Guild Wars 2

12/2/16 Adjustments:

• Far Shiverpeaks: -50

11/16/16 Adjustments:

• Far Shiverpeaks: -50
• Dragonbrand: +50

Would you want to see any changes to Courtyard before it came back? A new mechanic, perhaps?

Excelvior.8520:

I played one Skyhammer game yesterday. Guys, the camera when you cap close/far is really, really awful. I have to zoom in to understand what’s happening.

We’re looking into some changes for the side points to address this.

Aza.2105:

Can you guys add spirit watch and Capricorn please. Both are fantastic maps. So is the new coliseum map.

Glad to hear you enjoy the new maps! We’re happy that the initial reception of Coliseum and Capricorn was positive, but we’re still evaluating some map changes to address point-to-point run times and routes. I think they’re great candidates for ranked in a future season.

Thanks! We’ll look into it.

FYI, S4 titles have been distributed to those who entered legendary division. Check your in-game mail.

Thanks for the feedback, folks. I’ll pass this along.

Jourdelune.7456:

Josh Davis.6015:

Mel.8495:

more skill based? I think it is too hard to reach legendary
can you sell a legendary division booster in the gem store? I would pay 8000 gems for it

Not everyone belongs in legendary – it should be hard to get into.

As for the second question – no.

Hard or Grindy? I want a hard game that I can play 10 to 15 hours a week and still compete.

I suppose it depends on how high you want to go. Want to be top 100? You’re probably going to need to put more effort in.

Spartacus.3192:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hiya,

We’re looking for a majority for the trial step. The permanence vote will require super majority.

If the trial vote passes, the entirety of season 5 will be solo/duo.

Hi Josh

Will the matchmaker take into account so that you don’t get a 2,2,1 team vs a full solo 1,1,1,1,1 team? (move the second duo to the other team).

The system already attempts to do this for every match created and will continue to do so.

I’m really glad we’re talking about this poll before it goes live so we have an opportunity to talk through things together.

Folks have been asking for us to bring back solo/duo queue since it was removed some years ago. There is a perception that matches are skewed due to the dynamic nature of the queue and the possibility that a team of 3+ can face solos or duos. Regardless of how often this actually occurs, it is somewhat true that q’ing as a premade will allow you to climb in leagues more quickly than those who are solo/duo, especially in higher tiers. Solo/duo only would ensure that advantage is no longer possible and make leagues more competitive across the board.

The first poll will ask “do you want to trial solo/duo queue in season 5?” and will require a majority vote. If that passes, the second poll will ask, “Do you want to make solo/duo queue a permanent feature?” and will require a supermajority (75%). In the scenario that Season 5 as solo/duo goes well and the community decides to keep it long-term, the PvP team will look at ways to accommodate competitive team-based play.

That said, solo/duo queue is a small part of the overhaul we’re doing for leagues – there will be other improvements to matchmaking, how we measure and display skill, and how you earn rewards.

Personally, I think solo/duo queue would be pretty fun, and I think it’s worth giving it a shot. Worst case scenario, you can always vote “no” in the follow-up poll and things will go back to the way they are now.

-Josh

Ashamir.9574:

Josh Davis.6015:

Hi all,

I’d like to take a moment to address some of the concerns posted since last Friday regarding the possibility of solo/duo queue.

The poll we’ll be running this week will simply ask if we should trial a solo/duo queue system during season 5. Assuming the poll passes and Season 5 is solo/duo only, we’ll monitor feedback throughout the season and then run another poll at the end of S5 to ask folks if they’d like to see the change become permanent.

“But Josh, what about people that like to queue as premades, do guild missions, etc?” An overwhelming majority of players already play as solo/duo in leagues, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about the groups and the guilds. That said, unranked arena will continue to accommodate roster sizes of up to 5. Guild missions will still be able to be completed in unranked arena. Assuming the post-season 5 permanence poll passes, we’ll evaluate the need for another environment where teams can compete (based on your feedback).

Hopefully that answers some of your questions!

How big a majority will the solo/duo queue need to have to get voted in? Can I asssume that it will need 75%+ to pass like the WvW polls?

And does “trial” mean that if the solo/duo queue get’s voted only this system will be played throughout the complete season 5 no matter what?

I’d like to know that just to be clear.

Hiya,

We’re looking for a majority for the trial step. The permanence vote will require super majority.

If the trial vote passes, the entirety of season 5 will be solo/duo.

Would a stickied LF thread on this forum suffice?

Hi all,

I’d like to take a moment to address some of the concerns posted since last Friday regarding the possibility of solo/duo queue.

The poll we’ll be running this week will simply ask if we should trial a solo/duo queue system during season 5. Assuming the poll passes and Season 5 is solo/duo only, we’ll monitor feedback throughout the season and then run another poll at the end of S5 to ask folks if they’d like to see the change become permanent.

“But Josh, what about people that like to queue as premades, do guild missions, etc?” An overwhelming majority of players already play as solo/duo in leagues, but that doesn’t mean we’re not thinking about the groups and the guilds. That said, unranked arena will continue to accommodate roster sizes of up to 5. Guild missions will still be able to be completed in unranked arena. Assuming the post-season 5 permanence poll passes, we’ll evaluate the need for another environment where teams can compete (based on your feedback).

Hopefully that answers some of your questions!

Reminder: Unranked and Ranked will be disabled in 15 minutes.

ThatNAESLGuard.6238:

grouch when or i blow up ur skype

I’m contacting the cyber police right meow.

ventusthunder.5067:

Maybe this is the legend titles being handed out?

It is not. We’re still working on that compiling the list. Soon™.

This maintenance allows our server team to apply some needed updates to PvP servers.

To address the OP: there will be an off-season balance patch – it just won’t happen this week. Sorry for the confusion!

Jaxom.7310:

think they forgot to remove the pinned capricorn map maybe

Capricorn sticky was removed earlier today, FYI.

Maintenance is complete.

Hi folks,

Unranked and Ranked Arenas will be taken down for maintenance today at 3pm Pacific. The process should take no longer than an hour. Custom Arenas will be available for use during this time.

Sorry for the inconvenience.

bloodpyrope.8630:

Josh Davis.6015:

So, we’ll likely change things in phases so we don’t over-correct. Here’s what we’re thinking for a phase 1:

• Reduce downstate invuln duration to around .1s. This means you still get the full condi cleanse, but you can keep cleaving.
• Cap rally distance.

Thoughts?

Edit for clarity: these would be PvP-only changes. Also, not including any skill proposals at this point.

As long as the rally distance isn’t something super short. At least an ele’s full mistform away distance?

We’re going to test around 3000 units. That’s a little less than mid to side nodes on most maps.

Daishi.6027:

Why not just letting quickness speed up stomp again? But continue to not allow quickness to revive faster.

This makes downing a target more meaningful, and opens up viability and utility of builds that can reliably gain quickness, without it being to broken in the revival department?

If we add quickness back in for stomps we’d likely allow slow to reduce stomp speed for consistency’s sake…and slowed stomping doesn’t feel great.

So, we’ll likely change things in phases so we don’t over-correct. Here’s what we’re thinking for a phase 1:

• Reduce downstate invuln duration to around .1s. This means you still get the full condi cleanse, but you can keep cleaving.
• Cap rally distance.

Thoughts?

Edit for clarity: these would be PvP-only changes. Also, not including any skill proposals at this point.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-vs-world-skirmishes-arrive-on-september-9/

This is something we’ve been monitoring for a while. We’re looking at a couple of different options here, but we do need to be careful making changes to something that is so integral to PvP gameplay (and as a note, we’d be making changes to PvP only).

Below are some suggestions I’ve seen on this forum over the past few months. We wouldn’t do all of them of course, but I figured I’d throw them out and see how you folks feel about them.

• Implement 1-to-1 rally policy, similar to WvW. This means that only 1 player would rally per enemy killed, rather than up to 5. Would likely be the downed ally closest to the enemy player.
• Cap the range at which someone can rally.
• Bring back PvE-downstate policy
• Shorten revive/downed “invuln” buff.
• Reduce healing per tick when rezzing.
• Further reduce downstate HP
• Adjust outlier revive skills (Function Gyro)

SPESHAL.9106:

The first obvious issue is matching premades with solo players.

Making leagues solo/duo queue is something we’ve discussed. We’re open to doing a beta of it, but we’d likely put it to a poll and have the community decide. We probably wouldn’t run a premade-only arena at the same time as there’s not enough 5-mans actively q’ing during a season to make the queue times reasonable.

Cynz.9437:

Oh Grouch, can you guys help us with those with coming changes while you are at it? They just pile up and pile up and pile up

Zui.9245:

Josh, although you’re attempting to create the most “balanced” teams possible, it just isn’t working very well. Perhaps this is due to low population, but my idea of a balanced game is one where my MMR is similar to that of everyone on my team, and similar to that of everyone on the other team. Another possibility is highly distorted MMRs from S2/S3 matchmaking style.

However, what I’m seeing is there are rather extreme skill variances. These extreme skill variances are not fun, and don’t lead to very balanced matches, even if 50/50 win/loss is being achieved as a byproduct of the matchmaking. There are way too many matches that are blowouts.

And the events that take place in the matches are often baffling, to say the least. I’ve had a match where the other team triocapped (? – they capped their home, and the other 2 players were nearish there and not doing anything else, so ???) their home and sent 2 mid; I capped our home, and by the time I was halfway to mid (on Legacy, as a Thief) our 4 players at mid were all dead. These kinds of matches, where you need to anticipate the mode of failure from your team being extremely clueless or otherwise bad at PvP in order to win, are unfortunately the majority of all matches I’ve played thus far in the season. And the flipside of this is, you also have to try and find the bad players on the other team and figure out how to exploit them in order to win, as well.

I’d really like to be playing against people of similar skill level to me, and with people of similar skill level to me. Creating balanced teams with such wide skill gaps simply isn’t fun, and it’s also not really helping me improve as a player in any meaningful sense.

Perhaps an MMR reset is in order? Perhaps expanding the player pool will help with this? I don’t know. But if the matchmaking system’s goal is just to create “balanced” games like it currently is doing, without regard to wide skill gaps, I fear that nothing will change. And if nothing changes, you’re going to bleed more competent players who simply cannot enjoy the current style of matches that are being produced.

MMR being adversely affected by S2/S3 style matchmaking is something we’ve been discussing – we’re evaluating a few different options to address it.

As for your other points, take a look at my recent post history – I’ve been discussing some of the problem areas we’re looking to hit in various threads.

We’ve been talking about personal score a bit. I’m personally of the opinion that it isn’t representative of a player’s effort in a given match, and it also can be incredibly misleading and potentially lead to bad gameplay habits (5-capping home).

If you were to redesign personal score, what would you do? Does it track different types of stats? Would you want your personal stats displayed to other players?

Mel.8495:

more skill based? I think it is too hard to reach legendary
can you sell a legendary division booster in the gem store? I would pay 8000 gems for it

Not everyone belongs in legendary – it should be hard to get into.

As for the second question – no.

Hi there,

First, here’s the a recent post on the topic:

Gaile Gray.6029:

With the start of Season 4, we’ll be returning to Season 1’s style of matchmaking which focuses on creating the most balanced teams from the players queueing within your pip range. This change may widen the skill range of players in each division, but we feel that increased match quality is worth the trade-off of reduced prestige for this season. During Season 2 and 3 we added two league features that greatly impacted your ability to climb: start-of-season division placement based on previous season performance and win/lose streak pips, and both of these features will remain enabled for Season 4.

Season 4 matchmaking is already using MMR to create the most balanced teams possible. Teams are no longer “stacked” as they were in Season 2 and 3.

The problem (that we’re solving for S5) is that we’re currently searching for players close to your division to match you against. This means that the pool of players that we can pull from to create a match is much smaller than if we were using the entire pool of players. A player may have a high-enough MMR to put them in the top 100, but if they’re in Sapphire they’re only going to get matched with players that are in or around Sapphire. Season 5 will use the entire pool of players for creating matches – this should help the system create more balanced matches and improve queue times.

As for the “forced 50/50”, there’s nothing on the backend that forces a certain win-rate. This is a byproduct of your MMR settling.

Wargameur.6950:

Come on guys stop beeing all salty after we got a dev answer.

Josh, I suppose you won’t give us an answer about what are the change. But can you at least give us the areas ? Is it a change about the MMR, pips system, leagues, seasons ?

It’s too early to give concrete details. First we need to finish up development and then run through our internal “it is ready to ship?” process.

In short, we agree with a lot of what has been discussed on these forums. Leagues need to do better in the prestige department, and the pip system can’t really support that. If you’re in legendary, for example, you should truly be in the highest percentiles in terms of player skill. Leagues also need to feel more rewarding, especially once you’ve landed in your correct division. In the current system, the rate at which you earn rewards slows down significantly as your climb becomes more difficult in the later divisions – but you should still be rewarded for playing in your correct division, even if you can’t progress any further.

Another area of focus for the team is improving match quality. I can’t go into detail here (it will be better explained once we can talk about the entire scope of changes), but I wanted to let you know it’s a priority.

-Grouch

You’ll still be able to get the wings, even with the considerable league changes coming with Season 5.

Hey folks,

Just a quick reminder: the PvP team is not responsible for profession balance. The PvP team, along with all of the other major feature teams, provides feedback to the skills team, but the PvP team itself is not directly involved in making balance changes.

What we do have control over – however – is the build panel (sigils, amulets, runes). It’s one of the knobs we can use to push gameplay in whichever direction we feel it needs to go for that particular season. For this release, we wanted to take support down a notch and increase the pace of combat.

It’s not our intent to completely remove professions from the meta – but things do fluctuate and I think we need to give the change a bit more time to see how it plays out. Elemental Bastion being bugged since Tuesday certainly has not helped the Tempest situation, but that should be resolved fairly soon and we’ll be able to properly see how ele will fare.

I know many of you fundamentally disagree with the removal of build items – and that’s fine. I understand where you’re coming from, but I hope you understand why we use this as a tool for balancing PvP specifically.

-Grouch

Our shrine at the office.

It’s a bug. We’re tracking a fix for it.

Tomiyou.3790:

Also, Josh, the way the current legendary backpiece is rewarded (people needing to cross divisions) should be changed if you make divisions more representative of skill, as most would get stuck in a division, unable to climb further = no more progressing divisions. Otherwise not all people could get them. I’m fine by that, but I don’t think majority will be-

Yep – this has been part of our discussions, and ties back to:

• Make leagues feel more rewarding after you’ve placed in your appropriate division

Hey folks,

It’s been a while since we’ve commented on leagues, so here’s a brief update.

There’s definitely room for improvement in the league system, and it’s safe to say that it’s the team’s highest priority now that we’ve signed off on everything going in for the July release. It’s still a bit early to talk about specifics, but I do think we can talk about some of the goals we have for the changes:

• Improve match quality
• Make divisions more reflective of player skill
• Make leagues feel more rewarding after you’ve placed in your appropriate division

We’re still determining the scope of the project, but I do want to be clear that it’s unlikely that these changes will be in for S4. Once we get a bit further in the dev process I’ll see if I can give an update on our thoughts/direction.

-Grouch

I don’t see any reason not to. I made a note.

Trigr.6481:

---

Balancing SPvP individually——-

- This is probably the single most important change that the SPvP community needs whether you realize it or not. Not only does this make sense, but since SPvP is already isolated, not one change you make here effects the rest of the game. The way it currently works the devs expect us as players to think about the rest of the game before giving changes to a specific game type, however this way of thinking will never create good balance and the reason why is the majority of changes people suggest are obviously only made and will work for Spvp. WvW and PvE are very different in terms of balance and changes for one often conflict with the other two making the change almost meaningless to begin with.

The Lesh Prince recently developed some tech that makes skill-splitting more feasible than it was previously – you’ll see some PvP (and PvE) splits in the next balance update. It’s important to understand that changes will still need to be global, but we’ll definitely have a bit more flexibility moving forward.

Keeping parity between modes when possible is important to us – but when it’s not feasible we’ll look at splits.

edit: that clickbait though

Heya! This is fixed internally. Will be out with the next balance update.

Aury.1367:

another Bug:
1. Envoy of Exuberance;
Doesnt heal when blinded even though its not attack

Good catch. Added to the list for the next balance update.

Great thread, thanks. Good feedback from OP and the subsequent posts.

Tipper.6973:

Haven’t had a chance to read every post yet, but I really think ANet needs to look at the pet abilities. So many of them are underwhelming with ridiculously long cooldowns.

Especially if pets are here to stay as a mandatory part of the class.

Is there a similar thread to this one but for pets – ideally somewhat current? Looked over a few pages but came up empty handed. Would love to take a look.

Thanks for the feedback and suggestions, all. We’ll likely be looking at redesigning the trait entirely – maybe reincorporating some of its original functionality/direction.

Seems reasonable. I’ll put it on the list of things to look into.

Thanks for the suggestions. Anyone else have any alternate proposals for Momentary Pacification?

Furajir.3815:

Rushhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Time for attempt #4! I made some slight adjustments (anim speed, attack radius, increased travel velocity for the small leap at the end) to the skill that should (hopefully) make it land more consistently.

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

Josh Davis.6015:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

it also doesnt remove immob when traited.

After the remake I would defo class it as a mvoement skill.

I’ve got fixes in for making Stomp work with Warrior’s Sprint and to make it function as a blast finisher. Should be out for the next balance update.

Wait what?! A Dev in the warforums? This is unreal. Hé must be a hacker or something. Ban this troll.

Debated deleting my post to mess with you guys…

TheLastNobody.8319:

So I….it’s working as intended but the tooltip is just wrong? How the hell is this thing even a GM? At this point it should just be a minor trait at most! Give it a 1 second ICD and it would still be worthless.

I believe the trait functionality changed back when Embrace the Darkness changed. I agree that it’s lackluster – hence why I’m here. There’s a number of decent suggestions in the thread. I’ll bring them to the team and see what we come up with.

Both are in our internal tracker.