Guild Wars 2

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

Chinchilla.1785:

Basically in analogy: right now the foundation wont allow more then 4 buildings to be made on top of, furthermore constructions takes quite a bit of time to renovate/change said buildings.

I totally appreciate that as an accepted position.

Still, the fact that it takes a lot of hard work to make things better is never a good reason to not make things better. Giving women the right to vote wasn’t an easy thing to do in America; but, it was the right thing to do. Good companies, game developers included, should be agile enough to do the hard work necessary to do what’s right for their business. The alternative is to devolve into irrelevance, due to laziness and detachment.

I don’t pretend to know the inner workings of ANET or their business practices. However, I understand that creative production is an organic process. It is not black and white. It doesn’t mean doing “what is right” or “necessary hard work” will make anything good. I don’t think civil rights is a good comparison, e.g. giving women the right to vote isn’t a creative pursuit, they either have it or they don’t. Fighting for that right, however, is a discussion entirely out of scope for this post.

People will like/dislike/mixed/interpret-entirely-differently every creative pursuit.

Should they pursue to working on their game engine to allow easier map resets, map rotations, total map number scaling, etc.? I think they should. My opinion on this got lost underneath other posts, but it is this:

Chinchilla.1785:

…
Side “hard to do” preference: work on the game engine itself so scaling the number of maps is easier to allow for future designs instead of just 3 “home maps” 1 “balanced map.” As populations dwindle the map amount can be scaled if and when servers are merged/die off.

However time spent doing this could be a while, meaning their is a risk in losing players attention as effort is put into back end stuff that the players won’t see initially.

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

Personally, as a Necro roamer, I find my play didn’t change much at all on Desert, compared to Alpine. It just took longer to travel about during each timed play period. So, my problem is still that the maps aren’t balanced. Team games require balance to work well. This should be obvious to a decent game designer. Computer games often obscure balance in order to compensate for programming/AI issues. It’s the designer’s job to maintain balance despite the limitations of computer technology. This is because, in the long run, beating an inferior opponent into submission or getting beat by an superior opponent stops feeling fun and becomes a chore.

Wouldn’t you agree with that?

No, I don’t. It isn’t my place to say a designer’s job because it’s so varied and general of a description. I say no because that isn’t their only job (balance). Understanding balance comes with experience, time, trial, and error with elements involved.

Yes, it is boring to have mis-matches between players, but I think this isn’t the place for that.

What do players want? Everything and now. Which is impossible to grant in reality. :S

So I will preface this: all things end. It should be a goal to make the limited time more valuable, and fun. By now, if we are going by active population in WvW, the game mode did not age well. So it is better to ask why that is. The answers will be systemic, and hard to fully discuss in a single post. If we take player’s topics in this forum, half will be probably be useless to a developer, and most of the rest will be symptoms. Going off of those symptoms as a direction you end up with feature creep that ultimately only masks the illness, and gets perceived as directionless.

My long answer to OP:

1. Matchups/Servers:

A. The big issue is going with a 1v1v1 matchup that takes all the cons of a 1v1 and gives only “the illusion of variety” as a pro. Snowballing still occurs, and as is seen now, we end up with a squabble for 2nd place with two middling (or less) servers matched to a giant. The elephant is that the servers themselves could never handle a full three way fight.

B. People’s concerns with server identity. I will get hate for this, but merging should have occurred over this linking concept that requires upkeep from ANET. The idea of community would actually shift to the Guilds themselves. See Guild Wars 1.

C. Coverage/population balance, that comes with people’s initial interest in persistent pvp modes. I see this more in NA servers, but this idea of persistent doesn’t take into account peoples’ actual playing time. A huge chunk of NA will play for a 4-6 hour time-slot, and end up losing everything outside of that prime-time (the current score system only masked it up better). Lastly, there is a chunk of players in off hours who are not even matched up together, but inadvertently caused this disruption in coverage.

2. Maps

A. The only variety you will get from this game-mode is through maps. It is what directly affects player behavior. Making new maps is always an option. Because of the 1v1v1 we are limited in options for maps that are balanced on their own. The current three copies of the somewhat asymmetrical Home Borderlands systems fails since it relies on a balanced population 24/7 across all of them. This relates to coverage, and the 1v1v1 matchup so you know how systemic these issues are.

B. Circular-ish map design lends itself to Ktraining. With a 1v1v1 you will almost always get some form this. It is clearly apparent in Eotm. In the past it was performed in the Home Borderlands on Friday, and during the initial release of notaries it was seen on Eternal Battlegrounds. Even in non-full ktrains the third lowest server’s common option is to attack unoccupied objectives of the two larger teams (the basic Ktrain).

C. Switching to 1v1 maps offers more flexibility, and allows for a better scenario in case balance is necessary. If you were not here before, the initial Alpine-Borderlands underwent revisions (about 3-4 times), in addition to Desert Borderlands. To put it bluntly, the center of the asymmetrical 1v1v1 is cursed. So cease it, and transition towards 1v1.

3. Game play Loop

A. WvW has not aged well. One way is the siege playstyle, and how it is heavily inconsistent. Firstly, is the balanced battle over an objective that takes up most of a guild’s raid. Secondly, the ktrain where the objective is unoccupied. Finally, the off hour nothing where no side has much of any presence. Another systemic link is because had there been population balance the players once stuck in off hour would be fighting others. In addition time to siege increased by feature creep and progression: tactivators, passive guild upgrades, shield gens, cannons, and still trebs.

B. Separate balance for WvW. This is in hopes of facilitating future balance while making the fighting experience more valuable. With this long term decision it should in theory let balance be made by the potential WvW team.

C. Progression is a concern that is going to sound counter intuitive. The way it was handled in WvW could be considered feature creep since it was to appease people. There is also the gear itself where optimization requires even more time spent outside of WvW. Taking a step back, I think it is better to say people want recognition for their in-game achievements not necessarily statistical advantage. Too much statistical progression is a barrier to entry for new players, who will go to Eotm and probably stay.

TLDR: And it’s hella long! Read the bold only, but WvW has many connected issues that cannot be easily surmised in a single post, and probably not even a single five minute video. Sorry, it takes effort to fix! Try doing game art or programming! It all requires more than this post did.

If your scout/person is within 1200 range and sees the enemy (with w.e. siege) it seems it being a throw-able trick is redundant? They would just say “20 YB at paper tower.” They are better off throwing Siege Disabler.

It would be more useful to revamp the Stealth Disruptor Trap to apply “marked” so it will see more use (it’s kind of in a joke state atm). Probably a better tool that helps those who already scout. I would say only keep it 15 seconds in duration so map awareness is more critical.

Or you could always increase sentries (they force larger forces to stop if they don’t want to be marked)!

In the end it all boils down to the usefulness of marking, which deters larger forces compared to marking a few roamers.

Mark = Knowing Locations of Enemies
Knowing Locations of Enemies = More Fights
More Fights = Profit?

Sure, I guess. Even though the current OS leads to interruptions in regards to GvGs. That or it’s just this guild, idk. I would prefer the current guild halls use WvW game mode rules and their arena size increased, or create a new spvp map for GvG’s specifically. I can’t say those suggestions are more or less work than the OP.

The only technical limitation I am aware of is that it takes ANET about 3 months to switch maps or something. Search function doesn’t work great so I can’t find it.

Gudradain.3892:

Would 4 vs 4 work better or worse than 3 vs 3 for WvW?

I’m asking just to get your opinion and it’s not a feature request. Please exclude from your answers the fact that the maps are not designed for 4v4.

While, indeed, the current maps are not designed for 4v4 but this issue has everything to do with map design.

If you did not care about balance, and a consistent matchup, then yes you could have whatever team arrangements you wanted.

Once you break out of the 1v1 you start to lose flexibility in map design. 1v1 can be a line (or more) that bend to the designers whims as if it were a path to travel upon. You can achieve far more distinct combinations in this match up.

Beyond 1v1:

When you add in 3 teams, it forms a triangle, 4 would be a rectangle (assuming square is a type of rectangle), 5 would be a pentagon.

Attempting to Introduce Asymmetry:

These are shapes, they’re rigid, and cannot bend unless you’re willing to introduction asymmetry. The caveats of an asymmetrical map design mean you disrupt balance. However…

Research:

If you define W in WvW as a number, you can widen your perspective, and simulate this scenario in strategy games. In this case, I looked at Starcraft I maps here: http://classic.battle.net/scc/lp/3.shtml

TLDR: spoilers added for this reason. Read at your will!

Premise:

The purpose of this function is to easily announce game play relevant information in chat while simultaneously using the ability.
See, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Call

• These steps do not have to be updated all at once and in my opinion only steps 1 and 2 are needed the most.

Steps:

1. Provide a Separate Hotkey

Right now as default, ‘left ctrl’ is “Show Enemy Names” AND shouts out skills/buffs/conditions in chat.

A similar issue arises with ’left shift’ as “Show Ally Names” and listing clicked objects.

• Example Hotkey names: Call and Cast, Click and List.
  The focus here is Call and Cast.

2. Provide the Simultaneous Function

‘Call and Cast key bind’ + activating skill = ability usage AND message in chat. This must include use through other key bindings.

• The function needs a different ‘chat suppression’ that would have a shorter period of suppression (3 seconds at most).
• Something to consider would be implementing a special option for players to block the chat produced by this function.

3. Provide Context

Essentially this is where an automated message along with the call is shouted out in chat and varies based on the context of the player’s selection.

• Examples: “I am afflicted with [Bleeding]!’” “I have [Aegis] on me.” “I am using [Judge’s Intervention] on ‘Xterra!’”

4. Provide Additional Information

At this point the system has advanced enough to provide weapon/utility bar information and trait allocations through a link in text that would be synonymous to GW’s template system.

See, http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Template

Conclusion:

Many people use some form of audio communication to call out their abilities, this will not be a replacement but an assist to help locate visually where critical abilities are being executed. Eventually, in the later additions, expedite the sharing of builds.

I don’t know what you consider skilled play (I stopped saying such things post-hot personally. :S ). This definitely favors bursting thieves that then can run away and reset then burst the next one, and repeat. If you can’t finish the downs, isn’t there a lack of skill in that?

My issue is your tunnel visioning on favoring your particular play style. I’d rather see this in Spvp though, where everyone can be assured gear is at least balanced.

Waffler.1257:

So essentially all of the servers that have less players than the servers they are fighting would lose twice. They lose the PPT battle because the server with more players can hold more keeps / towers / camps than they can, and then they lose again because the server with more players can win more fights (and therefore achieve a higher K/D ratio) due to their numbers advantage. A 40 man blob wiping a group of 10 while only losing 2 of their own would have a 5.0 K/D ratio, so I guess we should reward them for their skilled play by giving them more points.

Indeed, that is true if you take this system as it stands. If the smaller group continued to be caught by the larger group the K/D would inflate.

I can provide you a constructive solution, to lessen the effects the K/D scoring by gaining no “kills” on those with “outmanned” buff. This applies to the kills provided by capping the “outmanned” team’s objectives.

I can also provide another, you can place a threshold on the K/D ratio like minimun of 1/2 and a max of 2/1. Or whatever number you wish.

To reiterate the proposal, this system is for a more rewarding “PPK” not necessarily a solution to coverage or population imbalances. Feel free to suggest editions to this if you wish, just as I have.

The only things that can be extrapolated from GW1 is having actual balance when it comes to skills, and AI. Dodge, and a real jump are a good thing here. Too bad there are no on-jump traits (you know…to replace the on-fall ones nobody takes).

A lot of GW2 mechanics compressed GW1 skills (e.g. Confusion condition for most of what Mesmers did in GW1…). The general idea increased the complexity of individual skills within GW2, that I suspect in an effort to narrow the potential metas ANET would have to balance out in the future (in theory).

However, the added complexity meant the AI in GW2 greatly suffered. No longer did AI have access to the same abilities players did. All that we fight in PvE are auto-attack damage sponges and scripted events (your bosses). I actually miss AI that properly used a CC to interrupt me… Fuqing Cry of Frustration NPCs.

The only notable AI that half-way cares about their existence are the trainers in Spvp lobby.

I have to preface this: I dislike all 1v1v1 map designs they all end up roughly the same effective playable layout: triangle or donut (actually doughnut).

On principal, the OP suggested to remove the mechanics that make this particular map unique and baseline for conveniences. Normally, I am against this and would say no.

BUT…ANET chose the home borderland layout (i.e. supposedly to enable a 1v2 ish scenarios) they’re doomed when it comes to adding/removing unique mechanics. Mainly because the home borderland layout is replicated onto potentially 3 maps instead of 1 for the sake of balance. These maps are not equilateral making the impact of special mechanics disrupt the balance between all 3.

Had they abandoned the home borderland idea, and went with equilateral maps (or just 1v1) it’d be much easier for me to be against removing game mechanics. Since they didn’t. I don’t care either way.

Taobella.6597:

to be more balanced i would agree to this only if the sever is outman

This is more sensible. I’d still be against it. There is a lot of random crap that gets associated with the down state that’d need balance. Warrior banners and kitten.

Furthermore it’d be far easier to pin snipe…which was already fairly toxic as is.

DeWolfe.2174:

PPT isn’t, wasn’t, nor hasn’t, been broken. What’s broken is the lack of understanding of a War simulator.

If a German soldier holds a bunker for 1 day without making any improvements, then only to have it fall to two Soviet soldiers who hold it for 2 days. Next the Soviets then exchanged said bunker to 3 American soldiers who added a Gatling gun. Unfortunately 4 German soldiers with a tank obliterated the bunker to complete rumble, and planted a flag on it. Who won the war if we assume this all took place during World War 2?

How is WvW a “war simulator?” How is it not like a “war simulator?”

In my opinion, because of the “ticking” component, current PPT model doesn’t accurately enough reflect activity. It merely exacerbates coverage gaps by providing essentially an uncapped resource of points during slower/inactive times. Thus you have people complain about the “value” of various periods of time. Not because they do/don’t understand “war simulators.”