I think we all need to thank anet for the great december 10th patch. Removing solo queue was amazing, and I absolutely LOVE the new feature of queuing for 10 minutes only in the heart of the mists and not being able to go to pve, hotjoin, dueling, wvw. I love that, with my busy real life I am excited to play a game which has me locked to my pc sat in a boring area for 10 minutes at a time.
So +1 to OP. Anet are the best. Also those new maps they have been churning out are amazing. I am massively enjoying the new temple of the silent storm map. The last made competitive map, which was released 3 years ago. The speed of updates is fantastic. And the balance patches are really good. I loved the last balance patch on april 15th 2014. I really enjoy getting passive procced by fire/air combos and losing 10k of my health to an auto attack.
Really this game is great. Their updates have really improved the game.
Delete Heart of the Mists, add open world dueling/queuing, make PvP grouping feature more prominent…I can dream.
Seriously though Heart of the Mists is currently a garbage zone. Don’t tell me it is a training area. Hitting target golems isn’t practice, fighting profession AI isn’t practice, and the bosses (lord, svanir, chieftain) are all in different positions than you would find them in a real game scenario. And when is the last time you formed a good team in map chat? If you are a decently ranked player, probably never.
tldr: Heart of the Mists is the worst zone in Gw2, let me queue from somewhere else.
Edit: Also, the “Wall of Champions” hasn’t been updated in nearly 2 years, gg.
Congratulations on 10 years. You are probably one of the longest lasting franchises in this genre, please remember what makes your games great and continue.
I think it has now been 4 months and 25 days since this change was put in. Little sign of dev compromise, despite much of the PvP community speaking out against this (especially seen in PvP streams now being much less entertaining for the viewer and the streamer). So frustrating.
Edit for Tarcis:
One image from February 3rd, queue popped at 20 minutes and the game was 4v5.
Second image from December 7th, 40 mins and 2 seconds. I can’t remember if the queue popped or if I just gave up.
These are older screenshots but they still support the point here. And this is all part of the reason I become more and more bitter to this game’s pvp and developers (my apologies to anyone I have been negative to).
I’m excited to see such a big shakeup in traits. I don’t think the balance can get any worse than it has become, so I’m cautiously optimistic that this will lead to a better game.
Also hoping the developers will reduce the RNG in the game, and return to the principles of “for every action, an animation”. The current game of sigil and trait procs all over the place, and multiple AoE boon/condition spam per skill…is just such a disgusting game to play in. We’ll see what the future holds.
(Shameless plug for Gw1 balance, the only RNG I can recall was Block% chance, weapon crit, and blind 90% miss)
This is the main reason I don’t play as much anymore. Balance issues and joke leaderboard aside, it is just annoying to queue now…especially with friends (as Lordrosicky says it often takes much much longer).
Cool. How about fixing the real problems though? Leaderboard, queue experience (time/being stuck in that lobby…), celestial builds, air/fire sigil builds, and so on. This and ToL3 are just crumbs.
As someone who played extensively through the old leaderboard, I really think it was nearly perfect, except for the decay. I rose and fell in the old boards (in solo and team) and could observe that the difficulty of the matches was greater as I went higher up in the board, and the players ranked higher tended to play better and try harder (of course there were outliers, but it worked as well as I can imagine for this sort of thing).
-Currently at 5,259 ranked games played and prefer everything pre-December update (aside from the minor changes like match ready sound and light-up when tabbed out). Been PvPing in Guild Wars for the better part of 10 years, and I’m not sure my enthusiasm has ever been lower.
I’m not sure why they don’t just make it based on MMR with a minimum number of matches…
I think we all want to know who is “the best”, not who came first in a season.
Exactly, this is what we had before the December update. The only thing to be improved upon was the qualification of minimum matches played, or played within the past week/month or whatever.
Instead we have the devs tearing PvP apart every couple months and pretending to make improvements (or sadly believing they are).
The burden is with ArenaNet to sort through the disaster PvP system they created in December.
The rewards have been the same in both ranked and unranked, and there are more maps to play in unranked. Furthermore, despite how many big wins you had in ‘ranked’ these past couple months, none of it mattered as the names on the “leaderboard” would still be the grinders who generally weren’t even in the same MMR range as top players. That we have top players playing in both queues is annoying, but they are just carrying on in the broken environment created by the PvP devs.
We will see what the new leaderboard is like tomorrow, if anyone cares anymore.
Revert ability to queue outside of mists, increase accept timer if needed. JUST DO SOMETHING ABOUT IT. The developers took the absolute laziest solution possible, and have alienated plenty of PvPers.
I appreciate that we can see necro life force finally, but the downed state color is much worse than before, please change. And why are the chat boxes green?
Nice that they fixed the teleport bug where it would do nothing and go on cooldown. But they really need to nerf teleport spots like the one on top of Keep. If an opponent cannot reach the teleported player by a couple jumps or a few seconds of movement, then I think it is overpowered.
The first one, we had before the December update (you would invite 1-4 people to queue and they would be on the ‘roster’, your party was separate. And you could see on your roster who has accepted the invite and who has not. It was much more convenient and functional than what they have replaced it with).
The second one, build templates, was a major part of Gw1. I don’t remember if they were in game at release, but it was part of Gw1 for as long as I can presently remember.
It’s a very serious issue especially now that the game is getting more exposure.
Sitting in queue for 10+ minutes not being able to do anything but hit golemns is not only boring, it’s driving people from doing PvP.
We might be witnessing a big growth of Gw2 popularity (like WoW at BC or WotLK era). Too bad the devs decided to plunge sPvP back into beta in December. Serious revisions are needed, the sooner the better.
Also: I recommend all Gw2 devs watch the streams of some of these popular twitch players as they try Gw2. You can learn alot from their initial reactions and struggles and use that to make improvements.
These ‘stealth buffs’ (usually accidents) have happened, so I wouldn’t be surprised. However it is more likely that you are fighting better shatter mesmers with good timing on their spikes. As mentioned, analyzing the combat log is probably the only way to know for sure.
Ignore the trolls who are flaming you, I think they didn’t understand your question or are trying to defend something.
It is sad but I agree. Too many “pregame strats” discussed in pug team chat are less than optimal and assume the cooperation of all players in the team. Many people will do the opposite of what is suggested just out of spite, and others will spend the rest of the game arguing why the the “strategist” was wrong (I am ashamed to admit I have done both of these many times, and I see other people doing it all the time).
In reality, I would love to be kind to my fellow players and calmly discuss strategy and try different things out as the game goes on. But because conquest is a game where the clock is essentially always running, and kills/decaps can happen so fast, I find myself and other players often discussing things in brevity (often in the rudest way possible, unfortunately).
Whether this will change with other game modes or different pacing in the game, I do not know. Just wanted to share some scattered thoughts of how I agree with the OP.
The might nerf went after a couple builds that were overperforming with their combination of celestial amulet and weapon ‘swap’ availability more often than other professions (ele, engi, war can all spam swaps and abuse cele). Every build that has been making fair use of “Might” for over 2 years gets nerfed.
What I’ve seen:
Still as many cele spam builds. Cele dd, cele shoutbow war, cele engi. Boring, ridiculous to fight against.
As many or more Air/Fire zerker builds. I love the feeling of not knowing whether that auto attack will hit me for 1k or 6k.
Condition spam builds. Just keep spamming out those conditions as enemies remove them 3 at a time, eventually there will be too many.
Are we E-Sports yet? Boston will be great to watch just like China.
Yes I’ve been saying this since it was implemented. And it is disturbing that the PvP devs have had little communication with the community since the December update other than…“yes we know the leaderboards are flawed, we will have more for that someday” and “tell us about your bad matches and we will look at your stats”. Minimal attention given to the fact that they completely kittened the infrastructure of PvP in this game. If Heart of Thorns wasn’t coming, I’d say they killed the game.
Still happening today. This is the longest I’ve had an issue with unplayable lag/rubberband since Gw2 launch. Even the DDOS lags (which felt about the same as this) didn’t last this many days, and weren’t all day long. Plus there is absolutely no dev response so that is terrific.
It would help if people didn’t need to wait in Heart of Mists for 1-20 minutes for their tournaments. Would you expect a streamer to keep doing his ‘show’ if half of his content involves him standing in a boring lobby filled with noobs make stupid comments in map chat?
If any of the developers watched many PvP streams in the past, they would know that not many streamers waited in the HotM, but rather did dueling, hotjoin, wvw, etc. Also there is no leaderboard anymore so people are just playing for ‘fun’. When you consider the above mentioned points, many are not having enough ‘fun’ in the new system to justify putting up with all the new bullkitten they pushed through in the Dec. 2014 patch.
EST/Verizon. Past few days have been filled with unplayable lag (most of the time but not always). As others said, my internet is fine, Guild Wars is not.
Lagging past couple days. Sometimes it is fine, but other times it is the prolonged stutter/rubberband that everyone else in the thread is describing. Absolutely unplayable when it happens.
Typical example: 1v1 on clocktower capture point. Lag begins and enemy player is shown running off the point and into the road below, a few seconds pass, enemy player appears back on point and has actually been attacking me for 5-10 seconds.
Not sure what caused the lag of the past couple days, but it is really bad.
Honest solution: Extend timer to accept queue from 20 sec to 1-2 minutes (or less but still more than 20sec). Allow queuing from anywhere in Gw2. Will people really be that upset if a couple of qpops are denied if they can be doing stuff while waiting?
I think for the next ESL this should be the focus. It can become a new Pokemon style game: 2 players enter, summon all of their NPCs and AI. Whoever wins the AI battle can take the point. The 2 players are not encouraged to attack each other though, that would be in bad form and not very gentlemanly.
But all i have to say that’s when you waiting for Q pop up , you should train your body with push up ,it’s will make you stronger , and turning you a heathy gamer.
QFT. Queue times long enough to get a work out in, confirmed.
I won’t even bother recommending a daily automated tournament system that automatically gives you the reward after completion because apparently gw1 features are too complex for gw2 #observemoderip
Why build upon successful systems from your first game when you can just flounder around for 2+ years reinventing the PvP system every few months?
Congrats to all winners and thanks to all teams for playing. And to the stream team: well done it looked professional and was a much better viewing experience (especially with the new camera tools).
Guys there are no more 4v5, the devs ‘fixed’ them in December. That was the whole reason for that awful pvp patch right? Right?!! Or was it to fix the leaderboard? LOL
This is literally the biggest problem with pvp right now. Anet Plz fix
I can think of bigger problems!
Boring, bad game mode!
6 months between patches!
No pause feature!
Trying to be esports when not esports!
No real leaderboards!
Tiny population!
Bad matchmaking!
No competitive scene at all!
Wahoo! Bye frands!
And yet, I’d argue that the queue problem will lead to less people playing (I don’t think many people are willing to wait 5-10+ mins for a pvp match, unless already really into pvp). Then we have less competitive scene, worse matchmaking, lower population, less ‘esports’, and so on.
But who am I to talk, I don’t have the internal “figures” to study and make these ridiculous changes like the ArenaNet clowns do.
I don’t like the jumping puzzle idea. Please keep in mind there are people who PvP for hours every day. You really think a jumping puzzle will keep them entertained after 1 or 2 times through (or less)?
The only solution for me is to restore all of the privileges that were available before the December update. And find a way to make a PvP queue popup prioritize over load screens/cutscenes/etc so that it can be clicked. Even without that I’d rather wait an extra minute for people to accept/deny queue while actually being able to do what I want to do.
Staff ele is still exceptionally strong. In addition it has probably overtaken bunker guardian as the easiest spec to play in the game. You literally just do some rotation on a point and dodge in between. It is just spam and is the ultimate in brainlessness.
I would say that is a design flaw. The build that you mention (as I’m imagining it) is not really impacted at all by this nerf, as they don’t always equip battle sigil or might runes. It is just an annoying attrition build that tries to outlast and rely on bad timing/positioning of enemies on point (and is absolutely terrible off-point at anything other than surviving). I would like for there to be more viable options for staff elementalists to play at a high level, do not think I defend the build you describe.
I digress though, my main point was that basic game mechanics (Might) are seemingly being modified just because a couple of builds are over-performing.
Another one is the staff elemantlists – As d/d eles are gonna get nerfed the replacement to that will become staff eles – the never dying menace that will take forever to kill. Nerfing sigil of might will not effect staff eles all that much as they have a lot of blasts on their own and a lot of sustain as well — keep an eye on that i’m sure they will become “meta” soon after you shave d/d eles.
Staff eles only have 1 blast: Eruption (2 if we include Evasive Arcana: Earth). Let me remind you that Eruption is a 1.25 second cast with about a 3 second delay until the ‘eruption’ and blast actually happens.
DD eles on the other hand have 3 blasts: Frozen Burst, Earthquake and Churning Earth (4 with evasive arcana) and access to Fire Aura by leaping with Magnetic Grasp through the fire field. All of the DD ele blasts are easy to use except for Churning Earth. Let me also remind everyone that Frozen Burst did not ‘blast’ until the April 2014 patch.
I’m not sure where the meta will go. But I am upset about the nerfs to Might and Battle Sigil. It seems like it is just scratching at a couple extremely op builds (cele dd ele, shout war, engi) and gimping Might/Battle for the rest of Guild Wars 2.
I guess we’ll find out soonish. Don’t get your hopes too high though.
A boxed expansion would probably help sales a lot though (though I’m not sure what they’d put in it…). I remember when I was shopping for the holidays I didn’t even see Gw2 on the shelves at major retailers like WalMart or Target.
I think weird setups like this can do fine actually. Just have a few good spikes and prevent the opposing team from getting a foothold in the match and you can win. Granted, it may not work against the ‘top’ teams, but against anyone else it should be quite possible.
I see your point in making this thread though, as the matchmaking claims to try to prevent these situations (and the matchmaking seems to claim to do so many other things as well…creating all kinds of expectations).
Yes, constant problems with Lightning Flash on Elementalist. I’m sure it is the same for other teleports too. It can sway the balance of the game if you’re kiting and suddenly your escape doesn’t work.
Edit: At least we don’t get stuck inside terrain anymore…at least not as often.
Leagues can’t divide the pvp player base because is basically only a different leaderboard reorganization. A good matchmaking should prioritize people of your league but there will be always the chance to face people of other leagues. Starcraft has the same system, you can face people of other leagues so it’s basically a leaderboard reorganization + rewards dedicated for each leagues.
So basically it is another attempt at improving the leaderboard then? The previous one only had a few flaws. The new one has an incredible amount of flaws, and maybe the league leaderboard will be better? Idk.
#observemoderip
