Guild Wars 2

I don’t know any of the particulars of Anet’s dev budget, their actual priorities (as they are discussed internally within the organization, not in blog posts and patch notes that are for the public consumption).

What I do know is that a lot of the feature pack’s features are ports from China. That tells me that it’s cheap, low-hanging fruit. There’s nothing wrong with that…but I have a feeling this feature pack cropped up as a way to spin these feature ports they had planned all along as something more than it is.

I doubt Anet actively doesn’t want to build new WvW features, new sPvP maps, and whatever else people are bellyaching for, but the fact is that that would cost them far more money to build these things than it was for them to port a bunch of stuff over from the China game. Most likely, they probably don’t have the budget and instead are focusing on smaller modular items one at a time that a small dev team can eke out.

As someone who works in UX and product design, I’ve learned over the years that somebody out there will always find something confusing, despite your best efforts.

It’s a slippery slope making things easier and easier, streamlining stuff, trimming the fat, until what you’re left with is so homogenized that it isn’t an experience at all.

Yes, down/rally can be confusing the first, maybe second or third, times it happens. After that? It’s perfectly logical. New players will inevitably stumble and make mistakes, that’s part of learning. Should we make failure impossible? No, then you rob all reward from success.

Running a train in EotM is perilous by design. It’s a WvW zone. In a game that makes as huge of a distinction between pvp and pve as GW2 does, any place designated as pvp is both intended and used as a pvp area.

It’s the same risks run by people trying to run GvGs on WvW maps. If somebody ganks you guys, sorry? But that’s the nature of the map.

Warriors are frustrating. They’re rarely worth fighting unless I like dancing around for five minutes while neither of us dies.

Getting frustrated about thieves is a bit masochistic. After all, they’re designed specifically to be elusive, mobile, and irritating. Why allow yourself to be so stressed out?

Adapt to your environment rather than demand your environment to adapt to you.

Sometimes I craft my gear, usually one level before it is usable with the mats collecting while exploring and completing events. As a bonus, crafting usually grants a level or two as well.

WvW drops off tower and keep champs. I think even camp claimers too.

Crafting. Personal story. WvW if your server is active and flips lots of camps/keeps/towers quickly.

Groups in GW2 don’t serve the same purpose as they do in most other MMOs. In most games, the group is a fundamental unit for the consumption of content. In GW2 they are mostly a social division useful for communication and coordination, but entirely unnecessary from a mechanics perspective.

As long as there are players around doing things, you can jump right in without a group and receive the appropriate rewards. This gives the player great agency to roam around independently without having to compromise with other players on an agenda that serves the greatest need.

If your desire is to make friends in game, then I recommend joining a guild. They’re the primary social structure in GW2. You can join a guild by either seeking one out intentionally (they often advertise in map chat when recruiting) or if you participate in map chat conversations or join zergs in WvW, guild invites typically follow (provided you’re not a troll).

Mystic.5934:

just wait ’till you want to craft :P those are not at the keep

Claypool is where I’ve done all of my crafting since the beginning of time. The only thing that’s missing is a trading post a short WP hop away.

I’ve noticed it seems to re-size usually when I have other windows open to a smaller size, then is bigger when I have no other windows open.

So I’m not sure if it’s a bug as much as an intentional change intended to reduce window clutter and better use UI space?

The most disheartening is that I find I’ve been manipulated into playing against the design philosophy of the class.

I’m being compelled to stay in extended engagements my class isn’t designed to win.

I should be moving around the melee, avoiding attacks and eluding CC, hitting hard when gaps open up in my opponent’s defense, and disengaging when my advantage is lost. I realize this is frustrating to my opponents, but that’s the point of the class—we’re SUPPOSED to be frustrating you.

Instead I get stuck in CC, dragged into the thick of the fight, and even with ~20k hp, I get shredded in just a few seconds with little hope of bugging out to regroup and try again.

I’ve never had problems half-assing my way through zergs with a sb, just spamming auto-attack with auto-target on while jumping around and spamming sb tele and steal when it’s up to make sure I spread the love among all the mobs.

I offer no REAL contribution, but it’s enough to convince ANET they should give me loot.

So, I stopped playing back in August because life got busy.

Just came back and I’m at a loss on how I’m supposed to play thief. I read the patch notes and noticed the tweaks to initiative gain and some of the nerfs to curb perma-stealth.

It really seems like ANET wants thieves to adopt more durable, sustained dps builds that rely less on stealth and mobility. It seems anathema to the concept of the class. If I wanted to fight extended engagements out in the open, I’d play warrior or guardian or any of the other professions better suited for that.

Is p/p and s/p with points in DA and Acro the way to go now? How are thieves finding success in sPvP or WvW?

ArchonWing.9480:

You can fight against #13-15 ranked servers for no other reason then the developers thinking you want to test out your skill and then blame you for losing.

It’s funny, because there’s like no reasoning behind it. Maybe they’re trying to make all the smaller servers deserted and pile on top of the league, so there won’t be as many servers to maintain/

In any case, the only thing to get is that the developers have no idea of what they’re doing. The real message they’re sending is “go back to pve”

Hmm more like they’re saying go play a game with better PvE since WvW is the only reason I play GW2.

….After reading that thread, it seems to me that ANet doesn’t understand that WvW and PvE are entwined as one ecosystem. Poor WvW performance leads to transfers leads to situations like ET already has with nobody running temples except maybe once a week, which leads to either more transfers out and some quitting GW2 entirely.

Things get worse for the stacked servers too. There’s WvW queues. More queues for PvE content too. Skill lag is everywhere and gameplay is reduced to a foaming rabid zergfest. Not fun.

I read the WvW announcements over PAX in the article Massively ran. And I just read ANet’s announcement spelling the leagues out.

Coming from ET—one of the lowest ranked servers—I can’t help but wonder what difference the leagues will make for us?

We’re set up to lose or at best rank in the middle in the league. While I don’t mind never ever winning, because I enjoy the WvW in its own right, it sucks when nobody is around.

Since it’s obvious we will not be a contender and because ANet is upping the rewards for WvW winners, I foresee an increase in transfers out and an exacerbation to the stacking problems.

Am I wrong? What am I not getting about these changes? I just can’t see the benefit for low ranked servers. Losers will keep on losing and the winners will keep on winning, to me it looks like all they’ve done is mix up the details but did nothing to the weak foundation WvW is built upon.

Deamhan.9538:

So please do tell..

How is it when, after waiting in queue, do I get in and begin to stack bloodlust, and even though there is a massive ZvZ going on, I don’t experience any lag at all where I’m at?

Am I in a different server than the zerg, despite being on the same map?

Why is it that this lag only happens when I get close enough to the zerg for it to get loaded at which point the computer’s responsiveness bogs down in general? Not only is there a drop in FPS and not only is there a lag in skill use, but even alt-tabbing to desktop is delayed a bit.

This is speculation, but it’s speculation based on my experience working for a web hosting company with major data centers.

I see two issues. The first as Devon pointed out are CPU spikes caused by having to calculate hundreds of skills dropping on hundreds of players at the same time. In a game like GW2 that has free targeting of skills and is very generous with AoEs, you’re going to get way more of these spikes than a typical tab-target 1:1 target MMO

The other side of that is your CPU spiking from trying to find the best way to present that data to you. And no, this isn’t strictly drawing the graphics. It’s knowing what to draw and where that slows things down. Once that’s figured out, graphics are rendered. That’s why super duper GPU system still get stutter and lag.

Somebody mentioned that SM is worse than Hills or Bay because the latter are multiple floors. The reason for this is that while there is still a high concentration of players, there are less effects and skills that need to be calculated on the whole because they are separated.

ANET can either optimize their hardware to eliminate server-side choke points, which will speed things up a bit, but client machines will still struggle. The other option is to optimize their net code to make it more efficient for the client to interpret. They should probably work toward both.

SB is what makes a thief relevant in PvP and PvE zergs. Use your blast finisher in fire fields to AoE might to your zerg. AoE auto attack that becomes an AoE immobilize if you pop it from stealth. Not mention the additional mobility it brings. I almost exclusively use SB in WvWvW.

That being said, if you mainly play by yourself or in small groups against a limited number opponents, SB is not so great.