Guild Wars 2

Obligatory “I’m not a programmer, but…” I assume the tech is more or less already there, since other professions have similar UI effects. It’s a small change that would make running Chronophantasma significantly more enjoyable.

Take the current mesmer meta build. Replace your least favorite trait line with Chronomancer 3/3/3.

New HoT meta.

One can dream at least…

Fay.2357:

Illusions drops the cooldown of continuum split, and continuum split is the primary skill that gates everything else that you do. Saying that ‘alacrity already provides cooldown reduction’ is silly. Obviously alacrity provides cooldown reduction, but you want as much as possible.

So the question is what is worth more:

• Illusions for Continuum Split cooldown being 78.5s (down from 90s), and 20% reduced recharge for Phantasm skills, on top of what cooldown reduction alacrity provides
• Domination for 12.5% more damage across the board, 15% more damage from phantasms, and 15/30% more damage from shatters

Some thoughts:

• 11s off Continuum Split would only be majorly relevant if using it on cooldown. Unless I’m mistaken, the main purpose of using it would be to get two Time Warps (+some additional skills) off. After the second, it goes on a 180s cooldown. How many PvE encounters last long enough for Time Warp to come back up, even with alacrity? How many encounters would make use of multiple Continuum Splits?
• How much does the phantasm skill cooldown reduction contribute to your skill rotation? Over the beta weekend, running Dom/Duel/Chrono, the weapon swap cooldown was the time gate I was hitting on summoning additional phantasms, not the recharge on skills. Is the extra cooldown reduction, on top of alacrity, for phantasm summoning skills necessary?

TheFrighteningFrenchFry.3275:

If you mean for dungeons/fractals/raids then probably something of the sort like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQRAsc8dncfCtqh9fCmfCUrhlVjqcDGhAo+Yj2pFd6OjrD-TxRBABXt/o8oQ9Biq+DZKxe4EAAwTAwMlgBAOAGuwFOg1Xf91Xf9Ge4hHe4hHDQeA-e

Domination might be better than dueling we have to wait and see. You can take shield if you need more personal survive ability or more stuns or more quickness. You can take pistol if your phantasms will stay alive longer that way. You can go with Well of Precognition if your team needs more survivability. etc etc

Is there a strong reason for Illusions being mandatory for a DPS-focused build? Seems like the main thing it provides is cooldown reductions, which Chrono brings passively through alacrity (and not just for you, but the whole party). Both dueling and domination provide damage buffs that don’t seem worth dropping, while the benefits of the Illusions traits can be gotten elsewhere:

- Illusionary Retribution: doesn’t really matter.
- Persistence of Memory: alacrity already provides cooldown reduction
- Illusionist’s Celerity: alacrity already provides cooldown reduction
- Phantasmal Haste: Domination gives +15% damage plus 12.5% from Vulnerability, which beats 20% more from faster attacking.
- Master of Misdirection: alacrity already provides cooldown reduction
- Master of Fragmentation: buffs Mind Wrack crit chance by 10%, while Domination buffs its damage by 15 or 30%. Other effects are underwhelming in most PvE situations

To me at least, it seems like Domination/Dueling/Chrono makes for a stronger PvE DPS build – something like this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vhAQNAs8ancfCtfi9fCuqBUrhFVjiMAKgirsDKhBoOZn2qF-TxBBABYt/o8AgTCgh6FGV9nyUiFwDA4MlgBAOAGuwR4g1Xf91Xf9Ge4hHe4hLDg+YA-e

Simple quality of life suggestion for Chronomancer: if Chronophantasma is active, phantasms that currently have the buff receive a distinctive dot on the illusion UI, allowing mesmers to better track whether or not their phantasms have the Chronophantasma buff at a given point in time.

After a phantasm is shattered for the first time, the buff is lost, and they return to having a normal illusion UI dot.

Quick mockup is attached, with Chronophantasma-buffed phantasms receiving a blue dot with subtle smoke/glow effect based on existing mesmer UI colors and icons.

Fay.2735:

I wanted to use just ‘Fay’ but someone took it within seconds (someone who didn’t even really want the name…;_;…)

I really wanted the name from the moment the ability to use three letter names was confirmed. And even before that…

EverythingEnds.4261:

How about “For each arena match won”?
Prevents afking.

Because of the randomness of matchmaking, it introduces a randomness to the punishment. If you’re unlucky with your queues, you might end up having to play 20 games without rewards to remove the three stacks.

It’s better if the system just recognizes playing, rather than winning, and having punishment be consistent.

Xbon.9086:

Don’t like any of these. If the game already started, I still want reward track/pvp rank progress @ the end of the match, I don’t mind if it’s 4v5, just makes game quicker.

You would still get that for matches where abandonment doesn’t occur at the beginning. Additionally, arenas are a ranked game mode and leaderboards/MMR are important. Rewards are secondary incentives. 4v5 matches are detrimental to leaderboards and MMR.

joonasp.9217:

So you’re saying that people with dishonored buff would be able to join ranked games and not gain any rewards?

They would just afk through the game to get rid of dishonored.

That’s why I said removing stacks would require it to be a game of the length that earns full rewards (current cutoff is seven minutes), so they can’t intentionally make games short to remove stacks.

Additionally, Anet needs a system for dealing with AFK players anyway, preferably one that ties into Dishonorable so that AFK players not only couldn’t remove Dishonorable via AFKing, but also receive additional punishment for attempting to do so.

Pre-game Improvements

Extend the pre-game time from 1:30 to 2:00. Instead of forcing players to join the match as it begins, force them into it at 1:00.

If all ten players have not joined by the time the match begins, do not begin the match and instead return players to the Heart of the Mists. Punish the player or players who do not connect.

If a player abandons in the first three minutes of a match, and does not reconnect within sixty seconds, disable stats and rewards and allow the remaining players to leave the match without punishment. Punish the player who abandoned the game.

Dishonorable
Currently Dishonorable, as I understand it, functions by applying one stack for each abandonment, and each stack lasts 72 hours. If three stacks are currently active, the player cannot queue for arena matches. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be an effective deterrent to abandonment, and additional conditions can be added to Dishonorable to further punish abandonment.

As it stands, a player can effectively abandon two games every 72 hours without punishment. The longer the time is between the first and third abandonment, the more ineffectual the punishment becomes. Altering the functionality of Dishonorable to ensure that every abandonment is punished – not just the third if done within a certain time frame – would aid in deterring players from abandoning.

I would propose Dishonorable instead function in this manner:

• Abandoning a match places three stacks of Dishonorable on the abandoning player
• Dishonorable stacks do not expire over time
• While Dishonorable stacks are active, the player cannot earn rank points or rewards from matches, including progression on reward tracks.
• For each arena match completed without abandonment, one stack of Dishonorable is removed, if the match lasts longer than seven minutes (the current threshold for full rewards). This would prevent players with Dishonorable from intentionally throwing matches in order to remove stacks faster.
• Players with Dishonorable stacks are given low-priority status in matchmaking and when possible are placed in matches with each other, so as to remove them from the prime matchmaking pool.
• If a player reaches 15 stacks of Dishonorable, they receive a 48 hour ban. At the end of the 48 hours, 3 stacks of Dishonorable are removed and they can reenter PvP with 12 stacks still active.

This adds short-term punishment for abandonment by temporarily halting PvP progression for the player. If the abandonment is an isolated incident, there is no long term punishment, similar to the current system. Three full matches will remove the stacks and the player can continue earning PvP rewards as they normally would. However, repeated abandonment will extend the consequences for doing so, and eventually a punishment similar to the current system (a ban from matchmaking) will be reached. If a player wants to receive rewards for their time spent in PvP, they cannot continually abandon matches.

AlbertoUlkesh.4517:

In what way exactly is a Spirit ranger “toxic”? I’m not trying to defend, I just really don’t know. In what ways are the Spirits that different from a Guardian giving boons to his team or a warrior using Banners?

Constant uptime of spirit effects? Constant regeneration and easy resurrections and self-resurrections from Spirit of Nature? Screen and targeting clutter from spirits? Completely passive gameplay?

Sheer lack of skill required?

A guardian may share boons, but guardians can be taken down reasonably in a team fight, and the guardian player is having to actively manage skills. Spirit rangers… less so in both regards, while providing arguably stronger buffs not only to themselves but their team.

Skill timing is too simple. Right now it’s pretty effective to just use weapon skills on cooldown for most classes. Skill use is too simple as well. The vast majority of skills are just target-and-forget functionality, and the strength they have is inordinate for the lack of play involved in using them. This is where Geff talking about skill shots comes in. If using a skill has significant impact in an engagement, it should not be a simple button press and half second cast onto a target, waiting 20 seconds, and doing it again.

Roles right now are super simple. Either you are some form of bunker (guardian, spirit ranger, decap engineer) or you are roaming damage (everything else), more or less. Compare this to other competitive games where you’re getting melee damage, ranged damage, support, ganking roles. CC. High health “tanks”. Team compositions are built around the variety of options players have. GW2 might have killed the PvE trinity, but PvP needs a better defined framework for players to work within. The development of roles and role-based team comps would add beneficial complexity to the metagame.

Countering, in whatever form that takes, should add a layer of beneficial complexity to the game. Currently either you are a class and build that counters another specific class and build, or you are getting rolled through. There’s certain matchups which should clearly favor one player or another based on what they are running – this is part of developing player roles in team compositions – but right now winning an engagement is firmly anchored to certain builds and player skill is irrelevant, as is what a player has available to them. Doesn’t matter if you have an escape skill if you’re getting permanently stunned and immobilized by a warrior. Doesn’t matter if you have burst, you’re not going to pressure that thief to withdraw, cause they’ll just Withdraw (see what I did there) and reengage. There should be fairly involved play and counterplay.

Conditions are a source of unnecessary complexity. There’s so many, and it’s easy to accumulate many of them, and there’s not enough condition clear in the entire game to deal with the sheer number and rate at which they can be applied and stacked. In a MOBA, damage-over-time effects have a certain rarity to them, and if a skill has a DoT component, applying it is the main point of the skill. Compare this to GW2 where everything is passively applying bleeds and cripples everywhere, or doing a massive amount of direct damage in combination with a strong condition effect, and the entire condition system becomes difficult for players to deal with.

So again, it’s not a matter of GW2 being too complex, or too simple, or how any other games compare: it’s a matter of the systems present in GW2 being too simple or too complex in the wrong areas that’s hindering its development as a competitive game.

Brigg.6189:

Hrmm interesting. I don’t play mobas because I thought they looked too simplistic. Your argument, and correct me if I’m wrong, is that the simplicity actually adds depth because you know what to expect/avoid. Too many permutations and the opponents can’t react/preact to eachother. It’s something to think about I guess, ty.

The thing about MOBAs is that, despite the extremely limited set of skills available to a player, they are very complex in the context of the entire game. If you look at a game of Dota 2, you’re not watching 5v5 combat between players with four skills each, you’re looking at a whole map with creeps (which involve tactics such as creep stacking, creep pulling, and creep wave times as well as creep power… creep over time), four tiers of towers (which effect creep equilibrium as well as team map control), lane rotations and how roles choose to lane. There’s xp levelling as well as gold generation from creep and player kills. There’s the order players choose to level up their skills as they gain experience. There’s items and item builds and item build order and item active and passive functions. What a MOBA might lack in combat compared to GW2 is made up in literally everything else, and all that has to be kept in mind by players and teams as a match goes on. Combat is a minimal element in the large scale system, although it is a pivotal element in that it effects everything else.

Guild Wars 2 is different. Conquest doesn’t have the complexities of a MOBA map, but it shares some key points. Rotations are still important in order to ensure you have the right players in the right place at the right time. There’s still an element of map control, and while not as rigid or progression-based as in a MOBA, it effects where and when engagements occur. However, you’re still not dealing with creep waves or neutral camps or farming, you’re not dealing with progressive skill or item builds, and you’re not dealing with team gold or experience deficits or advantages as a match progresses, and this frees up attention to be placed elsewhere.

So we have, generally speaking, access to twenty skills with scaling cooldowns. One’s locked to a heal (though some are passive, but whether or not that is detrimental is an argument for another day). I don’t think number is really an issue. What can be an issue, and is an issue, is how skills are implemented, how combat mechanics function, and how players have to interact with these systems.

Play and counter-play (and by extension, counter-counter-play) are the pillars of combat in a cooldown-abilities based game. This is where GW2 dives too far to the opposite end of the spectrum, into unmanageable complexity. In a MOBA, you generally have a solid understanding of what the enemy players are capable of, what you are capable of, and that if an ability is used by either party, it will be on cooldown and the parameters of the engagement change accordingly. If an enemy misses a skill, that creates opportunity. If you do not manage to avoid their skill, you have to react accordingly. Perhaps it’s using an escape skill to avoid further damage. Perhaps it’s using a burst because you know it will force them to retreat. If you wanted to, you could make a timeline and plot out an engagement and understand how the decisions players made effected the outcome of the engagement, as well as map how things could have been handled differently. This isn’t simplicity, but gameplay with tactical and strategic value.

This is where Guild Wars 2 is lacking. While the base combat mechanics are great – active movement, dodging, Line-of-Sight evaluation and all – everything that is layered on top of it is destructive to the combat experience. Many engagements are just a game of popping things on cooldown with minimal concern, and letting the game do the math to figure out whose skills stack for better damage over time. Pacing is only a concern for specific classes and builds. Pacing is entirely not a concern for others (coughinitiativethievescough). Risk/reward is a kind of foreign concept when it comes to skill use, and it’s hard to truly exert pressure when both you and your enemy are both just hit every key you can and healing every chance you get.

So we’re not even looking at combat as complex vs. simple, we’re looking at the need for a multifaceted balance between complexity in certain areas and simplicity in others, and right now, everything is askew.

Don’t forget about the five PvP salvage kit “reward” for the monthly.

There honestly isn’t a whole lot to go on, but I’ll try to break down the issues I have.

Sword is the current melee weapon for Mesmer. It has a chain auto-attack where with successive hits, boons can be stripped. Your proposed weapon is instead ranged, but functions more effectively as melee, a kind of inverse-Greatsword. However, Sword provides a gap closer while your Spear does not. This is somewhat balanced by the fact the Spear can also be ranged. Overall the auto-attack isn’t bad, but it also has no strong connection to the mesmer as a class. Warrior would be good with a weapon that is ranged by gets stronger at melee range. Maybe Ranger or Thief. There’s no thematic tie to mesmer for your Spear yet.

Your second skill. It’s exactly what off-hand Sword does. What really is there to say? Duplicate skills are not a hallmark of good design.

Third skill – it’s a melee attack that cripples. Okay… but why? Greatsword 4 summons a phantasm that can repeatedly attack and cripple, and it can do that from range. If the purpose is to keep enemies close to your melee attacks, Sword already does that, as it has a gap closer (which is really good) and immobilize (basically cripple but even better) on the 2 skill. So there’s already two skills that fit the same purpose and do it better. Plus, mesmers have access to vigor and blink, so staying close generally is not an issue. Also, again: how does this skill relate to mesmer?

Fourth skill is your phantasm summon. It’s a ranged phantasm (being spawned by what is nominally a melee weapon) that applies confusion (already done by Phantasmal Warlock) and blindness (which if you’ve taken Torch for the Warlock, you have access to also, along with invisiblity and burning, which is a strong damage condition.

Fifth skill, Dagger Storm: Mesmer edition. It’s a neat idea but we already have strong access to reflects, and better means of dealing damage than spinning in circles in melee range. I’ll ask a third time: why mesmer? Thieves can do this.

So you’ve made a sort-of melee weapon with no concise role that overlaps with other weapons, while overall being less effective than those other weapons. I don’t know where you want to go from here.

1. Basic auto-attack
2. same function as Sword 4
3. same function as Greatsword 4
4. same function as Torch 4 + 5
5. similar function as Focus with traits

Nothing new or creative, nothing that fulfills any new roles. No strong direction for the weapon design other than “spears are cool”.

Needs work.

The Feathered Headpiece for females is causing the forehead shadow for circlets to be displayed, and it’s very noticeable with the new short haircut.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Custom_Arena_Time_Token

150 gems for 5 days or 480 gems for 20 days.

Justin ODell.9517:

The distinction between horizontal and vertical here is critical and I believe some people misunderstand it. When we say the progression is horizontal what we are really saying is that we will give our best attempt to balance things so they are approximately equal.

Yes we have and will make mistakes, but we will also try to correct those mistakes. I know people don’t like the current rate of balance changes, and we hear you, but that is another issue entirely.

Might it be considered that the difference between horizontal and vertical progression is not the core issue here, but rather, progression mechanics interfering with gameplay versus progression mechanics that do not? Arguments have been circling around the vertical vs. horizontal issue, but I think they are buzzwords that miss the point.

Yes, the implementation of unlockable skills and traits is not vertical progression. It doesn’t inherently grant increased power to players who go through the effort of unlocking them. Vertical progression does not have a place in PvP and it is being avoided, in favor of horizontal progression, and that is good.

Unfortunately, the horizontal progression being implemented is not the kind that was expected, and as you can see by this thread, not the kind that players are in favor of. This isn’t necessarily because it is being perceived as vertical progression – despite the arguments being made – but because it is a source of interference with gameplay. The issue is that skills and traits are being locked away at all, not misconceptions that having them unlocked will make certain players better than others. The original stated intent for PvP was a level, all-access playing field for everyone, which was good. It is one the reasons PvP in this game was warmly received to begin with.

There are numerous ways to further develop horizontal progression for PvP that do not interfere with gameplay. We don’t know what is coming in terms of reward systems, but there is great potential there. Cosmetics were the original progression for PvP players, and while the system which was (and/or still is) implemented wasn’t the best, it would be a place to look for improvement. Skins that can only be unlocked in PvP would be great. PvP legendaries? An awesome goal to work towards.

There’s achievements. Currently PvP achievements are pretty lackluster. Why not extend the Champion titles for tournament wins? Make them upgrade with additional levels, like title tracks in the original Guild Wars? When the achievement system was updated, the ability to tie item rewards to title tracks was added, and something could be done with that. Would it encourage me to play if I could unlock an exclusive weapon skin for winning 500 tournament games as a mesmer? Yes it would. What about an exclusive armor piece for 1000 wins?

Those are just two ways incentives and progression mechanics can be improved for PvP that do not run into the issue of interfering with gameplay. Those are the kind of additions that I feel you would see an overwhelmingly positive response to, instead of multiple forum threads asking the developers to rethink their decisions.

Justin ODell.9517:

Yes, high level players will find the best combinations. They already do, and have this advantage over new players. It’s one of the skills they’ve learned that makes them so effective.

The thing about this is that part of what makes a PvP game community great is when high level players can share their knowledge with less experienced players. Writing guides, making videos, teaching new players what works and why. It’s something that has been happening since launch and is a benefit to all players.

However, when skills and traits start being gated, this ability to freely share is hampered. It’s no longer a simple matter of offering new players guidance in terms of what skills and traits they should try for a certain profession, because the issue of what they have access to has been introduced. It will not be a huge issue immediately, unless certain profession’s meta builds tied to the new traits, but you’re encouraging us to think long term – what about when half of the traits are not core? Once the utility skills available has doubled?

Should anyone wanting to help new players with their builds just say “gg, come back after unlocking x, y, and z?” Should an ecosystem be forced where guides have to be made specifically for core skills and traits, even if those builds are less effective or ineffective, just because that’s what new players have access to?

Is that the new player experience Arenanet truly wants to encourage?

If guidance is what you are after, I think there would be greater value in letting it fall to the community. Provide encouragement to write guides, to make videos. Let us help each other rather than hindering what players can do without an investment in time and money.

Justin ODell.9517:

Also, this system is designed for horizontal progression. Unlocking traits, or what have you, won’t (at least shouldn’t, barring any balance issues) make you more powerful, they simply give you a wider range of builds and allow you to better tune your character to your play style. Many, many successful games ease players into options, and, in my opinion, trait unlocking isn’t any different.

Why does PvP need these kind of horizontal progression mechanics at all? What value do they add to the PvP experience? How is the implementation of this beneficial to PvP players?

I feel what we, as players, are trying to communicate is not that we oppose the addition of new features, skills, or traits, or the addition of new ways for the game to offer some kind of measurable progress, but rather, that this is not an agreeable way to go about doing it. Freedom was supposed to be at the core of Guild Wars 2 PvP. Players were supposed to start on equal footing. This game is supposed to be different from other MMOs by not forcing PvP players to unlock things needed to play.

All we see now is Arenanet turning back on its word and slowly adding back the elements everyone wanted to keep out. Locked skills, locked traits, “progression” tied to gameplay instead of just cosmetics. Hopefully you can understand why we are disappointed and frustrated.

I fully understand that part of what the developers are trying to do right now is introduce these horizontal progression mechanics throughout the game. It’s additional content, it adds additional experiences for players, and it definitely has a place – in PvE. However, while there are many things that PvP needs, this is not one of them. Ranks and rewards are the progression mechanics for PvP. Player skill and leaderboards are progression for PvP. Locking new skills and traits away under the guise of “easing players into options”? It’s harmful to what PvP is supposed to be, and boldly strides in opposition to what players expect.

Please reconsider the approach being taken towards PvP. The core PvP community wants Arenanet to deliver a game about skill, not a game about PvE progression mechanics shoe-horned into a PvP game after a year and a half.

Vena.8436:

Reliance on the community is a weird one, because the community doesn’t agree on anything as a whole. They just orient players and, many times, go unnoticed by players until they get involved in said community. A new player is rarely going to glue themselves to youtube to learn the intricacies right off the bat. They will, more likely than not, throw together some build and then go off to play. The more they have to sort through to put together their build, the higher the barrier to “moderately composed” entry becomes.

…

Ultimately, the issue is: are the core traits good enough for a basic build that is competitive? If yes, then there is no real issue, you have perfectly fair ground to start and stand on from the get-go and can join a team accordingly. If no, then there is an issue as you are literally unable to compete evenly until X hours have been expended.

There are good and bad sides to every design orientation. My distaste is the character bound unlock nature of a PvP unlock.

You make a good point, but I have to ask: what prevents a player from turning the “core” skills and traits into a mess of a build? And how does locking off new skills and traits change this? I would argue it doesn’t: starting with one more trait in each line from the beginning is essentially the same as having them locked if you hand a new player the game and tell them to make a build. However, if that player looks up builds and does research about their profession, those locked away traits are just placed behind an unnecessary barrier. Traits are not learned in any direct sense, they are modifiers to gameplay. You don’t need a number of hours with a class to understand how a trait works, the tooltip tells you. Traits are effectively passive, you don’t need to understand how to time them or how they synergize in the heat of combat, like you do with skills. Yes, experience will tell you why you are taking a trait, or how to make your own builds based on the available traits, but ultimately there is no recognizable progression related to traits. You take them or you don’t. No one is locking beginning mesmers from equipping a sword because they won’t be able to time Blurred Frenzy, or effectively immobilize using Illusionary Leap. And there’s more to be learned about that than there ever will be about a +interrupted skill recharge time trait.

So again, it’s an issue of Arenanet implementing an artificial barrier to new players that serves little purpose. They’re playing gatekeeper with core gameplay and there is no good reason for it. There’s better solutions to be found in terms of the new player experience and PvP progression.

Vena.8436:

Nineaxis.1826:

This is how real, competitive, successful pvp games such as Dota 2 handle it. They don’t prohibit access to gameplay, just to ranked queues. No skills or traits locked away. No treating PvP as if it requires PvE progression. You learn the game, you gain skill, you move up based on skill. Purely based on skill.

As it should be.

This reminds of the discussions between LoL’s vs. DotA2’s form of content delivery with champions. The idea in LoL to save up and get that new hero is an incentive for many to play through failure, orient themselves, and learn something along the way because they can’t just jump from hero to hero, fail at everything and give up. Conversely DotA2 offers up everything at once, and is great to jump into and the game is much more heavily designed around counter-play between heroes (so its a bit of a necessity by design).

Most FPSs have taken the LoL model because it IS a successful guiding method for new players. The fact that it gives them a goal, even if its an artificial one the game put in place, is a big thing for the psyche. The number of games that use the DotA model are few and far in between these days.

Of course, I still think that these things should unlock for the account if they are unlocked through PvP. Then any other character in PvP will have them available.

While I’d agree that the “LoL model” does have at least some effect in terms of guiding players, I think what Riot is really trying to guide players to is their wallet to buy champions. :P

More seriously though, I think there are important differences when you start picking it apart. MOBA heroes and GW2 profession skills & traits are not particularly good analogues, as in MOBAs there are fairly well defined “beginner” heroes and very clear cut “experienced” heroes. Dota 2 provides a limited hero pool game mode that restricts players to choosing “beginner” heroes to aid in people familiarizing themselves with the game, so even it has that initial guide for new players. Plus it has a fairly extensive tutorial that it suggests new players play through before they even queue. GW2’s PvP tutorial is rather lackluster, and I’m sure 95% of people skip it because they’re trying to get to Lion’s Arch through the Mists, not learn about PvP.

That’s a different topic entirely though. Back to skills and traits – skills aren’t heroes. Traits aren’t heroes. I’d rather equate skill and trait builds to MOBA skill and item builds. They are core to your success as a player, core to your place on a team, and the wrong build or skills going up against enemy players can lead to defeat. There are “meta” builds (more so in GW2 than a MOBA) that guide how players set up their characters, but the important thing is the lack of limitations. A MOBA doesn’t tell you that you can’t purchase certain items because you are new, and it doesn’t force you into a certain build with a certain hero because you are new.

I’ve recently been on a break from GW2 and playing Dota 2. I was, and still am, a new player. The first thing I did though was look up guides for heroes I thought were interesting or would match my play style. I think this is the best solution to any perceived issues that new players might face – encourage the community to write guides, provide resources, contribute towards the new player experience both inside and outside of the game. Give the new players access to everything, but allow the community to build a guiding environment. Unfortunately, Arenanet’s continual chain of poor decisions has effectively killed the PvP community, so there isn’t any real incentive to write guides or make videos. However, continuing to make these decisions isn’t going to help things improve.

In my mind, reliance on the community is far better than potentially locking new players out of meta builds because they need to play to unlock skills or traits. It’s better than telling players they cannot do things. It’s better than trying to put “horizontal” progression in where it is not welcome and not necessary.

jcbroe.4329:

So go hotjoin and level up?

Yes, experienced players don’t want to Solo Que with or Team Que with players they feel have less experience than them. It’s a competitive atmosphere and people queuing expect everybody to carry their weight, it shouldn’t be considered an atmosphere for entirely new players.

So then it comes down to hotjoins, and hotjoins are just a mishmash of experience levels and attitudes which would ultimately get described as a pub (public match, pubstomping, etc, you know), and that is the place for new players to gain some experience and have a place to gain the resources to unlock new things.

There shouldn’t be any hate, but there does need to be barriers of entry that distinguish the different tiers of competition within the game.

This can, and should, be handled by the matchmaking system for arena queues. The game should recognize that new players are of lower skill, their base ELO/MMR should reflect that, and they should not be getting put in matches with high skill players. As they improve, so should their ELO/MRR, and they should be placed in a higher skill tier naturally.

Artificially limiting skills and traits available to players in unnecessary and detrimental to what PvP should be. New players should be encouraged to queue. New players should be encouraged to read guides about their profession, its skills, and its role in the game. New players should be given everything upfront, told to experiment, and matchmaking should sort them appropriately.

Progression should be about skill. In low level matches, they can learn their skills. In mid-level matches, they can refine their game senses and teamplay. They should not reach high-level matches unless their skill reflects that that is the level at which they should be playing. But at no point should the game say “no, you can not play this. You are not allowed to use this. You need to do this number of things just to obtain full functionality for your chosen profession”.

Optimally, we would get ranked solo, ranked team, and unranked queues, with a rank requirement before you can join either of the ranked queues. This is a clean solution: a new player is not limited from playing whatever they want. They can participate in arena matchmaking. Completely new players will be separated from those competing for leaderboard positions until they have a decent amount of experience.

This is how real, competitive, successful pvp games such as Dota 2 handle it. They don’t prohibit access to gameplay, just to ranked queues. No skills or traits locked away. No treating PvP as if it requires PvE progression. You learn the game, you gain skill, you move up based on skill. Purely based on skill.

As it should be.

Directly buying armor and weapon skins from vendors would be my optimal solution to “fixing” PvP rewards. No opening random chests, no salvaging, no mystic forge RNG, just walking up to a vendor to spend gold in exchange for a specific item you want. Rank limitations could stay in place, and the skins could be reasonably expensive, but if I want a skin it means I can play to get the rank and money required and then obtain it.

The Mystic Forge method is silly, crafting isn’t part of a PvP experience, and neither needs to be shoe-horned into it. Look at any other successful PvP game and how they handle cosmetics and it’s simple: use real money or a currency earned in-game by playing to purchase or unlock skins.

No crafting. No Mystic Forge randomness. Set a cosmetic goal and then go after it. Additional systems only complicate things unnecessarily.

This has been an issue since launch. Items in invisible bags should not appear in the Mystic Forge window, just as they do not appear in the vendor sell window.

Solo queue just needs to be limited to competitive maps, like the team queue. No Skyhammer or Spirit Watch that do not encourage team play and are won through gimmicky builds and “lucky” team composition rather than skill.

So Phil Thackeray, cousin of Logan, stands at the Hunting Lodge in Queensdale. For a long time, he was rather pale, but it seems like he recently bought a Total Makeover Kit, because he’s looking a bit… darker than usual.

What he’s supposed to look like: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/File:Phil_Thackeray.jpg

What he looks like now: http://i.imgur.com/d4Jpy4n.jpg

For a month or two now, the game has been pretty awful at determining what the correct notification in the top-right is to expand, and which ones should be collapsed. This was particularly bad for pvp as the capture progress for the point you are standing out would not display (in favor of a notification about repair kits), though this has been alleviated somewhat by the updated in-map capture point graphics. It’s still annoying in PvE though, as things you purposely expand get collapsed in favor of events out of sight, while the event you’re at you cannot see without expanding it.

The game either needs to get better about identifying which event you are actually standing at, or the upper-right notifications should not expand and collapse themselves or remember the state the player puts them in.

Why would this be necessary? What trait line would it go in? How would it be balanced?

No, you need two copies of the skin.

We should be able to see the target of the player being spectated. It’ll help show who is being focused on by them in team fights, and it’s particularly important to let us see how they handle boons and conditions on their target in combination with their own, particularly with the current state of the meta and the number of skills which interact with boons & conditions on enemies and not just players.

I’ve been messing around with a mesmer interrupt build, and the potential seems to be there for it to be decent. The combination of Halting Strike and Chaotic Interruption is excellent in giving a feeling of the profession having some cc and some connection to the original mesmer as a class that punishes enemies, instead of the GW2 phantasm spawn node.

The issue I’ve found, however, is that we lack access to interrupts to actually make the build play out, and with what interrupts we do have, it’s hard to have them land, and even when they do, it’s basically rolling dice as to whether you’ll actually interrupt a cast. Mantra of Distraction is in a broad sense the only really useful interrupt: after charged it is an instant daze with a very short cooldown until all charges are used. Our other dazes are exceptionally more difficult to utilize as interrupts – Pistol 5 has a 1/2 second cast time, Focus 4 has the 1 second cooldown before it can pull, Greatsword 5 has a 1/2 second cast, Chaos Storm has to proc a daze, Sword 4 can chain to a daze with a 3/4 second cast time, after casting the first skill… and then there’s the F3 shatter which requires illusions to run to their target and actually manage to hit. Notice these are all offhand/4 or 5 slot skills except the Mantra and the F3 shatter.

And then there’s the fact that you can blow the cooldown on any of those by the enemy dodging, blocking, popping stability…

We can compare that to Warrior which has a daze with no cast time on main hand mace (15 second cooldown), or Thief’s Headshot which dazes with no cast time and can be spammed, or Ranger’s Concussion Shot, which while a fifth slot skill, only has a 1/4 second cast time.

If mesmers are supposed to interrupt, why do we not have access to convenient interrupts outside of one utility skill? Why do most have cast times longer than most casts in the game, requiring preemptive casts to interrupt anything? Why do we not have a main-hand interrupt, and one with a reasonable cooldown? I think these are the questions that need to be answered before messing with anything else. I don’t think cast bars are necessary, so long as we can see a skill being cast and interrupt it, instead of now, where you basically have to hope an enemy keeps spamming attacks long enough for you to cast a daze, and pray it doesn’t hit them between skills.

It appears as if it started working yesterday evening, a guildie who had been in the 200s for many weeks even without playing finally dropped into the 400s.

Engineer turrets, binding roots, etc. etc. They need green health bars if they are friendly and red if enemy, instead of yellow no matter what.