Guild Wars 2

Tamasan, the majority of players I’ve talked with would disagree with you. I think many of us would be okay waiting just 1 minute to have the game setup a 5v5 team. Also, autobalance at the moment is completely rubbish and stupid. If it starts out 3v5 or 4v5, there’s little chance for the disadvantaged side to ever comeback and win. I have hundreds of games of experience and I can’t really remember a time when I won a match on a team with less players.

Now many of you might be thinking “how is this different from Arena?”. Ask yourselves now – how is it currently different? It’s really not. As it stands, hotjoin and arena are almost exactly the same. Arena needs to be more competitive. Perhaps a Rating that can be increased or decreased depending on victories should be implemented so that players strive harder to win. Hotjoin PvP would not have a ranking and would be just for fun, but at least taken a little more seriously.

Players experimenting a build for the first time should not be in matches with players who expect them to understand their build and know its effectiveness.

Sure, players can still join a ranked match. But why risk losing when you could join a practice lobby for a few minutes?

Which leads to another issue – when you have the objective to capture points, you force players to play bunker builds. If the objective was kills or just killing the opponent Guild Lord (like in original GW), then the build designs should shift more towards well-rounded play because combat would be all over the place instead of localized at control points where AoE spam and bunker builds dominate.

If you want to test builds, there should be practice lobbies setup with no rewards at the end of matches.

As it stands, there are absolutely no consequences in any pvp game mode for doing just about anything you want to, and that simply isn’t fair for those who put a lot of time into sPvP.

Thanks for your feedback. I think if people really want to play team-based-nobody-really-cares-style-pvp, then go play in WvW. But structured pvp as it stands is not, in any way, structured by the game.

I’ve played tons of ranked matches where players just leave. There’s no penalty for them and it ruins the fun for everyone.

Again, this topic is for hotjoin matches. If every issue was resolved by going to ranked matches, why would you even have hotjoin? There’s almost no difference right now between hotjoin and ranked.

Even easier roles: Defender, Assaulter, Support.

1) Defender -> Defends Points (No way, how intuitive!)

2) Assaulter -> Caps Points (Still going with that intuitive idea? Sweet!)

3) Support -> Pairs up with Defenders or Assaulters to support them (Oh my God, he’s three for three!)

The downed state makes more sense for PvE, just not PvP, in my opinion (which is shared by others, too).

Most competitive pvp games (Starcraft, Dota, LoL, etc) are primarily hotjoin matches, and the developers actually take them seriously. I don’t know why Anet, who originally WANTED GW2 to become an Esport, isn’t doing this.

Hello everybody:

First off, I used the title specifically to attract attention – and it probably worked.

This topic is regarding hotjoin PvP in Heart of the Mists and will only cover that.

Some issues addressed are not necessarily relevant when using a pre-made team, but that isn’t the topic here. Hotjoin pvp should be more fun, and it isn’t.

Some of these issues were NEVER a problem in the original Guild Wars – how can the developers not have this resolved more than a YEAR after launch?

1. Why do you allow players to click “Leave Match” without ANY consequences? The team is often left without a replacement, only to have their time wasted. There should be a system that temporarily denies players from rejoining hotjoin pvp if they disconnect from the match. Make it, say, a 10 minute window?
2. Games often start with very few players. I’m sorry, but this is just stupid and nobody appreciates this. Matches shouldn’t start unless both sides have full teams. Want to play 1v1? Fine, make a custom match and go nuts.
3. Players are not playing with other players near their skill level. Is it too much to ask that we play hotjoin matches with people around our skill level? You can at least start by matching players based on pvp rank, even though it isn’t the best method. But it would prevent longtime PvPers from playing with people whose in their first match ever.
4. Bring in gladiator-style PvP matches. Let players battle 1v1, 2v2, 3v3, etc. Have this be a separate ranking system that allows players to show off how good they are fighting 1 vs 1. Matches should allow each player only one life, so make it count.
5. The downed system does not make sense for a competitive PvP game. If someone is able to take you down, you should be down. You weren’t prepared. You messed up. You didn’t stun the glass cannon build. Your teammates didn’t help. Sucks to suck. Can you still resurrect them? Sure, and make the resurrect time a little quicker to aid this. But don’t give them abilities that are sometimes better than some abilities while they are up. More often than not, the downed system is annoying. You get about one guaranteed “save my butt” ability to buy you time, a decent auto attack, and perhaps a third useful ability. But 9 times out of 10, you still die and you just wasted everyone’s time doing nonsense. The rally system doesn’t make any sense – how do you suddenly get the ability to come back up, now perfectly fine, just because someone else died?

If you agree with anything I said, or have CONSTRUCTIVE feedback, post it below.

If you don’t agree, then don’t say anything. Nobody wants to hear how dumb you think these ideas are.

If you, as the developers, want this game to grow – this is the main problem (in my opinion). I want to see professional game casters devote part of their channels to Guild Wars 2 PvP. I want to see this become an Esport.

I just want this game to be better.

Just because the patch didn’t change much with Warrior, DOES NOT mean they can’t be OP. They have been ridiculous since Beta and Anet has done nothing to limit them in any way. They have the best of everything: damage (with those gimmicky frenzy burst builds), 18k starting health, highest armor, ranged weapons with good abilities. I mean, what’s the point to playing any other class if the Warrior can do their job equally or better? Honestly, it doesn’t make any sense to playing anything else.

People need to understand that just because health for each profession is the same (some may experience health increases, other health drops) does not mean that is the end of balancing professions. That would only be the beginning. So if you immediately think that a certain class having more health would be OP then you are not even considering further changes. If Guardians experience a health increase in order to make all professions have equal health, then Anet can totally change the amount of healing, damage, protection spells, etc. It’s all open to change. But if everyone has the same health, then professions are more likely to be able to fulfill the same roles as others and balancing becomes THAT much easier. No class should be left without the potential of fulfilling a certain role. Having any class fulfill any role IS one of Anet’s goals, after all. Definitely seems like that hasn’t happened and it probably won’t unless there’s some decent change.

I’ve experienced the 15-20k damage in a few seconds even on my tankiest of warriors. This isn’t me being a glass cannon, this is about the failed mechanic that is Quickness.

Making all characters have the same base health is not anything like WoW. And even if it had something to do with WoW, does that mean cast it away? Not at all. Having equal base health is important because it becomes one less thing to balance.

Why should other classes be able to inherently take more damage? That creates roles that some classes can only fulfill and that completely opposes Anet’s purpose; they want any class to fulfill any role and that currently is not viable at all. With armor off, everyone should die just as fast. The reason Warriors and Guardians should take more damage should be because of their armor, not necessarily their high health.

@ Nels the Cornwhisperer: Getting bursted down in less than 2 seconds is not enough time to react. That’s upwards of 20k being done in nearly an instant. That is not at all any indication of skill of the person who died. No class should have that damage output.

And you also said “warriors do absolutely crap damage.” Seriously? I can’t believe you said that, have you never been hit by a frenzy + 100blades before? Or are you too good, because you can dodge eveything and it doesn’t matter how much damage someone can do because if there is a 50% change of avoiding it then its okay.

NO, not at all okay. Damage capability should not be that high. It urges players to play burst gimmick builds that require little to no skill and ruin the game.

@ Others: Read very carefully. I only speculated on removing all burst. I specifically said to lessen burst skills to just a few, not completely remove them all. This would make it so that burst skills were used more cautiously and not as opening moves like lots of thieves and warriors try to do.

Also

When I said to make it so everyone had the same base health, I meant this as a starting place. If everyone had the same health ALL you would have to do if then manage damage output.

Right now they are trying to manage health on top of that, and with everyone having equal health it becomes one less variable in the equation.

Lastly, balance should not be soley based on 5 vs 5 groups. Remember that pick up groups are a huge part of sPvP and that will probably never change.

The reason some classes can’t change weapons during combat, like the Elementalist, is because the Elementalist already has more skills than most classes have because the Elementalist can switch between the 4 different attunements. Hope this helps.

Dear Anet and players,

This is a suggestion on how to balance the combat almost perfectly in about 2 minutes of your time.

1) Remove Quickness

This feature urges players to play burst builds that are cheeky and ruin the fun of the game. It does not increase the skill required to play, but it decreases it because killing players is now easier than ever. This is especially true with many builds being able to kill players in under 3 seconds while using just 2 abilities. That potential is limited to only a few classes, and it does not belong in a game like this. And no, dodging and using escapes is not always viable or even available. Not to mention, not even all professions are able to grant themselves/others this ability (see http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Quickness ). Please post “Hello Scyrka!” at the beginning of your reply so that I know you have been reading carefully. If you don’t, I won’t reply to you.

2) Equal Base Health

Unequal base health gives inherent advantages to some classes and disadvantages to others. If every class had an equal base health, before anything is given to a profession the game is already balanced. All Anet would have to do is limit the damage each class can do (i.e. Make melee do slightly more damage for the range issue but don’t make it overpowering). Source: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Health

These two are the biggest reasons why this game is currently unbalanced. The goal of balancing combat should be to reduce overall burst capabilities with classes.

Think about it this way: If you remove all possible burst capability from every class – you now make each fight longer and more challenging. But that’s not good. Not at all.

However, if you then introduce just a few small chances to apply a nice burst – only enough to take off the last bit of health, then THAT would be good. Burst is currently used to bring players from full health to zero; it should be bringing players from 15% or so, to zero.

I could get very specific but people don’t have the time or patience for that.

Enjoy!