Guild Wars 2

Hello,

So my question is simple. Do you find Gw2’s Combat interesting to play? Why or Why not?

Also do you find the combat interesting to watch? Why or why not?

I just feel for a game that is trying to become esport material, we have very low twitch views for the “hardcore” pvp side of it. I’d love to see what people think of the combat on the forums to maybe discuss and brainstorm ways to make it more interesting and possible increase entertainment value while watching it.

I have my own opinion that Ill put in a reply.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

snip

Hi Illconceived,

I really like a sense of personal progression to through challenge and we will be continuing to move in this direction.

Chris

So in my orignal post I really wanted to get across that the reason the original currencies didn’t hold up in terms of horizontal progression was because they were so easy to get and didn’t feel as satsifying. I feel like if you put in more things that challenge the players ability to play the class it will help the game out in the long run. The community and the whole fights with the queens gauntlent was the most fun I had in this game since release. Players helped me and I them. We talked strategies, discuss classes strong points and how to use them. Now you may be saying the forums blew up with complains about how hard it was. This is true, it was hard. However, I think a big issue with it was that it was on a time limit. Players only 2 weeks to do and they felt rushed. If you put something of that difficulty level back in the game and make it perm content players can work for I think it will do the game a great good.

ColinJohanson.2394:

A question to help direct the discussion a bit:

What are some of your favorite progression systems of all time in others? Be they horizontal, or vertical, just which ones really got you excited and were fun for you to continue to progress in?

For me, Final Fantasy Tactics is one I loved, where I was able to continue to unlock new jobs and advanced professions for my characters, as well as level up their abilities within those professions. It remains one of my all time favorite games, and one of my favorite systems of progression in any game. I’m also pretty darn fond of that Guild Wars game and skill collection.

Guild Wars 1 Skill Collection- Just loved being awarded for actually killing a hard boss (most of the time I solo’d them).

Guild Wars 1 campaign tokens- I always felt the gw1 story missions were hard. Not insanely hard, but they were a lot harder than Gw2. As a result of this when I received those tokens at the end it felt very regarding for me. In gw2 not only is it easy, but you can also just buy the pact weapon skins on the TP.

TESO- you unlock entire skill tress with passives and actives by doing certain things in game. Joining a fighters guild/mages guild, becoming a vamp, werewolf, etc. It is not to surprise most beta testers are saying that this games strongest point is the skill system.

Home/Land customization- Mods on skyrim that allow you to build your own home, Morrowind’s building your own home, Guild wars 1 guild hall customization. With the Skyrim and Morrowind example, NPCs were required to make the places feel alive. If they were empty they were not as fun building and interacting with. Guild wars 1 I liked because not only did you have an entire guild that could check out your progress on upgrading the hall, but you could also get people to come see it and guest inside of it. You could also guest inside others.

Fallout 3/New Vegas/Elder Scrolls- Faction standing. I always like the idea that there was progression in NPCs interactions with you. Sometimes you could bypass a lot of time by getting correct traits, other times you could gain special access to areas at NCR camps if you were in the NCR, but joining the NCR meant that you made enemies too. You’d also get a lot of secondary quest and sidequest lines you could do, however joining a faction sometimes meant you couldn’t do other factions sidequest. It really helped the replaybility of it. Now you have this somewhat with Orders, but it just doesn’t feel as important. I absolutely love the secret base in lornars pass for order of whispers members. I’d love to see this more with all organizations with the pact.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

TheDaiBish.9735:

Felbryn.5462:

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The two main areas for discussion will be Horizontal and Vertical progression, however please understand that the commentary and ideation we are really looking for regarding vertical is around its accessibility in game.

I’m not sure I understand this bit; could you clarify?

Basically:

• How easy it is to attain the Ascended gear?
• Is the balance of acquisition of Ascended out of whack between different game-modes (i.e. Easier in PvE than WvW, easier in the open world than it’s intended game mode [Fractals])?

Couldn’t have said it better myself DaiBish. Thanks.

Chris

In terms of collection in WvW and PvE I think its in a pretty good position. However, obtaining in different routes does take a bit longer I felt. I also understand why. This game is very easy in most parts of it. If you increased the drop rate the item would lose its significance because it would be too easy to get. So I feel like you need to increase the difficulty in more ascended gaining areas while also increasing the drop rate. I don’t want to have to do a really hard event 100 times to get one ascended piece.

Part 3:
There’s a lot of other games that have really good horizontal progression. One of which is Skyrim. Some may not agree, however since the game scales to your level for the most part is is very much like horizontal progression. Look at the skill system. There is no just skill point you get each level. In order to unlock skills you actually have to find the in the world. Some require you to do special actions such as joining a faction or doing a quest.

Look a Guild Wars 1. To get a new skill not only did you have to be a certain point in the story, but also needed to know how to kill him. Most bosses had specific strategies.

Most popular RPGs in the world never had a skill system that was just level up and you get a point for a new skill. They usually had another gate.

Also if WvWers (all skills should be auto unlocked for spvpers) want, they can just buy skills with a combination of badges of honor and skill points.

Right now the endgame for horizontal progression of karma/gold/skillpoints/achievements is getting old fast. I’m seeing more people get burnt out faster. You either need to find drains for the karma/gold/skillpoints or split them up so its not so easily obtained to make them more meaningful.

Currently the game has more the enough horizontal progression dealing with crafting and collection. It has moderate to good horizontal progression for dungeon gear looks and WvW gear looks. Now its time to start introducing some new ways of horizontal progression.

Part 2:
So that gives the players some great horizontal progression that awards player skill in the game and the zone expansion offers great ways for the developers to continually expand this and make zones important to players. You’d keep the current levels of progression so that crafters and what not are still able to get these gears.
Next up horizontal progression with skill points. Since skill points are so easy to come by, the time it takes to get a new skill as a endgame player is so short that it doesnt’ properly take up the reigns of a lack of a vertical progression. One way you can alleviate this flaw is to gate these skills behind actions. They don’t have to be insanely hard task like the above suggestion of the bosses/liadri concealing darkness tough. Though should challenge the player to a certain extent. Now WvWers will still want some way that they can easily gain these so you can lock the skill behind maybe player kills or badges of honor. You’d keep the 25 cost for skillpoints, but players wont be able to purchase these unless they do the specified action. An example in PvE would b rescuing a group of tengu from an incoming destroyer force. In reward they will reward you knowledge of their tribes culture and you can then purchase the new skill. This should properly take up the reigns that the signet of capture left in Guild wars 1.
The final progression that they need to add is with Guilds. There just isn’t enough progression for guilds aside form the influence, and even then it is not a lasting form of progression to keep endgames sastified. My suggestion is to put in “guild structures” in each map. Two max. These strucutures would have a public area and a guild area that leaders of the guild can decide to open to the public or not. In these guilds would be special buffs, the armor/weapon skin zone vendors would be in the public area. There are some other vendors and services that required the zone they’re located in to be stabilized. Have a stabilized region not only unlocks certain services in the guild structure, but they also give guild wide buffs. Now each guild structure is in one stabilization zone. So zones are split into two areas. When a event is completed in this area, the zone becomes stabilized. It degrades over time. Lets say there are three “levels” of stabilization. It would take about 1 hour-2 hours for an area to become unstabilized one level. For a guild to gain access to a guild structure, they must meet the requirements of a certain guild influence level. As the zones level increases, more influence is required since in the harder 80 zones more people are required to do events and it is tougher. Influence would also get a passive drain to help get rid of in active guilds. This would guilds seem more important for players aside from being just a big LFG system.
Those are atleast my ideas of a perfect Guild Wars 1. Those are my opinions, but just right now I feel like this game’s endgame is way too heavily focused around crafting. Crafting in general (including the mystic forge route) is just such a huge chunk of progression. It wasn’t what sold me on guild wars 2. Guild wars 1 did have its progression routes that took lots of gathering of rare materials (similar to the crafting/MF in gw2), however its routes of progression for skills and items that didn’t involve grinding (such as completing a story campaign) awarded you instantly. These rewards were gated behind actions that were hard enough that they were satisfying to earn and they weren’t just easily by passed with gold. At this point I"d take any form of progression that required me to think a little and wasn’t just a crafting simulator.

Part 1:
Anet had original designed the game to be heavy on the horizontal aspect with the original routes of gold, karma, skillpoints, and dungeon tokens. They said they introduced the ascended gear because players had gotten exotics way too quickly and they needed to put something in for the to work towards.
First lets discuss why the original currencies failed.
For starters the game is ridiculously easy to earn these currencies. They are ridiculously easy to farm to. So they dont challenge the players at all. I feel that since they are not challenging and they are earned everywhere players do not feel as satisfied when the earn them. This combined with the fact that there is no good drains except for crafting means that players can easily obtain stockpiles of them causing future content that involves them be meaningless.
On the concept of dungeon tokens, I feel one of the main reasons most of these aren’t satisfying is because theres also an exploit or a path thats insanely easy to do and people just farm that. In my years of playing MMOs I find that players feel most rewarded when they’re given something that shows they’re better or more dedicated at the game then other people. So with these dungeons if there is even one path that is “farmable” it ruins the entire dungeon sets image.
Now lets look at why current outlets of progression aren’t living up to what the game is supposed to be.
Guild Wars 2 was sold on NOT being a grind. In a dev post from a long time ago they said it themselves that Gw1 rewarded players on collection, and they didn’t want to do that. Despite this, they did. Ascended gear is a great example. Many will say that there are alternatives route to gain ascended gear besides gathering a bunch of materials and crafting them. However, thanks to RNG this is still a grind. These alternate routes of earning them are usually insanely easy. As a result they have to make the drop rates insanely low. SO you’re still grinding for about the same amount of time, just this time instead of grinding for different mats you’re just doing the same thing over and over again. So in other words Guild Wars 2 progression is still heavily gated by collection and it is even worse than Guild Wars 1. This is also the most popular form of progression because the long grinding requirements make it more unique and hence more “impressive” in some peoples eyes. However, there are still a good amount of people who think those don’t mean anything. My guild is heavy on the PvE and WvW side and I read and hear about people talking about how a player is very bad at the game despite having a legendary of ascended weapon.
Finally lets talk about methods of fixing it.
For starters the concept of tokens. These are good routes if done route. Dungeons did not do this right. Why you may ask? Not only does it take one path to destroy it, but they are still grindy to the point that when someone finally gets the gear they want from that particular dungeon they are burnt out on it. So we need to find a way to use the concept of tokens in a manner that doesn’t cause players to be burnt out on it. My suggestion on this is map specific armors and weapon skins. So say I wanted a full armor set from a map. They would take around 150 total tokens. Each event in the map would award players 10 tokens. Jumping puzzles 12, mini dungeons 15. World bosses would award 25. This means I dont have to spend a bajilion hours to earn one piece of gear.
Following this I would start to involve more difficult bosses to areas of the map that aren’t obvious. They are not denoted by a event and they are not just timed spawns. They require you to do actions across the entire map to spawn them. They have a good chance to drop specific weapons and armor pieces. However, to do the pre event actions to spawn them you need to spend 50 tokens gained from the above suggestion to gain a special one hour buff that goes away on death and is required to do the pre events. Now these bosses will be hard, as in lidari concealing darkness hard. They will be instanced to 1 player. For each additonal player it gets harder, but the drop chance increases. This means that on a solo level it is still difficult enough to be impressive. The drop rate needs to be like this. If I’m doing it by myself and I kill this boss 5 times I should have gotten one times of his unique drops. One or event two of these bosses should exist in each zone.
The items from the token vendor would be dependent on the zone level. You can not earn tokens till you’re level 70. Level 40 zones and under would be rares. 50-70 zones would be exotics but level 65. 70+ zones would be level 80 exotics. The items from the really hard boss would be ascended with unique looks too.

Darnis.4056:

I think they tried with these new heals..

I actually find the new mesmer heal to be quite interesting for my shatter build… makes for quite a lot of time thinking about every move I make..

I thought the same thing with the new heals. Problem is that you can’t just include that concept with one skill in the meta. You have to change a Maori of them.

@Rezz

Thats what I want to see what in this game is combat more similar to Gw1 because it cultivated such an amazing competitive atmosphere in a MMO. They had skill punishment because of CDs and mana. They had more single target skills and not as many AoEs. The AI builds required a lot of micromanaging and made them interesting to watch and play. Gw2 combat is fun, I just don’t think it cultivates a competitive atmosphere as well as the other MMOs in the market.

Hey,

So first let me say that the combat in the game is fun. Don’t get me wrong, it has a level of enjoyment. However, I dont think it really provides a whole lot of competitive because there is a huge lack of active play for combat. Personally I find this makes the game uninteresting to watch and a bit old to play/boring to play.

I was wondering what everyone thought about the matter and the games combat in terms of providing a suitable environment for competitive gameplay.

So this is my personal opinion on the matter and what I think is holding back this games active play.

1. No real skill punishment. Lack of resource, lack of CD are big play skills (many weapon skills), and lack of casting times.

2. Lots of Passives. Theres a lot of auto activat skills or boon application that just happens passively. Dodge get vigor, equip kit get vigor, get a bleed get regen, etc.

3. Rise of AI. Starting to see AI become prominent and popular.

4. AoEs, AoEs everywhere. Seems like everything is AoE.

5. Defensive setup. Main defensive skills are around using blocks, invuranbilities, stealths, and dodges. Problem is that most of these are easily spammed and don’t really have a counter.

Those are just my gripes for the combat system.

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Defiant Stance: http://strawpoll.me/845913

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Skelk Venom: http://strawpoll.me/845904

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Water Spirit: http://strawpoll.me/845898

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Signet of Vamprisim: http://strawpoll.me/845891

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Signet of Ether: http://strawpoll.me/845883

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.
The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.
Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Litany of Wrath: http://strawpoll.me/845879

Hey guys,
This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.

The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.

Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

Arcane Brilliance: http://strawpoll.me/845870

Hey guys,

This is a poll to get your first impression of your new heal skill. This is not talking about any of the other balance changes, but just what you think of the heal skill in terms of how viable it is. In other words how “good” it is.

The vote will be on a scale from 1 to 5. 1 being the skill is horrific and bad, 5 being the skill is amazing.

Thank you so much for you time and please remember that this is only first impressions. It may take awhile for a build to be formed with it that really shines.

AED Skill: http://strawpoll.me/845838

Toolbelt Skill: http://strawpoll.me/845845

For me esports doesn’t just mean MLG or no. In my eyes sports were created for the sake of entertainment and enjoyment. This means if a lot of people watch a video game, regardless if its in a MLG setting, and this game involves some form of PvP it is esports. While WoW is not MLG, it does bring in quite a lot of views PvP wise. Therefore it is doing pretty well as an esport.

Results!

Fractured: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/14wzIfQ0rbVMcwoT7o7HWKQc_Pr4u7WCWSse9O2PweKg/viewanalytics

Nightmare Within: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1_qFF7IOwyrH7Kp9eV_-go6JhhOFXc1vvuTjRdff4viQ/viewanalytics#start=publishanalytics

Thank you to all those that responded, it was an amazing turn out! Please stay turned for the next upcoming poll (probably next week).

Something you need to realize with this game is how they created the skills. They went kind of casual heavy. What I mean is that they have a lot of AoEs, Condition/Burst spam, and passives. Killshot is one of the few skills that I think is made pretty well. Reason being is that it has a very obvious animation call and you can’t spam it. Unlike the thief backstab that can be cast a lot quicker, you can’t see, and does the same amount of damage.

I keep saying this, but if they reduce screen clutter from combat animations and reduce AoEs, skills like this wont be nearly as complained about.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Darnis.4056:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Please send me this one line of code. I haven’t found it myself yet, so this would greatly reduce my workload!

In seriousness though, what you saw was not dueling. We have to ability to change our teams using cheats, which would cause a free-for-all in the lobby. What you really want is only two players hostile towards each other, which is much more complicated that using teams.

Can you do this instead? this sounds much much better Free for all in lobby sounds like the best time Ever, put it on a timer like every 15 minutes o_O

Maybe there can be a free for all pit you can jump into People trying to duel would get angry if other’s jumped in though.

Free for all pit like in the old days of WoW would be a great start.

Here are some ideas for locations.

1. Stoneguard Waypoint http://i.imgur.com/gMOO8moh.jpg

2. Section in the Crown Pavalion http://i.imgur.com/wqvOtmZh.jpg

3. The Bane http://i.imgur.com/THcrSBKh.jpg

4. Snowblind Peaks. http://i.imgur.com/fVlSniTh.jpg

I mean a big step they should do is fix the combat. Sure it may be fun, but from a compettive stand point it is soo badd. THey really dropped the ball on this in an attempt to make PvE more appealing to casuals. I mean this is by far some of the worst combat I’ve seen in a pvp game that wants to be “esports”. It doesn’t promote player skill/active player nearly enough to be interesting to play or interesting to watch.

1. AoEs. By the six everything is a dam AoE. Really reduces the overall skill required to do anything

2. No Roles. This means there isn’t a whole lot of teamwork. All teamwork that happens in this game is primary passive play. Not directly doing anything for each other ,they just automatically do it. I thought combo fields would take over this problem. Nope. You guys made the combo fields effects not matter that much and they’re just spammed none stop.

3. No skill punishment. If its an skill you activate, people are probably spamming it. Conditions, anytype of AoE, dodges, defensive skills.

4. Animations. This combined with no skill punishment the overall gameplay from a watchers perspective becomes a confusing mess of what appears to be players just mashing buttons randomly. On top of this you make the entire counter play to some skills is spotting their animations. That sure seems like a good thing to do when you have a midget class and enough animations on your screen that it is easily mistaken for a downtown nightclub.

5. No roles means that each class is trying to achieve the same thing. This is insanely boring. Only exception to this are bunkers and that is even a more boring role to watch. Watch as I run in circles around a point doing none stop CC, damage negators, and just staying alive. They just spam that crap.

6. AIs. A game about watching models and animations, it sure is easy to spot what an asuran is doing in a teamfight when there are 15 models on my screen and a ton of animations.

Like honestly with this whole new reward system I think the population may go up for like 2 weeks or till the next big LS patch. Your mechanics and game mode just…suck for pvp. The only way you’ll be able to get people back into spvp with the current mechanics is to start offering unique skins.

clint.5681:

GW2 isnt really an complex game and all the classes are really kinda easy to pick up and play well provided you know how to play the game. Yea some are a little easier but at the end of the day its all very simple.

This times ten. Love people who just bash one class. Engineer probably has the largest APM required. That being said its still not insanely hard, especially with this game. Since the game was released the game has been spam heavy thanks to lack of proper skill punishment. AoEs/Bursts/Condis. The spammy trinity.

AlphaNeonic.1925:

• Add new skills and let us use signet of capture. Put those skills on champs and bosses all over the world.

• Each zone has a unique skin that can randomly drop. Chance of drop goes up with each event you do in that zone.

• All mobs drop level 80 mats and gear. Players now have the ability to “break down” higher tier mats to lower ones the same way we can promote lower ones to higher.

• Every zone has a unique zone wide meta event that can happen, with unique rewards.

These are all ideas i’d love to see. I think they should keep the crafting nodes for the lower tier mats, but I’d agree with the rest. Also said previously in the thread, if you downlevel everyone to the full extent drop rates need to go up. I also agree with this. I have 2,000+ hours of gameplay and the total amount of money I’ve made from getting exotics from drops is about 23g (6 exotics). Materials Have been a lot better since release thanks to champ bags.

Also, as said previously they’ve been putting too much horizontal progression in the game via the gem shop. So far thats been work alright, but people are starting to get bored. We need more things to do endgane and more endgame to do with each LS. The LS has been working alright so far, but its slowly turing less into about making the world feel living and a story and more into open your achievement panel and see what oyu need to do to get that one mini or that one piece of armor.

Locuz.2651:

Main priority should be to create a good competetive pvp mode. Something that is super intuitive, easy to get in to but hard to master.

The entire MOBA trend shows exactly what designing a good pvp mode can do for your game.

They’ve talked about some ideas concerning the lord and that MOBA design. One example was making the lord go up over time in terms of its points so that even if someone is off by 200 points, they can still make it if they can kill their lord.

Another suggestion I thought up is maybe making respawn times last longer as the game goes on so that dieing has a much larger punishment. Similar to what they do in MOBAs when the respawn rate I think is decided by your level. I mean imagine being off by 100 points, you win a teamfight, boom you are now back into a close game because the team you just killed is waiting to respawn. This kind of on your edge of your seat instances could really help improve the watchability of this game.

I mean I just don’t see the current reward system and skill reward system working well for another year unless they add in some new drains for them. I really don’t. My question to the people not wanting to have to do something else aside from opening a menu and clicking buy with skill point, have you played the game for a year straight? None stop as in no 2 week+ long breaks. Most people I know who didn’t quit the game or took breaks, they have an over abundance of the current rewards and are starting to get bored. They don’t feel like they have anything else to do in the game, no more progression. Most have taken to WvW and most don’t care too much about the LS. Anet needs to add in a more depth horizontal progression. If they continue to go on the current path they’re going to begin losing the older players because when they introduce new skills it wont lengthen or make the game any more interesting for them. It will only benefit new players and from what I’ve seen in the open world zones, we aren’t getting a huge influx of new players.

I think the deciding year for this game will be spring of 2014. We got 2 big name MMOs being released. Depending on this game’s population handles it will decide if their current system is acceptable or not.

For me though I dont think it does. You’re right though, I am imposing my idea of fun and so are you. Main reason I’m being so imposing is because of what I see in the poll results, what I see when I talk to players in game, what I see and how people reacted to the anti toxin skill, and finally the public opinion of the WvW reward chest.

Ok so here is why I created this thread. People don’t like the rewards the game is currently giving. Look at the backlash from the WvW season 1 reward chest. People were disappointed with the rewards for their work and coeicedently they also wxp, luck, ascended mats, skillpoints, and greens/rares/blues/exotics. This is from the WvW perspective. On my poll i’ve got 973 responses. 78% of the voters rated the reward factor of the nightmare within story below 3 on a scale from 1-5 (1 being the lowest). 32% voted 3, 28% voted 2, 18% voted 1. It is obvious that people are not liking the rewards.

That is why they need to add more depth to these concrete things that don’t just involve current currencies or they need to start introducing some drains to these things so that they mean something when people gain them. Putting a gate behind skills that requires you to perform something not only makes it more interesting, but it offers more opportunities for Anet to offer more meaningful rewards. Along with unique skins and what not. I mean what if they make it so you need something similar to signent of capture to gain a skill and you need to buy this each time to gain the skill, similar to guild wars 1. This will offer a drain for the skillpoints, but it can also be offered to WvWers for rewards in season chest. Maybe like 5 of them and they each cost 30 skill points or something.

No matter what, the fact of the matter is that players are not satisfied with current rewards.

phys.7689:

someone new to GW still has to earn his skills, you arent given all skills. you will still need to get 30 skill points for some elites. WvW was and still is progression based. you wont have WvW ranks/skills, you wont have exotics/ascended armor, you wont have grandmaster traits till 80.

And im not saying make it impossible to get, im saying (in the case of WvW) that your server has to pull together to get 3 keeps, or stonemist, and if your server is sucking, you go the personal route and kill 50 players without dying or defend a keep 5 times in one session or something.

In my opinion, the game overall feels generally flat, because all the systems are generally fairly seperate from the world. Even though the toxic skill sucked, it was even less of something to do because i opened up a menu and hit buy skill.

Now i will say the other method of obtaining it was just as dull and unimaginative, collect 250x and X gold. How about you actually go on an adventure, and learn something about the world/game in order to progress eh?

Thats my views exactly, the horizontal progressions are way too flat right now because they’re way easy to get and there’s no good drains for the currencies. I mean by giving you something to actually do in game to earn the skill will give you more to do. IT will actually make the world feel like a living world instead of a UI simulator. I mean its the same way with a lot of currencies. Guild influence is another example. Theres guilds, including mine, who always have had a ton of guild influence. Even when missions came out we still weren’t worried about having enough. That’s because there are no drains or caps to these currencies. I think thats the biggest downfall of anets current horizontal progression system. I know a few people who have a ton of laurels too, but its not as big of a problem because of ascended, t6 mats, and the mini are all good things and expensive for people to buy. Also laurels can’t be farmed for a day.

That is something I always imagined the game would do with new skills is actually have is complete stuff. Like an idea I had was with new weapon skills. Instead of just introducing new skills, you could introduce new “styles”. Like warrior greatsword. He can learn a samurai type style for greatsword after he trains and does mission with a Canthian immigrant who fought for the Minisitry of Purity or something like that. Something that makes the game more immersive and the world more living.

Immensus.9732:

The new changes will bring more ppl in PvP which eventually will increase the interest for livestreams, thats the best solution for that currently more ppl in PvP more viewers… and of course some good commentators are essential

I think a big thing they should do is give the option to choose to spectate ranked games and what not. It will help immensly for new players who want to figure out good strategies.

Right now I don’t think our twitch views are reaching levels (for live streams at least) that they are capabible of. Sometimes we’re even lower the star wars the old republic shivers.

What are you ideas to maybe get audiences to be more involved and connect to fights?

I find with most popular streaming games audiences are often connected to players because of how they play the game and what not. You got “big” plays in LoL and Mobas, you got big combos in fighting games, i find in popular MMOs like WoW the pvp is centered around a lot of micro management of allies and enemy players.

What do you think this game’s pvp needs to get the audiences more involved and excited while watching streams?

Justin ODell.9517:

Ulalume.9584:

No offense, Justin, but unless you have several friends to queue with team arena is a a horrible experience. Since solo queue pops take so long, I’ve been pugging team arena for the past couple of days. I consistently find myself in matches with guild groups of four r1 players on my team. I am sure the newbies try their best, but they just have no clue how to play their class, let alone in a tournament environment. Of course, these total blowout matches wouldn’t happen if you introduced a rank requirement for competitive pvp…

I wouldn’t advise anyone to pug team arena unless you have at least two buddies to queue with so you are able to carry two newbies. I’ve lost 95% of my team queue matches and the only reason I still queue up is for giggles. It is hilarious how many players die to Svanir or manage to never run over a node, not even by accident, throughout an entire game.

I believe there are a few guilds that exist solely to allow you to find people to Team Arena with. I’ll mention it to Josh, maybe we can increase their exposure.

I just had a good idea that you could look into. What if at the area where you que for team and solo arenas there is another tap called teams looking for members or something like that. In ehre players can list what they’re looking for in their team. I like the new LFG system, but no one ever uses that for some reason. So you could do that or maybe put a link under the que button that automatically opens up the LFG for spvp or something.

So I decided to get into thief and play him in pvp/level him up after tuesday. I decided to try to make my own build.

Now I haven’t played since restart so my MMR is insanely low. However, so far this build has proved really good in solo que. Especially when it comes to bunker and preventing orb.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAqaVlYmqNHbS6E+5Eh3jvOWzqVgmdP46WpKA-TsAA1CtIsRZjzGjNSbs2MK48x8DA

Thoughts? I think its such a funny build because I have vigor up a ton, can stun a lot, can dish out some good physical dps, can steal boons, and I’m almost in a constant state of evade.

makiface.3286:

The talent was never worth taking. RNG + vestigial bundle mechanic meant it was just a waste of points.

Yeah I was experimenting with traps and I thought to my self “Doing full traps, ptuting them down and having them pop them doing it again could be very good. 2 thieves summoned, then do thieves guild, could have your own army!”.

Was very disappointed.

Why is it in the soloQ still? Everytime I play it map/team chat is filled with moans and groans

Here are my problems.

1. Heavy CC classes (engineers, necromancers, and other classes with lots of CC) are ate a HUGE advantage. Not only with taking sky hammer and points, but also coordinating with skyhammer fires.

2. Heavy mobility classes are at a huge advantage. You’re so squished in most of the fights except for mid point because you can’t move either from a wall, a hole, or the edge of hte map. Then a sky hammer fires and fills the entire area

3. Skyhammer is really strong. Combined with 1 and 2, skyhammer can be dominated farily easily and it is very frustrating to combat.

I like the idea of jumppads, but the holes in the ground, horrible designed side points, and skyhammer/skyhammer platform being horrible designed makes this map more of a dread than fun.

Ghostwolf.9863:

Works as intended.

Randomly refreshes either venoms, signets, traps, tricks or deceptions.
What you have on the utility-bar is irrelephant to what it recharges.

Ohh. Thanks

Improvisation is 7 in the Deadly Arts tree. I wanted to try create a acrobatics thief and I was wondering if this skill is bugged or I’m just not understand how it works. It says it stealing recharges the CD of one type of skill, however when I steal my skills on CD don’t do anything.

Does anyone understand how this trait works?

I liked the anti toxin thing they had going on, maybe instead of it costing money it should have been based on if you did something with the living story.

It seems the biggest issue is there is no drain for skillpoints. Like so many things in this game, there is no drain. So people are just gathering an over abundance of them. Also said in this thread, it is currently very easy to gain skillpoints. The reason I said you should need to do something instead of just buying skills with skillpoints. It is not satisfying at all to do.

Again, those who are defending the current system. What do you play (pve,pvp,wvw,etc), how many skill points do you have, what are you currently using them for?

They don’t even need to do what I said. I’d be content with anything other than open up hero panel, push unlock on skill. That is sooo borrring.

I dont craft. Never liked it nor felt the need to. Never wanted to get my legendary. I don’t need skillpoint at all. I don’t think im the only one either. So assuming they release skills at a constant rate of 25skill points they would need to release 13 skills before I run out of skill points, and that is assuming I dont earn any in between the skills. I would love if I could use those skill points for something that benefits me even though I’m not a crafter.

I mean, most of the people in this thread defending keeping the skill system at its current rate; what do you do(PvE dungeons, PvE open world, etc)? What do you use your current skill points for? How many do you have?

I would much rather have a different thing to do in game aside from what is current an option to us. Lets assume that they keep on the same trend they are now. Living story arcs every 2 weeks, repopulating an old zone. Maybe a new zone if we’re lucky. Come back to this thread in one year and tell me if it was a bad idea to put in some way of getting skills instead of just buying them via the skillpoint menu. If it was a bad idea to give some more endgame content to the game.

Not really RNG as a solution, but a better version of it. The rates that they drop are insanely low. Players can only do the same content over and over again for days.

Also I was suggesting that they do named exotics tied to specific permanent characters in the game. Like Flame of Vidius. Focus item. The name indicates that it has a connection to the Vidius Flame Tribune in fireheart rise. It would only drop from there.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Ostricheggs.3742:

This is one of the worst of the new heal skills… Very sad to see.

Because a heal skill that can guaranteed prevent you from dying is clearly bad…

The skill has way too long of a CD for what it is used for. The heal is not that big of an impact considering the cooldown (40 untraited. It pretty much forces you to go gadgets if you want to be even close to viable). When you go for this you’re also losing condi management. The synergy this skill has with others isn’t that high either. Static Discharge build is about the only one that I think it would be good with. With that in mind the toolbelt skill also has a lengthy CD. So the only thing that makes this really viable is to go heavy into the gadgetieering tree and take advantage of the double cast as dulfy said in her post. However, every other healing skill is better for a SD build. Especially healing turret which offers a really good heal on a 15 sec CD combine with a combo field, and regen.

Should they ever change gadgets to maybe work a bit better together (right now slick shoes and rocketboots have the synergy that I wish other gadgets could aspire too) then it could be worth it. As I said the SD build is probably where this will shine the most, still heal turret blows it out of the water. Also condis will rock you so hard if you go this. You’d have to go elixir C or elixir gun.

So dulfy probably has a more updated one. Its about the same values I posted in terms of the none stated heal. HOWEVER, it does have a 4,025 initial heal on use.

Another big HOWEVER is this. IT has a ICD of 1 second with the passive heal. So if 5 targets hit you at the same time or within 1 second of the inital hit, it will only heal you ONCE.. The other big HOWEVER is that the active effect you put on somebody gets a very clear marker above their head for 5 seconds and has a stack of 25. So in the 5 seconds that someone gets attacks, they can only get hit 25 times before it goes away.

I found a much better rune I think. Ill pm you it because I feel like is a fiercly underrated rune and it will probably be a very strong contender for a new meta rune for engineers and I may buy another set for my condi speci if you agree with me. Don’t want it to jump hugely in price.

Heta.8629:

Players will only go to these new zones as long as there is profit then leave when it runs out. Southsun being the perfect example because it was immensely popular during those living story updates when there were achievements. Once a new update came out it was deserted. The world boss there is more rewarding than most but not done because it’s too hard and time consuming. Anything less is face roll easy. A change in player mentality is needed to fix this issue

agreed x10. That is why I’ve been pushing for so many new reward systems that do not center around the current currencies like karma, money, and somewhat skill points (less of a problem with skill points). This games horizontal progression is HEAVILY dependent on gold. As a result players will look for every avenue to get the gold because they only way you can progress is through long hours of grinding and farming (things like legendaries, crafting weapons, etc). Dungeons help, but because they are tokens on a DR they do their daily dungeons for tokens then get to farming. I knew that if they were to go this route with the champion loot that it would end badly. I knew it wouldn’t be good for the community, I even created a post expressing my concern before release and how I think each champ should have a unique tied to itself to prevent these farm trains https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/17-events-should-award-skins-champ-rewards/first#post2480166.

TO create a different change in the mentality of people is I’d offer more concreate ways to gain gear that isn’t just tied to gold or long hours of grinding. More to perform tough actions or a combination of skill points with laurels and stuff like that. I’d really like to see people move away from the whole karma and coin system.

Requiem.8769:

Every zone you populate is another depopulated. This is the key issue you’d need to resolve before adding more. My personal recommendation would be simultaneously opening and closing zones, to keep the population density constant while still bringing new content. This could most easily be accomplished by tying these old and new places with the living story.

This is true, but closing and opening zones could have a bit of a bad affect on the levelers. Maybe the “Endgame zones” like frostgorge and orr could be closed/opened. However, this messes with the living story.

I think what is important is giving players a reasonable thing to go to each zone daily. With the new zones and the rewards I discussed in other threads players could go to each zone and do one of the hard events to get a token for some daily gold. They could go in there and help people looking for a group for it. This combined with guild missions and world bosses would lead to a pretty good fluctuation of population in zones.

coglin.1867:

We have a perfectly good system in game now for acquiring skills. I think your idea is a bad one. You falsely assume we want to be pulled away from our game play to unlock a skill simply because you feel it would be fun. I disagree.

I can earn skill point to buy skills. And having already done things to earn the skill point, I no longer have to do things for them. I do not have to quest for every skill and I like that.

I think my system would still be an interesting concept, however I do also think WvWers should have a way to unlock it themselves by utilizing things that only WvWers would have or things that they acquire while doing WvW. Badges of honor is one suggestion. Laurels too, however I dont know how hard it is for WvWers to complete their daily through just WvW.

Reason I dont like the skillpoint system is because they don’t have a lasting horizontal progression. For it to “last” you pretty much are required to be crafting stuff because if you dont then skillpoints just build up over time and before you know it you have an over abundance.

Solution: play a ranger, use Sic ’Em. Reveals all stealthed enemies and your pet deals extra damage for a short time.

I’m actually leveling up a ranger right now for the sole purpose of this. Still doesn’t change my position on stealthing however. If every class was in some way able to apply revealed, then I’d shut my mouth. However, they can’t.

chemiclord.3978:

I’m curious… did you whine about the rewards in GW1 as well?

Some of them, but it was more in game than on the forums. I just feel like more and more people are becoming disapointed with the way the LS is turning it. We are seeing more and more temporary content and the only permanent content being added is through the gem shop. This is why so many are requesting expansions. Everything I discussed would be added through an expansion. In guild wars 1 some of the rewards weren’t exactly awesome. I especially hated the grind behind vabbian armor or things that required ectos. However, it wasn’t too bad considering the combat and general gameplay was a bit more engaging. Thats another topic though.

With an expansion you’d get new zones, new armors, new classes, new skills, things like that. It was that way with nightfall and factions. So far in a year of a living story we have very little to show for it. Tell me, how would a player even know the molten alliance existed/happened? He either saw the gem shop things, the gauntlents, or the absurdly overpriced jetpack. IT is a good thing they added the dungeon into fractals, but we still aren’t seeing too much of a addition in the ways of horizontal progression. Southsun? Who would have guess lions arc came under attack. Who would have guess we invaded the entire island and fought many many karka. There are so many patches where the biggest signs that remain that the story and the patch even happened is evident because of gemstore things. I’m all for making a profit on the gemstore, but currently I’d rather see more content in game instead of a gem shop. Do a expansion if you must, but the current LS just hasn’t been cutting it for me in a sense of what I was expecting and what a expansion has traditionally done in the past.

I love how people like you degrade others for posting their views on things in the game. I’m sure that you “whined” about something in the game sometime or another. Most people like you do. Atleast I’m posting an extensive write up about why I’m distraught about certain aspects along with providing in detail suggestions.

Thieves are borderline overpowered in combat. Many say they’re not as powerful in ranked pvp because they’re lack luster in the teamfights. However, if we ever see a deathmatch/tdm mode appear thief will be the most played class.

Reasons this stealthing system sucks.

No direct counter. The current counter depends heavily on the players ability to predict another. This is a huge skill requirement to fight one class. No other class requires this level of prediction. Sure fighting them does require prediction, but thief requires the most because of stealthing.

First strike advantage constantly during fights. In any PvP gaming have the first strike advantage is insanely good. Being able to have it multiple times during one fight is insanely good.

You got bonus stuff! I can’t tell you how many times I’ve fought a thief and he goes stealth and appears without conditions. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve gotten a thief down to 10%, he spams stealth, appears with full hp, get him down again, uses heal, rinse and repeat. So you get all these buffs to an already impressive thing to have in PvP.

You control the fight as a stealther. You want to reset your HP? Not much they can do to stop you. 90% of the thieves I fought had controlled the fight. If they wanted to escape a fight, they would. If they wanted to run, there are very few classes that were able to stop them alone. Other thieves and thats about it. I’ve seen instances where a thief would engage in a fight in the middle of 10 people in WvW. Then as we all chase him, he escapes. That level of forgiveness and fight control should never be in the hands of one person. No class should be able to escape the CC, condition damage, and damage of 10 people.

I have never seen any sort of MMO or MLG pvp game with a similar stealth system. Mobas for example. They have sentrys that anyone can buy , some classes have skills that can directly counter stealth, ontop of this none of the stealth skills offer amazing healing ability. Previous MMOs never had this sort of none counterable stealth.

They can’t just remove stealthing now however, I recognize how deeply thieves rely on this to survive. They need to find a way to buff your survivability without having you rely on such an overpowered concept of the stealth system. If they keep the current system, they need to reduce your ability to go stealth by about 1/4-1/2 of its current ability.

Hello,

So anet. From the current reaction to the WvW rewards and what responses have been given on my poll (666 responses on one, 996 on another), you don’t seem to making too many right decisions on how to award players.

So with the initial/first awards in the game, you gave them out too much. These rewards are useful, however they lost the satisfaction/reward feeling when getting them because we got them so much. These awards you can not rely on. These awards should honestly not be the majority rewards.

1. Blues/Greens/Rares- These are useful, as I said. However, if a player recieves these for doing something hard, or doing an activity that takes a long time they do not feel rewarding in the mental sense because of how easily they are obtained everywhere else in the game.

2. Karma- Again, they are useful. They don’t have the reward sense.

3. Badges of Honor- this is sort of half and half. To a none or very very casual WvWer, they’d love to get badges of honor to hop into WvW and buy some new gear. However, I notice hardcore WvWers or people that mostly just do WvW have a lot of badges and they don’t feel rewarded when getting them

4. Ascended Mats. Since these are only made to craft ascended weapons, the ascended weapons look isn’t insanely popular, and you need to have a leveled crafting pofession; these quickly became stockpiled/deleted in peoples inventories.

5. Skillpoints- Thanks to the champion system along with the fact you gain skillpoints as you level, people don’t see these as important.

Those 5 rewards you really want to stay away from being the main source of a reward for hard content. People just don’t feel satisfied when they get them. They aren’t doing a sufficient job in taking the place of the gear grind in a sense of reward. With each patch, it feels more like a To Do list rather than a living story with a living world. On top of this it doesn’t feel very satisfying at all when you do stuff. You’re improving on the satisfaction factor. However, long term goals of the game the current way you are rewarding players may get old after a few months.

So here is my little guide (i’m not professional, just my personal opinion on the matter. I could very well be wrong as the night is orange) on rewards and how you should offer them. Right now the current “end game” has no lasting appeal. Players can get a legendary, ascended, and thats about it. Most people need something to do once they get their items. Most will go into some form of competitive scene to show off their armor AND their skill. This is why we’re seeing an emergence of WvW popularity in the 2nd half of 2013. So unless you offer more forms of competitiveness, then you’d need to look into my suggestions or do both. All the following are very important on how you implement them.

1. New Armor Skins. These should be put in the game every 1 1/2 to 2 months. It is very very VERY important how you put these in the game. As of recently you’ve been putting them in the game via the gem shop. Next patch we will need to craft them or deal with RNG. I go into how to implement these items for both WvWers and PvErs in this link :https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/1-New-Armor-Skins/first#post3328036

2. New Weapon skins. These should be put into the game every month or so. Don’t do every single weapon at once. Alternate between very popular weapons and none popular weapons together. I will go into this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/2-New-Weapons

3. New zones: Players should get a new zone every half a year to a year. I will go into this here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/3-New-Zones/first#post3328277

4. New skills: Players should be getting a new skill or maybe a new trait every month to 1 1/2 month. I will go into how to implement these here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/4-New-Skills

5. New dungeon/dungeon Path: I’d recommend doing this about once every 1 1/2 – 3 months. Keep in mind that it would be smart to eventually impliment some kind of new weapon skins/armor skins obtainable through the dungeon with tokens. You can do RNG stuff, but dont depend on it so heavily. I liked the current dungeon/fractal addition system you’ve got going on. Just could use some work on rewarding players for doing the new dungeon path.

Those are my main points for the 5 rewards. Your current reward system with skillpoints, ascended mats, achievement system, and others stated in the original first part of this post are useful, however they are not satisfying to the players. Especially while champion trains exist. I know many people who do champion trains, but hate them. It is a very confusing relationship players have with it.

New skills are another important part to rewarding players. They offer new playstyles so that old content can be played like new again. They keep PvP interesting by putting in new ways to handle situations. Most importantly, they’re rewarding.

How you unlock the skills is important. Don’t just say spend 25 skill points. Again, like many other things, tie it to an event. This could be a single event or event chain. The players must complete this. After they do this they can then buy the skill with skillpoints in the menu. This adds a lot to the overall skill progression. One akin to gw1 in terms of how you hunted things down and killed them to get their skills. How satisfying it was. I’d recommend putting these type of things inside the most dead zones, starting with southsun.