Guild Wars 2

thief: “yo guardian, heal me!”
guardian: “I can’t, i’m a dps guardian, and i’m not wasting my virtue on you”
thief: “then give me symbol of healing!”
guardian: “I can’t, i have to be downed to do that.”
thief: "… " looks around to make sure no one is looking…
guardian: “hey let’s go gank those — AHHHH! GRENTH PROTECT ME!” guardian hits the floor, while thief overlooks him with a bloody dagger.

thief: "can you heal me now? "

the new change in making 5v5 mandatory in conquest spvp was a terrible idea. I have yet to play a game in hotjoin that didnt finish correctly. I’ll get into why i don’t arena later on.

In previous 8v8, if a person got demoralized and left the game, it would have been a slight disadvantage, but with 5v5, it’s a huge disadvantage. With the departure of one, often comes a domino effect. It is fairly typical to have an entirely new roster on the losing side, often at the expense of autobalancing 2 or 3 from the winning side. This is a very big problem. Almost no game can be finished without feeling cheated, either because you’re being flipflopped autobalanced, or your teammates have left.

I also hate 5v5 inherently, in conquest mode. I hate conquest mode period, i’ve said that many times before, but 5v5 is even worse. With 5 people on your team, and 3 nodes to capture and hold, this usually means either you’re outnumbered because you split up your team to more nodes than the other team, or you’re losing on points because your team stuck together. Or, in the case of hotjoins, your team has no synergy because they’re not an arranged team with a strategy, so your team could be losing both on the points war, and outnumbered in every fight.

In simple words: this sucks! This means there is almost never a fight that is even numbers on both sides! This also means that, assuming you leave a buddy to guard a node, you will not ever be able to play with all your friends at once. And guess what, people want to play alongside their friends, i know that’s so surprising, right?!

I’ll also repeat my long criticism of conquest mode. I believe that a more skilled player is someone who demonstrates more knowledge of a game’s core mechanics, as well as better intrinsic attributes like reflex or twitch, mouse eye coordination, and situational awareness. A skilled player should obviously be rewarded for his/her dedication, and hopefully the more skilled player wins the match.

Such is NOT true for conquest mode. Conquest mode has always been about cheesing, particularly in finding optimal ways to hold points without actually fighting back. Remember the aforementioned parts on player skill, like knowing core mechanics, having fast reflexes, and good situational awareness? You can throw those all out the window for cheesing. Who needs fast reflexes when you have a spec that is hard to kill? Who needs much situational awareness when your job is just to sit on a piece of turf? Of course all those things help… certainly in no circumstance does being a more skilled player hurt your game, but it doesn’t carry very far, not nearly as much as it should, in conquest mode.

All those attributes that make a skilled player, thrown out the window, replaced by how much can a person stall. Guess what… stalling is boring. Yes stalling is necessary and a legitimate tactic, but stalling for an entire match is plain stupid, and bad sportsmanship. Can you imagine a boxing or mma fight where all one guy does is stall? I’m not talking a clinch or a push here and there, i’m talking stalling the ENTIRE match. He just runs around the ring, never throwing punches. Now can you imagine the guy WINNING for stalling? That’s what conquest mode is. You have idiots that have no idea how classes work, they just copy or discover a cheesy build that stalls well, and sit their butts on a node and win.

If my words are scalding, then i hope i got my point across. It’s such a terrible shame, that such a well made game, artistically, musically, and core gameplay wise, has no legitimate pvp ranking system or game mode. It’s such a shame to see many who have no idea how many class mechanics work, but can get by or even succeed to the top by cheesing. All this, i have let go, i’ve never cared much to be recognized in this game as opposed to others i’ve competed in the past. However it can be frustrating to see teammates constantly drop out of the game like flies, and quite simply put, many people are NOT having a fun time.

There’s alot of poorly made adept thief traits, but i’d like to start with swapping ricochet and quick venom.

Pistol Pistol, or PP, is primarily direct damage. It would behoove more to put traits in-line with such weapons, into power and precision. Ricochet is very good for PP, almost essential., as PP has no piercing attacks. However, to get this trait, alot of sacrifice has to be made by losing at least 200 points in either precision or power.

Similarly, heavy venom usage is usually done by condition spammers, like P/D. The condition damage is down in trickery, so it would also make more sense to have such traits down there.

I would really like to see improvements made on harmonizing these traits. PP is fun to play, but so weak. Either you can do decent damage, but usually are unable to take ricochet, thus being frustrated with no piercing, or, you can be more well rounded, having some better survivability and ricochet, but having abominably low damage.

staff eles succeed well in battles where lines are drawn. The map courtyard has some narrow corridors which allow for such. I indeed agree, it’s good for eles, they can do their role without being overwhelmed so easily.

i would like to talk about the thief class, particularly with the change in crit damage to ferocity. I’ve played thief for a long time now, i’ve pushed the barriers on the class for a very long time, back in wvw and spvp.

I’ve agreed with alot of the nerfs so far to thief over the years. We were like gods for the first year; i had a motto as thief, be able to kill anyone, anywhere, in any sized zerg. With the old haste, it was doable, down and stake an opponent in 2 seconds, even in the midst of a pack of 50, and shadow return out to safety. Like a ghost, a good thief could murder a victim in a blink of an eye and disappear, in WvW. When cooldowns were down from doing such assassination, it was hide in the back, doing massive aoe damage with the shortbow. Then rinse and repeat.

That was how i played thief for over a year, in response to the overwhelming numbers in WvW. I grew up on a server that was frequently outnumbered. You had to kill something fast, or see your victim ressed almost immediately.

Many measures have been taken to nerf the thief since then, and the latest has been the decrease in critical damage cap. Now thieves have a problem: they are unable to dish out the assassinations like before, and still cannot hang in the fray of a large battle. So there’s little use for a thief, especially melee, in a large scale battle.

The battle doesn’t even have to be very large. It only takes a few heavily armored meleers to make a thief obsolete in melee. They don’t even have to pay attention to the thief, the cleaving alone will wreck the thief.

So much about a thief’s offense, and defense, (nerf of permastealth, and now nerfs to evades on weapon skills), have been changed. I think it’s time to re-evaluate how a thief can keep up in battles now that the pace has changed. I DO believe in these changes, all of them: haste nerf, shortbow nerf, evade nerf, permastealth nerf, but now it’s time to give something back.

Consider raising the thief’s base health. Since a thief can no longer force quick fights, or escape as easily anymore, then its base survivability should be normalized with other classes.

Consider giving more class skills. The thief has the least amount of class skills, (one!). The guardian gets 3 active and 3 passives, one of the reasons why it’s so hard to kill, and the mesmer gets 4. Perhaps the thief should get another class skill that could help with survivability, like evasion for 3 seconds or something.

Give more ways to remove conditions. The thief is heavily dependent on rune of lyssa, all the way till now. The addition of torment a few months ago was deadly to thieves, as hide in shadows does not remove it. There are few skills for thieves that remove a considerable amount of conditions, and with the small health pool, they’re almost pigeonholed into taking rune of lyssa for the condi wipe.

Give more ways to deal with spammed crowd control. One of the greatest fears for me as thief, is dealing with getting crowd controlled multiple times. In a smal skirmish, it’s not as big a deal. However if there is a fight with hammer warriors, guardians, the thief can not go in for even a second. Theives have few ways of getting stability, and in melee they have to fight classes WITH stability. It’s simply not on even terms.

So to re-emphasize, many of the things i used to get away with, as thief, are gone. Being an ultimate assassin, or ultimate scout, those days are history, and i totally agree with them, as they caused great frustration for the victims of the thieves. However, now, the thief isn’t left with much,. Hopefully, we can make the thief a class that CAN engage in melee in group battles, and be more ‘balanced,’ rather than skewed like the past, or rather outclassed in every role, as i feel as of now.

I’ve been having a lot of fun in courtyard so far, and wanted to give some feedback on what’s working and what’s not for team deathmatch.

Foremost, finally, the satisfaction of deathmatch. Deathmatch is a true test of a player’s skill, and by that i mean it reflects his/her knowledge of game mechanics. The objective is simple and clear: defeat your opponent, not cheese your way to victory by abusing meta objectives. With that being said, matches feel much more satisfying than conquest. Also, players can actually stick together, rather than being split up to capture different points. Deathmatch is much more conducive for comraderie.

As of now, i feel like 8v8+ is too much for deathmatch. The appeal of spvp deathmatch, is to have a venue where pvpers can use a wide variety of builds, and show off their skill in doing so. WvW, as we know too well, pigeonholes people into certain builds, and zerging. Indeed most large scale battles, are simply roll with your group, and mash 1. I can tell you why it became that way, largely due to lack of collision detection, and the unique feature of melee attacks cleaving., but that’s another topic.

Thus we want deathmatch to be at a robust scale, and i can tell you 8v8 and 10v10 is not. I love to melee, i’ve played thief and warrior since release, but so far in deathmatch, i’ve mostly been engineer, lobbing grenades afar for massive aoe damage. It feels alot like WvW most of the time. Of course having the scale too small, is not optimized either. We want a team build that is robust as well. I’m thinking 5v5 is a good place to start, in seeking the perfect medium.

The actual map seems to be well made. Aesthetically it’s gorgeous, (as always from Anet’s artists), and the size seems decent enough as well. The changes of elevation and barriers were also well done. An ideal map should provide enough cover for guerilla tactics, but not so much that it constantly interferes with the fight. Skyhammer is a perfect example of a poorly done map for competitive play, where combat is frequently interrupted by all too easily abused map mechanics. Players should know, or learn, how to use terrain and positioning to their advantage, but not so much that this trumps core mechanics of the game.

Also regarding map, i haven’t been on my thief much, but there seems to be some spots that are abuseable with teleport effects. I know of the imbalance problems of such, all too well, when i used to abuse infiltrator’s strike in obsidium sanctum back in the day. All i can say is be on the lookout for unintended spots to teleport in and out of. Usually they are on raised platforms, like bridges or scaffolding. The bridge in the south portion of the map is one of them.

The recent release was great, good on you Arena.net Admitting underwater combat was flawed and getting rid of Capricorn was good. Trying deathmatch very good. Rewarding pvpers with more incentives also very good. I feel like we’re finally making headway towards making GW2 a legitimate pvp game.

Deathmatch will definitely take some examining on balance. I think you should take a look at how to balance the ‘heavy pain trains,’ that is stacking many guardians and warriors and rolling through like a plow. I particularly feel that multiple shout warriors could be very overpowered. I’ve already tested this with just two friends, and the three of us constantly shouting and spamming 2.5k heals, and condition removal on the team, makes it nearly impossible for anyone to die. As much as i love finding the overpowered spec, i am giving you guys a heads up, this could be very bad news for balance.

I’d also like to suggest a MOBA format., that is a match where each team musst work their way past fortifications, and into the heart of the enemy’s keep, to destroy a primary objective to win. The MOBA format is great because its meta still focuses on combat and knowing core game mechanics, but provides a large twist on deployment tactics. A team must balance offense and defense, and gives something more meaningful to destroy, rather than just kill farming. Classic MOBAs involve packs of intermittently spawned NPCs to aid in the war, but i’m not sure that’s entirely necessary in guild wars’ case, as they would get obliterated by AoE or cleave.

Anyway, that’s just food for thought.

my thief’s angel look finally came into completion when they released the selfless potion.

the pants get asked alot: theyre t1 norn

is there a way to change race? the total makeover kit doesnt do it.

I dont understand the purpose of limiting the use of selfless and selfish potion to only the overworld. What could it possibly be imbalanced in dungeons, and pvp? it is but a tiny cosmetic graphic.

my main’s outfit has always looked like an angel, with wings, white and gold, and fire, so i was thrilled to get my selfless potion’s halo. unfortunately there’s not many places i can use it.

i really hope this can be fixed.

and you know, both times reported happened while spvping… i really feel like it was sore losers doing something spiteful.

thats what i’d first and foremost want: consistency. the first time i was reported, why wasnt i allowed to change all my characters? did the moderator really miss all the other names? Even my account name is Mofogie.

i would like some official word from Anet staff what to do now.

i’ve been suspended twice now due to naming restrictions.
these were my toon names: Mofogie, Mofogee, Mofogle, Mofogenous, Mofogeneer

Mofogenous was first flagged by Anet staff. I asked them to provide how the name breaches the code of conduct. They failed to provide a reason, and that is because all my names are gibberish. They even defy rule34, searching on the internet will provide no cohesive nor offensive imagery.

I complied anyway, and renamed it to Naming Violation.
Now a few months later, Mofogeneer has been flagged… and again suspended.

I’m tired of this. My names have been used over 10 years in gaming now, and i’ve never been reported for an offensive name. No one has ever told me in GW2, that my name is offensive, in fact, many said they like it, that it sounds funny.

Anet staff is also inconsistent. why are my oldest characters, Mofogie and Mofogee not flagged? I have kept derivatives of Mofogie on all characters to make it easier for people to keep track of who i am. I cant even remember half my friends list, because most people have very different names across characters. Consistency is important.

This is a total ridiculous waste of time on my part, and the staff. There’s abusive harassers in nearly every pvp match, yet I get flagged for a name no one finds offensive? Come on.

in light of recent news of upcoming changes to spvp, i’d like to share some thoughts. Just quick background, I’ve been active in esports both as a spectator and a competitor at top tier/ even pro level once for over 10 years, including gw1, warcraft 3, starcraft 2, and WoW.

The upcoming ladder change seems good. However, I cannot stress enough, the current meta, conquest format, is no good for esports. It encourages stalling, point holding, and cheesing over real combat. People want COMBAT as a spectator and competive format. They want action, mayhem, and death. They want to see good reflexes, and creative combos, not snail paced fights and no skill spam builds.

I feel like the current spvp format is a ‘lose-lose’ situation. You’re either defending a point against greater numbers, basically a punching bag, or you’re very likely being back-capped while you fight with your group at another node. Thus you either are getting pummeled by being outnumbered, or are losing another node and losing the meta. I want to play with friends in pvp, and that means fighting alongside them. In this format we’re always split.

On top of other things, there’s still alot of things that need to be addressed, like bugs. Again, why are there still obstructed bugs on projectiles? Why are there still teleport bugs? These are very big problems, particularly the projectile bug, that have been around since release and dramatically effect the outcome of a fight. For example, one of my favorite skills, scorpion wire, is amazing… when it works about 50% of the time…

So many things in this game seem casual because they weren’t fully thought out, and seemed to be implemented as an experiment or on a whim. Case in point: underwater pvp. Why is there no condition weapon for engineers? Why are so many slots and elites disabled for water, thus greatly effecting balance? Warriors and mesmers are insanely overpowered in water. The warrior’s spear for example: an adrenal skill thats an AOE Skullcrack, #2 is high dmg, #3 is the thief’s scorpion wire without occupying a slot skill, and #5…. a tracking, moving, 100 blades…. This sounds like a better weapon than any of the warrior’s land weapons…

Now onto the maps… Variety is good, but, for sportsmanship, a well balanced, non gimmicky map that has stood the test of time should still be used, and used frequently. MOBA style games use the EXACT SAME map that was produced all the way back in Warcraft 3’s mod, (discounting Eul’s version, Guinsoo and onwards). All the MOBA clones, DOTA2, LOL, HON, use the exact same map, and millions of players play it over and over on a daily basis. Why? because it’s balanced, and nongimmicky. Gimmicks that constantly interrupt your flow of battle are extremely upsetting. It does add a strategy to the map, but then the strategy becomes map specific. This takes away from the core pvp strategy of knowing class builds, and diverts it to how well you can ’ cheese.’

For these reasons, GW2 has never been taken seriously by anyone i know of that has had competitive gaming experience. In fact that is also the primary reason for fallout of heavy pvpers: because they feel like there is nothing noteworthy or meaningful to compete for. I myself, only play, because i love the artstyle, and core gameplay very much, but will never compete in this game for the above reasons.

how can this game be taken seriously when there’s too many formats that encourage zerging, and cheese-ing? well it can’t, and that’s why its pvp has never risen in the esports recognition. real pvpers demand combat, and victory through strategy and combat. spectators want to see good fights, and the best fighter rewarded.

spvp is still a disgrace. the inconsistency in 5v5 and 8v8 is still a sign there’s unclear vision amongst the dev team as what spvp should be. It’s also nicknamed ‘bunker wars,’ for a reason. bunker wars is not fun. It requires very little skill to play a bunker spec, the margin of error is very large, and the reward is low for everyone, as there’s little gratification in fighting a stalemate for 10 minutes.

Anet needs to understand… spvp was never well thought out, and was only really played because it’s the only option outside of wvwvw, which is mostly a zergfest. Few people enjoy defending, or capturing points, that is why people have farmed for kills up till now, and even still.

PVPERs WANT FAIR and REWARDING COMBAT that is the bottomline.
SPECTATORS WANT TO SEE DISPLAY OF PLAYER SKILL. that is the key to esports.

a bit about my background: i have been in the esports scene for nearly a decade. top 100 in warcraft 3 NA ladder, Guild Wars 1 3rd place in world, Starcraft 2 Masters league, and WoW top 10 arena season 1-3. I know what real competitive play is like, and why a casual and a hardcore would want to participate.

now onto the suggestions:
If you’re going to keep conquest, change the method of capturing: rather than sitting on the point, one must activate it intentionally. One successful case is Arathi Basin from World of Warcraft. This is a highly popular and well loved map. To capture a point, a player must channel a flag at the point for about 10 seconds. Any direct damage and he’ll be interrupted. What this means is, a team must either successfully repel the enemy, or completely eliminate them at the node. In other words, they MUST FIGHT. In Bunker Wars, one doesn’t have to fight at all to hold onto a point, just survive in the area. Are there still ways to stall/ cheese this method? of course, but not nearly to the degree of current conquest mode.

need to add pure combat based ladder pvp for a serious ranking system:
- this is the biggest reason why I, a competitive and former pro-gamer, and many others i know of like-mindedness, have never got that interested in GW2 pvp: there is nothing to work for, nothing to try to achieve, because all the achievements are superficial and meaningless. Titles and ranks are all a grind. Where’s the hierarchy of skill? I want to be rewarded for wins, and equally punished for losses. I want to know the opponents i’m facing are worthy, and the players above me on ladder are actually more skilled. This is not just for pride, but also to celebrate in the victories of the deserving, and also learn from their skills. This, is what creates a flourishing pvp community: where there’s e-celebrities, dialogue, and mentoring.

finally there has to be an option for deathmatch. That is the biggest test of player combat skill. no gimmicks, just mano a mano. I think i speak for most people: i don’t care how well you bunker a point, or how far you can run, or how long you can hide. I want to see how well you can kill, either by yourself, or with a team.

GW2 is a fun game, it is fast paced with elements of action games, it has great art and sound+music, but it just needs a few tweaks in its meta-game to make it truly enjoyable.

it doesn’t seem to activate as of today, at least not on the tests i’ve done in spvp.

^everything matches but the wings. otherwise great pic

my thief, (though in all ascended now), but the zenith bow went great with the glowing fiery look for awhile.

well overdue but, here’s my suggestions on balancing ele, to make more underutilized skills more useful

let’s start with focus weapon skills: fire needs an overhaul. both skills are complete garbage, both redundant with other weapon skills, and also extremely weak.

- scepter skills: fire 1 takes far too long to cast. Other ranged skills from other classes have been severely improved, like ranger’s longbow, or necro’s scepter. It’s about time this terrible skill got improved too.

-dragon’s tooth: would be much better if this were ground targeted, or had its AoE radius increased. it’s far too easy to avoid in pvp, and not by lack of any skill on the user’s part, but by the automatic targeting.

elite skills: ele still has the worst elites of all classes, so bad are they that frequently racial elites are taken instead, if possible. That or the fiery greatsword is a glorified movement speed boost.
tips to improve the elites:
- the glyph of elementals could use stronger elementals, more damage or more survivability.
- tornado needs to be on par with other elite transformations. It needs more damage reduction, like plague. currently this is almost a useless elite, just begging to be killed.
- fiery greatsword: conjure weapons usually have a very powerful skill that can be utilized, then switched back to the normal attunements. The power of good conjured weapons are not so much they give another weapon set, but can be treated like a powerful cooldown single use skill. For example frostbow can solely be used for #4 skill, then deequipped to the normal attunements. Or lightning hammer, be used for its stun and blowout, then scrapped.
why is this important? simply because elementalists rely on all attunements to both survive and deal damage.
Fiery GS gives no skill that is on par with desiring a conjured weapon like a hammer or bow. All of its weapon skills are mediocre, and on a short cooldown. This elite is almost as useless as the others. At least though, you get a free temporary legendary….

-arcane power: a very great skill, but also can be quickly sabotaged by erroneous positioning. Currently Arcane power charges get used with any direct damage, even the tiny damage tick on a fire field. This definitely needs to be addressed. Also consider changing the fact that each charge also gets used on a different target.

- glyph of renewal: takes far too long to cast and needs a longer range. this skill is almost always nullified by the time it finishes casting.

- signet of restoration: far too long cooldown, too little healing per cast. This signet pales in comparison to other healing signets, like the warrior’s and thief’s. It is true that the ele can heal in water, but this difference is far too great. With less armor, hp, than that of others, and less escapes than the thief, it’s not fair the ele’s heal is far inferior.

- conjure weapon cast times should be reduced, possibly even instantaneous. Compared to an engineer, it’s already inferior in the fact they can only be equipped once per summon, and have charges.

- ele water skills: there’s currently very few high damage weapon skills in water for ele. Water #5 is probably the hardest hitting but requires a wall or immobilize. Fire’s damage is pathetic, despite this attunement supposed to be higher dps. Air can only damage with #1, and the 3 bolts of lightning can be very buggy and miss objects at point blank range.

- armor of earth: i would like to see this on shorter cooldown, to match other skills like Endure Pain.
- mist form: also would like to see its cooldown reduced, to match other skills.
- arcane shield: again, same reason.

*asess, analyze, weigh judgement. really, you guys are censoring these words?

dunno why it says ‘kitten,’ it should say kitten

i’m sure this has been posted many times, myself almost a year ago… GW2 NEEDS a latency bar, just like every other game.
it’s important information to know when one is lagging, to safely kitten the situation. please, get onto this.

i miss the banana scythe from GW1. i think it’d be hilarious if there was a fruit themed set. A giant banana greatsword for example…

just some food for thought.

i would like to see many important bugs fixed in the near future. I would even prioritize it over releasing new content for a few weeks.

for example, projectiles are still very buggy on shaped terrain. Everyone is familiar with ‘obstructed’ messages when clearly it was not.

this severely effects gameplay performance. Please consider devoting more time to fixing important bugs like these.

it would be nice if there were more options on tags on allies. for example, more icons that commanders can choose from, to distinguish themselves, allowing for quicker recognition which commander is where on a map.

also party icons would be nice, allowing to put icons on allies and enemies. This would allow for alot easier sticking together. currently, a tactic is employed to target the party member leader instead of an enemy, but then that uses up the targeting. If instead, a party subleader could put, say, a happy face icon above his head, then that would allow for better organization.

i am displeased with this update, there is far too much lag, overwhelming for many non-optimized systems. I don’t have an amazing system by any means, but it’s far above the system requirements, (quad 4, ATI 7700 HD), SSD drive).

I have all graphical options turned down low, and it still lags, often 5 fps or worse.

Liadri is near impossible, at 5 fps, there’s a large barrier of bad luck from dying in the choppiness.

I think it’s a developer’s responsibility to keep system specs consistent, at least for awhile. Yes mmorpg’s evolve, but it has not even been a year yet.

please keep this in mind in the future, as i’m sure i’m one of many players who find it very frustrating to play a graphically overwhelming update.

i believe the downstate system has both good and bad. The good, encourages teamwork, and also a second chance.

I noticed in released notes, that your dev team wanted to discourage zerging. That is good, because currently many players are pigeonholed into zerging; swarm together, or get swarmed. It takes an enormous amount of skill difference to overcome greater odds, much more so than other games. A good player in many other games can take on 2v1, or 3v1, regularly, if the skill difference is vast. Though still possible in GW2, it is much harder, because of the down state system.

finishing enemies is always highly dangerous, being exposed for those 3 seconds, even a downed player can down a player trying to finish them most of the cases. Add in a little help from a second enemy player, even a downed second enemy player, and the skillful player who had downed both of them, is suddenly down as well, and will more than likely not overcome.

this is a big reason why people zerg: you are not rewarded for attempting challenging feats like 2v1 3v1. You may down them, but that’s it. No reward.

There’s also little penalty. Elementalists are the biggest abusers of the downed state, particularly in WvW, (but also in spvp). With no cooldown on mist form, they recklessly go into crowds, then return to their zerg to be ressed. It is totally obnoxious, having to kill many elementalists 4 times before they’re really dead. Easy solution is to put a cooldown on the skill, or make it last less time, meaning eles can’t go very far out past their zerg as recklessly as they do now.

Finally the rally system. An obvoius problem is Rally in WvW on PvE mobs. One shouldn’t be able to rally in a pvp fight by killing a boar, or a skale… that is absurd. A solution would be to add a tag, if a player is attacked by anotehr player while fighting a pve mob, then it can no longer rally on the mob.

Rallying in general, from downed state. I also think it’s absurd an entire group can rally from slaying one enemy player. There should be a cap, and a small one on how many can rally. Maybe, if there are multiple people that can rally off a downed enemy, the one that got the last hit rallies, and only him. The others must find another, or get ressed. Again, this problem makes being outnumbered an even greater problem. For example, two skillful players battled 4 , and downed all of them, but one went down also. The 4 downed players kill the downed opponent, and suddenly it’s 4 v1. The 4 easily defeat the 1, who is still heavily injured. The 2 skillfull players got nothing. Again, this contributes to the problem of zerging.

in wvw, and to a degree spvp, dead players can help their team by observing the happenings around them. This should not be allowed.

also other abuses can be exploited. A dead mesmer waiting inside an enemy base, waiting to be ressed from the outside by allies, to create a portal and a quick takeover…

these things should not be allowed.

the player should only be allowed a certain amount of time, maybe just 2-3 mins, before they are forced ressed at a starting waypoint

here are some concrete examples to elucidate what i’m talking about.

a player valiantly stalls an opposing team from capping a point, to delay them. He has no chance of winning, but skillfully stalls them for a few minutes, putting the enemy team behind. He gets 0 points for his efforts, and was beaten on by his opponents for a long time. Meanwhile, his teammates are zerging together, sharing points on capping locations, and kills. It is not uncommon to see at the end of the match, the player who was sacrificing himself may have fewer than 50 glory points, while his teammates well over 100. Sometimes, i’ve seen these martyrs have 0 points.

The next scenario, a team is in bad need of more combat prowess, as they constantly lose their fights. Thus their locations are overturned more easily, and are not able to kill as many opponents as possible. Meanwhile, a teammate, typically a theif or elementalist, does not care about winning or his team’s morale, but is solely interested in farming glory points. This player is rarely in battle, in fact avoids it, and even wishes the enemy team to overturn his teams’ locations so he can farm more. It is not uncommon for such a phenomenon, and the result score can be a vast disparity. This farmer can easily get 200 points, while his teammates who suffered all game may have as low as 50.

These kinds of scenarios occur all the time, almost every match, many times frequently in each match. I hope Arena.net will take a good look, and encourage more teamwork, and less selfishness.

the current system of the spvp genre, particularly for pickup queueing, is abyssmal. It encourages selfish practices like point farming over teamwork, and rewards cowardice over skill. I am near rank 30, and have played several classes to a high skill level, including warrior, ranger, mesmer, and thief, and i would like to give my explanation and good changes that can be made.

The crux of the problem remains still in that winning does not give much glory. Though it was increased not too long ago, it still pales in comparison to what one would get if one simpl farmed. Certain classes like thieves, with high mobility can easily get 200-300, even 400 glory, just point capping and occasionally fighting.

so what happens when there’s players who are solely point capping in PUG spvp? They essentially hoard the points to themselves, as teammates who arrive at the spot are often too late to also get the cap. The worst part though, is that the fighting force is down an extra person. This means the ones fighting, are taking the abuse, and getting less points. There would be better consolation if, winning gave more gratification, thus capping would be more useful, but the pitiful amount it gives leaves those fighting bereft of everything. Essentially they are the whipping boys, while the point cappers get all the reward.

The next issue is the system of downing, and finishing. Finishing someone in this game is incredibly difficult when it is 2v1, or 3v1. This is a good thing in many ways, but with the current point system, it suppresses individual player skill. It is the pinnacle of player performance to be able to take on multiple foes at once, that is a hallmark of a truly great player. GW2 should also reward that. Unfortunately what happens most of the time is, in a 2v1, or 3v1, situation, a skilled player may down an enemy ,but cannot finish, and is left with nothing.
Suggestion change: reward players for downing an opponent, maybe not as much as other things, possibly 2 points, and maybe put a cap of 6 points on an enemy in a certain amount of time to prevent abuse, but at least it’s something.

This brings me to the next subject: zerging. With both winning not giving much glory, and 2v1ing and 3v1ing not very rewarding, it is highly encouraged to zerg. Zerging, or swarming with other teammates, is bad for the game for several reasons: it does not encourage objective finishing, it rewards the zergers, while makes the nonzergers absolutely miserable, (while many of the nonzergers are legitimately trying to take objectives). This, reinforces even more, the selfish point cappers, who can escape the zerg pack, let them cap, then come back and cap again for even more points. For classes with less mobility and less escapes, they are simply dead if caught by a zerg swarm, discouraging them from trying to be objective minded.

To remphasize, the big fix would be to increase winning a match’s reward. A great amount of glory reward would suppress alot of these behaviors. If winning gave 100 or more glory, i guarantee you much of the selfish behavior would dissipate. Or decrease the amount of glory for all the other actions, while increasing winning.

The next suggestion is to create other formats. Everyone hates cowardly teammates, like the ones i talked about before, who don’t contribute much to battle, while hogging the points for themselves. Team deathmatch would resolve this, forcing all to fight, no more BS, just fighting.

and lastly, my final suggestion, is to create more maps, should funding and manpower allow.

It is very aggravating to play with objects in the way of your camera. Prime example: WvW the bridge on overlook. There’s large trees there that block the field of view. Half the time i’m blind when fighting there.

It may be less of an issue for smaller characters, bu as a Norn, with the camera up higher naturally, and towering over other avatars, it is very difficult to see through the obscurity.

Please add in a feature, like many other 3rd person cameras, that allows terrain objects to be transparent, between camera and player.

yea, it’s important for everything really. How can you gauge a situation without this information? I know this isn’t a big issue for everyone, since many have stable connections, but at some time, even ones with the best connections will suffer from a lack of a latency icon.

i agree, take this out, as well as jumping puzzle. They are heavily distracting to the main objective. Lots of PvErs come in, and fill up the queue, and don’t contribute, but instead are doing these things.

agreed. the bloom can be too much, blinding in places like snowy areas.

i’ve looked all over and havent found it yet, but why is there no latency icon for the UI?

there was one in guild wars 1, and just bout every other game.

this is very much needed, particularly in WvW, where lag, from both client and server, can be a frequent dynamic issue. I’d rather know beforehand what my lag is before jumping into a battle, and having a 5 minute run back.

indeed, the bots absolutely wrecked the economy. and a.net does take measures, but they’re hard to stop

i thought i could day trade the gem market, but it seems that converting gems back to gold has a taxation.

is this true? and how much %?