Guild Wars 2

Less RNG, Less passives. That’s all I want. Give us more control and the skill cap will go higher.

For sigils, runes, skills. Everything.

Can’t we have observer mode (like in gw1) with it? Asking much here but it would be the perfect duo. Twitch won’t hurt because of it.

So we have to trust the system to make a balanced matchup? So we’re putting more stress on a system that’s already having difficulties because of population?

Swapping allowed us, in most cases, to get more balanced matches in gold t3+. It’s part of the climb even; having more options as a player and being able to swap would increase your win ratio and you’d climb.

I’m afraid you’ll take that choice away and let the system figure it out. Increasing both queue times and creating worse matchups. Because, will the system compromise based on queue time and population? So if they can’t find a good matchup after 5-10 minutes, it’ll just wing it? Or will there be hard limits?

Will you cap placement games (at plat t1 for example)?

Another avenue (albeit a kittenty one) gone for teams/premades. Another year (“post-season 5 we’ll discuss the possibility”) until you’d consider something that your game(mode) basically demands.

You shouldn’t need to ask the community this. Feedback? Sure. But GW2’s combat in combination with the gamemode (5 v 5 – 3 capture nodes) demand a team environment. Ah well, w/e.

Posted this on reddit but I’ll do it here too:

Always talking about the solo experience, never about the team aspect.

Gw2’s combat is team-oriented. Conquest is a team game-mode. 5v5 – 3 capture nodes. There are no hard carry possibilities, not from a tactical point of view (gamemode) nor mechanical point of view (combat).

And lastly. “Esports”. If you want to diversify and grow the scene (instead of the trend downwards since a couple of years) then you really need to have a solid flawless infrastructure in place that allows people playing casually to become more competitive and interested.

Very simplistic illustration: casual (soloq) —> casual-competitive (soloq + teamq) —>; competitive (teamq) —> esports.

I know the population is low and that most people that cared left but there are ways to provide a flexible system that would allow a decent team environment. (i.e. Automated Tournaments)

The industry requires a solid infrastructure for the solo player. You see it in every (pvp) game. And that’s fine. But just don’t forget the team experience.

So yeah, excited about another attempt to create a better solo experience. Not so excited about the lack of any mention of ‘teams’.

And no, I don’t play in a team nor have I ever except for some random premades or very casually with some friends (back in the old days).

Dariya.9380:

Fay.2357:

zinkz.7045:

Fay.2357:

Mmmmmm yesssss I looooove me some good armchair developers. Please keep going, I can’t get enough of uninformed opinions and baseless statements!

If you worked in software engineering, etc to a decent level, then you would know what I am saying is correct, it is only people with no clue who think you can’t make certain statements about systems without having the code in front of you.

And we’re supposed to just take you at your word that you’ve worked in software development to a decent level? If you have, then so have I, and I say you’re wrong. Where does that leave us?

Inherently, implementing a “build template system” is really not hard. I’m a software engineer since 2004, take it as you will. However, there are a few theories on why ANet is unable to deliver:

1) Money-grab, by forcing players to purchase extra character slots.

2) Technical debt. Their code base is now one long spaghetti which is a nightmare to scale and maintain. I think it really shows with every new patch they push out and lack of QA, and their excuse for “limitations”.

I think it’s a bit of both.

“Not hard”… For a kittenty version?
It is complex depending on the scope. Anet likes to go for broad scope and high quality, for better or worse.

Money-grab? Just no.
Technical debt? Maybe

But for a dev with so much “experience” you do seem to be pretty ignorant.

etsmith.9025:

So how exactly does this new scoring system stop overstacked servers from blowing up the score. … yeah . .it doesn’t need to go back to the drawing board

Lol. Wrong screen.

You could use pips only and make it possible to lose divisons. It’ll filter itself.

If you’re adamant on using MMR then lessen its ‘importance’. So that it only matters in 1-3 tiers (not cross-division) etc. But I honestly feel that pips should do the job.

You could use MMR for placement matches to put someone in the appropriate division/tier?

Do not remove the treb, please. It’s a defining element of Kyhlo and adds quite a bit of gameplay to it.

Don’t know how I feel about adding a skill to it. Maybe poison?

Rotation speed is fine to me. It’s a powerful tool and it shouldn’t rotate quicker than now.

Zelulose.8695:

Well I am a 1 vs 1 tournament supporter using the ranking system similar to team ranked. Anet has the rare opportunity to make this the first 1 vs 1 and 5 vs 5 esport. They would attract so many players if they did this it isn’t even funny. Ranked 1 vs 1 would be revolutionary in mmorpg especially if they work out 5 vs 5. Both both ranked progression 1 vs 1 and 5 vs 5 they would stand above most pvp games out right now.

Problem with that is balance. The game is balanced around 5v5. Not 1v1. Look at all the rules 1v1 tournaments have to put out in order to create somewhat interesting matchups.

Welp…. Way to ignore the entire post, lol.

I’m not talking about soloplay. Those issues have tons of threads and comments already.
I’m talking about a system for teams (be it guilds, be it pugs). But I guess this just goes to show that the past 4 years have created the ultimate casual soloplay fest. Which nor the combat nor the gamemode (ie. conquest) at its core is meant for.

This post is about something I’ve been advocating for since the launch of gw2: Automated Tournaments (a la gw1). I made a thread on reddit about it, but figured I’d post it here too.

What

For those unaware of how those worked: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Automated_tournament

Basically, at set times throughout the day registration opens up for a swiss-style tournament (teams only – no soloq) with rewards based on your placement.

I decided to make this post because Grouch made a comment on a thread stating that they might try out a solo/duo q but a premade queue isn’t feasible based on their data (not enough teams queue). Source: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Let-s-do-away-with-forced-50-50-match-making/page/2#post6304191

Why Automated Tournaments

Gw2’s combat and the conquest format are inherently team-based. There are three points to capture and the combat doesn’t allow for a hard-carry (unless the gap in skill level is so huge that we’re basically talking about Helseth against 5 players that just picked up the game).

It’s a shame that throughout the existence of gw2’ pvp we’ve had basically no existing//succesful competitive team-based scene. At launch we did have the paid tournaments (later free) which were team-based.

Why did the in-game (paid/free) tournaments fail?

The pvp infrastructure was very barebone back then. And there were a lot of complaints about needing a team to play. The industry these days require your game to have a solo-play option. Every game offers it these days. It’s a fair sentiment. A lot of people don’t want to wait around to find a team nor want to play in a team. It often comes with certain requirements (VoiP, rank requirements, or something else entirely). You can compare it with the requirements that people put up when pugging raids. The majority just wants to play without the hassle. And that’s probably why Anet catered to solo-play and sadly ditched the whole idea.

So why do it now?

We almost have a complete competitive infrastructure for the solo-player. We just need a few adjustements to how the system works so that it becomes less-grindy and more skill-based. It doesn’t require many overhauls, it just requires some balls from Anet. But I’m not discussing solo-play here.

Granted everything falls into place on the solo-side, Anet should work on the team-side. Again, I reiterate that conquest and gw2’s combat implies team-play. I think a lot of people who played as a team (guildies, pugs, etc.) can attest to the fact that it’s a whole lot more fun.

You might think: “ok, why not just make a premade league and be done with it?” Well, sadly the current pvp population/mentality doesn’t support it. Grouch said it himself in the quote: “We probably wouldn’t run a premade-only arena at the same time as there’s not enough 5-mans actively q’ing during a season to make the queue times reasonable.”
People have no reason whatsoever to play in a team. There is absolutely no incentive nor fun, except the occasional pug-stomp.

And that’s where Automated Tournaments come into play. They only run at certain times during the day and are team-play only. It’s a format that can scale up very well (like it did in gw1). But it doesn’t require teams queueing at every single point during the day.
Slap some exclusive rewards on it (don’t hate me Reddit) and voila. In an ideal world I’d like to see an observer mode accompanied with it, which features said AT matches. But I might be asking for too much here.

Again for those who didn’t play gw1: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Observer_mode

Tl;DR: Anet likes esports (since gw1). Helseth says esports is the pvp endgame. Well then I say give us Automated Tournaments so that we finally have both a competitive soloplay (if they make the correct changes) and a competitive teamplay infrastructure. From casual —> casual-competitive --> competitive —> esports. For the last few years we’ve only had: casual + “esports”.

Any thoughts?

Can’t you make AT’s (Automated Tournaments) like in gw1?
Conquest is a teamgame. While the industry dictates soloplay to be a viable option, the game needs a competitive team infrastructure. I know it’ll be hard because of the past 4 years not providing a complete competitive infrastructure for teams to thrive in but AT’s could be a viable option.

The only thing we had in the past where the paid tournaments and such, which were a blast if you actually had a team. I guess they failed because the infrastructure was pretty barebone too back then and it lacked soloplay.

So I guess, you need both. Soloplay and teamplay. While making a team league isn’t feasible considering the state of the competitive scene (you said it yourself: “not enough teams queue”), AT’s could be the answer here. Have them open up at certain times, slap some exclusive rewards on it and if you want to go crazy give us an observer mode (again a la gw1) and have those AT’s feature in said observer mode.

You like esports, you’ve been supporting it for years (since gw1) but can you please look at the bigger picture and realise that you need a competitive scene IN-GAME first.
You need to allow players to grow from casual —> casual-competitive --> competitive —> esports. At this point we have: casual // esports.

For the interested people who didn’t play gw1: https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Automated_tournament
https://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Observer_mode

This would do soooooo much for the game.

Supreme.3164:

Chaith.8256:

Enjoying Capricorn, fast queue pops, queuing outside mists, and faster pace killing in casual play. Compared to last patch, the casual game is 200% more fun even without a ranked season.

If you wanna be negative, yeah, MMOs are dying from the minute they’ve launched but the timing on this post is weird

MMO companies that listen to the “plea” of a small minority are destined to die quickly, you may not be aware but currently GW2 has the same PvP population of GW1..after 8 years from its launch, after 3 years from its launch GW1 had 10x the number of active pvpers

-GvG Matches had like 2 million viewers?
-All classes have always been relevant and with multiple builds?

When you actually gonna see these numbers in GW2?…hmm I think NEVER

The small vocal minority will ofc be happy of seeing professions they don’t play out of the competition..no more a serious threat, but hey..yours is a pyrrhic victory.

For how long do you think NCSOFT will be happy to pay for your 3k viewers tournaments?

Source on the amount of people playing pvp in gw1 after 8 years and gw2 after 3?

Make me aware.

Why not a “deployable portal” of some sorts. Could help with the QQ about running back and such which was a bigger issue on Desert BL’s but could help everywhere. Would probably be hard to implement as to make it fair and not exploitable.

So basically, all off-time players solely play for the PPT not because that’s what their real life allows? People actually play off-time deliberately because the potential PPT advantage it can give?

Weird, I thought at this point nearly nobody cares about PPT anymore because of the current system. I thought the current state of WvW kinda showed that too. People gave up on PPT and just went for fights.

The proposed changes only change the scoring impact of off-time playing. It doesn’t affect fights or anything else. If you went out of your way to play during off-times to get a tactical PPT advantage then I can imagine that this hurts you. But even then, you’re still playing the other 2 servers in those skirmishes. You can still win those and gain points over the other 2 servers, albeit having less of an impact.

Looks very good. Exciting!
I’m all for the additional ‘controversial’ change too. I don’t think it hurts the gameplay outside prime-time.

Maybe add a new item: portal? You’d have to balance/limit its use but it could help with the ‘crossing the entire map’ issue.

Or perhaps that issue won’t be fixed by mere population fixes? Maybe the scoring update could help with that?

DeWolfe.2174:

Hoaxintelligence.4628:

@ slimike

Dude do you even play WvW? There are Q’s now all over the place because PVE people want to “farm” te WvW reward track. This is why there is a Q everywhere, and its going to be worst in the future. First eotm. Then the other failed borderlands that no one likes. Call it eotm2. No EB turned into eotm3 with all these low lvl scrubs I see. Are you blind? How can you be happy about this, Wtf!?

I’m from JQ as well and we do not have many on today. If you look at my thread titled “Paired Q’s” you’ll see as I’ve been documenting the Q’s on T1 NA. My biggest complaint is the Dev’s leaking information to privileged players. It’s unethical and should never have happened. Then the Dev’s either being incompetent or malicious in there “balancing” of populations. T1 populations are utterly lopsided and I have no doubts the other tiers are probably too.

For all the “good” the Dev’s did this week, this pairing should not have occurred this way. Certainly not to lock the server’s afterwards and have us now wait months, if not longer, before adjusting this.

It’s “beta”. They might change the pairings next week for all we know.

Nath Forge Tempete.1645:

I have no problem with premades… 1 of 8 matches is facing a FULL premade team (there are few teams) i don’t get why ppl whine about full premade when it happen 1 time every 10 games.

SOlution : find a friend and play together. u will face more duo-trioQers than full premades.

Me neither but as a soloq’er my MMR is way lower. When you get higher and higher in MMR/division you’ll get way more premades which are also good.

All full premade against full soloq matchups I’ve been in since leagues, I’ve won because they boost the MMR when teamed up.

It’ll take another week or so for enough people to catch up to diamond/legend.

Tbf the population hasn’t catched up at all.

The easiest, absolute easiest thing they can do that takes no dev resources, nothing:

Talk with ESL and force ‘no class stacking’.

That’s an easy and (hopefully) effective bandaid until the balance patch comes in. Tbh this rule should have always been enforced but alas.

There’s 9 classes anyway. Options enough. If you want you can limit it to elites/normals too. So you can still have a reaper and a regular necro if you’d want that.

EU is scrimming. Meanwhile NA is pipping it up.

So metabattle only copies ESL games now? Lol.

It’s funny because it reinforces that meta. It goes from pro league to metabattle to the players.

DH and reaper are more than great.

Band-aid fix without completely rekking balance mid-league: no more class stacking.

Band-aid fix until balance patch: no class stacking.

Ofcourse it does. And there’s nothing wrong with it. Competitiveness brings the salt out. You have options to deal with it.

Morwath.9817:

Zeghart.9841:

Not really, actually.
It started with peaks of 7k for EU and 3.5k for NA, and it has stabilized to around 4k since.

It started with 7,5k and went to 3,5k… thats actually 50% loss.

And 4k is still way waaaaay better than before. The peak on EU the first stream was 8k. So what? The first day had absolute kitten matchups too.

1k, 4k, 10k, 40k… People will keep kittening about it. Don’t focus on the numbers too much.

Cowboy.5982:

Great match ! (I just have afk in 10 seconds of the end)

4-man against 4-man. Whats the problem? And you play on a thief + you seem to be afking.

At this point I think people just expect to win every single game they play.

StickerHappy.8052:

Greatest Solution to Leagues

Amber to Sapphire

• Reduce Pips Needed from 5 to 3
• Increase Tiers

Ruby – Legendary

• Same tiers
• Losing will not always lose you a pip, especially against a premade
• Blowout games 0 pip lost
• Close games 500-400 lose 1 pip. (Would not matter if vs premade, atleast it was a very good match, not 1 sided)

They need to make the system ‘fair’, not dumb it down to make it extremely casual.

Theres two major things to it:

1. Soloq and teamq.
No matter what you do, this will stay an issue in a game where individual skill gets trumped by the overall skill of your team. In other games like cs:go (where they are not split) this isn’t as much of an issue because you have more tools to play like a team (Voip, commands, etc.) and the individual can carry much much harder through raw skill.

People will also continue using this excuse to fool themselves or others. “Oh no, I got a 10 loss streak, it’s the system, it keeps putting me on kittenty teams”. You won’t get carried, you’ll have to contribute yourself.
In over 50 games, my worst loss streak was 5. So what. Suck it up.

2. Start of season. Lots of people are pooled together in amber, together with a volatile MMR this creates unbalanced matchups and the likes. People who progress faster will have queueing issues (cf. collero and others in ruby).
You need to have placement matches or atleast let people start at a higher division when they finished a season in a high division. I.e legendary division makes you start in ruby or w/e.

People don’t even understand how it works….

The Ace.9105:

How is this related to divisions?

Divisions accounts for half of the matchmaking system. So if you’d get sapphire or higher expect long queues and teams.

Will you consider having this seasons standing affect the next seasons starting point to alleviate the population spread issue in the beginning? (a la hearthstone)

For example: if you end the season in legendary div, you start the next season from sapphire or ruby.

In addition, will you consider placement matches? This could also alleviate the issue.

Is there a limit on teams you can be in?

Honestly, this is a good thing. It means they factor in the divisions quite heavily which when people spread out over it, will increase the match quality.

Edit: If your position this season could influence your starting position next season and add some placement matches or whatsoever that would deal with the initial population spread issue when a season starts.

You lost twice, you lost a pip twice. Working as intended. The game doesn’t look at how close your game was unless there was a massive discrepancy in MMR.

Deniara Devious.3948:

Chaba.5410:

Serious question. How was it in GW1 with the expansion classes? The reason I ask is because I didn’t play as much GW1 and never bought the expansions but my sister did and I remember that the accounts mixed.

GW1 had better skill balance. Only when Eye of the North and Nightfall were released the game balance started to get a bit worse, but even then they managed to balance 1000+ skills better than GW2 is doing.

GW1 had better pvp game modes: proper guild-vs-guild, Team Arenas (sadly Arenanet deleted them), Random Arenas, Heroes’ Ascent, Alliance Battles etc.

GW2 has better pve.

Better balance? l o l

stop kittening about this holy kitten.

They never said they’d be locking matchmaking down in divisions. Sadly.

Jim Hunter.6821:

Almost a year to the day and this problem is still happening. Just ruined my last match for me. I’ve barely logged into the game since WvW was broken and this is the kind of kitten I have to deal with when I log on?

I’ve never had it happen in 4k games. :/ I haven’t seen any reports on it either lately.

Can someone beat these bosses with a full exotic group, please? Just to prove a point.

And your point is? That’s an issue with the people in your guild not with the raids.

Firebaall.5127:

style.6173:

No. I applaud ANET. DnT deserved the reaction that they got. Who cares that a guild that has been playing the content for a month can complete it? Now they know their place.

No, it’s an abuse of their position. Anet employees should not be attacking any player period. When they let their personal feelings override their job responsibilities there is a bigger problem at stake.

They announced the testers.
They announced the removal of said tester group. They gave their reasoning behind it.

I don’t see anything wrong here.

Zenith.7301:

butch.8136:

The only “bothersome” tweets are/were from their DnT twitter.

Things like: “After speed clearing the #GuildWars2 raid content in 15 minutes we’re attending the after-party sponsored by @mortonsalt. The loot is great.”

Might be the truth, but without any given (or just because of the) context it just doesn’t feel right.

I can tell you in 2-3 months not even the top 5 world guilds in WoW or FFXIV are speed clearing Mythic/Savage difficulty raids they have on farm status in just 15 minutes.

That’s not a problem with DnT, that’s a problem with Anet’s encounter design.

Hell, some WoW Mythic boss encounters last as long as 8-10 minutes, some even inching the 15 minute line.

Wildstar isn’t behind.

If DnT’s 15 minute clear statement is in fact truth, it does not remove the fact that a guild who has a raid in farm can clear a wing of a raid faster than running arah path 4 twice.

And Anet’s in a rut now, because if they change raids to increase difficulty/kill time, they are privileging the guilds who got the early clears over latecomers. So somebody’s gonna be kittened regardless.

I think the 15min is a bit of hyperbole. I might be wrong. But 15minutes to clear 3 boss encounters and whatever trash seems pushing it kinda.

The only “bothersome” tweets are/were from their DnT twitter.

Things like: “After speed clearing the #GuildWars2 raid content in 15 minutes we’re attending the after-party sponsored by @mortonsalt. The loot is great.”

Might be the truth, but without any given (or just because of the) context it just doesn’t feel right.

SlayerSixx.5763:

So, you mean to tell me that you managed to walk up to a DH from 1200 range without stealth and didn’t have all of your dodges burnt by true shot?

Also, KITE the guy with bow? Why, I just can’t. Excuse me as I go to the doctor, I think he’ll have to take a thorough look at my abdomen after all of this laughter.

Yes

15chars

Xanctus The Dragonslayer.2318:

mrauls.6519:

ehtom.5047:

2. Could you have guessed where the traps are? (Answer: Yes)

C’mon man… Really?

>Yeah, shame on you for not bieng able to dodge an invisable 10 k trap on point man.

>Shame on you for not bieng able to dodge an trap that takes like 3 quarters of the close and far nodes. on average.

>Shame on you for not bieng able to dodge an trap in the midst of a skirmish man with your 2 endurance bars. the 6 second dragons maw is completely justified. You shoulda have stability ready. Even if they are necro’s, scrappers and eles with their CC bombs. No man this is completely your fault.

>Yeah man. Everybody should just tailor thier build to dragonhunters..

Too be honest, you can kinda predict where it is and where it will be. The only issue traps might have atm is that they’re kinda spammable. Maybe increase the cooldown a notch and it’s fine imo.

You see a DH on point. (Stab +) dodge into it.
Don’t get kited by the DH, kite the DH.
If he teleports on you, dodge.