Guild Wars 2

I made a similar post a couple of years ago before they started nerfing them and would love to have the option of a side bar that held maybe 2-3 items.

IMO, they are another superb feature that has been overlooked. If they did some work balancing these items and perhaps limiting the amount a character can have in their inventory or bank to say 25, they would add a great additional layer of gameplay and encourage players to complete the relevant events regularly to be able to purchase them.

Properly balanced, their addition would add huge diversity to available builds.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Daroon.1736:

Just a flesh wound.3589:

No Mastery system. No Legendary crafting (that’s a mastery line). No elite specializations. No Revenant.

I’m not so sure about elite specializations:
“Specializations are a rework of the current trait line mechanic – Elite specializations can be unlocked at level 80, but are not tied to the mastery system. Unlocking a specialization is a character-specific progression and is not account-wide”

Remember that when they were originally announced the new trait line mechanic had not yet been introduced, so I think it is feasible that the elites will be added for all players once they are ready.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/specializations-part-two-reward-tracks-and-elite-specializations/

For PvP:
Elite Specialization Reward Tracks
“Finally, these reward tracks unlock everything for an elite specialization: weapon, unique mechanics, skills, and traits. They’ll also reward items, including new runes and sigils, a fancy weapon skin for your new weapon type, and an armor skin for a single matching piece of armor (usually headgear or shoulders). As long as you’ve purchased Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, you’ll automatically unlock access to all elite specializations in PvP.”

In general:
“Finally, we’re here. When we talked about rangers becoming druids and necromancers with greatswords, those were examples of what we call elite specializations. These are the brand-new level-80 specializations that will begin to introduce new weapons, mechanics, skills, and traits to existing professions in Heart of Thorns.”

In other words, the elite specialization are in the Heart of Thorns and will require purchase of the expansion to have them.

Thanks for that – that’s pretty clear.

Any thoughts on the living story aspect?

Just a flesh wound.3589:

No Mastery system. No Legendary crafting (that’s a mastery line). No elite specializations. No Revenant.

I’m not so sure about elite specializations:
“Specializations are a rework of the current trait line mechanic – Elite specializations can be unlocked at level 80, but are not tied to the mastery system. Unlocking a specialization is a character-specific progression and is not account-wide”

Remember that when they were originally announced the new trait line mechanic had not yet been introduced, so I think it is feasible that the elites will be added for all players once they are ready.

I have to say that I’m quite confused at the moment about exactly which features (particularly the mastery and specializations systems) in the HOT release will be available to all players and which will only be available to those that purchase the expansion.

All WvW and PvP content and maps will presumably be available to all.

The Playable map area, Guild halls (but not other guild content) and the ability to create a Revenant character will be exclusive to purchasers, which leave a question about all the other announced features.

Anyone care to clarify or share their thoughts on whether Legendary crafting, mastery and specializations will be available to all?

Also, how will the living story play out for those that have not purchased HOT? Presumably (judging by the last beta) the story elements are played through as part of the expansion map and all future LS releases (when it eventually does return) will be set even further into the jungle. Given that Anet has recently shown it is keen to ‘fill in’ story content (LS1 recap) for players that have missed elements, how are they going to ‘fill in’ all the HOT events for those that don’t purchase?

Given that I have strong suspicion that all the work done on living world season 3 was quickly turned into HOT when it became clear that more revenue was required to maintain the game, I am hoping that Season 1 personal story will be one of the as yet unannounced features of said expansion.

Pretty much the same as the OP. Log in – do dailies in PvP, Rage that hotjoin is still a queue jumping autobalance joke. Log off.

Occasionally I’ll do part of a key run but that’s about all I can force myself to do at the moment.

Given that there is sod all to do in game at the moment, even if no work has been done on it since it made its last appearance, what possible harm could it do to open it up for a couple of weeks?

Ashen.2907:

Daroon.1736:

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Even at your hypothetical $5/year subscription price, I would likely not purchase a game with that model. I prefer ArenaNet’s Buy-to-play model, and am happy to support the developers with this model.

For me, they deserve the money for the content and entertainment they provide.

I just don’t think your proposal (regardless how you tweak it) will find much support here. Sorry.

Still, good luck.

Aside from those few who have stated they will not be purchasing the expansion – Virtually every active (PvE) player is psychologically locked into purchasing the expansion at some point, simply by virtue of the fact that they are ‘active players’ – For all those currently playing the game regularly, not having access to all the new content is not an option, but it would appear that if the word ‘subscription’ rather than ‘purchase’ is used – everyone is keen to pay $35 dollars more.

The benefits to the game in the long run however seem to be being overlooked. Can anyone make a reasonable argument that a $15 fee would not encourage many more of the huge number of inactive players, who purchased the game at launch to try the game again?

I am an active player.

I am not sure that I will be buying the expansion as it does not (according to current information) add much of anything of interest to me. It is possible of course that my stance will change.

Thank you for for a very straight answer – So would a nominal $15 price point have persuaded you to ‘re sub’?

In answer to your question – I think that many more of them would be prepared to pay $15 rather than $50.

The main idea of this model would be to retain as many active players as possible – encourage many more inactive players to return and lastly (something Anet has already dealt with) encourage new players by proving them with the base game.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Even at your hypothetical $5/year subscription price, I would likely not purchase a game with that model. I prefer ArenaNet’s Buy-to-play model, and am happy to support the developers with this model.

For me, they deserve the money for the content and entertainment they provide.

I just don’t think your proposal (regardless how you tweak it) will find much support here. Sorry.

Still, good luck.

Aside from those few who have stated they will not be purchasing the expansion – Virtually every active (PvE) player is psychologically locked into purchasing the expansion at some point, simply by virtue of the fact that they are ‘active players’ – For all those currently playing the game regularly, not having access to all the new content is not an option, but it would appear that if the word ‘subscription’ rather than ‘purchase’ is used – everyone is keen to pay $35 dollars more.

The benefits to the game in the long run however seem to be being overlooked. Can anyone make a reasonable argument that a $15 fee would not encourage many more of the huge number of inactive players, who purchased the game at launch to try the game again?

Astralporing.1957:

Daroon.1736:

When Guild Wars 3 is announced, how would a $15 subscription model with a major expansion release every 30 months affect your decision to buy the game and why?

I’d put it that way – if GW2 has been announced with that subscription model, i wouldn’t be playing the game now. And that’s even after considering that i have actually paid more than i would in such case.

Wow, that’s really interesting.

Is it the term ‘subscription’ that put’s you off, even though you would be paying less to play over the 5-6 year period (assuming you purchase the expansion and the next expansion is 2-3 years away)

Lots of really interesting responses and to be honest I am fairly surprised.

It would appear that the only contentious issue is the ‘suspension’ of the core game account when expansions are released. If you take this away from the proposal, what we are left with is a discussion about pricing that ignores the main benefit that this model achieves, namely that all active players of the game have access to all the content available.

Obviously at the moment this is an emotive subject when applied to GW2 and HOT, so to try and bring some objectivity to the discussion, please allow me to alter the the context of the question slightly:

When Guild Wars 3 is announced, how would a $15 subscription model with a major expansion release every 30 months affect your decision to buy the game and why?

nightwulf.1986:

Let’s all just agree that this proposal is missing a lot of necessary info. GW2 is a buy to play game that subsidizes, I repeat, subsidizes itself through additional monetization. Free is just a marketing term that has a lot less meaning to the consumer than it does to the company. I can assure you that the $50 is not a value that exists in a vacuum. Unless the OP has a comprehensize model of monetization that includes gem store sales and other methods of monetizing, that “nominal expanson fee” is without sufficient context.

No, you are of course quite correct, The proposal is missing a lot of necessary information. I should point out however that the proposal only affects players who have already purchased the core game when the expansion is released – all other monetization factors (gem store sales – new players purchasing the expansion etc) remain unchanged.

The only information that you would need therefore to make an accurate prediction of whether this model would be successful, is the projected number of existing players Anet believes will purchase the expansion at $50 compared to those that would resubscribe at $15 – if the latter amount is greater then 3x the former – the suggested model is more beneficial to all parties.

JoshuaRAWR.4653:

The games free to play, you don’t pay a Sub fee each month like you do with FFXIV or WoW, you don’t pay for updates other than future expansions, even the living story was free if you logged in just ONCE in a 2 week window, i really can’t see how people are still complaining about this. If you think it’s too much, then don’t buy it, but considering how I’ve not had to pay a single cent for any update this game has given me for the past 3 years, the cost of the expansion is next to nothing for me. Especially when Blizzard put their expansions up for £49.99 while still requiring £9 a month.

And no, for anyone who’s going to say “I buy gems”, it doesn’t contribute as an argument because you don’t NEED to buy them.

I purchased the £80 version of the game, because i want to support Anet, but let’s do some math.

I’ve played the game since the 3 day headstart, i can’t be bothered to log in to the game to actually check how many days, it’s over 1000, but for the sake of this equation, let’s just go with 1000.

Now let’s figure out how much money each day has cost me compared to the £80 expansion pack i bought.

80 / 1000 = 0.08p per day.

Not even a penny. Not even a tenth of a penny. I can literally find more on the floor outside each day than this game has cost me.

Did you even bother to read the original post – there was no complaint, no moaning, just an idea for an alternative business model for discussion.

To clarify: I am not suggesting that at this point in the game’s life cycle adopting this model would be viable – it wouldn’t, as has been pointed out, it would cause to much of a kitten storm. But if this had been the model from launch, if you had known that when the first major expansion was released 2-3 years down the line from launch, a nominal subscription would be required to continue playing, I will ask the same question:

Have you or will you be buying the expansion:
If Yes: Would you prefer to pay $15 rather than $50?
If No: Would you have purchased at $15?

Additionally:
If this had been the model at launch, would the fact that your subscription would expire in 2-3 years (if you didn’t pay a further nominal payment for the expansion) have stopped you from purchasing the original game?

Phy.2913:

“To continue playing the game after HOT launches – existing players would need to pay a nominal expansion fee of around $15 or there account would be suspended.”

Ya, no. That would be a kitten storm to end all kitten storms.

The question I would have to you and all existing player who have replied is: Will you or have you already purchased the expansion? If so, my alternative model just saved you $35.

Of course changing the business model at this point would indeed cause a kitten storm, which is why it is a theoretical model for discussion.

So going forward, if an announcement was made now – that in future this model would be adopted and you would have a nominal ‘subscription’ to play every 2-3 years when a major expansion was added:

a) would you be happy?
b) do you think it would be good or bad for the long term health of the game both in terms of maintaining and attracting new players and financially for Anet?

From the pre-purchase community address under the heading business model clarification.

“We believe that to keep the game dynamic and vibrant with a constantly growing community, it should be as easy as possible for new players to get into Guild Wars 2. For Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns, we didn’t want the core game’s price to be a factor in a new player’s decision to begin playing Guild Wars 2.”

Whilst I fully agree with the above sentiment and the decision to give the core game ‘free’ with HOT for new players, IMHO the core games inclusion was a major contributing factor in setting the RRP at a point which many existing players feel is too high.

So, whilst for new players the core game’s price isn’t a factor in a new player’s decision to begin playing Guild Wars 2 for many existing players the price of the expansion is a factor in their decision to continue playing the game.

I’m sure that the vast majority would agree that having a game where all the content is available to all the players is a good thing and on that basis, I would like to suggest an alternative business model for discussion.

For potential new players there would be no change – all new copies of the core game would come with HOT at the announced price point.

To continue playing the game after HOT launches – existing players would need to pay a nominal expansion fee of around $15 or there account would be suspended.

Someone at Anet would obviously need to run the numbers on this, but at $15 – it’s likely that virtually every active player would ‘upgrade’ and many many more of those who haven’t played in a while would be prepared to pay this amount to try out the new content, than will purchase HOT at the current price point.

My guess is that, not only is this a much fairer model, but that it would generate more revenue than the current model.

The decision that all rewards and progress made with the revenant during the beta would not be saved was clearly communicated, so whilst IMHO there was no valid reason for doing this (all the free equipment could have been made soulbound and non salvageable or forgeable, if you have (a) chosen to play with the revenant in a standard pve zone instead of one of your normal characters or (b) tried you luck at forging all the free equipment to see if you could land a precursor, you did so knowing that the outcome would be.

If you feel that rewards should have been available, you had the option to do as I did and limit your participation in the beta to familiarizing yourself with the revenant skills in the pvp training area.

As I believe there will be no personal story for the Revenant, will the story rewards be combined into leveling rewards or will we lose out on all those items that you would normally acquire through leveling a character to 80 and playing all of the personal story?

Personally, I would be more concerned about why you suddenly go bald when you put a hat or helm on – This is by far the most obvious cosmetic feature that needs fixing.

I’ll start by saying that the idea to include the core game with the expansion is an excellent one and as such the pricing (for new players) is both reasonable and fair.

For existing players however there are a number of issues:

1) The price is too high for all the reasons stated in this and numerous other threads.

At £10 cheaper (base edition WITH a character slot) for existing players who pre order I’m pretty sure you wouldn’t have had a single complaint.

2) What exactly is the incentive to Pre order?

Back in the day, I used to work in retail when pre-ordering was first ‘invented’ – It allowed retailers to (a) ensure customers purchased the item in your store and (b) helped you guage how many physical copies to order prior to release. In the early days, merely guaranteeing that the customer would have a copy on the first day of release was sufficient, however as more stores starting competing for pre-order business, incentives became the norm – Money off, free posters or other promotional items etc.

So, the U-Turn on providing a character slot aside, it would seem that the only incentive on offer to pre-order is the privileged of doing beta testing and even then any loot or gold obtained is lost.

Withe the exception of offering the core game to new players, all in all I would say your marketing department has done a pretty disastrous job all round with this release and it has left a sour taste in the mouth of many players.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Crell.6401:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-guild-wars-2-revenant-and-stronghold-test-weekend/

Since this will be a test in the live-game world including WvW/PvP..

Will we be gaining currency and things for our live account? or will these still be ENTIRELY walled off characters?

You’ll have a beta character slot you can use to create a Revenant. When playing with a beta character: all progress, items, etc. you get will not be saved once the event is completed.

You can however use your existing characters to play Stronghold, and will continue to earn rewards/progress that is permanent on your account.

-CJ

Whilst I can understand the reasoning behind this for the last stress test beta, I find it more than a little unfair that any loot and gold obtained whilst playing the revenant this weekend can’t be saved into the account wallet or transferred into the account bank. WvW weapons and Armour cannot be salvaged or forged, so if the ‘free’ equipment is the issue. simply tag it as such and it becomes useless for anything other then the purpose intended.

What exactly is the reasoning behind this decision? You are asking players who have pre-ordered the game (and therebye by default are most likely your most loyal customers) to test the game for a weekend for you AND foregoe any loot they might obtain if they had played one of their normal characters instead – this really makes no sense to me.

Bravo. The ability to zoom further out and probably most importantly the collision detection changes will make many parts of the game much more enjoyable.

Maybe their is hope that some work will also happen to the abysmal targeting system?

I completely agree that anything that stops players quitting matches is a good thing but curiously enough a game earlier didn’t award me a class win after I thought I had volunteered from the 2v4 losing team so perhaps it has been fixed.

What would be nice would be some comment by a Dev on their take on the state of Customs and whether they intend to do anything about it – Sadly though, despite a few being quite active in the pvp forum – they only seem willing to participate in discussions about matchmaking formulas for un-ranked and ranked or upcoming balance changes.

Nope never had the commentator speak French before

As for spawning in the wrong base, yes it has happened to me on numerous occasions since the December patch.

I would beg to differ.

In the absence of any ‘official’ figures, I would stick by my estimate that the total number of matches completed in any 24 hour period is around 80% custom arenas 15% unranked and 5% Ranked.

On your second point – Any player new to PvP is going to start in custom arenas, so their chances of finding a game that might actually encourage them to participate further, are very slim.

Aside from the fact that all they are likely to experience is the ‘autobalance wars’ you correctly describe – where are the tutorials? why isn’t there at least some effort being made to direct players into matches against opponents of similar experience and skill?

IMHO, All of the problems in unranked and Ranked would be alleviated if efforts were made to build larger playerbase.

Narkodx.1472:

You need to realize there is a LARGE amount of people participating in “pvp” who actually have no interest in PvP

These are the same players who go on champ trains and karma trains – They are interested in one thing and one thing only EASY REWARDS

It is a necessary evil – let them play with each other in practice mode

I Agree – however that LARGE amount of people probably accounts for around 80% – 90% of the PvP Playerbase and they are participating solely in Custom arenas to get their EASY daily Rewards.

The problem is that what they get to ‘play’ is not an enjoyable balanced or fair PvP experience that might encourage them to come back learn, and there bye increase the VERY SMALL overall active PvP playerbase.

Why is PvP being developed from the top down? All the resources and efforts put into balance and matchmaking are being done for those VERY SMALL number of players taking part in unranked and ranked matches. Is it any wonder that the PvP playerbase is so small when the entry point for most players is being totally ignored and is a complete mess?

Instead of trying to endlessly tweak formulas to create fair matches for the very few, A little thought should be given to fixing the mode that the MANY play.

Tom Gore.4035:

I don’t have a complete solution, but I would suggest one change to alleviate a LOT of the problems.

Just change the “Profession Winner” daily to “Profession Participater”. As long as you play the whole match you get credit, win or lose. If you drop out to spectate even for a second mid-match, you don’t get it. If you don’t join the match within the first minute, you don’t get it.

A very sensible idea. Also if rank points are going to be awarded then the win bonus needs to be removed.

Zaxares.5419:

Actually, you’re mistaken about the Autobalance thing. If you are the player to get autobalanced, you will automatically get a win credit + the winning team’s bonus, regardless of whether or not you volunteered. (I think a lot of players do not realise this, hence why they quit or go into Spectate after getting Autobalanced. They shouldn’t. It’s a pure win-win situation for you if you get autobalanced, unless you absolutely hate being on the “losing” team regardless.)

In contrast, volunteering for Autobalance will give you the 25 bonus rank points at the end of the match, but unless you were actually the person who got transferred over, you are not automatically entitled to the winner’s bonus at the end.

For example, say that Blue team is leading 100 – 50. There are 4 people on Blue team, 3 people on Red. One player ragequits from Red, leaving it 4-2.

Both Player A and Player B on Blue volunteer for Autobalance. Player A volunteered first and gets transferred over. Both Player A and Player B will get the 25 Autobalance bonus rank points at the end of the match.

Now, if Blue continues to lead and ends up winning, Player A will get the full winner’s payout because he got autobalanced. (Player B also gets the full payout because he was still on Blue, which won.)

BUT… If Red made a comeback and ended up winning (I’ve seen this happen many times, especially if the person who got autobalanced was actually the skilled player that was carrying the winning team), Player A would get the full payout because he’s on the winning team (AND was autobalanced), but Player B, still on Blue, only gets the loser’s payout because he wasn’t actually autobalanced over, despite getting the 25 rank point bonus.

Sorry to have to disagree – I assume that this is how it is supposed to work but this hasn’t been the case since the patch in December.

On numerous occasions recently, I have been autobalanced out to the losing team (after forgetting to press the volunteer button) and it does not count towards the daily ‘class win’. If you volunteer however, regardless of what team you are on – you get the class win.

At the moment you can be on the team with 2 players V 4 when autobalance occurs and if you volunteer to join your own losing team you get the win credit regardless of the end result. Please do go try and you will see I am correct.

I have no idea whether this is intentional or not.

I think we all agree on what the problem is – unfortunately those in charge of the game don’t seem to see it as a problem at all.

I completely agree that players will take the path of least resistance to their goals and as an aside (and an example of how broken/ignored custom arenas are) for some time now, the easiest way to register a ‘win’ in customs is to wait for an autobalance to occur and volunteer. It doesn’t matter what side you are on, if you click the volunteer button, you get the win reward and the volunteer bonus – win or lose. If however you are on the ‘winning’ team when an autobalance occurs and instead of volunteering you get kicked to the other team (which goes on to lose) you get nothing.

Someone needs to realize that custom arenas are where the vast majority of players are experiencing PvP and that sorting them out so that players are having a fair and enjoyable experience ultimately benefits everyone, as more of them are likely to actually start ‘playing’, learn and become better players.

Zaxares.5419:

Again, all that would do is push the Daily hunters/reward track grinders into Unranked/Ranked. What then? It’s not like you can kick them out; players have a right to play PvP, no matter how bad they are. You’re then stuck with bitter, angry PvP’ers who say these people shouldn’t be in Unranked/Ranked and dragging their matches down, and bitter, angry PvE’ers who say it’s ANet’s fault for taking away the place they could farm this stuff without bothering the PvP’ers and/or locking stuff behind RNG in PvE to the point where doing PvP is the only way to overcome it. Toxicity levels go up, verbal abuse reports probably also go up, and nobody’s happy.

It’s not about how bad the PvE’ers are it’s about how bad custom arenas are. If any of the Dev’s actually took the time to spend an hour or two looking at the matches there they would see that the PvE’ers don’t actually play very much, they spend the majority of the time sitting in the queue waiting for their chance to join when autobalance kicks in and they can get into the team with the most players and the huge lead – they wouldn’t be able to do that in unranked.

I have a much simpler solution:

Remove dailies and track rewards from custom arenas.

Ayrilana.1396:

florence.1674:

The whole map’s mechanics are based on large zergs. If you look at all the other maps in Gw2, the future of the Silverwastes is a very bleak one.

Good luck to future players who come in and want to start doing Silverwastes content in the future.

Define large zerg. All of the bosses can be killed with a single party so that’s around 20 players. The same number and hold and defend the bases.

The problem is logging in and finding a map with 20 active players in it without having to stand around or go AFK for half an hour.

Whilst I understand the the Devs want players to have to play through unlocking the breach, the current implementation of using the megaserver system to dump you into an empty map with minimal or no pact progress everytime is becoming somewhat intolerable.

Inevitably many players simply want to take part in the breach, so they go AFK and wait for the map (and progress bar) to start filling up. Unfortunately that leaves so few players actually taking part in the events that completing them becomes impossible and eventually everyone logs off restarts – rinse and repeat.

When you do finally get into a map that is making progress, should you be unlucky enough to disconnect, assuming you took the precaution of joining a party, chances are you will get a map full error when you try to rejoin after being dumped back into an empty map.

Given the number of Modrem parts required for the various collections and the RNG associated with collecting them, this isn’t a problem that is going to go away soon.

I’m not sure what if I can offer a solution is if the devs insist on forcing players to play through to the breach but can we at least have a grace period (10 mins or so?) where if we disconnect or need to swap characters for a few minutes, we are placed back into the same map we were in when we reconnect?

Hidori.3472:

short answer: nope

This is not correct – you get a headpiece chest every time you complete it with a different character.

Jeffrey Vaughn.1793:

We’re continuing to experiment with improving the way cutscenes work. I won’t go into details, since I don’t want to say “We’re trying out X” or I’ll get asked after every update “What happened to X?”

What about designing the encounters from the start, so that dialogue and cut scenes appear at the Beginning and end of each story ‘element’ and take place in their own instance – the main ‘combat’ elements could then be separated and when players replay for achievements they can ignore the ‘story/dialogue’ instances if they choose.

For example: The Summit which was one of the most time consuming to replay could be split as follows.

Instance 1 – Chat to everyone/Witness the procession/etc initial attack on delegates.
Ends when delegates leave the chamber.

Instance 2- Main Dragon fight

Instance 3 – Follow up dialogue cut-scene and chat.

By splitting in this way, no additional work needs to be done to allow players to enjoy replaying the relevant part of the mission and the main story elements are left intact.

In addition to wasting players time, perhaps the developers might also like to consider the environmental damage they are doing.

If 500,000 players attempt each living story achievement an average of 5 times before completing it and have to sit through 2 minutes of cut scenes and dialogue each time, that is 2.5 million minutes or 83,333 hours.

Assuming each of their computers are using 250Watts – That is a total of just over 20,000 KW/H for every completed achievement.

I was hoping that this would be introduced this patch as threads appear every LS release on the subject.

I think practicality every player would appreciate it if the replay mode for achievements was a condensed version of the ‘main story’ that threw you straight into the action.

Chaith.8256:

There is something that nobody in this thread is really taking into account by suggesting a 6th player for either team whether as a Commander, or a simple backup sub for leavers.

And that is the player experience of the 6th guy. The player experience for that guy will be awful. Arenanet will never compromise on fun like that, and instead opt for.. the numerous 4v5 prevention methods already announced? This subject is poorly timed, lol. Wait 2-3 days.

Point 6 of my original post already addresses this:

5) In a game with no leavers or disconnects, each time a player dies, they take over the commander role for a minimum of 60 seconds – thereby ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to take an active part in the game.

The only scenario where the 6th guy remains as the commander for the whole game is if no one on his team dies, which is very unlikely.

Chaith.8256:

Unfortunately that means that stealth play openers and basically every strategy would be immediately squealed on by a spectator. Nope.

You are correct – As I indicated it would add a new element to gameplay.

Zethyrius.8692:

Daroon.1736:

5) In a game with no leavers or disconnects, each time a player dies, they take over the commander role for a minimum of 60 seconds – thereby ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to take an active part in the game.

Team comp?

Any 5 man party entering a game team can choose to play the game with 5 members only.

I don’t think I have seen this idea discussed before so I’ll throw it out for discussion.

Whilst it would not 100% ensure that a 4v5 situation never occurs – it would make it a very rare event, tries to overcome the issues associated with other solutions suggested and potentially adds a completely new element to competitive play.

1) Prior to the start of a match 6 players must be present on each team.
2) Again prior to the start of the match, one player either volunteers or is nominated by the team to be the initial “commander”
3) Once nominated to the commander role – that player enters ‘spectator’ mode and once the game commences, they are able to issue commands/information on the state of the play via a chat panel to the rest of their team.
4) In the event of a disconnect or a leaver – the current commander is immediately transported to the base to begin play and 5v5 is maintained with one team having only the advantage of having a commander
5) In a game with no leavers or disconnects, each time a player dies, they take over the commander role for a minimum of 60 seconds – thereby ensuring that everyone has an opportunity to take an active part in the game.

Evan Lesh.3295:

‘Hotjoin’ is custom arenas. Some are player owned, some we own. ‘Practice’ is the same as ‘Play Now’ and is still ‘hotjoin’.

Thanks for the clarification.

As you managed to post a reply within a couple of hours, I presume you didn’t try to find a match with even numbers on each side.

Do you not consider my point that the number of players (as a percentage of those playing and spvp) playing hotjoin; or unranked matches as they will be called, vastly outnumbers those playing in ranked arenas and the only way to increase the numbers playing spvp for anything other than dailies or reward tracks is to fix the problems in the ‘practice’ arenas so that players are actually able to experience something that is about competitive play in a ‘fair’ environment and not just making sure you are on the team with the numeric advantage?

Evan Lesh.3295:

There are no functional changes to custom arenas. However all match logic has be re-written from scratch, so any changes we do want to make will be easy.

Sorry but I’m slightly confused by this.

Are we talking about the same thing? Aren’t custom arenas ones you set up through tokens purchased with gold? I’m talking about the Hotjoin which will presumably fall into the ‘practice’ type after the changes – will ‘practice’ and ‘unranked’ arenas still award rank points and count towards pvp track rewards – If so nothing is going to be solved.

Please try randomly try logging in to a hotjoin match using the play now button and see how many times you have to click ‘play now’ before you find a match that is either in progress, or starts with the same number of players on each side.

If by chance you do find one, try playing and see how long into the game you get before someone leaves and you go into an autobalance freefall.

Surely this is where you need to start getting this aspect of the game right, at the bottom, where new players start.

Are any of the Dec 2nd changes going to apply to Hotjoin?

It would seem to me that one of the main reasons why the vast majority of the player base never ‘graduates’ to ranked matches, is the terrible experience they have had in hotjoin.

So long as dailies and PvP track rewards can be completed in hotjoin and the rewards for winning are greater – the current ‘meta’ of autobalance every 2 minutes will continue.

Possible solutions:
Award additional rank points every 5 or 10 seconds to the members of a team with fewer players.
Loss of rank points for leaving a game

CMM.6712:

Daroon.1736:

The known bug is that the vortex’s seem to stop spawning or spawn in the walls making it impossible to finish – still, look on the bright side we’ve just had a patch where ‘Some improperly placed shadows were removed from terrain.’ so I’m sure they’ll get round to sorting this too eventually.

Oh it’s not impossible it just takes 3 hours and 15 minutes of naked fighting to kill it with a rifle, you ask how I know this?

I know it is very frustrating but wouldn’t it have been quicker to restart the instance? and at least after the last patch you won’t be having to deal with those pesky improperly placed shadows

The known bug is that the vortex’s seem to stop spawning or spawn in the walls making it impossible to finish – still, look on the bright side we’ve just had a patch where ‘Some improperly placed shadows were removed from terrain.’ so I’m sure they’ll get round to sorting this too eventually.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Sure, when you get into an instance where someone wants to cheat via an exploit, or where people only care about getting it over with as quickly as possible for the bags, then it’s no fun. However, if you get into a group with people that want to play it in the spirit it was meant to be played, it’s a lot of fun. It’s not Anets fault that people are lazy kittens.

It is Anets fault though, that you can’t group together with Guildies or friends and create your own instance in which to play.

Gaile Gray.6029:

I always figured the NPCs were already staying over a bit, since they don’t depart until November 4th. That’s a +4 to Halloween, giving us a bit of extra time to complete our transactions. As much as I love Halloween, I think part of its appeal is the limited time that the whole event, including the NPC crew, is around.

Basically, having a bunch of NPCs with jack-o-lanterns and candy corns over their heads in April or July might be a little odd.

I agree and thank you for the clarification – I’m sure however that you have dealt with enough of these events to know that even when a clear notification that a vendor is departing has been made on the forums, some players will still complain – after all, not every player does (or IMHO, should be forced to) read forums.

Could I suggest that a solution going forward, would be to have the vendors themselves announcing their departure in game? A few lines of spoken dialogue activated a few days before they depart, informing players that they will be moving on soon would not only add an element of immersion but negate the need for out of game announcements and the inevitable spate of ‘Is vendor X staying/going’ posts that occur near the end of every event.

zenleto.6179:

Astral Projections.7320:

Good question. I’d like to continue trading candy corn for cobs for later use throughout the year if nothing else.

I’m pretty sure Sonder the Seller has been doing candy corn cobs during the year.

I realise that he is permanent – it’s the other one I am referring to.

Even when announcements are made beforehand, lots of players still get upset when event vendors vanish and on this occasion it would appear no information has been passed on to players thus far.

I haven’t seen an announcement on this, so if anyone else has a post would be appreciated.

If no announcement has been made, perhaps a Dev would like to clarify as I’m sure if he vanishes tomorrow without notification, lots of players will be unhappy.

They need to be able to create costumes that don’t either make my character bald or completely cover their head.