Guild Wars 2

MailMail.6534:

No matter what you call it, horizontal/vertical progression, if a kitten person buys this game 2 months from now, they will NOT be on the same level playing field as a veteran in pvp.

Sigh…
Being able to play literally every spec upon buying a game is the least of a new players worries… you are acting like new players aren’t already at a disadvantage, like they don’t have hundreds of animations they don’t know, all of conquest tactics along with counting dodge rolls, exc. exc…
Compared to that, I mean, unless Anet kittens it up pretty bad, this won’t noticeably unlevel their playing field any more… LoL does something similiar, Smite does something similiar, most top tier competitive games have an unlock system.
It doesn’t beat up on new players.
It gives them something to strive for.

I’m not saying the change is great, it seems mediocre at best, but if you know anything about Anet, that’s crazy progressive. Compared to skyhammer, compared to the condi meta compared to ham-bow warriors compared to the tourny queue system… this is gold. This might not be something that is utterly useless or actually hurting the game. It’s a step (albeit a VERY small one) in the right direction… yet people are QQ’ing for days..
What.
The.
kitten.

Decap engineers can continuously push people from the point, and endure quite a beating in the point to make sure enemies can’t take it back. And when their health gets low enough, mindless condition spam won’d do much, and they have quite some decent toughness to endure direct damage.

It’s a combination of traits, skills and gear that results in a build that it’s too effective in what it does.

Reduce the power individual parts of this combination, or move them around, and many other balanced viable builds across the game get destroyed, and engineers become too weakened, as not everyone brings all those things together.

Sometimes there’s no “key skill” to touch or trait to shuffle around, and you have to look at the very mechanics themselves.

So what can be done? You autobalance the system, so the problem does not happen in the first place.

Let’s look at the particular case of pushes.

Why do engineers spam pushes like that? Because they can. They can bring several pushes together, and they come quite in handy in many situations. Specially Skyhammer.

Replace some of those pushes with other effect, or nerf them with changes like increasing their recharges, and many builds that where not using them together lose many vital parts.

How do you prevent some cases without affecting others?

You address CC themselves. A single creature continuously CCed should progressively become resistant to CCs the more it takes within a short time, until it gets a free stun break and becomes immune to CCs for a short time.

Ding. Continuous CC spam no longer works, and CCs go back to being what they should: Strategic tools to turn the pace of the game.

This is what I call autobalance. A system that only kicks in in extreme cases automatically addressing them, so they do not appear in the first place. Such systems absolutely always work, although you see them mostly in properly balanced competitive 2D fighting games like when a target takes less and less damage the more hits they take in succession without hitting back, or when they can’t be continuously juggled in the air.

The main advantage of autobalance is that you don’t have to look at countless skill combinations looking for loopholes, nor continuously shuffle stuff around as problems arise from other changes like trying to solve a Rubik cube at random, as you address the problems themselves directly, so they do not happen in the first place.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

A really good place to start would be Automated Response. This is a terrible trait that needs to be removed, and engies need to be given more active condition removal.

This would simultaneously fix AR Engies being extraordinarily annoying to fight against as a condition class, but also make more of their builds better against the Necromancer which hard counters them.

The specific strength of warrior since September has and continues to be combustive shot turning cleansing Ire into a 100% guaranteed condi removal. All good warriors have realized this and this is why you will only see longbow specs until combustive shot is nerfed.

Josh Davis.6015:

So, let’s say we wanted to look into decap engineer, where would we start? I’ve heard a few different opinions on the topic, and I have a few opinions of my own as someone who has played against decap in top 100 rated solo/team arena games and also played the build myself.

In the same way that it was difficult to look at the September ’13 Hambow warrior and point out a single specific key to its strength, I think decap engineer is much the same.

I think it’s important to understand the areas in our game where decap engineer is strong, and then go from there:

• Conquest
  • Situations where communication is difficult (solo arena)
  • Against teams that have difficulty rotating appropriately

So, with the above in mind, what are some ‘low-hanging fruit’ type of suggestions for changing the way decap engineer works, without affecting existing builds unrelated to decap? That is to say, suggestions that would not require significant amounts of development time to implement.

We’ve already seen a few threads on PW, so I’ll focus on decap for now. ^^

Basically it’s all about the AR-Trait. Without AR decap engineer isn’t going to be invincible in a 1vs1 because he lacks condition removal.

Without AR any other condition engineer build is going to kill him (as well as necros etc).

If you nerf AR you’re not hurting other engineer builds. No engineer with honor is running this trait and it’s not required in any other (common) build. If you want to help engineers in terms of condition-opponents you should rather try to implement some kind of condition removal rather than immunity (passive -> active gameplay).

Make capture points bigger so engis can’t knock you out of it with just one skill.

Rennoko.5731:

DM GM: It is weak. Not much else to say. Additionally it should allow 50% of all sources of healing through, end of story.

Make that 100%, and there shouldn’t be a trait for it.
Healing should go through Shroud, period.

Rennoko.5731:

Spite GM: It is okay. Under the right circumstances it will be a reasonable sustain component. However as others have mentioned it is just like siphoning skills, in the since that optimally it will be good to impressive, and the other 95% of the time it will do an ignoreable amount of healing.

The major reason why this trait won’t be super hawt: see above.
But if you could actually heal in DS it wouldn’t be bad at all, actually it would be the first proper damage mitigation that scales with opponents.
Let’s assume 1 tick of bleeding does 150 damage. Mark of Blood on one target in WvW: 3 stacks would heal you for 22,5 hp per second. 5 targets: 112,5 hp. And that is from a single skill. You’ll actually do a lot more aoe condition damage than that. With a proper Epidemic maybe 5-10k aoe condi damage? That’s 250-500 hp/s right there.
But oh look! Major damage incoming, better go into Shroud to absorb it… and not heal at all -_-

MM shouldn’t be a trait line.

Ignoring the rat, minions are just a class of utility skills and should be improvable by a maximum of two traits (anything more turns a class of skills into a gimmick)

Death Magic as the boon duration line should have boons.

Blood/lifesteal

Lifesteal should not exist. 8 years, anet can’t balance it. Just give up already. Healing traits need to work with the class mechanic.

Yes it is possible the change out for the master level minor is to allow 50% of boona nd external healing through DS. Pure speculation of course, but the implications would be interesting. Sounds overpowered when you pair it with an EXTRA regen buff in a state when you cannot take HP damage now right?

First and foremost it is exactly what was requested. A trait deep in DM that doesn’t have anything to do with minions and actually fits in the tree (though it could have fit in blood too).

They even said in the post they reworked the rest of DM. I can’t imagine anyone complaining about it now with the limited information we have. And I complain about everything.

This:
manveruppd.7601

1. Introduce GUILD-BASED RATING. This is important for everyone who ever wants to try out a new build, or mess around casually, without jeopardising their ranking. It’ll allow people to play as a team under a guild tag whose ranking matters, and then switch to a “smurf guild” whose ranking they don’t care about if they want to mess about casually on join solo.

2. Autostart the next match for winners! Any team that wins a match gets automatically invited to join the next one. Repeatedly playing with the same people will help you get to know them and encourage the formation of teams. It’d be technically easy to implement, and you could apply it even if you didn’t follow any of my other suggestions – you could even apply it to solo queue.

3. Rewards for consecutive wins! This would encourage PUGs to stick togehter if they’re having a winning streak.

Time to finally open all these chests. The amount of tourneys that I have done, and this is how i’m rewarded. The amount of magic find, dyes, and carpal tunnel will be strong. Thanks Arena Net! I don’t even have the Ravager Title, and i’m almost Rank 71. Rank Points from won tourneys do not count. Here I go, wish me luck! =^_______^=

It isn’t that warrior is OP. It is that hambow is OP.

Mike.4830:

In my humble opinion, you sir are wrong…. I click my spells and I try to avoid all contact with my keyboard, Having to type wud be a real let down…. And anyways I am the best team pvper ever and i have people who might vouch for me so i know what im talkin bout, who are u !?!? VOIP in game is the only way for this game to procceddd

Really?
VoiP in game is what the game needs to proceed??
Seriously?

Out of all the issues in GW2, the lack of teamwork between classes, bad maps, bad queue system, bad particle effects, bad UI, bad leaderboards, bad custom arenas, bad meta, bad patch speed…. VoiP… something most people have been using since launch…

>.<

For those suggesting getting on a seperate VOIP,

Please understand the difficulty in being able to reliably do this in certain parts of this game.

Personal Observations

PvE Guilds I have been in have all had some form of VoiP for
-Guild Missions and associated events (Bounty, Puzzle, Mission, etc.)
-Dungeon (Speed Clearing, Casual, Roleplay)
-Open World Events (Mostly coordinating larger events like Teq and Wurms)

PvP Teams I have been watching on streams use it for
-Team Queue
- Sync Queueing
- When someone already knows the server info of someone else they may join up for solo queue as well (highly unlikely with pugs)

WvW
-Every guild I have been a part of has had a personal VoiP Server
-Every Server I have been a part of has had a personal VoiP Server

If you have type, your be prepared to get typefragged

Type Frag-
Getting killed in an online multiplayer game while you were texting your message to other gamers on the server.
Source – http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=type%20frag
Example “I was type fragged while trying to let my team know where the enemy is.”

Last Thoughts
*I hope this can give some perspective on how all game modes currently have people using VoiP, and thus show it’s a wanted/needed. *

sound on ping just like u did in GW1 !

Your Game My Rules.5324:

Well let’s be honest..

THIS PvP is “competitive casual” because there’s no competition at all. It’s not even close to be any competitive since it doesnt reward anything (#eSports)

As an exemple, the difference between a good and a bad guardian is fairly less important than a good and a bad prot/heal monk in GW1.

If you want an online game to be “casual competitive”, GW2 in its current state is perfect for you, considering it doesnt reward good players

Well, I came up with a better definition. Competitive casual is like people on a high school sports team: everyone there wants to win, but generally the emphasis, or the reason people join, is to have fun. Most people aren’t expecting to go to the Olympics, or the National Championship.

And yes, you are largely correct that there isn’t very much competition. This thread is about how normal fans/players of the game can enjoy playing the game more, which is very important if we are ever going to have competition.

What I don’t understand is why solo queue doesn’t work like the random arena system in GW1. If your team wins then it keeps your roster together for the next round. If you lose, the team is disbanded. If you win enough games in a row then you get put into team queue automatically.

If the roster loses anyone at all between rounds the counter until your random team gets put into team queue resets. The more people you have in your roster the fewer won games you need to enter team queue. If you leave the roster you can’t rejoin it unless you want to go straight into team queue.

What do people think about that?

@John C If you wanted to remove solo queue and just allow people to queue up for team queue by themselves if they wanted to, you’d still need to have some kind of buffer against premades. And even then, the fact that many premades use voice chat gives them a huge advantage. So again I’d ask for in-game voice chat, or some other game mode to queue for where voice chat amplified teamwork doesn’t give such a huge advantage.

I agree with people that want the option to solo queue and try to play seriously. Solo queue as it is right now reminds me of TF2lobby and some IRC rooms designed to setup random scrims in other games. The biggest boon solo queue has over those options in other games is that it completely eliminates premades.

Proven.2854:

What I don’t understand is why solo queue doesn’t work like the random arena system in GW1. If your team wins then it keeps your roster together for the next round. If you lose, the team is disbanded. If you win enough games in a row then you get put into team queue automatically.

If the roster loses anyone at all between rounds the counter until your random team gets put into team queue resets. If you leave the roster you can’t rejoin it unless you want to go straight into team queue.

What do people think about that?

@John C If you wanted to remove solo queue and just allow people to queue up for team queue by themselves if they wanted to, you’d still need to have some kind of buffer against premades. And even then, the fact that many premades use voice chat gives them a huge advantage. So again I’d ask for in-game voice chat, or some other game mode to queue for where voice chat amplified teamwork doesn’t give such a huge advantage.

I agree with people that want the option to solo queue and try to play seriously. Solo queue as it is right now reminds me of TF2lobby and some IRC rooms designed to setup random scrims in other games. The biggest boon solo queue has over those options in other games is that it completely eliminates premades.

I would have to agree, that every system they had in place for GW1 was optimal.

Automated Tournament system
RA > TA
HA
GvG

These were all core PvP modes, and the systems in place worked immaculately.

Unfortunately, we will have to wait until we have some other game-modes are introduced into GW2 before we can actually compare what we have (which is just a cut-down, miniature version of Alliance Battles)

Just my two cents but well….
With all this talk still going on after years about how to do PvP correctly, I don’t really understand why the PvP models from the original GW game are not given a shot in any way shape or form.
Is it like a pride thing or something? I don’t mean to be challenging to Devs in any way, I super enjoy actualy PvP combat in this game, but I’ve honestly been dumbfounded since release (still dumbfounded honestly) on the obsession with point capping in this game. Be it the 3 same ole points over n over in s/tPvP, or the groups of zergs running up against doors, it seems to be the only fighting model available.
I don’t understand this for 2 reasons honestly:
1. People ask for, like, and fight Deathmatch style in games all over the place. Especially for a Team game, as a poster above mentioned, the first thing you do when fighting for points in PvP is split up, and the first thing you do in WvW to get those points in group into massive zergs. Neither battle is ever really a balanced team vs. a balanced team. Can it hurt to set up some PvP like this and see if people like it? The only reason I seem to get is ‘we decided in the beginning on point cap, so it’s all we’ll ever do’
2. The Much Bigger Reason:
PvP in GW1 was 4v4 Deathmatch w the occasional kill the lord, or Guild vs Guild to kill the lord and essentially wipe the guild. Even after years, while competing with WoW and whatnot, this playstyle remained very popular. RA(random arena) was not friendly to people who sucked, but was more fun then a barrel of monkeys for people who liked a challenge and enjoyed creating cutting edge builds. No, you did not just buy GW1 and start playing RA. You had to learn first, you had to fight PvE and test your skills, build combos, see the effects happening.
So the big thing I don’t understand with some companies these days is how you can make a sequel to a game and just leave out or massively change certain aspects of it that were very popular? If you want introduce ‘cool new concepts’ that’s great, but don’t do it at the expense of your successful endeavors. When you make a Sequel game, you are attempting to sell me a new game based on the merits of the old one, so where are those merits?
Every single form of PvP combat from GW1 has been absent from GW2, and this is not an ignorable factor for a gamer who thinks about their purchases. Give up some 4v4 or 5v5 death match, some kill the lord for victory, and some of those old school guild battles instead of all this point capping, and you will INSTANTLY see people move back that way i think.
Popular game franchises over many years still successful: Super Mario, Legend of Zelda, Halo, CoD, Streetfighter, basically all the FPSs really… What do they all have in common? The do Not take away gameplay people enjoy to experiment with new stuff that will be ‘more fun.’ You add to what is already there, you don’t knock it down with a bulldozer, put something new there, and call it ‘The Old Game 2’

Do I like the actual skills/movement/combat in GW2? Absolutely. I just wouldn’t call it Guild Wars, since there is no more balanced PvP combat or Guild fighting literally at all. Guild wars, no guild fighting. Guild wars, no guild fighting. Guild wars, no guild fighting. See, doesn’t make sense. I would call it like ‘SteamFantasy Point Capping Wars’. There. I said it.

Having the ability to zoom the camera out farther would reduce the overall amount of space (on screen) needed to be moved by each mouse turn…meaning less motion sickness, and better area awareness at the same time. win-win

Why Gw2 Combat works:

It is Dynamic.

A player can maintain movement and the right skill at the right time can easily turn the tides of battle and pull out a victory or extend a fight just long enough for help to arrive. Skill of the player is important and shows.

Why Gw2 Combat doesn’t work.

Disparity.

While it is unrealistic to request that each and every class have the same access to all boons, conditions, CC related skills, etc… Gw 2 is chalk full of glaring abundances and barren wastelands between classes. Some classes have much easier access to sustain type builds while others struggle to match or even approach similar build types.

Over all i believe that a lesser limit in Health pools could do a lot to bring many classes up to snuff, specifically ele’s which i often, as a mesmer, watch go down first in every team fight.

However we could have a lengthy discussion just on Boons vs Conditions vs CC vs Support vs Dmg.. but thats a monster in its own right.

Others have, since my last post, touched on a similar sentament, where Punishment is lacking.

Punishment seems like a naughty no no type of thing to include in a game geared to induct casual gamers into the market but I cannot think of a Successful game in the past which did not contain some measure of punishment for doing various things. Mario punished you for bringing a fire flower instead of a raccoon costume in some levels for instance. The punishment was simple, you died, and lost your stuff, but it was effective. But I digress.

Disparity in base stats (both class specific and Armor attained) is something anet should address. Simply nerfing/tweaking Critical Damage does not suddenly make going full support just as viable. And this is because there is no punishment for still maintaining a glass cannon while there is currently and will continue to be punishment for attempting a full support build. This applies to all aspects of the game, not just PvP.

Tabards are the first step towards capes

Nice initiative Allie, I think its good that you open yourself up so that the community might better know their representative.

A couple of questions from me:

• A lot of players do not understand your role in the community correctly. Could you explain your role as a community manager to these people so they might get a better understanding of how to communicate with you?

• A follow up to the previous question: As community manager could you explain how much/little direct influence you have on the balance in the game?

• Do you as a community manager directly involve high profile forum threads (decap engie, thief p/w, etc.) in your meetings with the balance team? If so could you give us an example?

PS.
To the people posting here: Keep the questions above infancy level please.

manveruppd.7601:

rule out the most extreme builds – tone down the burstiest damage and soften the toughest bunkers, and thereby hopefully increase the skill required in the game and the number of viable builds.