Guild Wars 2

Title.

I outline the strategy before match in a helpful and non-threatening way. It serves well for coordinating when people actually listen.

All I say is:

1. Target prioritiess
2. Play the meta
3. Don’t over-rotate
4. Assist marked targets
5. Decap far is fine but dont die or defend

Seems like a pretty quick and easy thing to do on my part to outline a very solid general strategy for conquest. And more often than not it works pretty well for a victory, or at least avoiding blowouts and taking the match down to gameplay as opposed to incorrect/inefficient play.

The issue is those that blatantly don’t care or don’t know. Call us try-hards. Esports. What have you. I ask, “why play ranked?” No answers.

There has to be a better way to segregate those that at least have the INTENTION of playing to win through strategic means rather than those serving their scoreboard or zerging obsession, or just plain ignorance. I don’t know what the solution is, frankly its not my responsibility. I don’t know if the population can suffer the segregation. But to me it clearly comes down to player motivation when playing.

Title.

Too often are self-righteous players convinced of their delusion and either deliberately play incoherently or outright refuse any positive feedback or suggestion.

The time spent in pvp vs. the rewards given are just lackluster. Especially for those that spend 90% of their time in pvp. Not only do I not really care about the majority of chest content, but frankly I wouldn’t know what to do with a lot of it. Also, considering glorious is attainable from grinding, and barely much at that, there is simply no unique feeling to it.

Are players that are not interested in pve simply expected to have a less rewarding experience from time spent playing this game?

Lopez.7369:

I’m so tired of thinking about matchmaking. I just want to come home and play video games. I’ve never played another game where the matchmaking is such a huge concern that it actually kills my fun for the night. I don’t think I even gave a thought to the matchmaking in WOW, Starcraft 2, League of Legends, or Dota 2.

I fully agree with this sentiment. Its not relaxing, fun, unwinding, what-have-you. Is it a wonder the community shrinks after every patch?

I would bet a good number of people that came back for this patch aren’t going to make it to next tuesday out of the sheer aggravation of playing.

I have never seen a community so convinced of its ability, yet so constantly playing incorrectly. I for one believe it has to do with the conditioning of hotjoin where bad play was effectively encouraged and people came to the conclusion their bad play = wins.

Relentliss.2170:

Yep. This is the least fun I’ve had in this game in a long while.

The aggravation is palpable. So far away from soemthing even tolerable that a fix by tuesday seems far fetched.

Justin ODell.9517:

Silentshoes.1805:

Maybe the lesson is “Do NOT play Ranked Q without a team and TS”.

It certainly helps, and it’s something we encourage.

Meaning what for solo q? Won’t we will always be kitten because of premades? Sounds like solo q is just disappearing then.

Everyone needs a solid team to do well

lordkrall.7241:

longbawl.5072:

This. This would be pretty amazing. Talk about opening up the pop.

Talk about also completely destroying the whole game-mode. With people being able to create unlimited free accounts the amount of trolling, griefing, flaming and just plain bad behavior would increase quite a bit.

Yea no one has done a free pvp game with a functional mmr before…. ?_?

tico.9814:

If population is the problem then make the spvp side of the game free.

This. This would be pretty amazing. Talk about opening up the pop.

Justin ODell.9517:

Another part of the problem is the perception players have, which is being fueled by a selection and confirmation biases, and was not helped by unranked and profession ratings starting at the default.

We only have our experience to work with. Reading between the lines here, it sounds like you’re saying, “just give this new system a chance and a while to stabilize.” I can understand that.

But like I said initially, how long to do you expect people to continue to wait? We’ve been told to hang in there since release, but when you boil the experience down to its essence, regardless of all the work that has been done, its still as it was a year ago: a painful 5v5 conquest with people ignoring the meta, not rezzing, zerging the map, with a palpable dunning-kruger effect from hotjoin and wvw zerging success.

Do you have any estimates as to when the new system will begin to stabilize? Because these matches are tough to endure.

Been around since launch and I just came back after a long break (since about march, due to frustrations in competitive solo spvp), and its painful to see how little has actually changed. seems like a few quality of life changes for the better (vendors in Hom), but otherwise it seems like things have either stagnated or taken a major step back.

If spvp in this game isn’t dead (which is debateable), then how much longer are the remaining few expected to stick around when it is just virtually impossible to get a competitive match?

And there seems to be see-sawing in philosophy of where to take the game. Back to merging queues? Do we remember why the didn’t work in the first place?

i dunno. its not perfect, but its still quite fun with balanced skilled teams and equal builds. Is there not a way to get matchmaking to account for build type/predominance? i think most balanced teams skill and build wise can adjust to the meta at their respective competency. They just need to be brought together better imo.

Please try to facilitate this better.

Zepidel.5349:

You didn’t hear? You can invite people to your party with more than 1 game under “there” belt, and queue as five with them to avoid any randoms who might not be up to your standards.

It’s kind of a pro trick, so keep it on the down low we don’t want everyone knowing they can do this.

This has been the quote since release……you would guess that you, as well as anet, would realize there are a ton of people interested in a functioning soloq.

The cop out: get a team.

Its gotten to the point where if i don’t play for a few days I’m literally back in elo hell. Am I the only thinking that this is marginalizing the good players with less time to play?

Every time I log in now I have to claw my way out of the horrible play of elo hell, where players literally do not comprehend the simplest of gameplay tactics.

At every patch I feel like the veteran, skilled, unattached player is being marginalize. Either have a team and enjoy spvp or not.

Harbinger.8637:

…it’s still more enjoyable then soloq. Don’t have to worry about any terrible maps. Players in general seem better and are more focused on winning. Most of the time you end up partying with players you meet. Also it rewarding more is a huge plus.

Exactly. So why have a soloq at all when teamq is a better use of time?

Hotjoin: Laughable

Soloq: We all know these issues.

Solo- teamq: good luck. you’ll mostly see coordinated teams.

So where do we have any good competitive pvp action in this game on a consistent basis? Not once every 5-10 games.

Beta-2 player with little posting here.

I have sincerely believed in this game for 2 solid years since I first heard of its development. I thought every aspect of the philosophy matched everything i wanted in an MMO and thusly was going to kill everything. Well, its still that core game, the philosophy is there, but the execution has perhaps been on the mediocre side.

As hard as it is to balance a game like this, i understand that there has had to be a lot of fine tuning. Furthermore I understand that that takes time. Something MMO players hate. To me, what has killed your pvp community is not the fact the balance was off ( anyone remember wow warlocks pre-fear nerf?), but instead that the pvp environment makes it inherently easy to switch to whichever class is considered OP, or truly is OP for that matter.

As a long time player I have witnessed this in several iterations. First there were 1 button theives, then bunk guards and eleys, then some love was given to engis for a bit, well i dont remember all these, but the point is that at one point or another a particular class was the FOTM and a flood of players flocked. To me, the ridiculous amount of frustration incurred by having to play competitively against, perhaps lesser skilled teams that inclined to the stronger classes, is almost too much to bear. For many others i think it was too much to bear and they’ve left.

That being said, I feel like there needs to be some mechanism in the game to mitigate players flocking to the FOTM classes. Perhaps setting a main class each week with a gold penalty for switch? I’m just spit-balling here. But ultimately, I think something to that effect would help to normalize the population of pvp classes during times of high concurrency. I think this would have a very positive effect on every spvp experience in the game: hotjoin, soloq, teamq.

My $.02

Long title….i apologize.

I’ll cut to the chase. With the map rotation how it is, solo q ranks contain a variable of randomness that is far too sensitive to fotm builds or class dynamics, due to the fact that certain maps are clearly favorable to a particular profession and a particular build. I think my point is best illustrated by example.

eg. A solo q match procs Skyhammer and you’re opposing a 3 necro 2 guard team.

Point being: If your team is ill equipped for the map in question there is big chance you’ll record the L for that match.

My suggestion: commit to a short term (few days?) map rotation schedule for solo q. this gives some structure to the ranking in that every player is entering into a known arena, and therefore can prepare. that preparation is the true indicator of skill in this game and therefore gives the rankings a better picture of one’s ability to play at a high level. as opposed to the current: i happen to play necro and proc a lot of skyhammer matches where i skill:fear. i don’t mean to imply that rankings are composed entirely of this element, but i wonder why have ranks contain any part of this seemingly random element when a simple heads up would be suffcient to squash that doubt in anyone’s eyes.

my $.02

Wow man, you really don’t know your class at all.

You come to ask pvp questions in the elementalist forums? man, i was right you are disconnected.

tOss.9024:

felivear.1536:

tOss.9024:

Suzu.4193:

tOss.9024:

felivear.1536:

tOss.9024:

This is an issue that comes with developing a new engine and especially in an mmo. No one likes it, including the devs, and they are working to fix issues. Patience seems to be lost to the modern gamer.

I don’t understand what patience has to do with anything that I wrote. I understand that gamers today are impatient, but what does breaking things when trying to fix things have to do with patience? You could say “gamers expect too much of devs, devs are humans too” or something, then I could openly disagree with you, but your current statement doesn’t even apply.

Write an entire game engine from scratch, by yourself or with a team, and fix the bugs. Then you’ll understand why I say we should be patient. It takes time to find out why x causes y. Then, sometimes y causes z because of reasons you didn’t think would effect x. After that, x, y, and z finally work, until the thousandth time it’s been run under certain circumstances and break. After you chase your tail for a bit, you can finally fix this problem. Then you can apply that fix to similar issues.
Again, patience from us to let them fix issues is better. Once they know the issue, pointing at it again doesn’t do anything.

That’s what testing is for broski, even blizzard test’s their patches before launch, it seems anet does NO testing to their patches before launch. I mean how do you explain the naked mes bug, if they had play tested their own patch for 5 min they would have seen that problem.

And it seems that GW2 was released prematurely [Spvp wise] due to all the lack of content, most indie games come with more content imo, and this is a well known and long standing studio. I would have gladly waited a year or two to get a polished bug free game WITH content and e-sport infrastructure than this nightmare.

They could have tested it, and something went wrong during implementation. If they would have rolled back whatever caused it(if they, unrealistically, suddenly knew what the issue was) they community would have freaked that they rolled something back.
You will never get a bug free mmo at release. Ever.

Just to put my last thoughts on this: I played many other games for many years. Many of them indeed had bugs that came in patches. Guess what? The games that survived the longest and did the best were the ones that when these bugs came, they were hotfixed, and I’m talking quick.

There was a bug in one game where they changed the way skill A functioned, it somehow caused skill A to stack intensity with each hit (hmmm…sounds just like the bladetrail, ricochet, and other moves that did the same thing in this game for months). It was causing this class to do a large sum of unintended damage. It was hotfixed 24 hours later and the people who used this bug to complete content got 72 hour bans.

It’s not the bugs that are the problem here, it’s the way they are fixed (or should I say the way they aren’t fixed or swept under the rug). I really wish I could live in your dream world where companies get an infinite amount of time to fix and infinite amount of issues. I really do.

The “dream world” isn’t one were companies get infinite amounts of time to fix issues. My “dream world” is one in which customers are patient, logical, and understanding human beings who don’t make assumptions based on limited knowledge and constantly criticise from the outside without even trying to look in.

What is a reasonable time frame then? Almost 4 months in and it has been all downhill thus far. Soon enough there won’t even be people complaining because even the reasonable of us will have moved on. The fact is, unless you have a team, and a decent one at that, this game is not fun for you right now if you take it remotely serious. Even teams are fed up with the lack of mmr, ladder, and such.

Yes, they have to fix the bugs. Yes that’s hard. Other games do this too. The problem for me is, with every new patch hope is raised then squashed with the lack of any real noticeable game dynamic changes. It is becoming especially hard to maintain faith when we KNOW that if issues we wanted addressed were overlooked, it will be weeks, if not months, until we see meaningful change.

I have hope still, its not fully extinguished, but soon even the most faithful will be too jaded to continue and especially so that they won’t want to return. I know thats where I’m at with SWTOR, even if they keep emailing me to come back. Sorry EA, you blew it. At some point you have to ask yourself, “am I the last rat on this sinking ship?”

Dota 2 looks promising at least. Now that’s a beta done right if you ask me. GGGaben

tOss.9024:

Patience seems to be lost to the modern gamer.

I agree with you; but I think we’ve all been quite patient. To me this patch under-delivers big time.

Knote.2904:

Summoner’s Rift alone has so many changing objectives that changes throughout a game on top of a ton of different champion choices and builds.

To me this is the true secret to LOL’s success with the casual gamer. The more you play and the more rewards you earn, the more dynamic the game becomes through champion purchases. And even for those starting out with zero in game currency there is the weekly rotating of champs. The point is the game is as fresh as you want it to be.

Here, for now, the more you play the LESS dynamic the game becomes and the more repetitive/predictable. I know I log off daily when I get fed up with being zerg rushed or matched unevenly in tournaments.

There are classes that are skewed to dominate 1v1s, but there are still ways of outplaying those classes, yes it will be tough until balancing is figured out. But no amount of balancing will help you if you’re constantly being steamrolled by sheer number or coordinated teams of a higher ability level.

The fact is the problem will not go away until the game begins to offer more even or slightly uneven fights where there are opportunities to win. This will never happen in the current spvp game mode until it stops emphasizing zerging. where there is so much chaos that all anyone is doing is spamming their abilities and negating the core design of the game: Coordination, skill timing, and synergy.

Watch some high level paid tourneys on youtube or something and you’ll see what this game can be when the fights are competitively matched. Sure, 99% of us will not be as good as the 1% of pros, but we’ll be playing at our level and it will be competitive and not the forgone conclusion it is when you see the zerg coming over the hill or the premade in your free tourney.

So my post was trying to say: fix the fundamental game mode problems first and give us a chance in fights to outplay people of our skill level; as opposed to those who have the luxury of a team and voice chat (and are probably better anyway), or those running around in zerg packs.

felivear.1536:

I personally love the individual spawn timer. It keeps people from playing recklessly (or it should) since you have a static 15 seconds you’ll be out of the fight added to the down time of being, well, downed.

Maybe it will impact decisions at the true upper echelon of competition, where those players are actually making those kinds of determinations. But for now, with the other problems we’re seeing in game, I think it just makes it sting that much more when you get swallowed by the zerg, or will have even less playtime against that premade (as if anyone wants that right? lol).

Though it may not sound like it, I actually do like the personal respawn timer for the longevity of the game. I just think it will push more people away right now before its utility is actually realized down the road when other fundamental issues are addressed.

You’ll get both perspectives on here about whether you’re right or wrong.

Personally I feel the problem with spvp is more funadmental in their design, such as map size and point award, as opposed to mostly being individual classes being imbalanced. Don’t get me wrong I agree that balance hasn’t been right with the profs in game since BWE3, when they knee jerked thieves and mesmers to actually make them into pvp factors, which they overdid obviously.

tPVP, I think most will agree, is the better option for these maps based on their size and pt award dynamic. However, that game mode came flawed for different reasons. Obviously lack of mmr and premade/pug situation.

I think the dev’s actions have actually confirmed both these problems. They have tried fixing hotjoin spvp by offering 5v5 to those not interested in zerging, though that isn’t really working in my experience due to the flaw pt award system and lack of incentive for defense, and not to mention it seems impossible to stay in a full game with people constantly leaving from frustration. They also thought they were fixing tpvp problems, as they clearly stated, with paids. Though I think we all know how thats worked out.

Ultimately, I dont hold it against the people spewing such vitriol on these forums, though i think it could be done constructively. People, including myself, are angry with how this game has devolved over the last few months and they come here hoping they will either get some answers for the future , or at least someone who seemingly cares about why they’re angry. I know I often alt-tab when playing after having been steam rolled in tpvp by a premade, or zerged into oblivion in spvp, and usually have to restrain myself from making emotional posts.

I guess I just hope its not too late for this game. I realize it will be easy for people to come back, with there being no subs; but I do fear that reputations may have been irreversibly tarnished and expectations so resoundingly let down, that players may stay away out of spite. I, for one, hope that is not the case.

Kita.7819:

Because here’s what Arenanet does.

ArenaNet is the only chef in a world class restaurant. There’s a lot of people pulling them in every direction, but he can only focus on one thing at a time. Eventually everyone will have their food served, even if it does take a few hours. Or months.

People are walking out of the restaurant….

I think the only reason i still bother is because I have masochistic tendencies. I get so riled up at the inequities in the game, yet continue to play and queue in the hopes I can somehow outplay those inequities.

The fact is that what the game has devolved into isn’t even fun in the mists. If I wasnt so prideful about having ranted and raved about this game to everyone that would listen for the past, I’d have probably given up like most. I feel like the last rat on a sinking ship.

Lumines.3916:

You seem to be alone in this regard.

seconded

Coopers.4376:

Considering engis are a class of attrition then it would make sense that they couldn’t burst as hard as thief’s or eles…

Not too sure what your really asking.

Attrition; absolutely. The nature of attrition is contingent on the other party being of an attrition mentality themselves also. Otherwise, there exists no attrition when your ability to mitigate said burst is negated either by a persistent ability to negate (stealth with thieves particularly), or burst dmg to counteract lessened survivability (still thinking mesmer shatter).

In other words, yes we are attrition based; but what good is attrition when you’re insta-gibbed with no cool-down recourse or dodge recourse. Or for that matter the relative ease with with other classes reset the fight in their favor; in other words fleeing and resetting cooldowns.

The fact is i dont see much of a niche for ANY class other than either full burst or full bunker for tourney or for hotjoin. The attempt to avoid polarization has resulted in exactly the opposite of the intended result. in anything but organizied tpvp, which is a mess itself, you either roll a full burst build to hopefully insta-gib, or a bunkery build and wait for reinforcements.

The irony is, that in all the efforts to avoid polarization, if anything, that has been the key propagating factor with the current glory award system (aka no pt defense incentives or the like).

It comes down to the effort required to produce a result.

Right now it still feels way off to me.

e.g. – for me to produce 5k dmg on my engi and survive in a fight longer than 10 seconds, takes way more effort that for that same occurrence on a number of classes.

i could go on, but what does any of this really matter?

Ignoring the underwhelming flavor of the other aspects of this patch, the lack of mmr is what, to me, will address the status quo of the game in the most positive way; and the lack thereof is what has me the most disappointed thus far.

I try my best to see the forest for the trees and not get too worked up. I think rational gamers realize this is a process and those of us that appreciate the core of this game play will stick it out.

However, it is getting harder and harder each day with the lack of disparity in the current format. There is no more frustrating feeling than wasting 20-30 mins both in queue and in game, only to get the kitteny end of the stick. The other dimension is how ability affects hotjoin. Everyone is familiar with the perpetual join/leave cycle that inevitably follows when teams are unbalanced in terms of skill.

Until some sort of filing system is developed I can’t see my day to day playing being much different where the majority of games are either my team getting rolled or my team rolling the other. The exciting thing is that I’ve had a glimpse of what this game CAN be when there are competitive matches, and it is some of the best PvP I’ve ever played.

Fingers crossed for the future.

the buff area only lasts 6 seconds….im sure you’re capable of figuring out ways of either knocking him off like Jony said, or los-ing until the 6 seconds is up.

Spicyhash.7605:

There SHOULD be some kind of leaderboard feature however, where you are ranked based on a calculation of like, your kills, deaths, glory rank, and some other unknown variables.

I hope when they finally add this that it will take into account the time we’ve already played. Though, I can see people saying,“Well I wasn’t trying then! It didn’t count for anything!”