Guild Wars 2

You have to be kittening kidding me. That’s the most idiotic thing I’ve ever heard. What a huge middle finger to solo players. “Hey, bud, enjoy bad players on bad teams stomping your pugs and thinking they are better than you because they have a higher rating.” Don’t we already get enough of this from half the people with high QP? So obnoxious.

Can somebody please explain to me the logic behind that decision? I must be missing something, because to me that seems like sheer laziness — forcing people to play on teams or rendering them irrelevant.

I thought it was a balance adjustment.

I assume that you will have a separate “solo queue” rating and “premade-team-queue” rating, no? If so, while your pug might get stomped by premades, it should not impact your rating relative to other solo-queuers, who will face those same premades occassionally.

As long as you have separate ratings, it should work okay (although a pre-solo-queue would be ideal). If it’s the same rating, then that would be absolutely horrible. What am I missing?

I really did not understand anything you just said, and I read it twice.

I’m sure the patch has helped: That was my point. An easy class was made easier. To me, that is a negative change. I do necessarily conflate “easy” with “overpowered.” I am talking only about the amount of skill required to play the class effectively.

Good Rangers have always been a threat, even if occasionally outshined by other classes.

thrice.9184:

Another L2p post sad and old, I would tell you to play ranger Before the patch but its too late – you will never understand.

I never see any ranger ownage vids, All I see is P/d thiefs and D/D eles with a slice of Shatter Mesmers.

Ele’s should form the skill cap floor for any class? LOL.

Im not even gonna bother.

I did play the Ranger before the patch. I started playing it quite a bit after the Shortbow rate-of-fire tweaks, and the class was solid then, including in high-level tPvP, although there were other classes that did whatever the Ranger could do, but slightly better. That’s sort of beside the point though, particularly the point I was making.

The class has gotten better with each subsequent patch. My only comment is that the latest changes, which definitely continued to improve the class, made it better without making it any harder to play, and the class has always been incredibly easy to play. That is a disturbing development trend. Care to elaborate on your “L2P” comment — which frankly made no sense in context?

Edit: I read your post history, and I see that you’re one of these typical MMO posters who defends your class, no matter how fact-based or rational the criticims leveled at it are. Seriously doubt that you will be able to provide any intelligent comments regarding the one-dimensionality of the Ranger class and low skill cap, but maybe you will surprise us.

The issue with Rangers, as with many classes in this game, is that the changes really impacted and improved non-skill-based play. Doesn’t take much work to use Shortbow 1, and the additional damage from pet chomps also doesn’t exactly require much user input (i.e. NONE). It’s just another example of a class designed to have a very low necessary skill threshold, with relatively high effectiveness, one of the fundamental problems with this game overall.

That said, the DPS pets die super quickly if focused, putting the pet swap on a very long cooldown. (Even if they swap the first low health pet, you can burn the second.) Also, the Ranger obviously is susceptible to the various projectile defenses.

Unfortunately, I have been maining on a D/D Ele lately, which is naturally very weak against ranged classes (not a lot of ranged defense on dagger offhand — focus is designed for that) and since you are constantly fighting in melee range, a trap ranger with lots of slows and chills and a high damage pet are just a nightmare to deal with it. (And you can’t swap weapons mid-game anymore!) In my wild universe, I think that the skill cap on the Elementalist should form the skill cap floor for any class in GW2, but I understand that the game largely caters to less skilled players, and so it goes. That’s life I suppose.

Two comments:

1. In COD4, we used to have “COD Draft” on Saturday nights (because most FPS team only ever practiced Sunday-Thursday in any event), where any interested player would join one vent channel, interested players were selected as captains, and then captains would pick players for teams and hold a tournament. It would be fun to get something like that going, in GW2 although it might be more difficult to determine which team won — maybe use QP’s earned over 3-4 tournaments?

2. I have been considering starting a guild called the “Paid Tourney Pug Guild” [iPaY], which is similar to the concept of the other guilds like iPuG, but is specifically geared toward player looking to form a group for paid tournaments. I’ve had trouble finding groups using the other pug guilds because players are rarely repping that guild, and if I am planning to do frees, it’s easier to just solo queue. So, the one rule of iPaY would be that you only rep if you are actively looking for a group for paids. Effectively, repping iPaY would simply be a LFG-tool substitute to get more folks actively playing paid tournaments. Would there be any interest? If so, I will gladly cough up the precious silver and get it going (or would be happy if anybody else stole the idea and did it for me).

Biomanz.9302:

Thx for the writeup. Only issue is I think the shatters do the damage right when they reach you. They flash and do the damage, then “pump” and flex to do the animation. So have to predict and dodge a little early. Frustrating to pay so much attention to what 2+ clones are doing on top of tracking the real mesmer.

Yeah, great writeup Powerr. Only issue is the one mentioned here. I went and tested the timing of the shatter damage on a training dummy, and it appears to apply instantly when you hit the shatter, and then the animation follows after the animation applies. Thoughts?

felivear.1536:

I am just curious as to how much time you have spent using a mouse like the naga. you seem to have a lot of knowledge about how useless it is and I’m going to assume that you used 1 for a while and did not like it or should I assume what is probably true and that you’ve never even touched it and your super brain decided that it was useless because your super brain told you so? I’ve used a normal 3 button mouse for 95% of my going life, I’ve switched to this mouse and I’ll never look back because of the actual benefits and advantage (however small).
although mine is just an opinion I’m sure it is not as valid as your opinion that you derive from looking at a picture of a naga online.

I have never used a Naga. If I did, I would bind modifiers to the thumb buttons and a few one-off type abilities or uses, like Sprawl does. All in all, I would question whether the “benefits and advantages (however small)” justified the additional costs (in money) of the mouse. You evidently think it does. My point is that Payne’s $15 Wal-mart mouse is more than sufficient for all practical purposes.

Frankly, my super brain comes in handy in a lot of situations, but I did not even need it to analyze this one. It’s fairly straightorward: Because of how we evolved from monkeys (or how God created us like 12 minutes ago, depending on your viewpoint), thumb buttons are overrated as one’s primary means for hitting abilities. Supplement, fine, but if you are using a Naga to bind 6-10, then maybe you should consider an alternate control scheme.

Edit: I would also add to Jumper’s point above that the Naga Hex is a much better design than the original Naga. In fact, I would not even call it an abomination. Nonetheless, the basic premise remains — fingers > thumbs for key presses. Shift your movement keys on the keyboard and learn to use your pinky. Again, you get the benefit of complete freedom of movement while using abilities and the ability to use fingers instead of thumbs.

My input didn’t contribute? My input absolutely did contribute by suggesting that you could save money by not purchasing the Naga, yet still adopting a superior control scheme.

Apologies if my opinion of the Naga sounds harsh, but I explained why I consider that mouse to be a gimmicky abomination. The question in the thread title was directed to “tPvP” players, so I assume he isn’t necessarily looking for a competent mouse for casual players (the Naga), but actually wanted to know what players who compete were using and why.

(I don’t mean to suggest that competitive players can’t or don’t use the Naga, but I consider it entirely unnecessary for this game or any game for that matter.)

Imagine typing a paper with your thumbs, instead of your fingers, or playing piano or guitar. By human evolutionary design, it’s sub-optimal. Don’t blame me, blame the universe.

As I tried to explain, I never have to sacrifice movement to hit abilities either, only I outsource most of my ability presses to my pinky — lots of keys for that finger if you shift your movement key and use a single thumb button as a modifier.

Edit: Also, I don’t consider console gamers to be the end-all of control schemes. Yes, they can get by, but go spend some time watching some Black Ops 2 pro console streams on Twitch.tv and then watch TBNR Frag (PC pro pubber) and see if you still think the console argument holds any weight.

Mrbig.8019:

Atlas.6901:

It seems a bit insane to talk about a meta when there are only a handful of teams actually taking this game seriously at the moment.

This excuse is getting old, really.

Explain what it’s an excuse for, then explain how it makes sense to discuss a meta given the size of the population. While, meta defined broadly can mean any second- or third- level decisionmaking based on what you see your opponent doing, it’s typically used to describe the ebb and flow of established strategies that trickle down through the community as a whole. Right now, there’s not much to discuss.

Chill stopping dodge was an intended mechanic in BWE2 or so. It’s been changed for a while. Chill does not impact dodge, only immobilize does (as far as conditions go, fear also I suppose).

Regarding the recharge, it only impacts your abilities on cooldown. Just pay attention to the cooldown clock if you have that feature enabled, you will actually see that the cooldown numbers tick 66% slower.

It seems a bit insane to talk about a meta when there are only a handful of teams actually taking this game seriously at the moment.

I disagree about the Naga. I consider it a gimmicky abomination. Your thumb speed and precision cannot compare to that of the rest of your fingers. As such, it’s better to assign it to simple tasks, like hitting a single button or two.

I use a Logitech G9X with two thumb buttons, one bound to CTRL and one bound to my Mumble key. I use CTRL as my primary modifier, RDFG for movement, and my pinky to access almost all of my abilities (along with a few abilities that use the CTRL modifier). With this setup, I also do not need to remove my fingers from the movement keys, but I also never fat finger (or thumb) an ability.

As Payneful said, your mouse does not really matter in this game. There are very few circumstances in which you need pixel-precision, unlike an FPS or competitive RTS. So, I would not lose sleep over the decision or spend too much money relative to your comfort level.

I don’t know much about DN PvP, but I played for while, and I thought the combat in the game was amazing. I imagine that the CC-lock that Seether mentions actually takes quite a bit of skill. My impression from playing it as that you have to have a fairly deep knowledge of the game to effectively juggle a competent player for any length of time. Also, the game was entirely aim-based.

I’ve played other games that were amazing too, but dead by the time I tried them. Savage 2 anybody? That game was incredible, also aim-based with RPG elements, and with a massive skill gap. A single skilled player could easily take over the game.

I prefer both of those combat systems to GW2, but GW2 is fun for what it is. It’s combat is definitely better than any other standard MMO.

Solo ladder could just be based on W/L. Yes, there is a luck element regarding comp and who you end up with on your team, but that luck element is shared by every other solo-queuer. Initially, your ranking would be fairly volatile because of the luck element, but over a sufficiently large sample size the confidence in your ranking will increase, and your contribution to winning can be isolated as a variable, which is what your ranking ultimately would be based upon.

I have not gotten the GW2 load screen bug at all, lately. Black Ops 2 loads just fine.

Yes, just ditch the tournaments when the rankings come out.

And add solo ranked ladder. All solo queue, only. No tournament garbage, just 10 players getting sorted into a one-off ranked game, where your personal ranking is based on W/L.

You can do whatever else you want, but this game’s communtity is way too small for me to find a team that wants to plays as competitively as I do for just a few hours a night. Players are either super casual or somehow have eight hours a day to dedicate to video games. I do not. This is a huge entry barrier issue. If you actually want players coming back and potentially participating in team competition down the road, solo ladders has to be priority one.

Call me when it’s ready.

How close were these predictions to Chap’s talk regarding the state of the game?

Yes. As most free trials do…

Answer: You already bought the game. This does not impact you. Sorry you’re not satisfied with the product.

Players like you have other threads they can comment in on those issues.

You can change the pricing model, but the concept is that you charge a premium for cosmetic content that is non-essential to actually competing. If people want to look pretty, they can pay for it. Whether they will is a separate issue, you let your marketing and pricing experts determine how much to charge. The premise is sound, but you can argue about the specific implementation. Don’t bother me with the details, just get it done.

Who cares about the costs of the game? Those costs are sunk vis-a-vis people who would never play the game at all, but for the free-to-play option.

There is a reason why older games eventually offer various free trial-type options. Find as many suckers as you can to pay to play the game at launch. Wait a while, and then consider how you can draw in other folks who would never want to pay a penny. Giving them full access to a particular part of the game (like competitive sPvP) and charging them for cosmetic, premium content is bread-and-butter LoL-business model. The MOBA aspect is irreelvant.

Yeah, absolutely. That’s part of the “[d]on’t do this until you’ve actually made sPvP a complete game” issue. But it should be on the roll out list around the same time.

Make sPvP a standalone, free-to-play game.

How? Flag sPvP-only free accounts differently and auto-load all accounts to the Heart of the Mists and the Heart of the Mists only.

Allow free accounts to access all features necessary to compete, includings pubs, tournaments, ladders, free servers, spectator mode, etc. However, wall off access to certain premium features, including cosmetic items, ranks, etc.

Then, create two upgrade options for sPvP players: (1) sPvP upgrade option — $29.99 one-time fee to access all sPvP cosmetic content, ranks, etc. (still only Heart of Mists access) or (2) full upgrade option — they can buy the full game for $59.99 and get everything.

Don’t do this until you’ve actually made sPvP a complete game — ladders, spectator mode, etc. Otherwise, you’ll lose a lot of potential free-to-play gamers who might actually consider the upgrade. Package all of this as part of your “we’re serious about eSports roll out.”

Profit.

I am not a top team, nor do I speak for one, but I hope you will still grant me the courtesy of considering my reply.

This is absolutely, definitely, beyond any doubt a skill-gap decreasing change, and therefore a bad one. In general, Arena Net should be looking to get sPvP competition ready, not the reverse, which means evaluating every change in light of whether it increases or decreases either the individual or team-based skill gap and implementing changes based on two very basic principles: (1) increase skill gap good, (2) decrease skill gap bad.

It’s disappointing that they are not taking this approach.

(Slightly off topic, and hence parenthetical — I would love to see a charted breakdown of normalized damage across different abilities -- i.e. ground targeted/aim based, AI-based, auto-aim-based, etc. — to see whether skill shots are actually rewarded with more damage. I am confident they are not, just another indication that Arena Net is not focused on skill gap whatsoever.)

No kidding. Reminds me of an FPS game, which nobody ever watches. Oh wait.

The patch definitely improved PvP, even if some players don’t think it went far enough. Balance is a razor’s edge proposition though, so better to do too little than too much.

The real issue is that the current players are impatient about the promised PvP features. But that’s life. More players will leave because it takes a long time to roll these features out, but players will return once they are actually launched. There might be a handful of players who have moved on or refuse to return and relearn the game, but you can expect the PvP population to grow once sPvP is actually feature ready.

Ace of Spades.6325:

If i was in charge, i would put the effort into bringing a ranked solo q in the game as fast as possible, that’s the main thing that keeps the average/hardcorish player playing the game. Some people simply don’t have the time to find 4 good players, but they still want to play competitive, also i could name at least 10 friends who stopped playing cuz ‘’i don’t play unranked games’’. I strongly belive that if we had a system like the one i suggested (and most big games have it) we would’ve a much healtier game.

This is spot on. I agree that the Ranked Solo Queue should be a very high priority, and I suspect that feature alone would probably draw some folks back or to the game.

wintermute.4096:

JonPeters.5630:

2) Get any place from 1-8 :P nice catch :P

Glad you found time to answer that one. Now have a look at the ranger forums please, people are readying torches and pitchforks over there.

LOL, as if Rangers could do damage, even if they were mad.

Is there an equal chance to win any of those various gem values?

In other words: “Thieves really won’t be OP anymore, we promise.”

So here’s the real quick bottomline: Bunker, staff support Ele got completely murdered by the patch, while Guardian bunkers skated by relatively unscathed. Eles otherwise received no buffs — minus, subject to testing, some likely meaningless conjured weapon changes — but a significant number of pseudo-nerfs (particularly tooltip changes that confirmed the kittened form of certain abilities).

Jacobin.8509:

Ok granted they might spend cash as a marketing tactic, but still you are not addressing that most of the people interested in GW2 do not play or care about the competitive side. Anet or NCSoft would probably be more inclined to spend that 350k on new PVE content since they already have a huge base of people in that area of the game.

Not necessarily. As you recognize, PvE is huge already. It would be rational for AN to conclude that the marginal return on additional PvE investments is not worth it, when that same investment could be made to tap into a completely separate market — the eSports aspiring gamers that are currently playing LOL, Tribes, DOTA2, etc.

GW2 is a very ambitious game. And the strategic plan for it is obvious, building a three-pronged game to tap into three very different markets of players, the PvE crowd, the open-world crowd, and the competitive/eSports crowd. I guarantee you that AN still sees legitimate growth prospects for the s/tPvP-portion of the game, in which they would be willing to invest. They already have a strong base.

If you look at other aspiring eSports titles, many of them have extensive balance and combat testing before they are release ready. SC2 had an open beta that included beta tournaments. DOTA2 has been in beta forever. CS:GO, also a long beta.

GW2, by contrast, did not have a PvP-balance focused beta. As such, even if the eSports features were ready at launch, it would have been a balance disaster. Because there was no such beta, launch was a necessary precondition to any sort of meaningful balancing.

Current PvP’ers have every reason to be frustrated. Essentially, you are beta testing the s/tPvP content while — according to my prediction — AN gears up to earnestly launch the game as an eSport at a strategic and opportunistic time.

However, once you accept all this, you will realize just how deeply accurate Chaplan’s “tip of the iceberg” blog post was.

Sure. First, the $350,000 may be optimistic. It may only be $100,000.

Second, the cash would be used as a marketing device to lure players to the game, once it is properly balanced and has all of the features to make it eSports ready. The amount has nothing to do with the players who are currently still playing the game seriously for free.

Third, I’m not sure I agree with your cause-and-effect assumption regarding League of Legends. My recollection — and I could be off base here — is that Riot was fairly bullish about promoting their cash tournaments, even before the game was huge, which in and of itself drove much of the interest in the game.

In other words, the cash brings the gamers, not necessarily the other way around.

Some observations and speculation…

1. Arena Net (“AN”) never intended GW2 to be a smash, eSports success immediately at launch. At launch, AN knew that the absence of competitive features would cause an initial dip in the number of competitive teams and players and likely recognized and discussed this issue internally.

2. AN also did not intend Paid Tournaments to be AN’s eSport solution. Instead, Paids were simply an additional feature to separate pug/premade player pools and initially appease the more hardcore elements while other features were developed.

3. AN expected to have Paids at launch. However, Paids were delayed due to bugs. As a result, the rate at which hardcore, competitive players left the game was probably slightly higher than AN was hoping post launch, but not outside a predictable range. AN would likely admit that this was an unfortunate occurrence, which harmed the initial community of loyal tPvP players.

4. AN did not expect the late release of Paid Tournaments to be a perfect, stopgap cure for tPvP. AN likely realized that releasing Paids into a smaller overall tPvP population would likely result in the precise problem that has resulted — a smaller pool of participating teams, making it difficult for second tier teams to win (and thus want to participate in) Paids. Nonetheless, the feature was promised, and having Paids is better than not having Paids, for all the problems the late release caused.

5. AN’s plan for the eSports element of the game was always to grow it organically some months after release, relying on the predictably smaller, hardcore player base to act as a seed for its growth.

Predictions

1. AN will release ladders, rankings, private servers, spectator mode, and all of the other features that it said it would.

2. These features will not be released immediately, but will be slowly rolled out over the next 6-8 months.

3. More players will leave, and many players will complain.

4. December 21 will not mark the end of the world.

5. Around the time the major features are being rolled out, AN will announce a $350,000 cash tournament, likely to be held in late Summer 2013. AN will give new and rusty teams enough time to learn and practice the game, so there will be at least a 3-4 month qualifying period, where teams can earn entry into the invite tournament through participating in ranked ladder/tournament games.

6. AN will eventually offer s/tPvP trials of the game, which provide players with free, limited access to certain PvP features. To participate in certain ranked games and obtain gear from chests, players will have to buy the full version of the game, but this free trial will effectively provide players with an opportunity to practice and play the game at a high level for free.

7. In sum, the PvP population will likely continue to shrink over the next several months, but will start to grow slowly early next year when some of the new, major features are released, and will see a sudden spike after AN announces its plans for the first, major cash prize GW2 tournament and offers s/tPvP access as a limited free version of the game.

8. Specifically, GW2’s competitive PvP community will continue to shrink until early February 2013, when some of the more important competitive features start to roll out. That will bring back players who already purchase the game and are bored with the other holiday titles they tried. The major, cash tournament will then be announced on March 15, 2013, to be held in late July/early August 2013. After August 2013, GW2 as an eSport will start to take off.

So, I’ve reviewed the debate, and I have decided that I am voting for Prince on November 6. (Payne’s debating points were a bit too Romney-like for me, to be honest.)

Join an empty server and hope the other people who randomly join won’t interfere. If they do, leave and join another.

The Ele litmus test is PvE proficiency?

Haven’t played D/D in a while, but if you pan your camera a lot, it’s fairly easy to kite while panning your camera directly at your target, then right click to face the direction of your camera, and fire off Burning Speed. You have to get the timing down, because there is a very slight delay when you right click in which your character rotates toward the camera. But once you get that timing down, it’s a very efficient way to kite and then fire off an accurate Burning Speed (without relying on the Updraft crutch).

Edit: Obviously you have to adjust for moving targets, but Burning Sprint is pretty fast and the end of it has a decent-sized AOE, so it’s not that difficult to land once you understand the mechanics.

I did not see this one in the list, so apologies if it’s already been mentioned in the thread:

Mist Form: Mist Form and the 20% reduced Cantrip recharge trait in the Water line do not work together. When you use the trait, the tooltip for Mist Form reflects that the cooldown is 60 seconds (down from 75 seconds), but if you activate the ability, the CD is actually still 75 seconds.

(Very frustrating, because I would otherwise use the trait in several builds…)

Do you have a preferred Ele duelist build, Plonks? I’ve always loved balanced D/D builds for dueling, but don’t like running them in tPvP, since my role when playing the Ele is rarely a duelist role (against any competent team). Haven’t focused on dueling on my Ele in a longggg time, so I’m curious as to your thoughts on the 1v1 strengths of the Ele using duel-focused builds versus more standard S/D power build.

You are missing the point. With stealth, a thief can play very recklessly, get away with cutting a lot of defensive corners, and still survive. That’s the point of the mechanic. A bunker Guardian is built for one purpose — to defend the point. If you had your way, a thief would be able to both rock those same devastating offensive builds, while also playing an insane point staller role. They could kill you or stall you — a bunker can only do one.

As I said before, the concept that “thieves are useless on defense” is incorrect. Evades do not give away point and thieves have tons of options to stack dodge and evades, while building to otherwise be bunkery themselves. If that’s the role you want, you got it.

But this idea of a stealth staller thief is insane. If they make this change, I am definitely running a max stealth caltrops condition thief. Stack conditions, go stealth in a corner (and use dodge if every they actually get close to hitting me). Rinse, repeat, win. How is this even a debate?

Because a spammable stealth mechanic to defend or stall on a point would be incredibly overpowered —

Invulns also cause the point to tick down. I sometimes play point guard on an Elementalist, and I have to be very strategic about when I burn Mist Form or if I am running Focus offhand, Earth 5, otherwise I will lose the point. Engis, of course, have several Elixir S options—traited and the utility. But burning that will also cause them to lose the point.

Point is, while I appreciate that you enjoy your stealth-heavy build, you are useless fighting on a point alone. You can’t pick everything and do everything. This game is about hard choices. Either bring somebody else to fight with you or try another build.

The meta that has developed from the current balance in this game is faceroll stupid. Bunkers and portals. Both need a look, because they completely destroy the pacing of the game and the need for sharp, intelligent rotations. Obviously there are counters to both. We know them. We use them. But that doesn’t change the fact that the current playstyle that this game encourages is for kittens.

Why do thieves have to be good at defending a node? By the way, thieves can stack tons of evasion, moreso than just about any class, and they can run amulets that make them fairly hard to take down. If you want to play a thief on a node, maybe you should stop relying on the ability to go full glass cannon and use stealth as a crutch and consider some more creative options. I know that it’s better to just ask the developers to change the game to your narrow view of how it should be played. But seriously…

I feel like this new feature should have been mentioned in the blog post. “We have no features planned, other than the features we said we would include in the game at release. However, as a bonus to our dedicated sPvP’ers, we have decided to remove certain features — like the ability to seemlessly play the game.” At this point, A-Net is obviously just trolling.