Guild Wars 2

Is there a matchmaking system in this game? I get it, the hotjoin thing is what it is… but couldn’t it be done better? It’s just anything goes with leaving and AFK’ing. Surely there must be a better system than this.

As for the tournaments. I’ve done solo tournaments and found the marginally better then hotjoin games. My main issue with those are the wait times. I’ve waited over 10 minutes at prime time for these games to pop. It’s very boring. Surely there are more people PvP’ing. Maybe cross server PvP is needed? How do people on empty servers handle this?

Overall I think the PvP has potential. It feels like a lot of the pieces are in place, but it just needs more work. It needs more game modes for starters, it needs to have some of the damage looked at, it needs to have a better, respectable matchmaking system, and it needs to have better visuals in order to indicate what is going on.

There are many things that have me feeling like, compared to the PvE of this game, sPvP is an afterthought.

I’ll write a similar post once I spend some time in WvWvW for those folks. Don’t think I’m picking on you sPvP guys. I WANT to get into this game mode. I’ve spent all of my recent free time on it, but I feel like it has some major issues going on that probably push a lot of people away from it.

What happened to all the e-sport hype Arena-Net spouted on about at launch?

For the past week or so I’ve been doing nothing but Spvp on a thief that I made and having mixed feeling about it. I figured I’d come here and share my thoughts just like I did about the PvE aspect of the game. (Which I scored very favorably btw)

First, the good stuff. I really like the departure from “tab target” combat. It makes the game feel more engaging, faster, and definitely more dangerous. It can be a lot of fun when you take someone out because you really feel like you did something right or well. It’s validating.

The same goes with the gear. I’m engaged now, back in school again, and about to begin volunteering at a community center here in my city. I still love gaming, and I love being good at gaming, but I simply don’t have time to “pay a pound of flesh” anymore when it comes to games. As much as I loved the arena system of WoW, I could never bring myself to commit to the almost masochistic grind that the gear was in that game. I appreciate being able to “jump right in” with the gear and build of my choice in GW2. It certainly is a fine attribute.

Some of the maps are a lot of fun. My favorites are the one where there is the keep defense objective and the one where you can run the orb to capture points. Skyhammer can be fun too if you have a person or two who can check in on the gun every now and then.

Now for some other points of view…

While some of the maps are fun… there aren’t many, and there is only one objective: domination. Why? Was this intentional to not have any other game modes included in the game? Aside from the fact that it just gets old very quickly (I HATED Arathi Basin in World of Warcraft btw) it creates a disadvantage for some classes.

The game objective is clear: capture and hold points. The problem is that some classes are better at holding points than others. As a thief if I try to jump into the circle during a huge skirmish I am very likely to get blown up very quickly. The classes who shine in the capture point mode are the ones who can hold their ground. Thieves are not designed to “hold your ground” with. They are flighty by nature. It has led to some really frustrating moments.

Being a thief I conceptualize myself as something of a roamer who picks off ranged classes, weak “deserters” trying to run away, or people caught out of position trying to take a point on their own. This is well and fine -sometimes-, but since the game seems to revolve around zerging from one point or another, I find my class role very limited. Stack this on top of the fact that the maps are very small, so the odds of me actually getting a fair 1v1 match up is rare. Which leads to my next point:

The downed state mechanic. It’s awful. >.< As much as I enjoy driving my banner into someone and seeing a deer dance around or a giant smash them or w/e… I think this mechanic is REALLY frustrating to deal with. I’ve had several infuriating moments with it. They pretty much revolve around me downing someone, one of their friends coming over, and me either having to fall back and lose the kill, try to kill their friend while they regen and damage me, or try to burst them down while their friend either kills me or heals them. Obviously every one of those options suck.

I feel like this game simply isn’t friendly to thieves. Or, more accurately, spvp isn’t friendly to thieves. The maps are small, the game favors zerging, the downed state can quickly turn a fight you have just won into a fight you have just lost, and trying to enter into big battles for points is often suicide for a class as squishy as the thief.

Another big issue I’ve been having is dealing with the prevalence of condition based damage. I find myself quickly having to burn a heal and another condition cleansing spell in order to stay alive. By the time those conditions are re-applied, my cleaners are still on CD, which usually leads to my imminent doom. Sometimes I have fought necromancers who literally cover me in dots before I have done any amount of damage to them. Maybe this is an L2P issue… which leads me to my NEXT point:

“L2P” is very hard with how particle effects work, the lack of cast bars, and the general amount of nebulousness the combat in this game shrouds itself in. With the amount of explosions, red circles, conditions killing you, etc going on, its very, VERY difficult (and sort of absurd) to be able to keep track of everyone’s casting animations. Trying to dodge specific spells is hard enough, trying to dodge specific spells between 5 players, red circles, keeping track of your OWN abilities and damage is even harder. It’s nearly impossible. Often times I end up dead in a hurricane of explosions, flames, debuffs, minions, arrows, smoke, gas, you name it… It’s just very overwhelming.

This is not the only zone with a champ train. Honestly, what do you care if players want to do champ trains? If you find it dull, just don’t do it.

Mad Queen Malafide.7512:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

Put a straight relationship in a game and nobody bats an eye.

Put a lesbian relationship in a game and everybody loses their minds!

This quote needs a meme picture of the Joker. :P

Like this?

Critical damage is not the problem. The problem is game mechanics like reflect, corner stacking and even dodging which allows players to avoid damage altogether without any defensive stats and coupled with the fact that everyone has their own healing skill and condition removal and healing and tanking not being viable in this game due to heals being weak and the lack of an aggro system, stacking as much damage as possible and killing things before they kill you will always be the meta.

Which leads us to the other side of the Living Story issues: Gameplay wise.

Gameplay wise the LW had (has?) one major core issue: its transitory nature. THAT is the one thing that completely destroys and undermines the fun of the gameplay changes. The crushing majority of it is temporary. The achievements are temporary. The rewards (at least most of them) are temporary. What this means is that every release becomes an initial grind to complete all the content as soon as possible, to guarantee you acquire it before it expires, followed by burnout.

See crappy MSPaint graphic
(Paint skills off the chart, I know…)

The players feel forced to do the content as soon as they can, to guarantee that they acquire it, and proceed to grind it out. Once that’s done the last thing you wanna do is go back and do more of it for fun.

Take Super Adventure Box for example. In its own right an amazing addition to GW2. However, also a temporary one, with temporary skins you can only acquire THAT update… Result? People grind SAB out to acquire the skins, quickly getting sick of it. And when they do want it? It’s not around. Cause it was temporary.

I’m not saying it’s not ok to have some temporary content. I think the Wintersday event is a good example of good temporary content. It’s available around christmas and, at least so far, returns every year with (mostly) improvements. But those should be few and far between… The norm should be permanent content… Why is something like SAB even gone? Why are the SAB skins temporary?

I understand the point of course: forcing interest. Trying to force players to play NOW… However by its very nature that leads into that rather negative loop of small peak of excitement followed by burnout/exhaustion, etc…

THAT is what’s wrong with the LW system. I’m not the first person to mention it either. In fact that has been mentioned to death and back… So when I read an interview and I hear a dev say that “the problem” with LW was having both story and gameplay content together I’m confused… Why did we bother?

Eh… What do I know…

2/2

For the unaware I’m refering to this interview . Read up, it’s an interesting interview.

It’s nice to know ANet has identified that the current LW model isn’t working, and is willing to change that. That said, one paragraph specifically made me cringe. Made me wonder whether ANet had actually understood what went wrong with the whole Living World program in the first place…

“It’s very distracting to players,” observed Johanson. “It’s almost a muddled message, where we put these releases out and we want them to be excited about the story, to follow the story, and we also want them to be excited about the features that are coming with it. And either one or the other tends to be the thing that people cling onto.” And the other thing, people ignore.

This is what ANet considers went wrong with the LW update… That, essentially, people are too stupid to follow both story AND gameplay releases. That’s the one thing they think went wrong… That they were releasing story and gameplay…

…oh god…

Colin… Colin… No… No. No! No!

Colin, the current LW system was flawed in two different directions, one pertaining to the story delivery, the other to the gameplay delivery.

Story wise it had two major flaws: flow and quality.

As far as quality… I’m sorry but Scarlet’s story so far is terribly written. I’ve been on and on about its many issues, and so have many others. Not going to repeat myself. You guys are saying that it’s all justified because of the ending, I’m not buying. I’m not seeing how any ending ever conceived can justify all the writing issues Scarlet has had so far. PLEASE prove me wrong. If you do I will personally write an extensive public letter of apology to your writing staff.

As far as flow it’s very simple: too little too far apart. Even if we disregard the quality issue you’ve simply given people too little story. With far too much nothing in between. Consider the following: The LW story has been going on for a year now. You could sum up the entirety of the story in the back of a small napkin, leaving nothing relevant out. In fact you guys did a video sum up of it in less than 1 and a half minutes! And that left no relevant part of that story out!

That has nothing to do with having gameplay and story delivered together! Nothing to do with even the 2 week update rate! You could have made the bi-weekly update work for the story, but there’s simply not enough story here. How can players stay engaged in the story when it’s moving at less than a crawl? It’s like trying to be interested in a very small book reading 1 or 2 sentences every two weeks! The little story we did get, regardless of quality, has been stretched so thin it broke.

It doesn’t help the case that unlike, to quote the interview, “a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that)” the LW updates don’t come with re-runs or tivoing. If you weren’t in the game before you a certain part of the story came to pass that’s it. You can’t go back and relieve it. It’s just gone. This hasn’t affected me because I’ve been here since the start of the LW, but I’m sure people that joined halfway through would be even less compelled and interested in knowing what the hell is going on.

1/2

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

By its conclusion, Season One will have been developing for 15 months. What ArenaNet wanted to create was a complex plot that kept people theorising and speculating in the same way a show like A Game of Thrones (and the book series A Song of Fire and Ice beyond that) does – to have “people realise what the power of having a video game that can tell a story like a television show is”.

Really?

Just. kittening. Really?

If this was supposed to market your game, it did exactly the opposite.

I now know you are quite satisfied with this sorry excuse of a story we have.

I can now safely abandon the dream that GW2 will ever have a story I actually enjoy and never look back.

EDIT:

“It’ll be really fun in three months when the ending happens for those people to be able to stand up and say, ‘I got it right! I nailed Game of Thrones!’”

He obviously thinks they are comparable.

When I want to paint something and fail badly, I do not say anything at all about the painting of Mona Lisa.

I would not talk about how I want it to have the same emotional effect on people as Mona Lisa in any way.

I would simply be too ashamed to say anything remotely related to painting.

It’s HoboTron Prime: Hobo-bots…. let’s roll out!

This is only talking about SPVP

1) They don’t care about it.

2) They’ve spent 1 1/2 years balancing the game and they have gotten no where with balance LOL. Most serious pvpers believe the game was more balanced at the release.

3) The community is terrible. The feedback you all provide have them running in circles. and players with more experience in general go unnoticed because they aren’t pod casting(streaming) bullkitten all day.

4) No business model for SPVP. Thus no real effort is ever allotted ( Lets get real guys something has to pay the bills if we want to experience continued support )

5) NO PTR… We are the PTR this by far is the number one reason why this game has not been fixed properly.

Top 5 Ways they can make massive improvements to the game (SPVP).

1) Rewards this is number one. I’m not talking about gold either any real pvpers wants him or his team to be know as the best. REAL Ranking systems with titles.

2) Merge Solo que and Team que into competitive Que. Where you have a seen rank not just a time played rank a rank that fluctuates up and down depending on how well you do in ques. I’m going to break this down. for you . Player “A” struts a Private Rank Player “B” struts a Private 1 Star Rank Both players que they get matched up against each other player “A” wins he maybe goes up a rank Player “A” goes up a rank and he like wow i want to be know as the best GW2 player Alive so Player entices his buddies to create a team His team is filled with Private 1 Star players so at first they get matched up against pugs which they slaughter and get his team feeling good but then he proceeds to the General Ranks where kitten gets real and Player “a” is like o kitten theirs only other teams playing at this rank. Might not be so wise to got go que solo from here on out i’m gonna form strats with my team so i can be “5 star general rank” Which basically tells the world im a fugging bad kitten and now gives that player access to the 5 star general armory locker of unique weapon skins with amazing effects only acquired in pvp and can be ported over to pve as well. The same way pvers should be able to port over Legendary weapon skins as well.

3) Stop Balancing THE GAME!!!! STOP! FOR A MINUTE!! Focus on structure patches as mentioned above Then add a PTR (Public Test realms) with planned changes. With its own feed back forums Take my word most kittens dont take the time to join PTRS and evalute it so the feedback you’ll get from the players who go out of there way to improve the game will be much more valuable.

4) Add a Business Model How many millions do you guys make when you release a quaggan back pack. I know you tried it with custom arenas that’s not bad start but the game sucks kitten right now and no one wants to even setup another tourney. So we need something else. Display Rank Favicons Like the WVW commander one? ? !? or maybe PVE Weapon to pvp transmutation rocks…. Custom Team Ta bards or backpacks…

5) Actually Care about this amazing combat and potentially amazing competitive game you guys created. I wanna start playing again but SPVP needs a major overhaul

No quality of life changes.

Nothing for WvW.

Nothing for PvP.

No skill/trait updates/changes.

Possibly, nothing new in the above until after the 4th March 2014.

Basically getting 1 permanent world boss encounter, 1 temporary world boss encounter.

One may be like Tequatl, so you will need possibly 80+ players and probably join a current Tequatl guild.

The other could be like the invasions and be a massive zerg free for all, where players target loot above everything.

You will also get a list of achievements to tick off, some will be annoying.

You will also have a 1 in 100,000 chance of a ascended drop if you complete the boss but other wise the usual 2 greens and a blue.

Excited? Not so much…

Logan with Jennah is another lesbian relationship tb

As a necro who primarily played conditionmancer and has switched to MM recently, I think I should chime in.
I started to primarily run a MM in tournaments shortly after the patch preview came out, because it was obvious that even with the condition hating meta, Anet is still going to nerf conditionmancers even more. Conditionmancers have (as someone already mentioned in this thread) a lot of hard counters and those hard counters are quite common in PvP. If you pick that build, you can wreck many faces, but then you’re also hard countered by a lot of builds in the meta. You’re only effective if you’re not dead!

A MM on the other hand, has 0 hard counters (it’s safer to pick that build), can 1v1 relatively better, it can survive a lot better, has a very good amount of damage, control, and debilitating conditions, it can heal the party and cause a lot of chaos in group fights, it can destroy enemy trebs and gates with ease, it has enough boon removal and at the same time, it’s easier to play.
So tell me, why wouldn’t I pick that over a conditionmancer?

That said, I wouldn’t call MM the only good necro build in the current meta. The berserker life blast necro does pretty well too. The conditionmancer is still viable. But as far as overall effectiveness, I choose the MM.

P.S. It has absolutely nothing to do with SoV. Anet can remove that heal from the game for all I care.

CONTD!

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Necromancer

Grasping Dead – reduced physical damage by 12%

Feast of Corruption – reduced damage per condition to 5%

Signet of Spite – reduced condition durations by 50%

Lich Form – Deathly Claws – 10% decrease in base damage

Traits

Training of the Master – decreased damage increase to 25%

Siphoned Power – health threshold to 65% for trigger

Withering Precision – moved to master tier, recharge increased to 25 seconds & Terror – moved to grandmaster tier

Gluttony – reduced to 5%

To summarize: 1) A handful of small Power Necro nerfs. 2) Giving Signet of Spite the axe. 3) A big nerf to the current top condition burst Build. 4) 5% Nerf to traited Minions.

Necros are pulling numbers & spammy, devastating attacks that are definitely above the curve, in test-dummy scenarios. If Necromancers were allowed to run free, more people would see that they are indeed, out of line. Unfortunately, this leaves many things to be desired.

1) Necros are on the ropes in tPvP viability. Warriors, Thieves, and anyone else riding the CC pain train will poop on your Power/Condition necro. Only Minionmancers are commonly getting play in solo queue & team queue as of late. This is just one of the shortcomings of your ‘mathz’ – you advocate massive nerfs for builds that are already kept in check by external factors, like the presence of counter-comps. For God’s sake, leave the ‘power scepter’ Necro alone, too.

2) There’s little that’s suggested that could help to improve the counterplay & possible strategies when trying to deal with being attacked by a Necro. You can’t tell when/where the ground targeted abilities are coming – have fun rando-dodging when a Necro opens on you, and proceeds to mash Staff 2-3-5, Scepter 2-5-3, DS, 2-3-5-4 on you, without any phucks given to if you’re able to dodge. Spammity spam spam. This is where we need balance attention.

3) Your suggested change to axe Signet of Spite in half is too heavy handed. Signet of Spite is not a must-have for every Necro. Let’s try a 30% reduction for starters. 7s base, or 9s with 30% condition duration. It definitely beats the 10s base, or 13s with 30% condition duration

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Warrior – Reduce base health at level 80 by 1k

Healing Signet – Passive tick reduced to 200hps with healing power scaling coefficient of 0.175

Berserker Stance – reduces condition duration by 95% for the duration of the stance

Combustive Shot – radius at 3 levels of adrenaline reduced to 300, 220 at 2, and 140 at 1

Extremely heavy handed changes here .. but I understand where you’re coming from. Ok, so I don’t like base HP changes for reasons I’ve stated before – every profession falls into a specific category. Reducing the Warrior Signet heal from 392 base to 200 base is something I can get behind, if you can get around 450 healing from it when you’re a full Clerics bunker. Bunkers would still take Healing Signet, but the meta builds would definitely think about turning towards Healing Surge, IMO. I would support this change going in, as opposed to nothing.

Berserker Stance change: very fair, and only would serve as a tiny kitten in what, for all purposes, is a pretty kitten unstoppable ability in the right circumstances.

What’s missing: Still no reason for some select brainless Warriors to keybind their heal.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Traits
Adrenal Health – moved to minor master trait in strength line

Building Momentum – moved to minor master trait in defense line

Defy Pain – increased to a 90 seconds recharge

Defy Pain is bad, leave it alone. If you’ve ever played Warrior, you’d know that Defy pain over Merciless Hammer, Cleansing Ire, Dogged March, Last Stand, Missile Deflection, or Sure Footed is pretty MEH at best.

Swapping the Strength and Defense minor traits out at the same time would be too heavy a hit to Warrior sustain.. that’s pretty much gutting it from every direction. I think this is far too heavy handed, overall.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

General
With AoE rebalancing – AoE target cap increased to 8 targets

Good for PvP in theory. Unfortunately, this has huge PvE and WvW impact. AoEs hit 60% more things now?

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Blocking priority system that has aegis as the last block to be used up.

Sounds like a reasonable buff to Guardians with blocks.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Repair both conditions and boons to be first in, last out

As for the boon removal priority, I’m not sure about that. Actively USING a boon rip at the right time needs to be protected as a viable strategy. Your proposed system will allow for Guardians to hide stability very well under bunch of boons – boon removal is only made widespread by the Thief’s Bountiful Theft and the rare Mesmer’s Shattered Concentration in the current competitive scene. I think that generating a ton of boons as a counter to boon ripping is an unhealthy, spammy form of counterplay compared to managing a cooldown to rip stability off at a clutch moment.

As for condition removal, again, I feel the strategy needs to be viable on the side of the person actively USING the condition removal. The pre-determined condition removal priority has to go – the person using the Condition Removal at the clutch time to get immobilize off should not automatically take off every single condition before getting to the immobilize.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Immobilization Stacking eliminated

Good.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Portal no longer transports repair kit

This has been a contended issue since the beginning, meh – you can still pick the kit up, and Shadow Refuge until it’s repaired. Where to draw the line? I’d like to see the page of math, if possible.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Guardian – base health increased by 1.5k at level 80 to increase build diversity

A significant baseline buff to Guards. This is clunky, as there are only 3 health tiers which the professions each fit exactly. What you’re suggesting has some merit, but it needs to be done in a smoother way.

The bunker Guardian is pretty much a given in competitive tPvP. This is just uncalled for.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Banish – is now a chargeable skill

This is a clear buff to Guardian’s banish to allow it to be be super unpredictable if desired, and usable in many more situations.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Scepter – auto attack orb travel speed increased by 12.5% and damage is decreased 5%

This is a small buff to Guardian’s Scepter auto-attack damage.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Signet of Mercy – cast time decreased to 2.5 seconds, recharge at 120 seconds

This is a clear buff to Guardian Support – 33% reduction in cast time, and 20% reduction in cooldown.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Renewed Focus – increased duration to 3 seconds

This is a clear buff to Guardian survivability across the board.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Tomes: recharge reduced to 150 seconds: Tome of Wrath: Judgment – cast time decreased. Conflagrate – base damage increased.

17% recharge reduction to tomes, 20% damage buff to Tome of Wrath Auto-attack. Fair buffs.

DoYourBestBear.6810:

Traits
Kindled Zeal – moved to master tier

Zealous Blade – moved to GM tier, increase damage of GS attacks by 10%

Valorous Defense – cooldown reduced to 60 seconds

Glacial Heart – chance on critical hit increased to 100%

4 more minor buffs to underpowered traits.

Bear, I’m starting to notice a pattern here. You main a Guardian, and 12/12 or so of your Guardian suggestions were all either reasonable buffs to underpowered traits, or blatant survivability buffs to Guardians across the board, who definitely don’t need any developer help in obtaining permanent spots in competitive tPvP. At the same time, you denounce power creep as you advocate it. All these huge nerfs to other classes, and Guardian buffs all around? Come on.

Some thoughts:

- Horizontial progression can and should be the biggest focus of this game. The entire system of coloring armor, various armor sets and inter-mixing with transmutation stones and not being forced into ‘sets’ for bonuses and instead utilizing runes is a huge plus.

- With that said, as was talked about in the Vertical progression where Ascended gear should take some measure of time to gain in however manner you want to get it, Horizontial progression can entail the grind / effort to get what you really want to look ‘good’. Legendary weapons are already a perfect example of horizontial progression across the board by doing everything you can in GW2.

- Specific Horizontial progression paths (Dungeons for dungeon tokens for specific armor sets) are fine, but is there a possibility for doing group events in the same zone as the dungeon for minor payouts of the same tokens? For instance killing the dredge commisour in Dredgehaunt cliffs can grant just a few Sorrow’s Embrace tokens like its dungeon counterpart as a daily?

- For the investment into the Fractal dungeon I am surprised there hasn’t already been consideration into making a Fractal Armor set…or is there? I like surprises so if I am onto something don’t tell me!

- The flamekissed incident did open a possibility for enhanced cultural armor. Maybe construct a manner to have each race embellish their cultural armor with effects, through mystic forging, tokens, etc.

Only exactly zero.

DevonCarver.5370:

Would the commander system be functional enough with more markers, guild only tags, less suppression, better supplyinfo, and possibly additional marker shapes?

I would take that. deal. done. ty