Guild Wars 2

Rukh.1562:

We need a real rank system not a QP ladder. We don’t fight with our equivalents, we can’t improve ourselves and its really annoying.

This is a real big problem that comes with this implementation. Without ranking you can’t do match-making.

Everyone wins with match-making. It makes for better games for everyone.

Right now, no matter who you are I think. tPvP is either stomp or get stomped. Seldom do I play close matches.

Mammoth.1975:

So college drop outs qualifies for the monthly, gets their faces stomped in round 1, and goes back to getting farmed by good teams? Problem?

I honestly forgot about Monthlys when writing this But yes, it is still a problem.

You either have a ELO or similar based ranking system with a built in minimum matches played weekly or something to qualify that ranks all teams in a relative ladder and give Monthly spots to the top 32 or what-ever teams to duke it out in a tournament. With interesting matches starting of in round one as all teams there have a decent chance of going further.

Or you have a accumulated ranking system like this one (that in all honesty would probably have the same 100 players in the top currently in GW2 do to several reasons, but just in a different order) where teams around the cut-off point of 32 players would be shuffled around not based on relative skill and relative matched won and loss against each-other but based on “who played the most”. Where less skilled teams make it to the monthly and get eliminated right away as you say.

For me it is real clear which options is the better one.

The questions isn’t, for me, if this “works”. The questions is that this is a real weird way of doing it, no one else does it, and it only have drawbacks. So even if it “works” or “isn’t a big problem” why do it?

Am I missing something or did Anet really implement a really weird system?

As far as I can tell, the rankings on the leaderboards are based on accumulated Qualifying Points instead of the more common relative ladder ranking in some sort of ELO manner or variant.

In my opinion this is stupid. Really stupid. It is like the now old and forgotten WoW PvP Warlord or whatever it was called 24/7, 7 days a week grind kind of stupid.

In essence this means that grind and time invested wins over relative skill.

Lets make an example of what I mean:

Say you have a team called “Top Dogs”. It is a perfect team, they always win, against anyone. They are clearly superior to any other team and would win any competition. It is a team of Michael Jordan’s. But. They only play three nights a week and 2 tournaments a night.

Say you have this other team that are called “The Realistic”. They are also a good team. The second best team actually. The can beat any team they face on a good day except for the “Top Dogs”. When they run a paid tournament they win the whole thing 1/2 times and always makes it to the finals. The play a decent amount. 4 times a week, 3 runs per night,

Then there is this third team. “College Drop-Outs”. The big thing about this team is that they play a lot. 5 nights a week. 4 runs per night. They are not as good tough (still decent). They get to the finals half of the time and wins half of the times they get there (so 1/4), the rest of the games they get 3th or 4th place. Btw, they always lose against both “Top Dogs” and “The Realistic”

So what happens?

Team Top Dogs gets 6×5 = 30 Qualifying Points per week.
Team The Realistic gets 6×5 + 6×3 = 48 Points per week.
Team College Drop-Outs gets 5×5 + 5×3 + 12×1 = 50 Points a week.

So…. …. … Is this how it works? Team “College Drop-Outs” would actually win the rankings?

If it is, anyone should be able to see it is a rather stupid system. If it only works on accumulated points real skill isn’t represented at all. Any gamer interested in competitive PvP (regardless if you just spectate or play yourself) should in this case be upset and questions this.

Edit:
Before anyone asks, a better solution in every way in my opinion would be a laddered based ranking system that uses any kind of ELO variant or a modern ranking system based on the same principles of relative skill. To avoid the in some systems theoretical scenario of “Quitting when on top” and becoming unreachable a simple decay of ranking can be implemented for inactivity and/or a minimum amount of games played before you’re eligible for an official ranking.

Edit2:
I still like the game and will continue to play it for sPvP. I will never compete in the rankings anyways so it doesn’t matter for me personally. But in the long run this hurts any decent PvP community and eventually will make the large portion of the kind of PvP gamers you want to have around in your game move on to other things. Taking away that solid base of players and “buz” any successful game needs.

Thanks for the read!

What mostly hit home for me was the section about “levels are obsolete”.

On paper downscaling seamed awesoe as a solution to getting the whole world feel alive and important. In reality, downscaling feels of but I never managed to put my finger on why accept for the worse rewards.

When you talked about how GW1 actually worked and with the introduction of “hard mode” it hit me, downscaling really isn’t the same thing as every zone being max level as in GW1, sadly, without the instancing hard mode can’t be implemented in GW2.

Maybe they can solve the rewards at least. I remember how mad I was when I realized that the talk about “level appropriate rewards only where half true”. Rewards are better for a 80 in a low level zone, but they aren’t the same as in a 80-zone. I think they should fix this. Also, start daily or weekly achivments for different zones (like the Zhisen quest) to make people go to old zones again.

The second part that stuck with me was the change in skill builds. I agreed that GW1 was to complicated, especially for new comers. The game was to unfriendly for new players with thousands of skills.

So even if I agree on the simplification they took it to far. A simple fix as having 3 optional skills or something for all weapons would be great. Right now build diversity is to small, not only in viable builds, but also how different does builds really feel as a playstyle.

nofo.8469:

But progression is what everyone wants.

Sorry to see you go.

Not everyone

The conflict here is between two different kinds of players that wants two different kind of games.

GW2 was promised as a game for players that didn’t want a statistical progression. That is why people are upset.

This is close to what I feel currently.

I really hope Anet reads this, and gives us some feedback.

Thanks for posting!

I agree. I’m surprised and upset that this is happening.

I know arguments can be made that we don’t have all info yet and the changes are small.

But.

It is a matter of pride. Anet “promised” us a different game in all interviews, blog-posts and general rhetoric. Now they seam to go down a different road.

As many have said already. “That kind of game” is already out there, in abundance. Even if you don’t agree and want a new WoW or SWTOR, there is a large part of the player-base that came to this game hoping and believing that it wouldn’t be “just another standard MMO”. Basing that belief on what Anet said them-self.

I just want that kind of game, and in the vision Anet painted for me, as a GW1 fan, gear-progression has no place.

I voted no!

Posted on my guild forums:

Hi all, and sorry, I just need to rant.

The one major selling point of Guild Wars 1 that Anet was so proud of that they continually used and praised as the main selling point for GW2 was a static gear plateau, aka “no gear treadmill”, aka “no power creep”.

I can’t for the life of me understand why Anet is caving in on this question. There whole philosophy is based around this principle.

First of, fans of the original game did not to my knowledge complain as much about lack of end-game as fans of other MMOs like WoW, Rift SWTOR. More importantly, they always shyed away from gear progression as end-game.

So it is two different parts of the player-base crying about two different things. This is important to understand I think. Of course both sides are entitled to their opinion, but in my opinion there is a many more games offering gear progression as end-game and therefore I really wish that that Anet kept GW2 as the game that catered to a different audience.

I know we don’t have all information yet, and that the only screenshot we have seen the stat increase from Exotic to Ascended is rather small. But that doesn’t matter!

Anet and guild wars is (where maybe :/ ) the only MMORPG triple-A franchise that offered a game without the classic vertically progressive never-ending gear upgrading.

I know they kind of failed in offering enough horizontal progression, but turning your core ideas on their head is NOT the solution.

I’m sad.

P.S. just for the record, specific endless dungeon gear progression trought the Ascendeed buff could be ok, if it is kept separate from WvW and normal PvE, with the information presented by Anet, this isn’t the case currently…

No to Ascended items that creates “gear progression”!!!

I do NOT want gear progression in this game. Please.

A shameless bump…

Almost, I do have some more information actually

The initial recruitment went really well and after some re-shuffling and organisation we now have 4 (!) regular tPvP teams running organized practice multiple nights a week.

We have 4 dedicated sPvP Captians working together to foster our sPvP community and build our own knowledge of the game. We now have a range of options to offer that takes in the whole casual to hardcore scale in view of time commitment. On an effort and ambition level we are all “hardcaore”, aka we play to win!

If you are a quality player AND person and think you would fit in with the family, please give us a word!

Aragiel.6132:

I would use that in any scenario including hot-join ones. Simply because all PvP is team effort, and as long as there will be possible to get something extra, players will look at how to farm glory instead of how to win the game.
This way everyone is rewarded. Yeah, not fair that someone will get reward for slacking while others are doing hard job.. but thats also a part of life right?

My personal opinion is that there shouldn’t be any personal reward system in PvP at all in any game, more or less (for in-game actions that is, they always seam to make players focus on “fluff” instead of just winning).

Just base rewards on wining or losing as a team.

Buuuut I didn’t want to open up that whole can of worms of a discussion

Reikou.7068:

I would like to think that anet has already taken this into account…

I hope so and it would make me glad if they had, but I think this is something they would mention if they considered it and I haven’t come across it anywhere.

Masakari.8306:

combined glory gained by your team/5 = every1 from the team gets the same,
as they have all contributed to the win.

So in essence you would agree that in paid tPvP team based rewards would be preferable?

copy-paste from similar topic

I would too! Mostly because it is fun with several game-modes and I don’t really care about imbalances between game-modes.

Even so….
I think Anet will be really restrictive in adding content of this sort for two reasons:

• Anet have stated that they prefer one format to balance the game around as it is exponentially more difficult (if not impossible) to balance parallel but mechanically different game-modes simultaneously
• Avoid to much fracturing of the player-base, whit more game modes players will split up giving longer ques, less players, less competition and lase biases for rankings and similar, splitting the player-base is something most game avoid doing to much

I also personally believe there is a third reason. My impression from other games is that in the end, 80-90% of the player-base end up playing just one of the game modes anyways (this ties into that the players them-self don’t want to split up their own community and also how different game modes are perceived over time), while the company retains all increased cost for providing and supporting multiple game modes. this my be cynical but I think it plays in that it is might be a not so economical decision.

I would too! Mostly because it is fun with several game-modes and I don’t really care about imbalances between game-modes.

Even so….
I think Anet will be really restrictive in adding content of this sort for two reasons:

• Anet have stated that they prefer one format to balance the game around as it is exponentially more difficult (if not impossible) to balance parallel but mechanically different game-modes simultaneously
• Avoid to much fracturing of the player-base, whit more game modes players will split up giving longer ques, less players, less competition and lase biases for rankings and similar, splitting the player-base is something most game avoid doing to much

I also personally believe there is a third reason. My impression from other games is that in the end, 80-90% of the player-base end up playing just one of the game modes anyways (this ties into that the players them-self don’t want to split up their own community and also how different game modes are perceived over time), while the company retains all increased cost for providing and supporting multiple game modes. this my be cynical but I think it plays in that it is might be a not so economical decision.

Hi!

I have a suggestion I would like to see some feedback on.

As paid tournaments are just for premades (and as such should avoid problems with bots, PUGs, and similar) I would suggest that Anet changes the current point-system that rewards individual actions (capping, killing, roaming etc.) to a pure team-based system that effects the amount of glory/rank earned in each game.

To still keep it interesting and reward relative performance between the teams you could base the glory/rank given to each players on each team on the relative (or accumulated) score at the end of the match.

That would let a team that really blows the competition out of the water to earn more rewards, and would also somewhat give incentive for the losing team to still push for points as it would increase there own rewards.

The goal is to really make it so that you win or lose as a team, and also get rewarded as a team. Currently different roles in a successful tPvP team gets widely different rewards in terms of glory/rank.

Of course details in this can be tweaked and discussed to no end. Like how much glory/rank? Based on score difference or individual team accumulated score? Based on average personal points in the old system? Etc etc. The part I want feedback on is if this would be a welcomed change to paid-tPvP?

Thanks!

nowitsawn.1276:

Not sure what people mean here with the term ‘’Diminishing Returns’‘, then (to be honest it’s the first time I’ve seen it being used this much in an MMO community) . What I meant was that, in how I understand it, as your Toughness increases, adding the same amount of Toughness on top of that will yield less and less noticeable results in damage mitigation.

Like if you were to attain some absurd amount such as 10.000 Toughness, adding 200 more won’t really make a difference, but if you only have 500 Toughness, another 200 would help way more.

As for how that affects your survivability… well, I’m not going to pretend I know much about the math behind that :p

Read the long post from me and I’ll thing you’ll get it soon enough

And trust me, this discussion comes up in every singlge new MMO. WoW raiders debated this for years before it was “common understanding”.

As it is survivability we are after, it is the last part that is important to understand. In your “absurd” example going from 10,000 to 10,200 and going from 500 to 700 will let you take the same amount of additional hits. The red number on your screen will make a smaller jump downwards the more toughness you add, but the first point of toughness and the last point of toughness will add the same amount of additional hits you can take from the mob before you die.

Terms and concepts like diminishing returns is all bout perspective and asking the right question

MajorMelchett.6042:

@Luxiom.8279

Great post, it’s why i decided to go half and half on the Vitality/Toughness on my build. With more toughness you get better healing but with more Vitality you get better condition protection – going with half and half gives an equal bit of both.

Thanks!

In short, do survive burst you want EHP (effective health points). You get the most EHP per stat point if the ratio between armor and health is 1:10. Aka it is better to take 400 Toughness + 400 Vitality instead of just 800 Toughness.

As most classes has a ratio in favor of Armor to start with, Vit usually gives to most EHP.

For prolonged fights you will most likely want healing efficiency. This means Toughness is more important then vitality as eventually you will out heal any difference in EHP you would have gotten from splitting between Tough/Vit.

In a prolonged fight you just need enough EHP to survive any burst and sustained condition removal to handle conditions as I belive this is more effective then stacking health.

mulch.2586:

The formula isn’t right because it’s leaving out crits and conditions, but does seem correct for direct non-crit vanilla damage.

The formula also shows you that there’s no diminishing returns, but it’s not an additive/subtractive, but proportional.

To call that “diminishing returns” is absurd, because if it were straight up subtractive, at some point if you had enough toughness, you’d be getting healed by taking hits.

It is correct. It is just simplified (which isn’t the same as wrong)

You can expand it to include crits, healing condition damage, might, vulnerability and other stuff if you want.

But to conclude if armor has a DR or not against direct damage the simplified formula is more then enough. Like so (still not complete, just example, hopefully no errors as I did this on the fly, hard to format):

Average Damage done =
(
(
(weapon damage) * (Power + 35 * (number of might stacks)) * (skill-specific coefficient) * (1 – crit chance) +
(weapon damage) * (Power + 35 * (number of might stacks)) * (skill-specific coefficient) * (crit chance) * (crit multiplier)
) * (1 + 0,01 * (number of Vulnerability stacks)
) / (target’s Defense + Toughness)

I’m positive mulch is with me on this, I quoted this for others to see as I didn’t like the it being called “in-correct”

Dice Dragon.4326:

+1

Effective health is something that few people tend to think about.

Thanks!

…and yes, this discussion have been a plague in every MMO I have ever played or read about

I have never really understood why this concept is so hard to grasp?

nowitsawn.1276:

According to the wiki:

Damage done = (weapon damage) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (target’s Defense + Toughness).

So, if this is true, doubling your Armor (= Defense + Toughness) should halve your damage intake. This would indeed mean that Toughness has diminishing returns.

Please read the post above you

It is the same confusion in every MMO. Armor does not have a DR. Each point of toughness will increase your time-to-live with an equal amount.

If 200 more toughness lets you take 22hits before dying instead of 20, 400 points of toughness will let you take 24 hits, 600 = 26 hits. Aka, one more hit per 100 toughness.

The confusion comes from seeing that the first 200 addition points of toughness takes the hit down to 909 from (91 decrease from 1,000 base), while the second batch of 200 points only brings it down to 833 (76 decrease). BUT in both cases you live for two more hits from the enemy hitting you!

This discussion comes up in every MMO The concept to study is effective health points, aka “how many hits can I take before dying?”

This is a copy paste from my guild-forums as this discussions is currently under way there too:

TL:DR
There are no diminishing returns, soft caps or hard caps on Vitality OR Toughness when it comes to survivability from direct damage!

Increasing Armor OR Health-pool by X% will increase survivability against direct damage by X%

Increasing Vit will also increase survivability against condition damage by the same X%. Toughness will increase received healing efficiency by the same X%.

Example:
Say you have 20,000 health points and 2000 armor (close to base stats of a Warrior). En enemy hits you for 1,000 damage on each hit. Disregarding your self heal you can take 20 hits before you go into downed state.

Armor-slots gives 224 sat-points for a secondary stat, trinkets (without jewels) gives 240 stat-points for a secondary stat. Lets round this to 200 each for the following example.

Adding 2,000 health, trough 200 Vitality on say armor-slots, will let you take 22 hits before downed, increasing your survivability by 10% against direct damage. As condition damage ignores armor you will also have increased you survivability against condition damage by 10%.

Adding a additional 2,000 health by putting Vitality as a secondary stat on your trinkets too (not jewels) will let you take 24 hits before downed, increasing survivability by an additional 10% from base.

Aka, each 100 Vit will let you take one more hit so no diminishing returns.

The same goes for Toughness.

Increasing Toughness by 200 make is so each hit will now do ~909 damage per hit, letting you take 22 hits before downed.

Increasing Toughness by an additional 200 will make each hit do ~833 damage and lets you take 24 hits before downed.

Each 100 Toughness will let you take one more hit, so no diminishing returns.

In addition. Toughness will make all received healing more efficient. In the 20,000 health/2,000 armor example being healed for 5,000 health negates 5 attacks at 1,000 damage. If you add 400 Tougness instead of 400 Vitality that 5k heal will negate 6 hits instead. Healing efficiency will in short be increased by the same % as survivability against direct damage when stacking Toughness.

Conclusion:
As you can see in the example above, the first 200 points of toughness mitigates 91 damage (from a 1k hit), and lets you take 2 more hits. The next 200 points mitigates an additional 76 damage, but still lets you take 2 more hits before you are downed.

This leads to the belief that there is a diminishing return on investment on armor as people only see that 91>76. This isn’t true. The first 100 points of toughness and the last 100 points of toughness will increase your time to live equally (as always disregarding healing/condi-damage).

Disclaimer:
What excat increase in % you get from each point of Toughness or Vitality depends on how much you already have and the ratio between the stats. So the example above is just that, an example. If you had 25,000 health and 3k armor 100 Vit would ad 4% survivability against direct damage and 100 Tough would add 3,33%.

The reason they don’t add the same %-amount is because the damage formula works on multiplication. 50×50 is bigger then 1×99. As you usually have more armor then health (1:10 ratio) Vitality gives more effective health-points per stat-point.

The Unnamed Recruiting!
Looking for players for dedicated tournament-teams and overall sPvP
English speaking, EU based, on Blacktide server

Are you looking for a stable and organized guild to do sPvP with? Do you want dedicated PvPers with multi-game experience in team based PvP to practice strategy and tactics with? The Unnamed wants to offer you a new home where you can grow as a player and where your input will be valued as part of the team.

We are currently running two successful stable tournament-teams that places no.1 more often then not, and are now looking to set up a third team. We practice regularly at least two times a weak with well developed strategy and concepts. We also have a base of semi-casual sPvP players and want to grow that base a bit bigger to foster our common growth as a PvP based guild and offer the best environment for our players.

The Unnamed is an old guild with a long history. PvP have always been the focus with games like SWTOR, Rift and Warhammer Online under the belt. English is our language but we are spread out over Europe so even if we go for quality in players over quantity you will seldom log-in to en empty guild-chat.

In GW2 we have been a noticeable presence in WvW and starting to make a name in sPvP. As players seldom want to leave the guild, even if they focus on other games we have smaller groups of members that play games like LoL or CS, alwyas with the PvP action at heart!

Please get in touch with us! Visit our recruitment page or simply www.the-unnamed.com. If you fill in a good enough application we will be happy to offer you a two week trial with our tPvP teams!

Feel free to contact Luxiom.8279 in-game!

Cheers!

tOss.9024:

Explain to me how it is gamebreaking. I don’t see how locking people into builds would fix rock, paper, scissors type win/loses it would make it worse because you can’t adapt to the situation.

It does neither. That is one of the major points. The game either has problems with rock/paper/scissor builds or it doesn’t. But locking in builds or not does not change that. That is the main argument here.

The only thing you accomplished when allowing in-match switching of everything is that the optimal way to play is to be constantly switching to counters.

Either the game has a strong rock-paper-scissor design where builds (solo or team) “hard”-counter each-other or it doesn’t. Same with the game evolving into a one-build meta.

Imagine if you could resell all items in LoL without any loss of gold. The game would degrade to a to a constant circle of item counter-building.

It is not a balance question really. The game can be balanced with this in mind (personally I believe it is harder to do and currently isn’t, but that is beside the point) or just as well be balanced around locked builds. It is more a discussion about what is good for the game, what is “fun”, what is good from eSports perspective and finally, what kind of gameplay and skill-set should be the focus of the game.

milo.6942:

There should not be an instant-suicide button, as others have said it would take away important strategic elements. Others have said there could be a suicide button with a cooldown of about 10-15 seconds, but that is already about as long as bleeding out takes if you don’t try to heal yourself.

Mega Skeleton.8259:

Sure you could just let yourself bleed out like you do now but you might not realize that’s their intention (to leave you there) till you’re 3/4s up.

In this regard I would say it is a matter of your experience in judging the situation to decide what to do. In most scenarios vs good players it’s simply best to bleed out.

As I have never been left to bleed out (play with a friendly team over mumble ) I didn’t realise you had constant health loss in downed-state unless you activley where using the heal skill.

In that case, it is a no issue to me and should be kept as is as you already can kill yourself.

Aragiel.6132:

Hsulf.9370:

Really hope a dev is reading this as it’s pretty important stuff for the future of gw2 pvp.

i will be here with you till some of Devs will read it as i share same opinion

Brofist-up! I’m here with you guys

alcopaul.2156:

You’re not getting my argument. I just don’t want Guild Wars 2 to be mirror matches of a build that underwent a Darwinian process, being the build that is the most versatile and the most “balanced”. Guild Wars was like that and other builds that had chances to overcome the balanced build were destructively nerfed.

Being able to change mid game will offer additional variety of tactics and decision making to players. Multiple build configurations will be used to overcome the enemy, which is not prohibited to do so.

I understand that this is a thing you would like to avoid. But I no longer think allowing swapping of X in-match is the solution.

At first I was open for recognizing the skill-set of on-the-fly recognition and adaptation. I also saw this as a countermeasure to “buildwars” that some games suffer from.

I no longer believe it would work like that. Either the game has a strong rock-paper-scissor design where builss (solo or team) “hard”-counter each-other or it doesn’t. Same with the game evolving into a one-build meta.

Allowing build changes mid game will not change this. It will just create an environment where top teams need to change their build constantly.

Imagine if you could resell all items in LoL without any loss of gold. The game would degrade to a to a constant circle of item counter-building.

In theory, I’m not discuring the idea of in-match adaptation as a countermeasure to “buildwars” or as deterrent to “one build rules them all”. But if it should be used, it has to be severely limited in some way and a core design principle to avoid the problem of a constant build change circel-jekr countering.

As an addendum:

Of course this whole discussion is based in Anets ability to make a game balanced enough that there is at any time several viable balanced builds available that have an equal change of winning in the hands of equally skill players so that the outcome of the match comes down to perfection in execution and/or superiority in strategy/tactics.

Aka, winning by mind-games, knowing you opponent and having that edge of more focus right when it matters.

After reading this thread in full again I’m all for locking everything down as it seams like the best solution. At first I was open for recognizing the skill-set of on-the-fly recognition and adaptation . I also saw this as a countermeasure to “buildwars” that some games suffer from.

I no longer believe it would work like that. Either the game has a strong rock-paper-scissor design where builss (solo or team) “hard”-counter each-other or it doesn’t. Allowing build changes mid game will not change this. It will just create an environment where top teams need to change their build constantly.

Imagine if you could resell all items in LoL without any loss of gold. The game would degrade to a to a constant circle of item counter-building.

As many others here I don’t see that as “fun” gameplay. If it was supposed to be in the game as a skill-set i needed to refine, it should have a much better support by the interface. Like loading build/gear profiles etc. etc. I don’t think that anyone (at least not many) in GW1 thought that running with your inventory open and switching shields around as a monk depending on who where hitting you was a fun concept, but you needed to do it as it gave a small edge that matter in high competition.

@Braxxus
I do think that your perspective as a heavy solo-queing player effects your view of this and that is totally understandable!

When you are running with randoms you feel and notice the heavy burden of “build wars” and “hard counters” a lot more then you do in a organized team setting. No one wants to be stuck match after match, full game after full game, with limited options because you happen to spawn in a map vs. just the classes/builds you are ill equipped to handle. And really no build can or should be able to handle all eventualities (that would be OP and unbalanced).

But the discussion here is for tPvP and maybe even should be extended to paid tPvP when they arrive as this is supposed to be the “competitive” mode of GW2. In that setting also taking a fun/practical observer mode into account focus should IMHO be moved to the teams ability to pre-plan their setup to be versatile enough to win during all circumstances.

In a team you should not have to be able to counter everything solo, but the team should be smart enough to adjust their strategy (everyone should really start to use strategy and tactics in context more :P ) to handle any shortcomings by switching players, positions and goals around. And bring enough tools as a team to be able to do this.

That is what Aragiel means I think when he talks about moving focus to tactical team decisions instead of individual adjusting on-the-fly decision and knowledge. It is not about making the game less complex, it’s about switching around what skill-sets are needed to be successful.

I can also understand your views on personal vs. team performance and you feelings towards being self-sufficient. I just think (and want to personally) that GW2 is supposed to be a team game. The changes discussed here is in that light and as Aragiel has displayed a change like this could lead to more interesting team-interaction. The team is supposed to be able to handle everything, not you individually. Team that can plan and prepare for this should in that case be promoted for this.

Aragiel.6132:

Its not a MTG side deck as long as you speak about changing during the game. Even at respawn its “during the game”.

side deck in Guild Wars 2 is while waiting in MISTS – there you can change anything you want even your class, but once your team is going to the map – you are telling “im ready” no other changes should be allowed.

Back in GW1 i remember while we were waiting for next opponent, we offten checked observer in order to see our possible next opponents tactic and buid. Then we addapted. But it was in the game lobby, not in started game.

These two are a big difference as i see it. You should be able to change or switch class. But not in game that started. Even one of your teammembers entered the game, that should lock other members as well.

It was just a suggestion I’m all pro just disabling it all in all as that is the simple fast solution.

The point of the suggestion was that IF you want on-the-fly adaptation be a skill that matters in the game it should be implemented in such a way that you can select a different build from a already decided preset and do it a limited amount of times (IMHO).

On the MTG analogy. It is hard to compare a card game to a real time PC game, just used it as a reference. Your view of using it just between matches is valid, but you can also look at it from a perspective of each encounter *during * a match as a single round and therefor allow switches at re-spawn. Especially as a tPvP finals is a best-of-one while most MTG setups are usually a best-of-X where X>1.

If this kind of skill set is something that should be promoted in the game or not is for me up for debate, it has several pros and cons as I see it.

I have never understood the MMO community’s fixation with death-match. Even the once so death-match heavy FPS scene has at large moved away from the format in favor of other objective-driven gamemodes.

For me the equation is simple. If you have a pure death-match format you are missing out on half of the gameplay! If you are familiar with the definition and differentiation of the strategy and tactics concepts, then deathmatch is just tactics (how you win the 1v1, 2v2, 3v3 and so on).

If you add objectives to the match and game mode you also add the element of strategy which in this context is the ability to create encounters with favorable conditions like (an example) a 2v3 at a key moment and place instead off a 2v2.

In this case all the player skill and team coordination of a 3v3 style arena death-match mode ala WoW still applies, you can even show off even more by winning on tactical skill alone while being outplayed on a strategic level, aka stomping 2 players while you are alone.

I agree that Anets implementation of three point conquest mode might not be the most exiting or well-designed, but it is the fixation and constant request in all MMO games for a pure death-match mode that befuddles me. For me it’s just half of the PvP! Maybe WoW arenas successful history is to blame?

If leaving someone to bleed out is something we want to remove (unsure about that) then it is a good suggestion, just give it a 10-15sec cooldown (like skill 2 and 3) before it can be used so just can’t kill yourself right away.

I agree that it should be disabled. Either in its entirety (skills, weapon, amulet) or just disable gear change in all of sPvP as this should be a simple fix to implement.

This would encourage balanced build and also remove the hassle of playing for that small edge as it isn’t supported in a good way by the interface.

I can see a point in allowing utility’s to be switch as the interface for it is already there and simple. I also recognize that adaptability and reading is a skill in itself and should be rewarded, so what I really would want to see (if it didn’t cost a lot of development resources as there is more important stuff) is if you had a interface for switching to another build/sPvP -toon during re-spawn in sPvP but could only do it once or twice during the match. The loaded toon is still locked in gear, but allows skill change out of combat.

Like the side deck in Magic the gathering

I strongly agree that this should be left out!

KDR is always used in the wrong way and just invites to bad player and team behavior. It bad for the community and bad for the game. I don’t think it will have any positive effect at all.

Essentially I feel the same about the whole personal points system. Win or lose is what counts. I understand, sadly, that solo players want a metric to fight for in random games but I still believe you have a batter game without this kind of arbitrary metrics.

Especially in tPvP it doesn’t make sense, you win as an organized team, but the bunker gets half the credit and the treb guy always gets the most glory.

But that is another discussion all and all

MAxs.8042:

[…]
And i should mention that we were really impressed with “golem” massive attack from Gunnar’s who came to take Orb of Power =) It was quite spectacular.

Maxs [Xaoc]

Not sure if it is the same event as I was offline, but I do think we have that episode on FRAPS

As a member of ThUn would like to thank both Blacktide and Gandara for putting up nice fights.

This week has been great for WvW and made me really love this game, I’ve learned so much from the times our plans failed and either of you wiped us

I wish all members of the opposing servers good luck in the future matchups. I would like to do a special shout-out to Xoac as they where the enemy I got the most impression of.

Hope you all continue to work together and kick some more behinds!

Finally, a thanks to ThUn leadership, and a grateful nod to other Gunners Hold guilds running coordinated strategies!