Guild Wars 2

In the new map – The Silverwastes – there is only one waypoint and the map is designed in such way that not having more waypoints isn’t even noticable, at least for me after a few hours of gameplay.

I must admit it feels much better than the generic GW2 maps, feels much better than Dry Top, and pretty much anything that we have had so far.

I will go as far as saying that I would enjoy every map to be designed in this way – smaller than the traditional GW2 map, without an abundance of Waypoints and an absolutely amazing event structure.

I can also imagine it’s much more difficult to produce a map like that, but the quality is unrivaled so far.

Great job, ArenaNet. Whoever designed the map and came up with the idea of not putting waypoints everywhere around deserves a bonus and a hug from Colin or… something! I really hope it’s not just a single instance of this design.

What do you guys think?

I can prove that by a simple thought experiment:

Thesis: Necros are good.

1. People say eles are bad.
2. Anet buffs eles.
3. Ele is good now.
4. People say necros are bad.
5. Anet doesn’t buff necros.
6. Necro must be good already.

Q.E.D.

Shoutout to the Devs and especially Jon ‘5 signets’ Peters who graced us with this wonderfully balanced game.

PvP in GW2 was created without any vision.

A harsh statement, don’t you think? Well, let’s look how it all started and where we are now.

When the game first launched its PvP consisted of hot-join and free tournaments. After some time we received paids with a barrier of entry, nice rewards (gems) and QPs that were promised to qualify teams to tournaments in the future.

We also received a very simplistic progression system based on grindy rank and skins. That was it.

First thing to acknowledge is that the free/paid distinction was probably created with belief that PvP would be very popular with thousands of teams jumping in, buying tickets, competing and fighting for QPs. It wasn’t the case.
It first made some people quit the game when only frees existed, because casual people were joining matches solo or in teams and were being stomped by hardcore people.

I don’t know if devs believed that adding paids would solve that, but it certainly wasn’t the case. With an addition of paid tournies, the already smaller playerbase was split. Even more so with the initial cost of 5 tickets to enter, they caused more teams to leave the game.

What we ended up with at that point were super-casual players playing hot-joins, semi-casual prospective players were losing frees against hardcore people whole day with an exception of evenings when hardcore people were starting to play paids.

People were leaving, hc teams were accumulating QPs and everyone was waiting for announced custom arenas. People at the same time, since premiere, were asking for solo queue and ratings.

Suddenly, the devs decided to step back with Customs to implement matchmaking and ratings. It was most probably caused by a worsening situation back then.

We waited. Lately the devs “had” the idea to change paids into 1v1 instead of 3v3. It proved to be a relatively big success, just as people predicted. Of course they decided to keep one map for a whole week to keep us equally entertained. We were said that the system would be there to stay.

But this month’s update just shows the sad truth – PvP team had no idea how to make an entertaining, competitive and popular PvP system that would keep people playing.

This month they deleted paid tournaments – the barrier of entry proved to be a very bad idea. They deleted the QPs and tickets – this is not the way tournament entry will be decided in the future, at least for now. It is another thing they wanted to have but it proved useless. Just another bad step. The matchmaking is apparently there, but it is NOT solo queue. We can only wonder and wait to see how bad of an idea not making the 1v1 solo-only will prove to be.

I have no idea how experienced game developers/alleged PvPers that run this game’s PvP were unable to pull this off after so much hype and millions of people at start. How could they fail with so many intelligent and dedicated people that were literally beta-testing and even designing (!) game systems for them. For free.

Add a terrible balance, hundreds of bugs and ridiculously over-powered specs since launch with no live and immediate response to the above and we have a story of how PvP that was supposed to be everything turned out to be nothing.

TL;DR:
Anet thought that making a PvP that would be based on hot-joins for non-PvPers, frees for semi-dedicated players and paids for professionals would work out. They wanted everyone to pick their mode and stick to “because it’s fun”. They thought this reason is enough to forget about rating and matchmaking. The idea was to add Customs in the future so that pros can just play them and occasionally go to paids and then use their QPs to play in bigger tournaments. It didn’t work, was bad design, people knew this better than devs and now there’ no one to fix things for.

Less QQ, More pew-pew.

Impressive insight!

There is pretty much nothing to be added. As I wrote in Another thread there are things Conquest achieves. It just is colorless and bleak.

The fundamentals were noble, but I think they lost it in the process. It is completely fixable both technically and conceptually. But it would require developers to look back and admit Conquest isn’t perfect. Then they would need to sit down and build a new PvP mode from scratch.

I would also add that in my view the idea of making GW2 an e-sport is long forgone. The Conquest is just unsustainable as an e-sport.

• Maps are too small and simple to provide long-term entertainment for viewers – I don’t know about others – but I can’t imagine myself watching a stream of a few randomly rotating maps in a multiple team tournament. Conquest with its maps doesn’t have League of Legends scale, complexity and possible scenarios.
• The matches are too short. With every match pretty much ending in 15 minutes it just isn’t enough to tell a story and show rivalry. Messy things happen very fast in multiple places with no single point to hold on to. In League of Legends the focus points are usually being carried by junglers in early game, then by whole teams during mid-late game. Conquest just doesn’t work like that in so many ways.

I think Anet needs to realise that to be able to move on.

8 professions / 2 professions/stream = 4 streams
4 streams / 1/2 streams/week = 8 weeks
8 weeks / 4 weeks/month = 2 months

Conclusion – next balance patch no sooner than in two months.

Touche, Anet, touche.

Dahkeus.8243:

Please shut this thread down. It’s clear the PvP community has the maturity and entitlement issues of a 10 year old rich kid.

This is a positive thread. Could you please refrain from posting negative and inflamatory opinions?

Well, Allie clearly isn’t responsible. Her job is to gather what people write and present it to the Devs.

The balance team on the other hand… it is probably the poorest team in the whole studio. While I can say that sPvP was improved throughout the year, slowly and by not much, but was improved, I cannot say that about balance.

The balance team is just so disjointed from the actual state of the game that it is painful for me to even think of it.

People were giving feedback regarding balance for months and here we are; with cheese being everywhere even though no one asked for it.

Allie, you asked for constructive feedback explaining that it would help you understand the root of the problem. I think, after 12 months, that the problem is inside, not outside, given how much valuable feedback people had given and where we ended.

It’s because necro’s design is largely incompatibile with the dynamics of the game’s combat system. I’m beginning to understand that most of the balance suggestions are pointless because they are never going to fix that problem and a full rework of some weapons/mechanics is needed.

Despite a huge negativity in this thread, I’ll try to be as constructive as I can.
The new Crown Pavillion is garbage.
That’s it. I’m out.

And I have none, because my guild is too small and doesn’t have Art of War.

Thanks for making us quit the game. We were really waiting for this guild content.

We really would like to say it was fun… but it wasn’t.

Pls fix your game and stop this one time event misery.

Thanks.

Bhawb.7408:

Chukree.1756:

Any professional response to my complain?

Stop being bad and you’ll realize that turret engi isn’t that good.

He’s actually a very good player from EU. That response is quite below the standard I would expect from you.

Now, let me show you how discussion is properly done.

What Phd (OP) is saying is that turrets have an insanely high payoff-to-effort ratio and actually work in an unorganised PvP. When I play Ranked Arena solo and encounter turret engies, I get insanely mad, because there are a limited number of good players who will adjust and outplay a turreteer through rotations.
Usually you don’t land with only such players on your team and get some PvE heroes that will just get screwed sooner or later and then just rush back over and over again leading to an ultimate wreck.

Point is, in unorganised play the turret engie is extremely likely to contribute a lot with very little effort. The build allows players who use it, to bring their contribution to levels that is unattainable by them with ‘normal’ builds (much like power LB pew-pew ranger) and this is the problem here.
When I play as a premade team, I don’t care in the least if there are turret engies on the other team; they will get rekt. But when I see these baddies winning over other baddies just because of the build, I understand these complaints.

ICEing.9237:

I like how you care about AP so much when it doesn’t measure skill.

Stop AP farming and get good at dungeons.

I never farmed AP, but it’s an indicator of me having played since beta. Also, you know nothing about my gameplay, so why the insults?

Stop mindless posting and get good at reading.

So… That’s it?

For a couple of months of waiting and we get this?
Please communicate? Is it everything? You basically repeated the stream and then some by forgeting about thieves.

This doesn’t feel very fair and what to discuss if you post nothing new?

Some of you may know that Anet has introduced a new type of PvE items (Ascended) that has received a wide response from the PvE community.

The merged discussion has received over 9000 replies with almost 100000 views.
In this topic (created 3 days ago) community expressed its concerns regarding the new item type.
It took less than 24 hours to get a written response from Studio Design Director regarding these concerns.
Link here: A message from our…

Now, we know, that Anet made a PvE game with a tiny little bit of a PvP twist to it, sometimes.
We know that our topics don’t reach such high popularities.
We know we are spending less on gems than PvE community.

But we also deserve an answer from someone in charge, and pardon me when I say, someone higher than Jonathan Sharp or Jon Peters.

We have been raising concerns about PvP since the very first beta event. These concerns haven’t, I repeat, haven’t been addressed since then. We haven’t received any communication of even slightest importance besides empty promises that Anet cares about the PvP.

We need answers from someone in charge and we need them fast.
We need someone in charge to come and say, just as Mr. Whiteside did, how they imagine GW2 PvP in few months. What do they want it to be? What are your goals regarding PvP? What’s the vision?

@Jonathan and Jon: No offence, nothing personal. you both look like cool guys to hang out with. We know you like quotes, Chap, so here’s one I like.
“I have learned to respect ideas, wherever they come from. Often they come from clients.” Leo Burnett

That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans…

Learning the old system was okay for the veterans.

But newer players will benefit from the updated system.

But it isn’t for the new players.

A is fine for Group V. A is too difficult for Group N.
Group N is dumber than Group V. Apparently.

That’s what I feel Anet is saying. The system was just too confusing.

When you read their explanation out loud, there is no intelligent way to justify it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Concerns of this nature come in via tickets, when someone takes the wrong step, buys too many times, isn’t able to process the acquistion or exchange, etc. By the time someone’s on the forums, they’re usually comfortable with the systems.

What prevented you from adding more quantity tiers then? What’s the explanation to this question? Also confusing?

It’s like a slap in the face from my perpective.

ArenaNet haven’t given any explanation why this is implemented.

Until then or until the decision is reverted, I consider myself deeply wronged.

I have none, because I play necro and there is no reason for me to look at LFG.

These blog posts simply don’t cut it.
I just feel that the company lost its momentum. They don’t engage in discussions anymore, the Collaborative Development Initiative turned out to be BS so far.

Before season 2 we were fed with the info that most of the content is permanent, but they forgot to mention that the value of that content is mostly lost due to it being just one-time story instances that you enter once or twice.

They won’t engage in a dialoque about things that hook people up (SAB is the prime example) and won’t give official statements on features that have been asked for since forever (first-person FOV). It just all seems like we’re stuck with, sorry to say, poorly written, childish and boring Living Story updates worth 3 hours of playtime every 2 weeks. The development of these underwhelming updates takes a long time and after just a few months they have to take a mid-season break.

The features they’re adding surely improve the quality, but don’t change the gameplay.

What players need and are asking for is changing what they’re supposed to do, not how they’re supposed to do that!

What is the point of having Solo Arena Leaderboards if the game mode and some terribly design missteps (Skyhammer) stop people from enjoying the game in the end making them leave?

What is the point of introducing new WvW golem mastery/skills or new traps and tricks if it doesn’t change the crucial problems with population, zerging and rewards?

What is the point of going to Gamescom if you can’t even make a cohesive presentation?

What is the point of giving interviews if there is literally no questions you can answer (seriously, the GuildMag interview was just embarassing for the Studio).

What is the point of maintaining these forums if in the end all that the passionate players writing walls of texts of feedback get is an excuse of being just a vocal minority?

It really seems like Anet moved from developing and improving the game to just servicing the bunch of players who still play it.

The absolutely worst thing, that the management at the company should be ashamed of, is sending the truly passionate Devs to these interviews while having a strict non-disclosure policy and making them dodge all the questions. The ones that should put up with these questions should be the Studio Leads.

Joshua Grouch Davis,

We like the game and aren’t unthankful, but the pace at which the balance team releases changes is abysmal and their impact on the metagame in PvP and PvE is none.

I really hope it’s because HoT brings new weapons and skills and whatnot and that the balance looks different there, that the team was working hard to make the meta and playing all professions fun in the expansion (with the new game mode that is coming) which was the reason for close to no balance changes over the last year. Otherwise you’re never getting even close to making a competitive game and your e-sports dreams will remain just that – unfullfilled dreams. You’re moving farther away from it with every player lost to months of stale, uninspired and, sorry to say, plain dumb management of the game balance.

PvP can be a great community-building device, but it needs to be nurtured and taken care of. What’s been done during last year is just a spit in the face of your loyal players who’d been there even longer than some of the Devs and who supported the game and promoted it through viva voce. You’d be nowhere without these people. They deserve at least some honesty on what the hell is going on and why it’s taking the team 5 months to change 36 skills. Makes me sad thinking of it.

It’s been too long.

Sincerely,
a gw2 pvp fan since beta

Josh Foreman.8250:

You crazy kids breaking my maps!!!

The breaking will continue! It will until Cantha is added!

Chris Cleary.8017:

lets do some Bearbow math.

Best post 2014.

Danto.6748:

…cut…

Gotta love how one guy comes, says he’s pro, disagrees with changes in few months old game, says others agree with him and requests the developer to revert the changes.

I couldn’t disagree more.

Well, let me explain something. This is not your game. It’s ours. Please do not generalise.

That’s a healthy change that enables us to actually prepare team builds as well as encourages balanced teams. It shifts the game from ’who’s got portal, who’s got ele to nuke treb, who’s got thief to solo Lord’ into ’who’s got the most universal team build, the team that can win no matter the odds’.

If things don’t work out well, this can always be changed back.

But you discrediting it from the start, proclaiming yourself a voice of top pvpers (like the game was being developed only around you) and ‘requesting top players’ to agree with you is just unbelievable. Please don’t force elitism on Guild Wars 2.

-1 OP
+1 Anet.

ArenaNet, can you please add a short tutorial on how to click skills? Thanks!

I haven’t read the whole topic so I don’t know if anyone already suggested what I’m going to write.

I realise people will be angry with me for this idea, but here it is – just make Terror a GM trait to limit the number of builds you can run it with. Switch it with the scepter or weakness trait so that you forgo defense to go full <30/30/w.e /w.e/w.e> offense (THIS OR kill Dhuumfire without changing the Terror)

• This way, you can’t have Soul Marks and Last Gasp in one build with Dhuumfire and Terror.
• You also can’t have unblockable marks in the same build so that you have to make choices.
• Corruption, warhorn and the the swapped trait all become viable again. They help the necro offensively as well, but in a different manner.

Some things during the Terror trait swap would have to be figured out, like if the traits are good enough for their tiers after the swap, but that’s the easy part I guess.

The aim of the change is to bring back the old-school 0/30/w.e/w.e/w.e condi necro, maintain the ultimate damage hybrid as a possible and a high risk/high reward build, force build diversity and drive away the fotm players from the necro

Coming from an exclusively-and-constantly-since-beta necro.

Please don’t hate me too much, just trying to help.

• Yet-another-edit:

To potential people concerned about the change having a negative impact on PvE/WvE – it doesn’t.

You know what – I was the biggest Anet supporter for many years.

I was an evangelist for the franchise.
I praised the Developer and the game long before it launched.
I advocated its cause every time I felt necessary.
I had a strong link with the Guild Wars brand.

Anet has done a marvelous job at destroying it with the PvP they gave us.

I first started to
get angry,
then rage,
then hate
and finally I just lost hope.

Now I don’t care anymore.

I feel we were treated as stateless people suffering from lack of civil rights and sovereign protection.
We were treated as no one cared about us.

Why would we care?

That’s what it is. I can’t see why someone who played GW1 would ever like it.

I just lost all faith, I wanted to like this PvP, I tried from the Headstart. At first it was a blast, but right now I just hate it. Meta is boring, Conquest is a fail, there are no basic features.

GW2 tPvP is less fun than LoL and GW1. It’s less fun than most of the games I played. This marks a death of some standards we were used to.

I don’t write it because I hate Anet. I do share this feedback because I hate what Anet did with our favourite game. They took everything we loved about Guild Wars 1 PvP and put it into a trashcan.

I hope Jon and Chap and whoever designed it read these forums so they can evaluate.
Also, the studio head should look back and think of rehiring the masterminds that created GW1 PvP, so they can fix this mess.

But maybe it’s just me…

As always I’m redirecting anyone to these two topics, they deserve more recognition.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Lost-potential

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Guild-Wars-2-Competitive-Game-Analysis/

Hey, guys. I’m Leman. I’ve been around since always. I’m an active Solo Arena EU player and the current sweg-massktochen for one of the best PvP teams that have ever existed.

Today I had a horrible PvP match streak infested with people that clearly weren’t matched properly. After one match I decided to check out how well the matchmaking was working and here are the results;

I included tpvp experience as well to try to gauge the actual skill of all players better. Don’t mind the rank though – it doesn’t count towards solo queue matchmaking and it may have decayed (it certainly did in my case since I last played).

How am I supposed to enjoy this game when this happens to me? Not to mention I then just flame my team for their disability, but it’s not their fault…

I really hope there are fixes and changes coming, because in this state this game is bloody unenjoyable and outright infuriating.
Quoting Mike O’Brien, the CEO of ArenaNet:

Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t (…)

It’s pretty obvious that in this case things aren’t working out and it needs to change.

Special bonus for the Devs that are reading this topic – there were huge lag spikes and rubberbanding during today’s matches (everyone was complaining) and as you can see on the screenshot – I was respawned in the water under the map.

Grebcol.5984:

“Martin Kerstein and Kate Welch " Woooott they are gone?

As of today’s news.

Over a year ago Anet sat down with the community and talked about possible new game modes in a Game Modes CDI.

Here we are 16 months later with an announcement of Stronghold that will initially consist of one map and new gameplay.

There are already topics discussing this horrible, unexplained example of slugginess.

What I would like to ask is: how come that during the HoT announcement Colin Johanson comes on the stage and says that guilds are going to form guild teams that will play Stronghold to fight for the top spot on guild leaderboards and then Grouch and Nightmare say something completely different during the Ready Up?

You’re either making it a feature connected to guilds with separate matchmaking, ratings, leaderboards or combining it with Conquest into one queue using the current leaderboards and MMR. In either case, someone wasn’t telling the truth.

Is this going to be the ‘fractal leaderboards’ all over again? Get your stuff together and for once decide what you want from your game. You know, like professionals do.

I think the argument is that this ‘expansion’ is nowhere near worth 50 dollars and I will not be buying it.

Also, the ridiculous white-knighting by two users in this thread makes my day. Whole bullpen at the bank heard me laugh thanks to you, boys.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And if it does, everyone will just complain about how the Elite Spec is mandatory.
Because complaining poor design.

Players will have every right to complain for two reasons:

1. Revenant gameplay in all specialzations being both better designed and stronger
2. Having to buy HoT to stay effective.

In the end, what absolutely needs to happen is every specialization needs to be viable (=playable, desirable, balanced) in a significant portion of the game, regardless of whether you play as vanilla necro or HoT chronomancer. Otherwise we will continue to have 3-spec metas, that rend anything else useless and forgotten tratlines like Blood Magic, using which is considered trolling or being a total noob.

No PvP in GW2 is the official statement.

<continued>

Putting it all together…

Match highlights:
When a match starts, you should focus mostly on surviving, building LF and putting pressure before you can move to the juicy part.
I like to go over close with whoever caps it to make sure it’s not being pushed by someone (engies and warriors like doing that, and you’re a perfect deterrence).

When you start fighting over mid or close, stick to ledges, place your Wurm in the escape spots and start putting pressure. On average, your favourite targets would be engies, other necros and squishies.
I like to pick targets myself, if you play solo a lot, this is the best thing you can do in the beginning. At this point, there is usually someone already training you hard and this is the crucial moment, because you now have to survive and put pressure waiting to make use of your true strengths. If your team focuses correctly, opportunities for Corrupt Boon and Terror spikes should happen and this is the time where you add your damage interrupting the targets and fearing them to negative hp, i.e. the downed state.

At all times I’ll try to stay at a safe distance to make sure I can avoid as much pressure as possible and not to get gibbed by some crazy spikes or cc-locks.

In practice though, you will find that having a thief and a warrior jumping at you with all their cooldowns forces you to start kiting them around and usually it’s best to stick near to the node so that if things go south you may get rezzed by your team.

As for the duels, I honestly don’t feel comfortable dueling over a node as a necro. I not only find other professions inherently better at fighting over small areas than the condi necro, I also believe that the current meta makes it rather hard for condi necros to perform that already difficult role. I also don’t think that’s where necro can shine the most and thus doing it as necro isn’t optimal.
However, fighting for a node against an engie, another necro, a thief or a ranger I find, on average, to be skill-based, so you may very well go for it. With the others it’s more tricky, but a thing to remember is to avoid celestial eles above everything. Fighting them is a waste of time that will likely result in you getting killed with fire.
If you’re wondering on how to actually fight, I’d say try to force your opponents to dodge and pop their defensive cooldowns. You should bring their health as low as possible (around 50%) and push for a Terror spike. You should also aim at interrupting their heals and maintaining poison and weakness on them. When playing against other condi specs you can try playing with Deathly Swarm and Putrid Mark condi transfers – they can absolutely devastate your opponent.

Some additional advice:

1. I consider Nightmare runes not worth it because you don’t have any control over the proc and it was nerfed lately. Personally, I use Traveler’s and I’m happy with the passive mobility they provide, allowing you to rotate and kite more effectively.
2. similarly to the previous one – I hate Reaper’s Protection and instead have been running Greater Marks for a long time now.
3. I also use Soul Marks instead of Master of Terror to generate LF with my turbo marks – unblockable, with lower cooldowns, generating LF, what’s not to love? I also think that in general it’s easy to lose value on Master of Terror, because good players break stuns and dodge properly so the increased duration may never happen.

As you can see, my build is less focused on damage and more on keeping myself alive and performing careful, timed interrupts and corrupts, so playing on the strengths and offsetting the weaknesses.

I think that’s it for now. It’s quite late here and I still have some learning to do.
Tell me what you think and ask if you have any questions.

Bhawb.7408:

OP is the definition of the Dunning-Kruger effect.

This, totally and thus I recommend everyone not engaging in the discussion.

Brutal Arts.6307:

“You never feel like you’re grinding”

Hahahahaha. Hah.

Same reaction, I almost spit my cocoa listening to this.

Well, technically it’s their game and they can do anything with it, even if it means introducing money-grab mechanics. Everyone’s job at this point should be to stop paying Anet’s bills with our hard-earned money. The customer always wins in the end and their in-house ‘economist’ should know that. Should.

Locust Swarm: The casting time of this skill has been reduced from 1 second to 0.5 seconds.

• Dev note: This change will give necromancers a bit more mobility.

Whoever wrote this deserves a troll bonus.

Leave Allie alone. She’s just doing her job, and is great at it lately, mind you.

I agree that the patch month ago messed more than it fixed, but things are going in the right direction now. I cannot believe that one can claim that our (necro’s) survivability was hammered this patch. It was improved, by large. There is still a long way ahead, but we’re moving there.

Everyone needs to realise, that the tournament is coming and some kind of status quo needs to be maintained until it concludes. After that, I am sure, new balance patches will come and we will see another set of changes – buffs and nerfs.