Guild Wars 2

There’s another thread discussing this same thing called “WvW Achievements are unrealistic” over on the sixth page. Guess how long ago they said they would address it?

One good thing that’s come out of this: Their total lack of response to Skyhammer still being in soloq, plus all the bugs in the map itself never being fixed, got me into League of Legends.

So I guess you can count me as someone who lost interest in sPvP due to ArenaNet’s kitten-poor handling of… well, pretty much anything, but Skyhammer particularly.

cheese.4739:

If someone does it in more than one game… they know what they’re doing.

That’s not how the bug works. You don’t “do” it. It’s a passive bug that can go away and pop up randomly. Since the certain skill required to activate it is the most common skill for warriors, and the certain trait is gaining ground due to the updated on-crit sigils, you’re bound to run in to warriors who have it without even knowing it. Heck, I discovered it by accident without even knowing it was reported since a signet-heavy build coupled with <particular trait> is a great complement to soldier amulet.

Because the matchmaking is pretty bad (due to either their algorithm or the substantial lack of players) so being in the top 1,000 doesn’t matter too much.

I’ve been getting into League of Legends. Once you get the hang of it, if you’ve never played, it’s a lot of fun. The community’s a bit worse, but you can just mute someone if they’re raging. It also has a capture point map.

I think if you start losing your fun, you should look to another game. ArenaNet just doesn’t have the resources (or the focus… probably the focus) to devote to one aspect of GW2, so when you really get into something (dungeons/fractals, PvP, WvW) you start to see all the warts and the inconsistencies that you didn’t notice when it wasn’t your primary source of enjoyment in the game.

You’re gonna have a better chance at teaching yourself how to code, getting 3-5 years experience, submitting your resume to ArenaNet, work on contract for a year, get hired as a full time employee, and implement it yourself, before they actually address the problems in PvP.

Agreed. They also need to determine participation better. Currently, if you don’t kill someone or are on a point when it switches over, you don’t get any personal score points. This encourages people to double/triple cap points or zerg around just to inflate their score. Normally this wouldn’t be a problem, but if you don’t score any personal points, you don’t get any reward track progression. A handful of times, I’ve been matched way out of my league or with people who are totally inept, and I wasn’t able to kill anyone or decap/cap a point, meaning I didn’t get any track progression for my time.

This absolutely has to do with there being no tutorial or adequate explanation of the game. So many times, I see people double-capping, running into outnumbered fights, not rezzing, or ignoring the minimap. It’s because the only tutorial the player is given is, “There are some points you need to hold to win. Go get ’em!”

Compare this to every other PvP game, where you’re given a basic-but-thorough overview of common mechanics and strategies. This is because the devs for those games actually know how their game is being played. There isn’t this disconnect between what the devs patch for and what the community is playing.

In their defense, this isn’t a PvP-only or even PvP-focused game. But if PvP is going to get better, there has to be more explanation for new players. They should be able to come in fresh and, after the tutorial, know that “home” is the point closest to spawn, “mid” is in the middle and generally where most of the fighting happens, and “far” is the enemy’s home that shouldn’t be pushed unless you’re confident. They should know that more than one person on a point doesn’t speed up capping, but also that neutralizing a point (referred to as “decapping”) is almost as important as capping a point, as it prevents the enemy team from scoring. They should know, if they just got 3/4v1’d at a point, they shouldn’t run back into that point after spawn; they should go somewhere else until everyone there leaves.

This is a very common complaint that the devs seem to not really care too much about. They think it’s more important for you to be thrown into a match, even if there’s a huge discrepancy between you and the people you face, guaranteeing a loss. Because what would you do if you had to wait in the queue? Play the rest of the game? That’d be torture!

But these are the same people who keep Skyhammer in solo queue and can’t think to add “do not exploit bugs” to tournament rules, so don’t expect a fix for this any time soon.

Probably 0/0/2/6/6, really basic popular build. The 6 in water is what makes it, as it has insane condition removal.

Yoroiookami.3485:

And if you just read more of this topic, you’d find out that someone already told me about the stability, and I already responded, that it just doesn’t work with my build and it would be a waste to just spec agaisnt this one CHEAP build. =P

So your specific build doesn’t allow you to swap out for stability, and you come across a CC-heavy class and complain that it’s hurting you? Yeah, that’s going to happen. It’s like not spec’ing any cleanse and complaining that people are killing you with conditions. That’s the risk you run with a very specific build like that.

If you’re really just so dead set on not equipping any stability, either learn to dodge/interrupt the heavily telegraphed moves, or run. Those be your choices.

runeblade.7514:

What if the player leaves after the match start?

I don’t care what happens after the match starts. Most of the 3/4v5s are people leaving before the match begins. They’re two separate problems that can have two separate solutions implemented at different times. To ignore fixing one just because it doesn’t fix both is equally asinine.

They’ve shown they don’t really care about PvP. This thread will get merged into the main one, and Skyhammer will continue to be in solo queue because “Self-Sabotage” seems to be ArenaNet’s mantra and company credo.

All we can do is look into playing some other game. That’s the only thing they’ll listen to. Or maybe they won’t? Who knows, since people have been quitting PvP since the first few months due to a clear lack of focus and the fact they haven’t changed their direction at all.

infantrydiv.1620:

My argument has never been that elementalist was underpowered… holy kitten… the only thing i was saying is that currently, playing elementalist is at least more complicated than warrior, so it isn’t as bad.

Your argument was that elementalists don’t have the ability to do the things warriors do. They do. It just takes a little bit more coordination.

The problem with elementalist is its really high skill floor (meaning it’s too much work to get proficient) compared to warrior. Meanwhile, hambow warrior is much easier to get into, but its skill ceiling is low, so there isn’t a lot of room to grow. It’s kind of almost balanced out. A little bit. Maybe.

infantrydiv.1620:

How about water 3? You don’t know that’s a blast finisher? I guess you never played the class. Not to mention the fact that different attunements on Ele do much different things. Hambow = spam

Also, Elementalist sure as hell does not need a buff. I dunno where you got that idea from.

…what? We’re talking about might stacking. There isn’t a lot of time to fit Water #3 in, especially since the enemy will rarely give you the opportunity to get the base rotation off. You don’t want to switch into a whole separate attunement just for a single blast finisher. Save water attunement for when you need condition cleansing or to back off and give yourself some breathing room. And even then, that point would only help me! Since one more blast finisher means more might stacks, which your argument seems to be that elementalist lacks.

See, these are things you would know if you played the class. Do you see me on here speaking out of my kitten about necro or thief? No? Then don’t come in here spouting nonsense about classes you don’t play.

manveruppd.7601:

snip

If you stay in longbow the entire time, you’re gimping yourself in the fight, and that’s the only way you’re going to keep Combustive Shot up 100% of the time.

The fact that elementalist needs to be buffed doesn’t mean warrior needs to be nerfed.

And I’m not sure what you’re talking about with elementalists not getting the same benefit from strength runes. Rarely will a warrior or an ele be able to keep 25 stacks of might up by themselves in a fight, but they will be able to have some sort of might from their combos and weapon/attunement swapping.

infantrydiv.1620:

Elementalist rotations are obviously more complex…if you can’t grasp the fact that they have 4 attunements on ~10 second cooldowns while warrior has two weapons with 5 second cooldowns and exceedingly simple skills…I don’t know what to say. And of course you are leaving out the fact that warrior healing is completely passive unlike eles which is tied to rotations. You are also leaving out the fact that warrior is naturally far more tanky than elementalist… so, what, again, is your point?

Yeah, their rotations are more complex. They also offer a bit more utility. The basic hambow build doesn’t have any mobility and barely has any sort of conditions. It’s kitten-easy to dodge out of Combustive Shot and Arcing Arrow as well as half the kitten hammer skills. “B-B-But the capture point!!” Yeah? Every class has AoE skills to force people off-point.

Elementalists also has passive healing in the form of Signet of Healing, which combined with 6 in water gives a lot of condition removal and regen as well. They’re also going to be getting a lot more dodges than a hambow warrior with their almost-perma Vigor uptime.

infantrydiv.1620:

Warrior spams combustive shot completely covering the entire point and then uses Arcing Arrow and Earthshaker on the field the size of the moon… that’s some really complicated rotation right there, folks!

It’s the exact same complexity as D/D elementalist: Fire #3, Fire #4, switch to Earth, Earth #4, dodge. Judging by your signature, you’ve never actually played the class, so I can’t blame you for not knowing that. What I can blame you for is getting your butt handed to you by a hambow warrior and coming on the forums to complain and beg for nerfs instead of examining why you were having trouble.

Warrior doesn’t need a nerf. Elementalist needs a buff.

infantrydiv.1620:

Elementalists also have to rotate properly, and dont have complete immunity to damage periodically.

What… are you talking about? Warriors have to do just as much rotation on a hambow build to get might stacks, and Elementalists get Mist Form and Obsidian Flesh which are truly complete immunity and not just immune from direct damage or conditions — not to mention Swirling Winds and Magnetic Wave, which reflect projectiles. Oh, and Fire Shield, which grants Might on hit.

Uh, EQ:N is #4, and Star Citizen is #5. Those games aren’t even in alpha yet.

You’d have to be a fool to take this list seriously.

They must have some serious contempt for their own playerbase if they keep this in solo queue. I mean, could you imagine if this was in team queue? sPvP would be dead. There’d be no Tournament of Legends. The only reason this hasn’t killed sPvP being in solo queue is because the “serious” PvP is in team, but as many people have attested, they quit playing sPvP specifically because of this map. It’s just baffling how it’s still here.

I can understand not wanting to throw away the work, but take it out of solo queue. Courtyard isn’t in rotation, so why should this be? The vast majority of my 3/4v5s are on this map. Either you’re lucky and on the team that stayed, or you aren’t and you get your kitten handed to you because the Skyhammer is completely overpowered.

I’d like them to fix the dungeons that are already in the game before they devote resources to releasing even more…

SoR is in a bad spot because we’re forced into a tier we shouldn’t be in. We don’t have the coverage to fight in Silver, but we can’t leave until the tournament is over, so a lot of people are getting frustrated and not wanting to return to WvW. Just know it should get better.

They need to fix why 4v5 happens in the first place. If someone leaves before the match starts, they need to be replaced. The match shouldn’t be allowed to start. That’s just asinine.

Can’t see this happening, given the abysmal interaction in this forum by ArenaNet and how little they seem to care about WvW.

tichorum.2415:

So this makes PvP dead? It’s more alive than it ever has been since launch.

Yeah, because it’s been dead since launch. Wasn’t hard to shove a bit more life into it. Doesn’t mean it’s worth the effort, though.

Branden Gee.2150:

This is getting fixed soon™. It does look like this was reported before, but unfortunately due to large amount of high quality posts it can be easy to miss a thread or two. So thanks for reporting this!

Perhaps you all should make it so threads that have been looked at and noted have some sort of automated response letting both the devs and users know their issue hasn’t been missed?

Maybe it would help clear up all those bugs from release that are still in the game, yeah?

Dusty Moon.4382:

Right – go reread their forums on the load times, the quests that are so broken people can’t actually finish or level up, etc. The Bots camping bosses and nodes for crafting. As well as the amount of gold sellers (I have not had one whisper me in months and then it was only one).

They’re in the process of fixing load times and bugs. In fact, you can read all about it in this reddit thread where the devs are responding to players! Look at that! It’s like they’re actual, approachable humans!

A year ago, there was a thread in the GW2 subreddit where a customer service rep was telling people why their character was banned — to a humorous effect, because the now-banned user would act like they did nothing wrong, and the CSR would paste in an extremely offensive and obviously ban-worthy message they said in chat. Where did that ArenaNet go?

Dusty Moon.4382:

That game is so broken and it is a sub game too (plus it costs more than GW2 – if you want the imperial race and a mount). Sorry – your argument is thin also – they have Bethesda to back them which is a big company – A.Net has itself.

You’re the one who said to compare ArenaNet to ZOS. And of course it costs more! It just released! GW2 has been out for 2 years. It took them a year and a half to drop the digital price from $60. The digital collector’s edition was $80. So they were actually the same exact price on release.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Wow, comparing a company that has 4700 employees (Blizzard North) to A.Net (which has 350 BTW) is really telling. They are also still supporting GW1, also. So, I do think they are spread a little thin but that is how business is now.

If you are going to compare companies, compare A.Net to ZeniMax Online (which is the developer of ESO – as of 2012 had 250 employees).

Yeah, go look at ZeniMax Online. Look at all the awesome stuff they’re implementing as a direct result of user feedback. Look at how often they post on reddit and the official forums. Look at their GMs running around the megaserver, literally slaying bots that users /whisper them about. They have incredible presence.

Your argument is, “They don’t have a lot of people, so they can’t handle being spread thin!” Then they shouldn’t be spreading themselves thin. That’s my point.

Nike.2631:

I’m trying to see how in the broader MMO industry the notion of stepping out for a month is all that radical.

Have we really been that conditioned by the 2-week cadence of the Living Story to lose our minds because they’ve been busy elsewhere 16 days? Your definition of “drought” as it applies to bug fixes must come from some other language than English because there have been 8 patches since the features pack with the most recent only 5 days ago.

And really, this silence people are harping on is grossly exaggerated. There’s still new entries in the Dev tracker daily (excluding weekends). I guess Chris will be happy to know that people are pining so fiercely for the CDIs. Because outside of an unusual gap in those, I’m still seeing various devs poke their heads in once in a while in their respective areas – tracing problems in the Personal Story arc, John Smith teaching economics lessons, the occasion “Hmm, that might be a good idea for PvP ranking” chatter. Pretty much business as usual on that front.

How much hand holding do we really need? Yes, a glossy front page announcement of LS Season 2 would be nice, but I’m thinking I can guess what it’s going to be about .

Can you point to any other game that, when expanding to a new market, took their resources from their stable markets instead of expanding themselves? Did Blizzard stop talking on the forums when WoW was released in China? Did Riot tell the NA playerbase, “Sorry folks, but we’re launching in China soon, so unless the servers are on fire, you’re gonna have to wait for some indeterminate length of time until we aren’t launching in China anymore.”? Can you actually name any industry where “We’re going to ignore you for a couple months while we launch in another region” goes over well?

The vast, vast, vast majority of dev tracker posts are Gaile, then CC, then random threads that really have no consistency. Mesmer and ranger damage too strong in PvP? Dev’s on top of that! Warrior gets an extra 180 power and 40 precision due to a trait bug? Temple of Balthazar and Megadestroyer bugged? Certain infused ascended celestial rings didn’t get the stat boost? Fractal drops bugged? Necro minions AI bugged? No response, sorry, we’re just too busy! Megaserver caused guild missions to become even more tedious? Trait/Hero UI abysmal? Skyhammer map still glitching out? China China China! We can’t hear you, la la la!

Look at pretty much every other game on the market right now. The communication is much more consistent. You get a reply when your bug report is added to the tracker, even if it’s an automated one. You have devs responding to major concerns instead of dismissing them or just flat-out ignoring them in favor of what are obviously their pet issues (e.g. anything that hampers their favorite PvP class or anything that buffs the others.)

We don’t need to know anything about LS s2. No one is even talking about that. There are major concerns with the things they’ve implemented and bugs that go back months that still haven’t been fixed. Those are the issues that need attention, and instead, they think it’s kosher to put their devs on this release in China because apparently they’re so starved for cash, they can’t afford any more people.

Edit: I should add, Gaile and CC and their customer support staff do a great job. I’m sure their devs are trying their best, too. It seems like the problem stems from management and higher-ups — the ones deciding who works on what.

Nike.2631:

You might want to consider just taking a break for then next week or two while they finish up in China. While I think the content folks are probably still inching along behind the scenes, the hard-coders have got to be up to their eyeballs in last minute chaos and probably won’t be putting out anything less than fully catastrophic fires until after the launch.

If this drought of communication and bug-fixes is seriously because of the China launch, they should rethink something, because they obviously don’t have the resources to support a third region (completely separate from the other two, by the way.) That’s just supremely idiotic to pull all of your resources from the stable playerbase that still needs work and put them on an unstable, unproven playerbase. It causes tension and distrust in your loyal playerbase. That’s not even putting all your eggs in one basket. That’s taking your eggs from the basket, putting them in a plastic bag, and swinging them around at the guy who sold them to you.

Even if there are still folks supporting the NA/EU regions, the fact the only communication we’ve received has been the exact same thing you see in 8 month old necro’d forum posts that have gone nowhere leads us to assume our concerns will fall by the wayside.

Really cannot believe this isn’t already in place. What’s the point of allowing someone to leave before a match starts if they aren’t replaced?

Problem: Often times, matches start 3v5 or 4v5, crippling teams. It might not be too bad in team queue, as you stand a chance against PUGs or bad teams if you have really good coordination or voice chat, but solo queue is a different beast. There’s very little coordination possible outside of sweeping commands or what little strategy you can talk through in the minute and a half you have before a match.

Solution: Before the match begins, check if each team has 5 people. If not, delay the start of the match until each team has 5 people by pulling in people from the queue. Matches should not be able to start if one team is missing members.

Justin ODell.9517:

Solstice.1097:

yea in this scenario the only remotely fair setup would be a 2v4 >.<

Is this something the community would like to see? I could definitely do that, but I’m worried how it would be perceived by those actually playing the game.

Also, in that scenario, even if we stacked everyone against the 20 the numbers would still be on the 20’s side, even though the game mechanics would pretty much guarantee a loss.

How about some sort of system to automatically pull another party member when a person leaves before a match starts in solo/team queue? Since it’s a queue already.

Go back to the sPvP forum. Look at the front page. Find the thread with 300+ replies. Look at the title. Now look to see if it got any reply from a developer.

That’s how little they care about feedback from the community.

It sounds like those landslide fights are because your teammates aren’t reading the map or people aren’t communicating. If you have 2 or 3 people on you, let your teammates know when you get downed so they can move around them. If they’re too stupid to do that much, Shift+Left Click the map to “ping” it so you can direct them to a different point. Say you try to cap home but have three enemies jump you… Look at the minimap and find another point your team hasn’t captured yet, and Shift+Left Click it a bunch of times to tell them to go there instead of helping you at home. I’ve found fights tend to go a tiny bit better now that I’m using the minimap to tell people where to go.

Get a feel for how you do against certain classes. If you have trouble against thieves, you shouldn’t be the person to cap home at the start of the match, because they are the most common class to come and harass you there. (Unless there aren’t any thieves on the enemy team.) If two people come and you can hold them for a bit, ping the map to let your team know you need help.

If you notice people aren’t capping points, they’re fighting away from points, or they’re being generally stupid, tell them. “CAP POINTS FIRST. STOP FIGHTING AWAY FROM POINTS.” There’s a good chance they’re newbs who just don’t know.

Abusive language shouldn’t be tolerated.

What also shouldn’t be tolerated, though, are complete newbies joining ranked matches and screwing their whole team. Too many times does the match start, I run to home, and some jerk comes and stands with me on the point while our team loses at mid. Then I leave and look back, and some thief has downed them because they couldn’t handle sitting there. Or how about the people fighting next to/above/below the point instead of on it where they could have neutralized it. Or how about when I’m being hammered on by 3 or 4 of the enemy team and that one idiot comes in by himself as though he could save the day instead of bypassing us and capping another point while they waste their time with me. Or so many jerks who just melt when facing someone because they threw the zerker amulet and PvE traits on instead of taking the 5 minutes to find a PvP build.

If you found yourself doing any of those things, you don’t belong in ranked matches, or you need to be a little more understanding if someone starts venting about how badly the team is doing because of so many people — including you — not knowing simple things.

It should just be: If one team doesn’t have 5 players at the start of the match, the match doesn’t start until those spots are filled. This allows people to leave before the match begins and not completely screw their team. It would encourage people who want to leave (Skyhammer/Spirit Watch, there’s that guy you hate, you have to poop, etc), to leave before it begins instead of during.

If someone leaves in the middle, though, that would be a different beast. There’s no reason not to implement the first thing though. Like, really. Not sure why the hell this isn’t already in the game, and then we can figure out something for in-the-middle leaving. If there would ever be a solution implemented for ditching after the match started, I’d imagine it would be something like… freezing all points or making everyone friendly, or putting everyone back in the spawn but keeping the score. But that can wait. The majority of my 3/4v5 fights started that way (cough skyhammer cough) so we really need a simple, easy solution for that.

Holy crap this still hasn’t gotten a dev response? Let alone fixed?

tolunart.2095:

If they post a response people will complain because the dev’s posted to Warriorbob.2424’s thread but not to Wizardtim.5323’s thread. And they’ll complain because the response in February said they were working on a fix and it’s almost May and it hasn’t been fixed yet. And they’ll complain because they shared details about future plans and some players don’t like it, so they start complaining before the plans are even officially announced.

The first one, I don’t think I’ve ever seen. No reasonable player would get upset about that.

The second one… yeah? And? If February’s “We’re working on a fix” was the last thing heard, it’s understandable to wonder what’s happening three months later. We don’t have access to the internal issue tracker. We don’t get updates. However, we’re the ones being affected the most by the bugs. We don’t need real-time updates or anything, but if a thread pops up a couple months later asking what’s going on because there were a handful of patches that didn’t fix that one issue, it’s not outrageous to want some sort of response.

The third will happen, but it’s never as bad as the constant silence. Basically, they’re getting 50 units of Silence Outrage right now, but if they say, “Hey we’re planning on adjusting EotM (you know, the thing we said was a testing bed for WvW? the thing we’ve never updated since release?) <this way>,” then they’ll have 20 units of Change Outrage. They’ll still get some backlash, but it isn’t as bad as a constant, underlying resentment by the fanbase.

It will satisfy us if they actually follow up with it. That’s the key point. So far, if an issue is lucky enough to get a dev response, there’s a 90% chance “We’re looking into it.” is the last thing ever heard about it! That’s ridiculous.

Basically, only reply if you can give some sort of timeframe or nod that you’re working on it. If you can’t do that, then change whatever the hell your process is, because a dev team that can’t give some sort of timeframe is on the fast track to failure.

I like your suggestion. And yes, apparently, it’s the most difficult thing to solve ever.

You can roll a bearbow. I had one kill me the other day because I was completely taken by surprise as they stacked bleeding. I was like, “What the heck do I do with this? I’ve never come across one!”

dkspins.4670:

I don’t think anyone is asking Anet to reveal “trade secrets” or sensitive information about their game. Personally, I would like to see even just a “We are reading your comments (other than the ones they delete) and are examining possible solutions” A platitude such as that would help, rather than just waiting for the “haters” to go away and there is nothing but sunshine & lollipops on the forums. LOL Seriously, Yoshi – producer of FF xiv, despite being in the same position as Anet with their own upcoming release in China as well at the same time as GW2, manages to do just that and more, including interviews with 3rd party websites. 2 weeks after the laughingly QOL feature patch is more than enough time for a Dev, any Dev in house, to say we care about our current player base, we understand your concerns, and are attempting to reach solutions that will satisfy all. Perhaps we are just to assume that they are interested in suggestions, as well as the current player base.

Exactly. I love using FFXIV as an example, because Square Enix was the exact opposite a few years ago. It had to be the end of the world for an NA player to get a response to pretty much anything. But now? Holy cow, it’s a complete 180. They’re doing awesome. They’re pushing out interesting, beautiful content all the time (limited by the fact the game is 99% PvE, so things do get boring quickly, but oh man the dungeons are just the best thing I’ve played) and they talk with the community on a regular basis. Their Live Letters are things to look forward to for new information! Not some recap of the info they trickled out in blog posts and on the forums over the past few weeks. If there’s an issue with the NA playerbase, Yoshi himself addresses everyone (albeit translated) saying, “We hear you, and we’re looking into what we can do. Please stay tuned.” If they pushed out a megaserver update and there was a big thread on the forums with concerns, you bet there’d be a response to most of them. Heck, the community was annoyed with the most recent update bringing these things called Atmas, so the devs said they would retune them. And you know what? You can trust they will! There isn’t this underlying, “I guess we’ll see that in a few years, huh?”

I don’t even play very much anymore, but I stay subscribed, because if they continue at this pace, the game is going to be pretty much perfect for a PvE game in a few patches. Can you honestly say the same about GW2? Do we have any idea of what’s coming? Do we even know that they’re looking at the issues we the community bring up constantly?

timmyf.1490:

Do you think that it’s a possibility it happens more often than you think and the posts are deleted? For example, the one that I referenced which is now gone?

Absolutely.

timmyf.1490:

You say “ignore.” I’d counter “read but not responded to.” To me, those are not the same thing.

To the customer, it’s the same. We have no idea if they read it, if they don’t respond. How that escapes them is just beyond belief.

timmyf.1490:

Also, customer service is different from community management is different from game development. I see a lot of people attack game developers for things community managers do or do not do. And vice versa.

It’s all handled by the same company. A failure of community management reflects ArenaNet as a whole. The problem is, they have a failure of community management and development. (Maybe not customer service, I misspoke and said that instead of community management.)

timmyf.1490:

ArenaNet is a company of 300 people. People are busy doing their jobs. If you have a complaint, it’s worth lobbing it in the right direction.

Then why is nothing being released or fixed? Seriously. There are year-old bugs in the bug report subforum for events new users happen across all the time. One of the eight sPVP maps is bug-ridden and nothing has been done since it was released 6 months ago. It took them a horrendous amount of time to release the current balance changes. Where are these people doing their jobs? If there were consistent releases, we would know. If there was consistent communication, we would know. We have neither, so for all intents and purposes, they don’t exist.

@timmyf that kind of post is in the minority. Look around the forum at all the well-reasoned posts ArenaNet flat-out ignores. It’s disgusting, It’s honest-to-God the worst customer support I’ve seen in years. This company deserves 99% of the negative posts on this forum.

And now I’m in a 4v5 Skyhammer match (turned into 3v5 in the middle) on the losing side. It’s utterly incomprehensible what kind of development team would be so out of touch with their playerbase to let this map’s inclusion continue. Do you want sPVP to be a joke? Do you want players to hate this aspect of the game?

Every other one of your decisions at least has some hint of logic to it, but this? Are you all just so stubborn you don’t want to admit you’re wrong?

Oh look at that. I was just in a 3v5 Skyhammer match. Luckily I was on the team with all their players, but I could have just as easily been on the losing team. And it doesn’t make the game any fun. It’s not fun winning 500 to 98.

@RoRo Ah yeah, the bugs. I completely forgot about those. Half the time I try to run into the Skyhammer platform, it teleports me right back out, preventing me from going in again for a few seconds. Then there’s the times my character gets pulled to the edge of a piece of glass and somehow dies anyway.

Really just a fantastic piece of work to put into the solo queue.

Yes, this thread. I’m tired of rolling the dice to see whether I’ll be on the team that loses people because they’d rather take the dishonorable stack than play this ridiculous map. Half of my matches have had someone leave before it even starts — or just not show up. That should tell you something. Well, it would tell a competent development team something.

This single map is the cause of a lot of people hating sPVP. If you’re going to force newbies into ranked matches to gain progress on their reward tracks, then this map needs to be removed so the team that draws the short straw can have a fighting chance.

Problems with Skyhammer.

1. It’s gimmicky. “Positioning” has no effect when you give jobs the ability to grapple you towards them from anywhere. The entire map is built around the gimmick of fall damage.

2. It’s unforgiving. The group that has the most knockbacks is the one who wins, always, because you can spec more knockbacks and fears than you can stability, and all it takes is one landing without interrupt for you to die. For jobs that only have a handful of stability moves or stun interrupts, this is a problem.

3. The Skyhammer is entirely too powerful. Not only does it do 7,000-10,000 damage, but it stuns, and it cannot be dodged.

Solutions for Skyhammer.

1. Remove it from the solo queue. This would invalidate any complaint, since losing would have no effect on your rank. Plus, you’d quickly see how little anyone really wants to play it when they can just leave and instantly join another map.

2. Make falling more forgiving or rarer. We don’t need glass panels every 10 feet. This isn’t Unreal Tournament. Remove 50% of the glass panels, and slow their breaking down. A thief shouldn’t be able to run over a glass panel and drag someone to him (every 20 seconds, by the way, which is way more frequent than most jobs get stability) without making a significant investment or pause in the fight for himself.

3. Tone down the Skyhammer. Make it dodgeable. Axe the damage by 50%. Allow teams to actually win when a knockback engineer camps the Skyhammer and they can’t get to it. The Skyhammer should complement a team’s effort, not determine it.

Of course, it doesn’t take a savant to know this thread will fall on deaf ears after all the others have. But it’s worth a shot, right?

It really is stupid that the game does nothing for an outmanned match. No option for a replacement, no score change, nothing. It’s not like it would be terribly exploitable, since it would only exist in solo queue where people can’t really coordinate before they get into their match.

It seems like the devs just have their heads in the clouds with a lot of things. They put Skyhammer and Spirit Watch in solo queue and then punish the people who actually stick through the whole fight. No wonder GW2 PvP didn’t take off, if that’s the kind of attention it gets from the devs.

Tom Gore.4035:

There is never, ever any reason for anyone to stay in the spawn for more than 10 seconds after respawn if they’re actually playing in the round.

Uh, restroom?

Lopez.7369:

It’s been pretty obvious that this would largely fix the map for a while now.

But we’re dealing with a very, very stubborn development team. Remember how long it took them to make the really small fixes they made a while ago?

They, of course, insist that there’s a mysterious group of people that enjoys this map in competitive play. But I have never met anyone in that mysterious group.

My guess is it’s only a matter of time until they fix the map or remove it. What’s sad is once they do it will feel like such a relief that people will praise the developers, when we really should be looking back at how long the fixes took in embarrassment and disappointment. But I suppose that goes for a lot of common-sense fixes in this game.

kittening A-men. All of it. “Stubborn” is probably the best word to describe this development team. I haven’t seen a team this bad since I played FFXI back before the major changes, when there was literally no forum presence or interaction with the North American player base, and it would take years to get minor changes. (Ironically, Square Enix is doing awesome now with FFXIV; much better than ArenaNet, save for Gaile and CC.)

It makes it so when they say things like, “This fix is actually more complicated than it seems,” we can’t even trust it. Is it really more complicated, or is it just not what you feel like doing? Because there are so many bugs and feature requests that were told to be done “soon” or “by the end of 2013” and yet here we are, in 2014, and those forum posts are being necro’d to show just how long it’s taking. Then we have coordinators and liaisons drop off the face of the Earth, and you want to complain about people being bitter?

Anyway, that was a rant. One thing that has to change is the fact that the cannon cannot be dodged. That’s completely unintuitive, and I had no idea until I came on the forums and found out. I just thought I was timing it wrong or something, but nope — just can’t do it at all. Oh, and the “breaking glass freaks out your camera” and “port in and back out of cannon room” bugs are still there, after being reported last year.

This map is causing a lot of 3/4 v 5 games. It’s absolutely ridiculous something hasn’t been done about it.