP, as a general rule, I use my death shroud defensively for survivability.
When you are going to take a big hit (say 5-6k and more) quickly pop into DS to absorb the impact.
Also, the “spectral armor” helps a lot (there is also a trait that pops it automatically at 50% I think).
In general, if you struggle, use defensive equipment (i.e. more toughness and vitality, and either some power or condition dmg) and slowly introduce more offense until you reach a balance.
Also, it is generally easier to see the danger coming when you are ranged (so you can use scepter+condition for this). I personally play Axe+Power.

I haven’t tried the new conjure, but they never felt like a good option – maybe this could help a bit indeed.

====
1 – Skillfull/thoughtful play (VS “spam on CD”, fast undecipherable game or ennemies, and not being able to time dodges)

(please do not ignore this issue, please, please, please)

====
2 – Balance / Build variety (VS 1 viable option per class and overly strong classes)
3 – Quality of Life (e.g. several build/stuff templates)

Evilek.5690:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

You can pretty much guarantee that on patch days we are constantly keeping a close eye on forums as well as online most the day in-game. This however is basically an all day every day occurrence. We do our best at finding issues that pop up from the release as fast as possible.

Reporting bugs that pop up on patch days are incredibly useful to us. To ensure we know about it you can always pm me or Josh, we can give you answers. This forum space isn’t really the place for debate about bug awareness however.

PTR server reveal 80% bugs and “OP unbalanced” things during the first hours.
Why we dont make PTR server ?

They don’t need a full “PTR Server”, and it might be too much work…

BUT for skill balance/testing (which is the most difficult thing to do), a “PTR Mists” (limited only to the mists, then) would be more than enough.
Fixing the balance of skills between classes and testing all the combinations is complex and takes a while, and having players stuck in the mists would help with the testing (while keeping all the PvE stuff secret for the big reveal every 2 weeks).

TL;DR: Please create a PTR limited to the mists. Surely, it can’t be that difficult given the size of the zone and given the fact that fights are already inter servers in the mists?
This would solve 63.42% of your issues with testing.

They should listen to everyone (and I trust they do), especially if the people who have complaints represent 90% of their population!

As for the specific issue of the “blind” on thief, if several players report an (obviously not real) “issue” with this, then maybe there is still a problem of accessibility / “telegraphing” / skill visibility.
In this particular example, IF many new people do not realise they are being blinded by the red circle below them, then Anet might decide to make it more obvious (e.g. a bigger smoke effect coming from the ground and covering your face, or whatever they would come up with).
After all, these players must also enjoy their experience as much as possible to keep playing PvP and eventually become one of the 10% (or 4 or 6).

In this specific example, IIRC the player was pretty much alone in thinking that there was an issue with the blind powder though, so obviously this is more an isolate post.
I wish GW2 new moderation policy would also protect the players from being ridiculed by other players when they genuinely don’t know something.

I don’t like this idea either (haven’t played much though, so not field tested the change).

The real problem is:
If this proves to be a bad idea ultimately, will they have the humility to change the condition back to its previous state?

The problem with many big businesses who have a large user base is that – by fear of saying the word “mistake” publicly – they will offer an unconditional support to their own decisions (even the bad one) to save face.

djooceboxblast.9876:

Oh and now the warrior sword 1 is a perma imob! Great WORK!

If that’s true, I’m definitely playing my warrior again and doing this in hotjoin to troll as many people as I can!
Surely using sword 1 can’t be a ban-able offense.

Darnis.4056:

Why Isn’t Structured player vs player normalized you ask?
Cause players want their avatar to represent them
And by that I mean Tiny Rats or Lard butt Walmart dwellers.

In this case, they can keep it that way on their own screen (and fight rats and lard butts) but the people who want to stand a chance against an asura can still activate an option “Normalise for PvP”.

I don’t “mind” UW combat in principle…

But it’s buggy (pop in and out of water a few times for all sorts of bugs) and breaks some builds completely (necro MM). Also not very balanced.

It gets repetitive after a while, so I play on different classes/roles/build instead to get a bit if fresh gameplay.

jmatb.6307:

If a build does not win 1v1s against strong opponents or help quickly conclude teamfights in your team’s favor, why run it?

Because it is a bunker build.

Because against class X/build Y, class A/build B loses a lot of efficiency and cannot conclude team fights as quickly.

Because we are talking mainly about the game mode conquest here or possible alternatives, I wonder if a 5v5v5 on a triangular map with 3 cap points on corners, starting point on segments/side and 1 point in middle (gives 2x more points) could be interesting
That would basically be like extended conquest and is probably already balanced.

Tellah.8073:

Dhunis.9072:

You can’t talk about dirty fighting in game like this. This game isn’t balanced for 1v1 so certain classes will have advantage over others, in other words one of them is using ‘dirty fighting’. With this thinking the only honorable fights would be if both players used same class, build, weapons, everything. You should just play for fun and if you can’t do so in normal servers join some dueling ones.

it doesnt matter what you call it, it is what it is. by all human references jumping someone 3v1 or sneaking up and smashing someone while they are distracted is dirty. but i am not criticizing the players (though i couldve worded my OP a little better to reflect that), i am criticizing the structure of the gamemode that makes it happen.

for example (class balance aside) if there were only 1 node to fight over the battles would be far more pleasant, over 2 it would be also, as our backs would be much less vulnerable. in 3node conquest there are no front lines and people are just flying around everywhere leading to numerous backshooting ganks. if it were a deathmatch it would nearly eliminate these occurrences because people wouldnt be directed and distracted by node captures, they would generally stick together and be paying far more attention to their surroundings and be far more hesitant before jumping into battle. this is all speculation of course

No, I’m sorry but you need to think more about the implications of what you are saying.

First, this game isn’t only about “Battles”. This game is about winning by accumulating points. Sure there will be battles that will be necessary to do this, but you also have a need for: defense, mobility, support.
From your post, I understand you like a good 1v1 fight, but how useful is someone whose speciality is mobility or defense in a 1v1? Yep. Useless. With the current game mode, the “non DPS” builds have opportunities.

You feel that the game mode forces people to go in a certain number of FoTM builds? That’s probably true, but let me tell you that it would be way worse with deathmatch for build diversity.

1 node to fight over becomes deathmatch as the node will be consistenly uncapped (white), movement skills become useless, downed state becomes OP.
Deathmatch/1 node (same difference) is just the worst game type for GW2.

Just play another class already or get on TS with your friends and ask for help when you’re overwhelmed on a specific point. Or just play duel servers, as others said.

PS: on a side note, I agree that fights ends up 2v1 or 3v1 – not even denying this. But this is because every second you are fighting without capping, you are wasting the time of your team and losing.
So the best strategy becomes to attack 2v1 to kill quickly and cap quickly – but I know of no balanced game where you are supposed to win a 1v2.

Reesha.7901:

Another solution I have been thinking about, would be adding a block option on a player. The block option should prevent me from being teamed with that particular player.

On the other hand, if I block just about everyone because am unhappy with being teamed with them in the first place, then I would put myself in a bad spot and I would be the one having issues getting into a match. It should work both ways so people can’t abuse the system without punishment.

I don’t know if it is a viable solution or not. Maybe it contains flaws that I haven’t considered.

Obvious flaw is that everyone would block players with low skill/new players/bad players. Then you only end up on team of rank 50+ and win consistently.

I don’t like the idea of a “block player”, as there are many reasons why a player can leave a game and not come back (cf. GW2 MLG tournament “CC vs Denial”, if I remember correctly, where a player couldn’t come back) – but very few opportunities for the player to justify their absence.
So if you ever get disconnected by mistake, you can be sure that you have been blocked by 4 other angry players (the people from your team).

I think a “leaver” debuff to glory/rank or some refined implementation of the current system is enough. Oh, and the obvious “I’m ready” button before going in the PvP map that kicks the player of the team if they don’t respond with 30s (but this one is a given now – I hope, and only helps preventing a 4v5 before the game – not during).

Also, I don’t like the idea of a “resign” option to stop a game, as you will end up having people calling for resign every time they see they are losing the game 20-100, giving up and telling their team they are “baddies”.
Some extreme people playing PvP will want “flawless play from the start OR leave”, and they are many “sensitive” players in PvP, who give up easily, to who I don’t even want to start to suggest the possibility of resigning the game.

And I think that in SoloQ, the team sometimes need a good 4-5 minutes to find a good dynamics, find their role in the team, etc.
If you give people the option to resign, a lot will just do it senselessly.
With the game as it is now, it’s already easy enough to let your opponent 3 cap you and kill you if everyone on your team agrees to lose anyway, so there is a workaround already.

The big thing for me is that, as soon as one player gives up, the game is generally over (we all know how a 4v5 end up).
So I would rather not suggest the option of resigning to sensitive players, otherwise and instead have a report option for “AFK/leavers” and the MMR of people frequently reported adjusted to take the fact that they are “frequent leavers” into account (perhaps a more frequent chance of ending with leavers, or a lowered MMR).