Guild Wars 2

Like, there are certain professions where I’m not just fighting what they’re using, but they’re just so fast that I’m just constantly and wildly spinning the camera in an attempt to keep up.

There are times where I get so tangled up trying to rapidly pan here and there that I have to take a couple of seconds to readjust my mouse and hand positions and this is usually fatal in the middle of a fight. This not only limits my ability to take advantage of the rare situation where I am in position, but I constantly feel like my own ability to move around is severely hindered because most of my physical effort is going into keeping an opponent in my camera.

Am I the only one that runs into this? Any suggestions from people going through a similar thing?

Zzod.5791:

Yes. I am Zzod from Rift.

You were a really tanky cleric, right? I remember you being a tough nut to crack.

Anyway, I’ll add another one that I’ve been struggling with, a lack of clear visual cues to react to. There are times where there’s so much clutter on the screen that I don’t even know what’s going on. And if there are two or three people generating mobs (mesmers, necros, rangers) I just can’t keep up with what’s going on and what I’m supposed to even hit.

There are just so, so many ways we are lacking the information we need to play the game effectively. GW2 isn’t difficult to get into game and start playing, but understanding it at any kind of real depth in real time is so difficult, even to experienced players.

Warrior and ranger are the two most straightforward professions. It’s not surprising, at least to me, anyway, that they’re the most popular.

At around the 20% ranking mark, I seem to be consistently playing with and against the same people.

This was not the case during the 30 losses that brought me down to the 20% rating mark, during which time I can only recall ONE person being both on my team and the opposing one. The others I saw on multiple occasions were either always on my team, or always on the opposing team.

This is one of only many kinds of information that we’re lacking. Tooltips could be better, more consistent, and more precise (and actually have numbers where it needs them).

I’m not sure we ever have any idea what stacks with what and what things are on what cooldowns.

I know that’s not what this thread is talking about, but there’s a widespread lack of information across the board, even on subjects as basic as, well, the basics, much less the stuff mentioned here.

Didn’t I play against a Zzod in Rift?

I thought I’d update after the weekend. Changed builds again, rather than a control build that requires other players to maximize its effectiveness, I’ve switched to a tanky condition build that can win 1v1s, and that’s when I started meeting regular success. I’m not any better as a player than I was four days ago. I’m not more useful to the team. I’m just more able to win 1v1s. Apparently that’s the difference between a 10% win rate and a 70% win rate that I’ve had since changing the build.

It’s a bit of a disappointing realization, understanding that 1v1 builds are what gets success in solo queue, but I guess that’s what solo queue is. I hope more team-oriented builds and gameplay are occurring in team arenas. I’ll find out one of these days.

Anyone paying attention can see what a hammer user’s about to do at any time.

There’s also stability and/or blinds which pretty much makes warrior hammer a tickly feather as its pure damage isn’t very high.

It’s neither too strong nor too weak. There’s just upsides and downsides to using it, as there should be.

Sword is conditions and general utility.

Yes, axes do more direct damage, but that’s what they’re designed to do at the complete expense of said utility. Axes get no block, axes get less mobility, axes get no condition damage, axes get no immobilize.

Greatsword also loses out on some of the general utility that sword has but gains greater mobility than sword, and much greater mobility over the pure damage of the axes.

They all serve their roles and they’re all in a good spot right now.

Also, final thrust hits fine, let them burn their dodges first and then try it. Hits just as often as anything else in melee does, really.

Cooldowns are long to the point that the punishment of using a skill poorly is that it’s unavailable when you really need it. The result then is roughly similar to resource management, if not a bit less interesting mechanically.

That said the chances of energy being added to this game are zero. It’s possible that classes may get their own mechanics/resources expanded moving forward, but the current system isn’t broken and thus won’t be fixed. Even core systems that are broken (underwater combat) may not ever get fixed because they can’t profit off the development costs that would go into changing it.

I was originally going to summarize some of the other stuff on the forums here, but you can go look at the matchmaking issues and stuff in other threads. Instead some general advice.

You can’t sweat the losses in PvP. You will die, and you will lose. No matter how competitive you feel about it, no matter how good you get at it. It’s a fact. I think we can all agree that losing doesn’t feel as good as winning, but if you want content you’re designed to win at, you should probably be in the PvE portion of the game.

Try to enjoy the matches themselves rather than the result of it. And once they stop being enjoyable, put the game down for a bit. I mean, it’s not subscription, so you can just fire up the game again whenever you want.

I wouldn’t call this logistics, as much as a lack of accessible information.

Like, a lot of people on the forums have been following the game since before beta, they’ve read the manifesto, the various hype posts being made during development, so they entered the game knowing what to expect.

Players entering the game without having read all of that pre-release stuff can easily get lost because the game doesn’t really provide enough information about what they could be doing.

Yeah, that information is accessible outside of the game, but that’s not really good enough. Maybe the Asian market release will set a more comprehensive tutorial. It took multiple tries for GW1 as well, if you look at the opening sequences for Prophecies, compared to Factions, and then finally compared to the fantastic tutorial area for Nightfall.

Downed is a good mechanic that currently isn’t explored to its full extent. Probably a common theme throughout GW2 mechanics.

Needs a bit more customization and interaction, though, as well a couple changes to rallying in PvP (a more limited number/range of people rallied off of a player dying, as well as no longer allowing dead NPCs to rally players), but the mechanic itself is fine.

Why would Arenanet limit how high gem prices can go? That means that the people who buy gems to turn them into gold can’t make enough gold down the line. It also means players never have to buy gems with real money, which they do not want.

I hated Skyhammer the first few times I played it, and it’s since grown on me and I don’t mind it being there as a change of pace from the other maps.

It’s good design that still works within GW2’s mechanics once you adjust your expectations.

I doubt it’s cost efficient to manage an active report system for leavers. Or even in PvE, for bots, spammers, bad language, etc. The passive system will have to do, and we’ll just have to provide feedback until it’s effective.

As far as I can tell, Heart of the Mists is instanced by server, but in terms of the solo/team arenas and the hotjoin servers, both of those are regionwide (so all NA players have access to the same PvP matches).

There should be multiple avenues to it, with time (such as laurels or once-a-day crafting recipes) being reserved for people who are unwilling or unable to gain the gear any other way.

So, high end fractals, an EQ-style epic quest, the current legendary crafting method, WvW, even winning solo/team arenas in sPvP (why not? It doesn’t create a PvP advantage and it’d bring more people into sPvP) can all be viable methods.

How about an epic multi-stage jumping puzzle that you can only attempt once a day?

Favorite: Mad King’s Clocktower*

Least Favorite: Crown Pavilion/Clockwork Chaos zergs

*I missed Super Adventure Box the first time around. From what I’ve seen of it, that would’ve been by far my favorite thing added to GW2 had I not been away from the game during that time. Looking forward to September.

My understanding of this is that they are planning an expansion, they just don’t know which type of release (living world, DLC, traditional expansion) will net them the most money.

I think they’re still trying to figure out how the community wants to play. We have an interesting thing going on with the current event.

One side of it is brainless zerg farming in which no skill or effort is required, just time. That’s the subscription crowd. In these aspects of the current event what the individual does and what the enemies do don’t really matter at all. There’s essentially no meaningful gameplay outside of tagging things to ensure maximum loot gain.

The other side of it—the gauntlet, the playhouse, and the queen’s champions—is tightly focused on the individual’s understanding of builds and mechanics. In here the matchup of the individual against the opponent is everything, and the player must not only use his skills wisely, but also mitigate or counter the enemy’s skills on top of being aware of the special mechanics at play.

It makes me wonder if this is some sort of test to see which aspect of the game gets greater amounts of positive feedback, as if it will determine future development. Seems possible to me, anyway.

How others choose to finish the puzzle does not affect my enjoyment of it, and as long as it continues to not affect my enjoyment, I don’t care what they do.

If the PvP team works on both WvW and sPvP, it’s reasonable to conclude that their primary focus is WvW, as that represents a great, vast, massive majority of GW2’s PvP community.

So, maybe after the borderlands lakes are drained?

There’s a lack of accessible information; it would be very easy to see where a new player would say this is complex.

Like if you started this game after reading the hype train for years to understand what systems are in place and why, it’ll seem natural to you, but there’s a lot going on here that even a person who has previously played MMOs is not going to really get from only being inside the game.

If everyone complains about everything, and no one is happy, we’re in a good spot.

My understanding, at least in the context of Guild Wars, is that “meta” is simply the community buzzword for flavor of the month.

If they just gave us our normal weapon skills underwater and then added spear and trident as normal weapons it’d be less annoying. I still have no idea what in the world half my underwater weapon skills do.

Hey Eyia. I’m just starting out too.

I dunno about hotjoin since I’ve never taken part in that format, but solo queue seems to be alright in terms of community. In my first 50 or so matches of solo queue, trash talkers aren’t in every match, and the really negative people who are insulting teammates too are quite rare, at least in my experience.

I know people say to do hotjoin first, but it seems like solo queue is the better environment to me, provided you aren’t concerned about your rating on the leaderboard. Uh, the matchmaking is a bit weird. I suspect what people are saying about high rated teams being matches against low rated teams is true, because for a while there I would be facing the same handful of names as enemies in a session, but they were never on my team. Lately it’s been better, and I’ve been seeing the same people both on my team and on the enemy team. I’m unsure if they fixed it, or if my rating has fallen so far (I’m down to 17% now) that I’m no longer placed against high rated teams.

@Dirame — I did realize the right click targeting thing about a day after posting this thread. It’s already helped some though it hasn’t completely alleviated that feeling that I’m fighting the UI against very highly mobile/stealth classes.

As for engaging the 1v1s I think I can’t win, I usually learn that I can’t win them by engaging them in the first place, haha. But I’m decently recognizing the classes/builds that I’m not playing well enough to beat, and the ones that are built to delay me until help shows up (such as bunkers). I’m very slowly adding to the list that I feel comfortable engaging on my own. Very slowly.

At the same time I’m realizing my playstyle lends itself to other players being there and creating opportunities for them, so I’ve been emphasizing moving to where other players are fighting and creating favorable situations.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey Corian.4068,

Just wanted to say that we really appreciate you taking the time to give us your constructive feedback. I’ve passed this on to the PvP team, and points you have brought up will surely be in our discussions on future implementation.

Thank you for this. I certainly can’t speak for more than myself but I’d like to think that this thread has overall been quite positive and representative of the kind of community we’d all like to see.

I also hope the more experienced players are providing similarly constructive feedback for you guys to work with, and that you’re finding it and passing it along. I want to emphasize that overall I am enjoying the sPvP side of the game, these are just some frustrations that keep coming up.

They said those that consumed karma under the changes will have the amount adjusted to be as close to what they could have gotten as possible. Wouldn’t worry about it.

When it gets to the point that you are stressed, it’s time to either put the game down, or focus on the parts that aren’t stressful.

You should just not do the event if you aren’t enjoying it.

So it’s been about a week since I last checked this thread and in that week I’ve played about 30 matches, and won a grand total of THREE of them. No, seriously. I was 14-11 in total matches and now I’m 17-39. The last one was particularly rough, we got stomped in a non-competitive 4v5. I was on the team with 5 and our score ended up in the 100s at the end of the match.

I’m baffled more than frustrated because I have been attempting to focus on the details. I’m learning the maps better, I feel like I’m more consistently useful to my team, and yet, we still lose nearly every match. We’re losing more than when I felt I was being dead weight, even.

I still don’t know how to fight a number of builds but I’m learning more and more to disengage/not engage those and go to where I’m more useful to the team.

So, still learning curve. I’m kind of hoping this is just a really epic bad luck streak but with each successive day of losses it feels less and less like that, though I’m not at all sure whose fault it is. I know the one constant is me, but I’ve been doing a little better. Still a long way to go, but yeah.

GW2’s player stats are balanced around fighting opponents of equal power (other players). Within that scope you should find that there are a ton of different ways to build your character for sPvP and WvW.

That said, the scaling for the health and damage of PvE bosses becomes ridiculous for… some reason, and the damage they do to players scales well beyond the player’s ability to mitigate that damage. This means the only way to build against PvE bosses is glass cannon dps, because a defensive spec provides little to no benefit at the cost of a lot of damage.

Dunno if there’s really a way to fix that though short of rebalancing and redesigning the entire PvE system.

It only took me two tries to do that one. I knowingly made a questionable jump because I thought I had some ground to fall on that would let me get back on the puzzle where I was, and I missed the edge of that ground after falling off the jump.

Second try, took the other thing that looked like a doable jump and that was the one that led to the end of the puzzle.

That said, vistas/PoIs/skill points should never be placed at the end of jumping puzzles. At the beginning, to mark where the puzzle is or so the vista can give you an overview of it, absolutely. Not at the end.

Lastly, I will offer some advice to those who struggle with jumping puzzles. I know this is a necro but I imagine the OP isn’t nearly the only person that this happens to.

First, stop the moment you get frustrated. Once you’re frustrated you’re no longer playing at the highest level you’re able to, and your inability to complete the parts you were completing before will frustrate you even more.

Look up the solution on youtube or the wiki. The wiki for many of the puzzles has a text guide, as well as a picture guide, as well as a link to search youtube for video guides. Of those I find the picture guides most useful, as I know how to make the jumps once I’m able to find them.

Third, bring a friend or party along. Everything is more fun with fun people around, and you won’t get as frustrated trying to figure out the puzzle in a group.

Finally, and I think this one will be unpopular, just give up the idea of map completion. It is even worth it if it’s not fun? You’re in game to have fun, and if you’re not having fun, you probably shouldn’t do it at all. If the reward is fun but the activity isn’t, same thing. Find an activity that’s both fun AND rewarding instead.

I don’t think they read the suggestion forum, and to me, seeing a thread be moved to that forum is a death sentence for the idea.

You’re kind of giving off two different vibes:

1. I want tournaments!
2. I want gems!

Let’s take out the idea of an increased reward completely. Do we still want tournaments for the sake of competition and bragging rights alone?

I would love to see CTF, but I’m not sure it’s going to attract new players.

A DotA style format would probably attract a lot of players, though in GW2 it’d probably play more like a scaled-down Alterac Valley.

Would much prefer CTF, personally.

Azraelle.1683:

Not a single pvp oriented game. Eve very differs from gw2. Other games are just casual pve. No UO, no WHO, no DAoC. What a pvp player.

Sadly, I missed the trains on UO and DAoC. DAoC in particular I would’ve loved to have experienced back in its day. Are you old enough to have played those games, yet still insecure enough at your age to attack others for not having done so?

Bamboula.6579:

Hello,

I am also quite new to this game and it took me about a week to find enough information all over the internet to improve in spvp. There needs to be a single pvp source for new players. I like intothemists.com.

Thank you, will check these out.

Is it really going to help anyone if a bunch of people who don’t even want to be there are in matches purely for rewards?

My experience across multiple other games is that if the rewards are good enough, players will just sit at the spawn point to get them because they have no interest in the gameplay.

That said, maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if both PvP and PvE dailies/monthlies granted laurels. It may result in the same thing, but the commitment required to get the daily PvP done is pretty minimal; people might just be willing to play through a half hour of matches every day to get it.

Thank you all for your replies and messages. It’s really encouraging to come back to this thread and see a lot of helpful posts. So again, thank you all.

I didn’t want to mention my class because I didn’t want this thread to become about class balance. My skills have a long, long, long way to go before I’m good enough that class balance is a primary factor in my fights, but thanks for the stream listings.

And yes, I agree that I need to learn the meta builds, as well as the class skills regardless of build. I wish there was an easier way than making one of the class myself and goofing off with it (I may watch those streams in addition).

In the meantime I changed my build a bit to better combat the things I’m struggling with. I also need to change my playstyle some and become more mobile, and move with the team even if it means abandoning a point. I really don’t like that idea but attempting to defend it on my own never seems to work anyway, and I’m not a bunker that can stall people until others show up.

Okay. Will take what I’m learning and continue to see how it goes.

It’s not that players should kitten off if they want raiding, it’s that GW2 isn’t that game. Sure, you could make the argument that it should be added since GW2 is an MMO, but you don’t see anyone saying Gran Turismo should have banana peels and blue shells because it’s a racing game.

I will say that it’s clear to me at least, that player abilities are scaled with the idea that they’re fighting against opponents of equal strength. Indeed in GW1 opponents often did operate under the same mechanics as the players did, using the same skills and etc.

I say this because in order to provide the dungeon boss fights and group events in the open world, mobs, particularly boss mobs, scale far beyond the player’s capability to deal with them, trivializing everything about the player builds except outgoing damage.

That means balanced parties in PvE don’t exist. Yes, requiring a tank and heals was detrimental to parties, but requiring all players to be glass cannons—because the difference between a glass cannon build and a pure defensive build is one extra hit from a boss—is just as bad. Balanced play in that regard becomes giving the player the choice as to what playstyle he or she is going to us, which GW2’s PvE doesn’t really allow for right now.

PvP balance there’s no point in speaking of because it’s not objective. PvP balance is cyclic and unending, not to counter only what is too strong or weak, but oftentimes also to counter what is too easy, too hard, too popular, or too unpopular. Changes will be made, and if no one is ever happy then everyone is on roughly equal footing.

They can’t ever say so, but yes, I imagine they’re tremendously disappointed, at the very least by the forum crowd. I think they understand that the forum crowd is a very small minority of total players, but it’s a very small minority with a very large majority of the feedback being provided publicly.

I imagine they’re also disappointed that the EQ-style MMORPG crowd is so addicted to their shinies that they’re completely unwilling to have fun with a fun game.

Not an enviable spot for them to be in.

Gehenna.3625:

It’s been my view from the start that there are too many leveling zones (also too many levels) and this is one of the consequences of it.

I think ilr’s commen has merit as far as solutions go.

The problem is, if there’s too few leveling zones, everyone will rage endlessly about how boring leveling alts is. Nevermind that in the real world they all stay in Queensdale anyway, once they’ve made up their minds about something that’s that.

To expand the idea to a more functional and realistic level, I’d like to see Activity lobbies. Not necessarily with all the competitive tools that sPvP has, but the lobbies where players and/or guilds can organize teams and just kind of hang out in it. Rotating maps is fine, or even being limited to the planned activity rotation would be fine. Maybe allow people to convert custom arenas to Activities instead of providing them by default.

Now, within those Activities, I certainly wouldn’t mind more things like Sanctum Sprint or the Mad King’s Clocktower…

Why do I feel like the only part of this post that you actually care about is the last part?

Anyway, I doubt GW2 is going free to play for the foreseeable future (say, this year). If they were struggling to hit satisfactory sales numbers they’d have been more aggressive on the summer sales than going to 30 bucks on amazon, especially when other games of comparable age were already down to ~10 dollars (Assassin’s Creed 3).

That said, I also doubt that expansions are well and truly out of the question for GW2. I look at a DLC system like Paradox has for Crusader Kings II and think to myself how easily that could be implemented here. Now that’s not the same as GW2’s standalone campaigns or the EotN expansion, but paid content releases will occur at some point. Expect to pay for access to new races, classes, continents, campaigns, and dungeons at some point.

That’s not some kind of doom and gloom thing. We’d have been paying for expansions anyway, I’m just saying that’ll happen in GW2 as well, even if not in the traditional manner.

This is a good thing. Just wish the 2-5 slots were customizable. Even one alternate skill per slot would be infinitely useful and amazing.

Or uh, dual classing to select from another class’ weapon skills. No idea how that’d work for something like elementalist but it’d be cool to revisit the idea, since it was so central to GW1.

…yeah I know, never happen. One can dream.

Locuz.2651:

Most would refer to end game as “everything you do once you reach max level”.

More accurately, end game to a lot of players is how you get better gear once you reach max level, which typically varies wildly from how the game plays before you’re max level, i.e. solo questing vs raiding.

GW2 hit its design goal in that you basically play the same game in GW2 whether you’re level 1 or level 80, but that doesn’t mean it’s all endgame. That means GW2 has no endgame. Since endgame is a buzzword and a determining factor in whether the subscription crowd hangs around, they can’t exactly say that.

The temporary areas are probably to give a sense of focus and urgency for the subscription crowd to keep them in game.

I don’t want to be a hero. I liked Everquest back in the day where you were just another face, and your reputation and standing was solely what you had with the other players in your community. Even early WoW didn’t go too far out of its way to stroke your ego.

But lately games try to make you feel as if you’ve made a difference, except that every place you visit always has the same problems they’ve always had. Rift was the worst, with the fireworks shows after you completed a quest line, sometimes while the town was crumbling around you.

GW2’s take on it isn’t quite so offensive, in which you matter but you clearly aren’t the main character, but I dunno. It’s still pretty artificial-feeling. And on the one battlefield where you can make your name known to the community, your nametag is obscured from your enemies.

Blah.

I mean, overall it’s a minor thing and I’ll live with it, but yeah.

I like warrior because it seems to be the most straightforward class. I could see where a lot of people would call that uninteresting, but in an ideal world brute force tends to be my style of play. Whether warrior adequately conveys brute force we’ll leave for a different conversation.

There are a couple classes I’m unwilling to play because I’m sure I won’t enjoy them, ranger probably stands out most among those. I can’t say from experience that it’s the least fun for me, but it’s the least appealing for sure.