Guild Wars 2

@Xeph

You do realize, in 2005 when GW1 came out, esports didn’t exist. You also realize that Guildwars had a $100,000 tournament in 2005.

I play a real sport called soccer, I love the sport and I would say I am at least above average at it. I enjoy the sport because you need a team, it invokes adrenaline, and it takes skill. Certainly, many people sit around in the U.S. and don’t understand soccer for one second, but yet it is a beautiful sport. For a matter of fact, it is the most popular sport in the world. Yet, near no one understands at first attempt, or even second at that.

GvG is a game that gives me a similar sensation to soccer when I play it. I feel like I am taking part in a team, like I am working together and that my team depends on me on a level far higher than can I win a 1v1 or live to a 2v1. Gw1 even had a sense of adrenaline, I PRACTICED for GvG. I played that game for just over 5 years since beta and it is something I have never found a mate too.

There is a consideration one must make when making games, complexity versus skill cap. You need to create a game with as little complexity as possible but as high a skill cap as possible. Problem is that complexity and skill cap are often interwoven together. In GW1, the skill cap was extremely high but Anet did nothing to ever lower the complexity of the game making it impossible to learn. They assumed the complexity and skill cap were the same thing and to make it easy for people to join, they just needed to make it less complex, what do we get? A game that has a skill cap orders of magnitude smaller.

(Oh, and btw, I did wonder if Team Paridigm was the same guild from Guildwars 1. )

GW1 was one of a kind frankly. I have looked up and down for a game that can even come close to matching the quality of competitive play that it had, none exist. For a matter of fact, I plan on making a game, because of my frustration, that will embody what GW1 pvp had, namely, true actual team play.

GW1 pvp had team members that required assistance from other players, and on a much deeper level than just be here and hit the same target. During GW1 prime, a balance build had to literally unlock the defense of the opposing team in order for the warriors to deal any damage at all. This sort of interaction created a powerful dynamic that meant, for the first (and apparently last) time that the sum of the players abilities tended to be waaaay less than the combined abilities of the total team. So, if I were only so good and a friend of mine were only so good, our individual skill did not matter as much as our ability to work together.

I could go into four pages of discussion as to why GW1 was like this and another four into why GW2 isn’t. The biggest problem is not the lack of a dedicated healer, the team size, the individual player mechanics or any of that.. It is the game mode to be frank. You cannot expect a fully cooperative team component to appear in a game if you are playing a game mode that FORCES players to separate. Historically, this way of thinking has always failed and it has failed again. To think that to release with a capture point game mode only was a good idea is evidence that Anet did not care to re-imagine any portion of what made GW1 amazing.

By the way, the second point, which I could also argue in four pages, is that Anet never understood GW1 pvp. They had to have rawr balance it for them after all.

I haven’t played wow, so I wouldn’t know the reference anyways. But consider like this, it would still be possible to go in, attack, and step out. Just you might have to do it multiple times. There is no claim that you have to stand there and attack the whole time. This is the place where the increased skill cap comes in. The point is it would force essentially a combo builder with a very loosely related combo requirements (as opposed to GW1 where you needed a lead, offhand, and whatnot.)

So I could see things like perhaps applying some stacks of condis to build some initiate, go into stealth, then come out and burst. This system balances the thief by removing their ability to just come out of no where and burst you. It raises the skill cap while still maintaining their high DPS objective. And it better promotes the attack from the shadows, disappear, and attack mentality as opposed to come out of nowhere, kill and then be done with the fight.

You have to keep in mind that defense for a thief is different than defense for a warrior. A thief has his defense from his ability to go invisible and evade damage in a more mitigation way. So the only thing that would need to be balanced is that aspect.

I mean, think about the complaints right now. “The thief is too bursty and although they’re defensively stat-wise weak, their stealth gives them too much defensive options.” In a sense, this concept would reduce the effectiveness of that defense by requiring them to step in and out of stealth more actively. So yes, it would reduce their effective ability to defend, but you wouldn’t need to increase their damage, unless of course you want to maintain that low skill-cap mentality which thieves are already so rank with. I am for any concept that raises their skill cap without making them a hard to play class. One thing to fix this is to remove damage from their front loaded attacks and perhaps spread it across a couple of engagements or reduce their effectiveness of stealth.

Although, I would still like to point out that I like the idea of a thief. However, anet didn’t make a thief, they made an assassin who steals. So your original ideas help to create something that feels more like a thief instead. I would like to see a combat that looked to push a more combo intensive play style. It increases skill cap without reducing damage or overly complicating combat.

@Knyx

It was just an idea, I completely agree with the concept of attempting to add diversity to thief builds. Note however, all that idea would do is essentially add preconditions to being able to spam freely and reduce the ability to just spam one skill. You would have to combo initiate builders with initiate users to maximize your ability to output damage. As it stands, all their damage is frontloaded. That could be altered by reducing their ability to push that damage out IMMEDIATELY and simply make it take a couple more hits or even a bit of building before it would be possible (as I think about it, it is incredibly similar to adrenaline in GW1 with the extra condition that you cant exceed a maximum adrenaline.)

You know, on this topic of casuals versus competitive style gamers, they need each other to exist.

Anet created, in GW1, a game that was not very casual friendly. It was a game with high barriers of entry and was difficult to begin playing. This prevented an influx of new players to watch GW1 pvp and as a result, the community slowly died. I think Anet learned from this aspect of their game but completely over reacted to it. Instead of just lowering the barriers of entry to their game, they concluded the best technique was just to lower the over all skill cap and to make the game just simpler on all levels.

If you ask my opinion, I would say the best technique is to maximize skill cap while making certain the game is easily accessible. The way I find it easy to improve this is to add things to the game that complicate it and ask something a long the lines of, “does this cause any kind of detriment to new comers?”

In regards to SCII, what I hear of heart of the swarm is that that game looks to make the over all game far more complicated by adding a large number of restrictions to what you can do. The idea is to raise the over all skill cap of the game. That is a novel idea, however in doing so you leave all your casual fans stranded. I think a game like SCII could benefit by changing handicaps based on what rank you’re in.

That last comment can be brought to GW2 and I can reference Cogbyrn for inspiration here. You absolutely need a simple version of the game for casuals to get into. They need to be able to play the game at a lower level, have fun, not feel overly competitive, and still feel like they’re playing the same game the top players are playing. I think this could be achieved by fun little extra games which aren’t significantly competitive.

@ Kazzuki- I completely agree that a problem with downed state is rally. But you have to keep in mind that a more engaging game model will be a more aggressive one. I can see your point, and it is indeed a valid one, to say that it promotes essentially saying “screw the downed guy let me just keep fighting and he’ll be ok.” But even in the end, its not that simple. Certainly in a 2v1 that may be the case since that one person won’t be able to get them up. But in most even side battles, the teams that win are the teams that can revive their allies from downed state. So it becomes essentially to respond to a downed ally immediately and sometimes this means defeating an enemy. But keep in mind, among higher players, they defeat someone with the downed player in mind. Perhaps without that player there, they might just let that player sit on the ground and bleed out. The only thing that really needs fixed (imo) for rally is only 1 for 1, not 1 for everyone.

Oh, and attempting to appeal to god as an argument isn’t really effective. Technically none of them are dead and to rally is a thing of moral. Essentially you are fighting for your life and the thrill of getting a kill on an enemy boosts your adrenaline so you can stand and continue to fight and get healed back up. But, in general, attempting to claim something is bad because it doesn’t make logical sense in a video game is just a bad strategy.

I couldn’t agree more with your header, I think transparency is a must. Although, I don’t entirely agree with your breadth over depth concept. But that is also because I believe different game types are a depth issue, not a breadth issue.

Unless if anet comes up with something amazing about capture points, I am convinced that the only way to fix their problem is with a new game type that will take center stage over cap points.

In any case, I couldn’t agree more. Please be more transparent, I can’t think of a development team over than Anet that didn’t give some conversation to the community about things that needed to be balanced.

@Gank Sinatra
You know, your thought about making initiative work from 0 up gave me an interesting idea. Have half your skills generate it and half your skills use it. You can’t use a skill if it would cause you to exceed the maximum.

I don’t know how well that would work, but I think it would be cool. It wouldn’t hinder that spamming mentality while it would also offer a more interesting and higher skill cap way of doing it.

@bloodbath

Thank you

If you’re a fan of reading extremely long posts and over all analysis you can search for my post, “Lost Potential.”

Anyways, about balance…

When they developed the game, for a matter of fact, when anyone develops a game, you have to balance around a game type. The reason for that is because objectives just simply vary heavily between game types and the objectives of a certain game determine the combat. So, when someone says they have to balance around tpvp, that simply means they have to balance things with tpvp in mind.

Here’s an example, consider the bunker situation. In spvp, it is all big damage zergs. A possibility to fix that would be to say hey, lets make defensive builds a little bit better at stopping this. The problem then becomes that in tpvp, it is simply unbalanced. Bunkers already push the boundaries which make people question whether they are or aren’t balanced (not saying they are either way), but to buff them at all would probably push them over the edge. This difference comes from the fact that in spvp, your objective is to farm points. You don’t care about a win only about glory. In tpvp, it is the opposite. Bunkers often take the center stage since you get the most points by simply holding a point, so the longer you can hold a point the better the chance of winning.

Now, of course I by no means would approve of such a balancing decision or even believe it is remotely a good idea to balance that. The point is that the game play is so different that it alters the actual combat as well. So, as a developer you are forced to ask, what do I balance around?

It’s the question asked for every game. LoL balances around 5s and GW1 balanced around GvG. You can think of many other games historically which had to choose between pvp or pve (thankfully anet has noted they will split skills if that decision comes to question.)

Other than that, about your map problem. The main point of the game remains the same, the alternative objectives just theoretically help or hurt that ability to meet that objective. Those objectives will be balanced as well as need be. Example being the bosses in forest. They used to be a lot simpler and their difficulty was raised a tad to help prevent the game being most won by who killed those as opposed to who capped points.

@alcopaul
You know, it is possible. Step into the world of abstractions for a second. Consider everything a monk did for you in GW1. There were two monks, the red bar and the prot. The prot’s job was to watch the field and preprot damage and spikes. Essentially minimize the total damage being dispensed. The red bar’s job was to literally watch the red bars. He simply had to react quickly to fast changes in hp and follow whoever their spike caller was around and infuse spikes.

So now I claim I dismantle the redbar. Take his abilities of managing the health and spread it to the tasks of individual players. Mitigation then gets added in. Ideally, having a support would be viable in a 5v5. His job would essentially be what the prot monk did in GW1. Watch the field and react accordingly to minimize the damage throughout the team. He would have the ability to heal a bit tied into the passive abilities. This brings me to something I would like to argue with Zero about, attrition factors.

I would argue that the energy bar is something that actually complicates the game without bringing a lot to the table. It adds a different set of challenges that one must consider, but proper skill usage and timing can be manage in other ways which are less confusing, i.e. cooldown orientation. The point here is that with the removal of energy, there has to be some factor that starts to weigh on you based on who is doing better in a fight. In gw1, we had energy. The better team had more energy. GW2 has potential to make the health bar that factor. Now, that seems odd, but if a game successfully pulled this concept off, it would be revolutionary. GW2 had that potential to do so. Give a higher net health pool, considerable cooldowns on your self heal, minute passive healing and strong damage mitigation. Then, ideally your heals shouldn’t heal you to full unless you sacrifice a skill with a significant cool down. As time wears on, it will amount to your better usage of your cooldowns over you opponent. Improper usage will cause pressure to start to build throughout your team. The great thing is that this pressure is extremely visible. It would still maintain the great dynamics of pulling back to relieve pressure, pushing hard to risk out pressuring your opponent and all the great things we loved and enjoyed from GW1.

Sure, I would be perfectly happy with an energy mechanic, I think it works well. But if someone did pull off the type of gameplay I mentioned above, it would be quite an accomplishment. As I have mentioned many times, GW2 had and actually still has the potential to do this.

This brings me back to alcopaul. The removal of the redbar and a change in dynamics of how you perceive pressure reduces the need for monks. It creates a game mode that would champion control and damage with slight support and prevent support from becoming excessively overpowered.

@bloodbath
You are correct. What I described to you is in no way what you would expect from an MMO game. The reason for this is that anet looked to create a pvp that was modeled after other game modes. Moba, RTS, and FPS games to be more precise. They wanted to look at games which are already e-sports and try to create an e-sport by modeling those.

Do I think this was a good idea? absolutely not. I have a very very long post describing that very point, but that is irrelevant. The important thing is to ask the question, how did anet want their game to feel when they designed it? Then ask, does this mechanic in question help or hinder that game objective?

I think we both agree they are looking for a casual friendly game. They want a game where you can choose your play style. They want a game that has potential for an e-sport. Now, although I know for a fact that all of these are possible to have in a game, I don’t think anet went the right way. But we can ask the question does downed, as is, help their objective or hurt it?

My claim is that it helps. A game focused heavily on individual skill is initially not very friendly to new comers. There are things you can do to adjust that fact though. For example, proper match making, informational observer modes, great tutorials, or a tiered ranking system. But those still hinder ones ability to enter the game. Instead, anet took a note from other game modes and decided to move the skill away from the individual player. This is evident in the way they chose build selections, the lack of marginal returns for most skills, the lack of a skill-detrimental attrition factor, and just the way the entire flow of the game operates. It is also implicit from much of their discussion over their own views of the game. Things such as wanting every profession to be equally viable. Now, I will grant that what happens at a fight does make a HUGE difference. For example, living for a minute versus living for 15 seconds creates a gigantic difference. Your success in that fight however, is not weighed by whether you literally won or loss. If a team commits resources, particularly when their resources are so heavily weighted, there should be some kind of result. The game would be a bit ridiculous if it were the case that people could win a 2v1 easier than now. Skill difference would be magnified and it would hurt new comers interest in the game if they got dominated.

Further, your argument that “Casuals are hurt the most” doesn’t really hold. Granted in spvp, the world is a different beast, they don’t plan to balance the game around spvp. If they did, that would be insane. Instead, they will attempt to balance around tpvp. Casuals in this area should quickly be aware of the significance of 2/5ths of the team being committed to a single point. There is no degree of casual that will not be able to eventually understand that importance. So, if he outskills his opponents, all he needs to do is waste their time as much as possible. Killing them, actually, is worse for your team in most cases! If they die, they will probably rez faster, and then be available elsewhere. But, in any case… even if I were to grant you that claim, this game is intended to be an e-sport and the harsh reality is that you can’t balance the game around casuals. It needs to be casual friendly, but that doesn’t mean casual easy.

Like I said, I have a lot of qualms about the general direction of the game. I mentioned my concerns long before the game was released only to be squandered by fanboys. This game’s potential has been shot, and where I agree that the game I described is in fact not much like an MMO, that is exactly where the problem is from my eyes. It honestly isn’t an mmo. It doesn’t play one bit like one. So, one thing you’ll have to learn is because you can win a 2v1 in another game doesn’t mean you should be able to win one in this game (sufficiently even skill difference).

@Bloodbath
You actually missed the point of my argument. The point was to note that the location of skill in this game is moved away from your ability to use your bar. Skill is more directly associated with being in the right place at the right time and planning ahead to make sure you can handle what the other team is planning.

This sort of redirection is necessary due to the game play mechanic of capture points and the greater importance of each player. It is also required due to how anet decided to define their game. They wanted you to be able to play how you wanted to play, in order to do that, they needed to move importance from individual bars and skills to elsewhere. This game comes down to making sure your actions in regards to where you are are the things that matter both.

Further, it’s not just whether or not you have someone somewhere, but that you have a particular someone somewhere. Your example that they gained an advantage by devoting two to somewhere when they have a tank elsewhere means that perhaps you should of made it so you had a tank defending the lone point. This gives your team two options, overwhelm the point with the tank or collapse and help kill with the tank. If you decide to leave an assassin back at the lone point, then there is a good chance he won’t be too helpful at holding it.

Seeing how there are fewer players, namely 5, each player is important. Far more than in general games where the numbers are slightly larger. To lose one is significant in many cases, it results in the loss of points for you and the gain of points for them, a gigantic marginal loss. That is why downed state helps to ensure that the thing that matters most is movement about the field, not who is strictly better with their bar. By the way, it is still possible to 1v2… assuming skill difference significantly high.

The point at the end was to say the IDEA is insane, not the person. But just think about it like this. You are calling a game broken because it seeks to be more casual friendly in giving the lower skill players an advantage. If you want to dominate your opponent, beating them 1v2 is not the place to do it. Out smarting them, out moving them, out ganking them, and out capping them is the way to do it.

Now, I personally do not like what GW2 pvp has become in and of itself only because it has fallen far short of it’s expectations. However, I will admit, the system in place does exactly what they look to achieve and does a fantastic job at that. If you want to discuss the game being worse than what it could be, that is a discussion over design philosophy as a whole, not downed state.

Added: about abusing downed enemy players.. just be a smart enemy player and bleed out. It doesn’t take that long. It would take basically as long as you’d have to wait for a suicide button should you implement it and wish it to be balanced. My favorite solution however would just be a rate of bleeding that speeds up over time. So the longer your down, the faster you start to bleed out.

No, try and fail is why you beta test something. You should never, ever release something to paying customers that is not to the best quality you can provide.

@Ayestes:

I would have to agree that multiple people rallying off of one kill is excessive. ME and a friend were doing a 4v2 and actually ended up downing 2 of them and almost a third when I finally went down. After blowing my knockback and my ally not being able to get close enough to down someone, they downed me and got all their allys back. They were completely unhindered by the fight in the end, didn’t lose anyone or anything despite being completely outplayed.

I understand that there was more I could of done to of lived against them and more my ally could of done to of downed someone faster, however, to have 3 people rally from one kill is excessive. It ought to just be one rally for one defeat in FIFO order.

Other than that, I also love down state and what it brings to the table. I would just like to see that rally part change.

There are half a million reasons I can say its not a great map, my favorite of these reasons is the fact that every map was designed so that you captured points, and on top of that, there was some secondary objective that helped you to win the game besides capping the points. Capricorn is not that way. It is the only map in which one of the three points IS the secondary objective. So, holding one point means you both gain the points for that AND as well as the extra benefits from the secondary objective. That is just bad design for a map in general.

@ saboth…. kitten is anets sense of humor. It is what replaces inappropriate words.

Also @saboth, capricorn is not a good map. It essentially makes it so you have to cap the ruins first or avoid it all game and work really hard. It is the worst secondary mechanic in that it is hardly even a secondary mechanic. The third point IS the secondary mechanic. That’s not really good design.

About server cost, keep in mind that if servers were free, everyone would have one making it either a huuuuuuge list or limiting it and having to listen to people constantly complain about not getting one. Why not charge a little for it to help solve the problem?

You know, downed is part of the game as it is and I think it is a great part at that. When fights (structured at least) are maxed at 5 people, the most important question comes to being in the right place at the right time. Dedicating two people to one person in this case is 40% of your entire team. This hurts their ability to get stuff done elsewhere. It is completely balanced to me that a 2v1 is nearly impossible considering how important each person is on a team. Setting up a 2v1 is in many cases either a disadvantage to the team with 2 due to them over committing to a point OR poor movement on behalf of the 1 team to keep an important point.

It’s insane to me that people think downed state is broken because they can’t win a 2v1. When you are fighting two people, you need to be smart enough to realize you need to make a decision. Waste their time or retreat and overwhelm another point.

Once again, to emphasize, 2 people is a huge chunk of a team of 5 people, it makes sense that in a game that focuses on positioning that 2 people should win against 1 nearly every time.

This argument is further silly since it also requires that for you to win a 2v1 you don’t just have to be better than one person, but better than both. And not just better than both, but better than both at once. Agh, crazy to me that people think THAT is the problem with downed.

The real problem I see is slight imbalance of downed abilities and the fact that one defeated person means every single downed player on the opposing team around gets to rally.

In regards to the suicide button, it isn’t a good idea. It promotes the ability to just time your death with the timer far too easily. Someone can waste all their abilities to keep you from capping a point while they’re downed, time their death, and be back potentially with enough time to stop the full cap. Essentially, that is something that is just asking to be abused.

Heh, aggressive response.

Anyways, first off, being demoralized does not go to death.

Your response with dodgeball is interesting because it plays into my suggestion more heavily. In dodgeball, you get hit, you go out. However, if a teammate catches a ball, the first one out gets to come back on. That is exactly my suggestion. Simply limit the number of people who can rally to one per death.

The advantage of this is it still maintains the same mentality and game play without creating a dramatic overpowered shift because one team was able to stomp just one person and get their whole team back. Further, penalizing repeat downs is also beneficial since it will help to prevent builds that are focused around constantly rezzing people (I understand that there is already a mechanic that penalizes you for repeat downs, I propose making that more severe.)

In contrast to your idea, it is considerably simpler and makes logical sense. To argue that someone should immediately die because they are demoralized is as strong of an argument as mine about adrenaline. And even if they were to choose which to fix, in implementation, yours requires a whole new system be implemented.

Whether this was their intention or not, the downed state is a magnificent beast in its own right. There is no energy in this game, so we end up losing the attrition factor that energy usually brings with it. It was instead replaced with cooldowns. The consequence of this was the loss of any form of “backup.” When you had energy as your reserve, you were able to survive strongly with energy, as soon as you ran out, you were not dead, you simply didn’t have any energy. You are now very easily killed, but not really dead. To me, the introduction of the self heal, the basic auto attack, and large health pools give way to the attrition factor in GW2 being the health bar. For this to work out best, we need a “fail safe,” a second chance to fall back on when you’ve taken heavy pressure and your resource is gone. In convention, it was your health bar, in here it is downed state. I love this way of looking at it and puts downed state and their entire game on an interesting position above most other games. Unforunately, because of capture points and short fights, we don’t get to see what truly could of been in regards to health being the primary attrition factor it could have been.

Point being, it isn’t right for you to take that away from other players based on their poor decisions. It is an important part in the process of victory and defeat. I agree whole-heartedly that an entire team rallying off of one kill is insane at the least, but to throw someone into instant death as an attempt to balance it is just as insane.

Well, if your discussion is going to be over WvWvW, then you ought to go to that forum section and talk about it there.

As to your question, I do not find that the least bit ironic. It makes sense, he fights an enemy to the bitter end, his enemy dies, and you get a burst of adrenaline that pushes you through. Makes sense to me. And why would there be a reverse action? An instant death button? That sounds terrible.

GW2 doesn’t have an attrition resource like many other games have. So because of this, health takes on that role. As you fight, your ability is to manage your hp as if it were energy. Just like a game, when your energy runs down and you’re helpless, you’re not quite dead yet. You generally have an hp bar that protects you a little bit before death. Since that doesn’t exist, it makes perfect sense that there is a rally system to protect you from running dead on energy.

I agree that an entire team rallying off of one kill is excessive, however, the request for a “reverse action” is absurd.

Like I said before, they need to penalize multiple down states more heavily and switch to only one person being rallied off a kill. Preferably whoever has been downed the longest.

O ya, and then when you want to play support or tank your sol because you cant feasibly kill someone or do anything other than help allies get something done. It is the direct opposite of a team game, it would then be a game of 5 individuals. Consider a damage skill which is balanced because it is a highly front loaded damage source but doesn’t 1 hit anyone. Well, if we take two of those then you can easily drop someone even tho that wasn’t the intention. If you balance around 1v1, you won’t have a balanced game.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yes, in theory balance is more than your 1v1 capabilities. That is why an Elementalist is actually quite popular in high-ranking games.

However in practice this isn’t how players evaluate balance. They tend to regard 1v1 capabilities as an indicator of power. And that has quite some merit. Nobody expects to constantly win 1v2s unless they are really confident in their abilities.

And logically, a game that is balanced in 1v1, will also by extension be relatively balanced around 2v2 and 3v3 situations. Especially without dedicated support roles like Healers etc.

Ultimately people will always assess balance based on 1v1 performances and developers would be wise to accept that. It’s much easier to balance out a handful of support skills around group situations than it is to balance entire classes around various situations.

balance around 1v1 =/= balance around 2v2 or higher. If everything is balanced around 1v1, then it promotes class stacking over more mixed options. The only reason balance around 1v1 is plausible in GW2 is because more important fights are a 1v1 fight. This to be is bad design, but hey, who am I to say. It just means that if you went in with 5 of one thing and everything was balanced around 1v1, then you would have a pretty easy time.

shaolin.9716:

It would be great and generate better feedback for 1v1 balance.

Heh.. 1v1 balance. Seems like bad game design if the balance you want is 1v1. But, capture points means you either balance 1v1 or don’t balance at all. Odd thing it is.

Eh, its all to be taken with a grain of salt. Anyone who is half intelligent will realize the game isn’t balanced around 1v1. It would just be a fun thing to do and a great way to easily test out builds.

Eh, you missed a little nuance. I suppose it comes from the fact I wasn’t clear. Each profession, according to Anet, offers you a choice of play style. So a thief is naturally more damage oriented than say a warrior. So their maximum damage potential is higher than that of a warrior, however, the skill to obtain that maximum number should come with relatively equal consequences and be equally as difficult. Now, I said relatively because whats squishy for a warrior is not the same as squishy for a thief due to different mechanics, but if you go full damage, you should have to do so at the loss of other options. This should sound familiar, because it is exactly what you said. But, they should be equally difficult to obtain that relative position among that given profession. Your desire ought to be that a thief, although more damage oriented, shouldn’t max out in their respective field with such a low skill cap. Same can be said with any profession trying to do their thing the best. Example a guardian probably needs to have his skill cap raised for the amount of defense he can offer.

It will be possible if you want to pay money for a private server.. lol

I am not a fan of this suggestion. Rally in and of itself is not the problem, it even makes sense that you rally.

The problem is that you can completely beat a team 4 on 4, get three of them downed and one of you downed, but because their team can delay your finishing longer they can finish your one and despite it all you now have a 4 on 3 with you on the losing end of it. IMO, only one person should rally for a defeat and successive downs should add a considerably higher penalty.

BTW…

The name for guildwars comes from the lore. I am not super proficient on guildwars lore, but I believe it stems from essentially a time when the world was divided into guilds who were constantly at war with each other. From there you get the game we all sit here and discuss, guildwars.

Has nothing to do with actual GvG.

But I couldn’t agree more about the lost potential in gvg.

You know, I would normally agree with you. The problem is that this stems from Anet’s own wording. They wanted every profession to be viable. Therefore, in my mind, to rectify this each class should have easy to play weapon sets and hard to play sets. But each and every profession should have similar skill caps. To achieve the maximum damage allowed shouldn’t come with a remarkably low skill cap, this should be true for all professions.

You know, I love the idea of remaking a thief into something which isn’t just an assassin who can steal. When I conjure up images of what I would like a thief to be, I imagine something that is focused around utility. Certainly, it can be an assassin. But it ought to be able to do about anything. I think of thieves as being full of tricks and fully capable of playing the game how they wish. I would of liked to of seen that style put into them. I think how you’ve diversified your skills shows a similar desire.

displacedTitan.6897:

I think most of you guys are totally high on nostalgia. I bought GW1 at launch got to 20 first week and played for like a month before giving up to go back to DOTA.

GW1 was interesting but pretty crappy at launch. No one had any organization and there was only the HoH if I remember right.

Stop pretending that because after a month and a half this doesnt live up to nostalgia fueled memories of a game that was developed over 6 years IN ADDITION to development before launch (because some of you like to pretend that pre-launch development only counts for this game).

Could this game be better? Yes
Will it get better like GW1 did? Absolutely

I desperately hate this argument. First of all, guildwars had GvG immediately. Even in beta, it existed. You had to buy a cape and a guildhall first. The cape cost about 2k if I recall and the guild hall cost in excess of 100k or a lucky win in HoH. The game they offered to us at release was in fact 100% of what they promised. They promised a game that would have instanced pve, a good story line, no gear requirements, and pvp that was played alongside of the pve.

You could do arenas at level 10. To get out of pre-searing you did a pvp match. Your next arena was at 15 and then at 18 for RA. HoH winners determined which region could use toa. Not to mention HoH was about the only way you could progress into GvG without having to spend a lot of time to get a lot of money.

Point being, they didn’t release a game with a promise and then not live up to it.

Further, they spent a massive amount of time (hopefully) LEARNING from gw1. Why is it that after all that time we end up with a game that is BEHIND it?

Seis, you bring up a fantastic point I forgot to bring up in this article.

The question he said, is elite versus casual. Now, that is not entirely true. My primary gripe is that they chose casual explicitly over elite. I completely concur that a good game, particularly an esport attempt, ought to appeal to both.

Now, I want to talk about a couple of points to explain why this is still capable of being casual friendly while also being a team sport. Most of the argument I won’t go into detail about can be dragged from my initial argument. Being casual friendly to me is all about discussing how hard is it to pick up the game and be decent at it? If they do it perfectly, you shouldn’t NEED a team to be able to at least play at some level, however, having a team means you can play at an almost exponetially higher level. Consider dota style games. Those are more team oriented that GW2 but less team oriented than what I would like, but even in those games you can see this concept played out. Another good example in real life is soccer. You can all come together and form a pick up game and you won’t be fantastic, but you can still and enjoy the game as a team. However, to move to the next level of skill it takes more than individual ability, it takes team work.

The problem with these games that stress individual skill above all else is that the skill cap isn’t quite as high. Certainly, you can point to SC2 and say it has a high skill cap and it most certainly does, but that is the nature of an RTS. They are incredibly complex games where the basic idea is very simple but the game play is complex. That’s a fantastic model, for an RTS.

Now we need to ask, what kind of game are we playing? What sort of game play should we expect from that game? It happens to be an RPG, an mmorpg at that. One thing we’ve come to expect for a playstyle of mmorpgs is a playstyle that, at least attempts to, promote playing together. It seems reasonable that when you pick up a game of a certain type, you will encounter that game throughout. It is borderline false advertising to call this pvp combat system that of an mmorpg combat system. It has the pacing and feel of an FPS.

That argument is an argument I made long long ago on guildwars 2 guru. People told me I couldn’t possibly know that until I play the game and eventually the thread died. But alas, you said the right words that made me remember that post and the argument I made in it.

The point:

The problem with GW1, as I stated earlier, was barriers to entry. This also is a direct relationship to how casual friendly a game is. But, creating a game that is more casual friendly that focused on elite players is a game that can’t stand up to a true competitive mind set. Further, when playing a game we expect to play a certain way. It is almost unethical to pull such a switch on people who expect one thing and you deliver something completely different. Sure, it may be good, may be even excellent. But they will all be depressed a little because they had their hopes up for something else.

I love orb of wrath, if you don’t pop it, it can be quite spamable. It’s one of those nice tricks you learn after playing staff long enough

I wonder how impactful additional game types would be on GW2, beyond people just having an alternate outlet to PvP that isn’t Conquest. Would it create a deeper meta with different objectives? Would it just be a different meta that’s still shallow? It could very well be that the game mechanics themselves will hamstring the meta in the long run, but I’m not convinced quite yet.

Also, regarding it being evident to anyone who plays for a week what skills are needed to be effective, that could be because many of the skills happen to be generally effective in one way or another. However, if you’re trying to say that after a week you’ll know the exact optimal build for the class, I’d throw the challenge flag. There are various “cheese” builds out there, as well as some “standard use this in a pug or you’ll get yelled at” builds, but I think that’s par for the course. They have certain purposes, but they’re by no means “the” builds.

I will mention the second paragraph first, I did mention above that I was not talking about actual balance of the game. I had hoped that would imply I wasn’t talking about literal skills. In any case, I wasn’t. I didn’t mean for it to sound as if I was talking about builds or any other thing like that. By skills, I meant your own abilities.

Now, regarding different game types.

Here is the thing with those, if they introduced new game types they have basically three options. Leave it unbalanced, switch their main game type and balance around it, or create a split in skills so they can balance both game types.

Now, the reason you can’t have two different game types with the same skill set and maintain an even balance is due to the fact that the different games require a different set of abilities. Because of this, it means certain skills themselves will become very powerful in one game type while very weak in the other. Maybe, in one game type something is perfectly balanced but in the other it is way over powered. To nerf it would hurt the balance of the other game type as well.

There is merit to the idea of having game types you don’t balance around. They are games that people can just go in and play around and have fun in. Non-competitive modes essentially. This is not what I want to see from a team oriented combat game mode. But, for the record, I am all for these types of game modes.

Splitting skills on the other hand, would be excessive. It would over complicate a game that honestly needs to maintain a “simplistic as possible” approach. It is a possibility, but not one I personally would like to see.

The thing I would like to see is them switch what they’re balancing around.

O, and in regards to the final statement in the first paragraph I quoted, I argued above that the mechanics of gw2 actually would make for a fantastic meta in a team oriented setting.

Something else I want to point out by the way. The thing I would like to see the most is for them just to reorient their current game mode. It is an easy activity. All they would need to do is make it so that capping points need to be done sequentially as opposed to in any order. Then, allow some form of point scoring that could help benefit from that. It would create a very tug-of-war style combat and still maintain the capture point theme. It also truly redefine how important those secondary objectives are and change how you go about handling them. To get them at the cost of getting middle would be detrimental, but if they help you to cap the center then it would be very powerful. So in each combat, you would have to decide if the alternative objective is worth the loss of a player.

You start to see these far more advanced considerations develop and secondary objectives become way more powerful. Imagine the cat in khylo. You would need to learn to focus on it properly and determine if the loss is worth it. As someone at the point, figure out who the best person to handle it would be, it could be different each match based on what you need at the point you’re fighting over. Not to mention the increase depth you would obtain by longer team fights with more important positioning and more impactful cross class combos.

It would just be a far more deep game and in no way more complex if that were the case. It opens the doors to cheese builds which I think are EXTREMELY important. Honestly, builds that have a remarkably low skill cap and still do a decent job are builds I think MUST exist in a game that is focused around teams. These builds allow players to learn to play with each other without asking for deep interrelated play. They also allow people to just go in with random people and do decently well. This helps to greatly reduce the learning curve of a game that would otherwise have a high learning curve.

Upon launching GW1, starting it up, and embarking on what would become the longest stretch of time I ever played a single game, there was something I realized. GW1 competitive play had a lot of potential. There was a lot of depth, it was quickly evident. I was ok with not being perfect at it in 1.5 months because I could easily tell that there was a lot to that game. GW2 pvp is not the same. I can see the path I need to walk to improve myself, most of it falls on my individual ability to improve. There are some tweaks here and there about communicating quicker and perhaps a more responsive reaction towards calls for help, but that’s it. The depth of game is not just shallower, it’s practically dried up in comparison.

It was probably a month into the game, constantly doing GvG and I realized that the flag stand was remarkably important. So, I created a crip shot ranger who had empathy and apply poison. I would focus 100% on running the flag and making sure they were unable to go get their flag. This caused our rank to skyrocket up to about rank 30-40 until everyone else started to follow suit. So, to answer your question, no.. it was by no means developed a month and a half into the game. But I could sit back and see the game for what it was. I am not discussing balance of the game, I am talking about the skills it takes to play this game.

It is evident to anyone who plays this game for about a week what set of skills are needed to be effective. Individual skill bar usage, management of health, positioning, communication, reaction, and pre-planning. It is definitely a formidable list of skills needed, but it is a list of skills from a different genre of game and in no way mimics the game Anet spat out the first time. I as a player have the most fun when I feel like I am part of a team. A game that fights to place cohesive battle techniques above individual talent. GW1 was kitten close to that, and it was the only game I have ever found even close to that set of skills. GW2 is not even the slightest bit near that.

Btw, I in no way “jumped” to any conclusion. That’s kinda why I wrote it in 5 posts. In regards to generalizations, that is the step you need to make in order to analyze something. You need to take one step back and ask how does this concept fit into the entire abstract game play we have in front of us? It is analysis that can be done, and I argue I did that above. If you had difficulty following the analysis you can read it again or just ask in any particular part you think I jumped to a conclusion in. I rather enjoy when people dissect that, it serves to only allow me to improve my argument the second time through.

O, and you claim they are taking a methodical approach. The point of this argument is to say that in their approach, in their attempt to analyze their game and other games, they failed to inspect something. They failed to look at the first game they gave us. They didn’t take away the appropriate lessons and didn’t understand what made that game what it was. If you want me to support that claim there, I can do it. I know that through their production of the game, the game itself was lost to them. So yes, they are in fact taking a slower methodical approach, the problem is they took a left turn when they needed to take a right and their slow approach is taking them down a path no gamer wants to see them walk down (yes, another statement not entirely backed up by evidence, but hopefully my original article helps to back this up assuming you agree with it.)

I have to agree with you cog. The things Lo lists as problems I see as strengths in the GW2 system.

~Build communication is something they will eventually handle. I’m not too torn down that they don’t have templates immediately (granted it is a little mindboggling, one of the best updates for GW1 didn’t make it to GW2, owell.)

~The traits allow you to customize your build without completely destroying what type of character you are. I love the way traits work, they’re more or less flavor that help you specialize in a way you want to play a certain build. I honestly think they have too much effect on the overall effectiveness of the builds tho. It would be nice if you were able to choose other traits just so that you could make a more unique build and not be penalized for it. Perhaps a greater focus on utility as opposed to stats would be a way to achieve this sort of result. No matter what you do though, some traits will simply be better.

~The blurring of the class lines provides the most potential of this entire game. If you were fighting in a team of 5, it lets you play proactively just by swapping weapons or perhaps trading out a couple of skills. The fact that a guardian can be very tanky, swap to a different set and quickly support an ally and then go back to tank offers a very dynamic look at the way a match can be played. Of course, this dynamic is severely injured by the fact that team fights don’t generally go above 3 people and shouldn’t ever last more than a minute or two at most. If that were altered, this dynamic combat potential could be truly unleashed.

~I can’t help but agree with the choice of weapon skills. For the most part, it simplified the skill selection system without completely abandoning it. What is good about it is that if you were to randomly throw some skills together, there is a pretty good chance they will be somewhat useful. In GW1, if you picked skills at random, most likely it would be an aweful bar. This helps to introduce new players to the game with a smaller learning curve and doesn’t technically hurt the ability to scale with difficulty (that comes from game type choice.)

~Now, elite skills are definately a whole different beast in GW2. I had hoped they would be a little closer to what the devs said they would be. I could imagine being in a team fight, 5 on 5. The game is making a change and the quintessential moment breaks. You could decide to use a game altering skill that you possibly won’t get another chance to use or you could gamble and save it. If you use it, you could push the game in your favor but at the cost of your elite skill. If they had a team oriented combat and had the elite system they promised, it would of been an amazing dynamic to have a skill that was literally game changing but could pretty much be used no more than once or twice in a given match. BTW, weapon choices are basically the equivalent of elites in GW2. In gw1, you would name the elite skill to define what build you were running since that basically decided what you did. In GW2, the weapon choice takes that spot.

~The watering down I don’t think is something intrinsic of the skill usage. It’s the fact that there is less of an ability to punish someone for doing something risky. I mean, it definitely exists, but it amounts to back capping someone for doing something risky. That’s it. The way you play together is what has been watered down. There is actually far more complexity in the way skills are used in GW2 than in GW1. Cross profession combos is a great example (another thing which is considerably hurt by the lack of team fight ability.)

BUT I appreciate you reading the article and I do think you see the problems as they arise, you just need to be better pointed to the source of the problem, not the symptoms

Added: At leman. I love that analogy. Best one I’ve seen so far.

Added Again: The biggest problem with GW1 balance at the start was how effective teams of 8x were. Like 8 eles and etc. Other than that, gw1 at the start was pretty decent balance wise. I personally think letting 8 of one thing be effective is a good thing just so long it can be beaten by occasionally. Another way to reduce the learning curve by giving players an easy build to help coach them slowly into the game.

Their defense stems from a strong offense. For them, defending a point amounts to killing someone before it can be captured. Stealth capping is simply not a good idea. You play as a thief and there is something you are agreeing to. You will be focusing on the offense side of builds. If you want to play a true defensive role, you might consider playing a different class.

I would give almost anything to see Anet discuss why they decided to completely ignore PvP from GW1 and go for a format so left field from their great predecessor.

A post that might tell me what did they plan to bring from GW1, what do they plan to bring from GW1. Something that would let me know the company I invested nearly 6 years of my life to is still in existence. So far, this company is not the same. They aren’t making a game for gamers, they’re making a game for the general populace. I remember watching a short video by them where they discussed how they got their start. Introducing them as a group of players who wanted to make the ultimate game for gamers, if I recall right. I would love to know they still exist.

Yup, there must be some huge in game problems if people are already being nostalgic

Lol, so, to you it’s ok to finish the engine, slap a couple of things together and call it done?

Sorry to tell you but development has a couple more steps than
-finish game engine
-release game
(and it sure as hell doesn’t take five years to make an engine)

Especially when they want push for a competitive game. They spent a lot of time analyzing other esports and trying to figure out why they were good. The thing they didn’t do is analyze their own game. They had a model, which granted needed work, but it was a great model at its core. If they would have polished the team oriented combat up and released that, they would of been a thousand steps further in pvp development AND would have a better product. They tried to recreate the games everyone plays in an mmo context, I for one, don’t play an mmo to feel like I’m playing an FPS or a moba. I wanted to see the first true e-sport that was an honest to god rpg. Guildwars 1 was close, they just needed to fix a few things. Instead they said screw it, start from scratch.

Point, they took something easy and made it complex.. They simply tried too hard to make something like everything else.

Sky.9347:

I played GW1, but I wasn’t in an elite guild or anything. I loved PvP, and I watched a LOT of GvG.

I prefer GW2, because before long these technical issues will go away and the team will have time to bring the things that kept you in GW1 forward.

Keep in mind, all of these features have to be re-programmed from scratch.

That’s why we gave them 5-6 years… And the argument is, it takes 5-6 years to get to a place that isn’t even half as far as the last place they were at (gw1 pvp.)

Although, I can completely sympathize with the"47" argument, I have to agree that at it’s current state retaliation is a bit excessive. imo, it should be a very quick reactive boon. Something that penalizes someone who is bursting you without paying attention.

Up the potential damage, drastically reduce the duration, I think it would be an interesting skill. Take it from passive to active.

I agree with you, although I feel your argument is far more flowers and roses than an actual argument.

People don’t understand the difference between GW1 and GW2. GW1 was a competitive game without even trying. They never intended for the pvp to be as competitive as it was. Their original design was a game that mixed pvp and pve into a single cohesive experience. On release, that is exactly what they released. They didn’t give us a half finished game, they gave us the experience they promised.

Gw2 is their attempt to make an e-sport where they tried entirely too hard. They didn’t trust their product and instead tried to copy it from other e-sport games. If I wanted to play those games, I would go play those other games… don’t want to play those other games, I want a game that is as coordinated as GW1.

If you want my full argument, look up the post entitled “lost potential.” It’s entirely too long for me to explain the downfalls of GW2 pvp. (Btw, I will mention it is a fun game, but it will never have the same enjoyment and depth gw1 had.)

Kiirin.3418:

I don’t remember GW1 becoming an esport or seeing it in any of the major gaming leagues.

Because major e-sport platforms existed when GW1 was at it’s prime right? O wait.. it was in its pre-infancy state of existence.

e-sport as a whole genre of games and at the level it is is only a very recent thing. When gw1 was out there were quite a few tournaments where the winners won large amounts of money, but since there was no term for that style of game and no cool club for it fall in, it was technically not an e-sport. If it were released today, all polished up and shiny it would most definitely be an e-sport. (By polished up I mean if they fixed a couple of things about GW1, but it is WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAY closer to an e-sport than GW2 is.)

Personally, I wish anet told us what they were thinking. I am ok with the idea that the stuff they tell us may change. I would just love to know in what direction they are going, what they find important, how they feel about arguments. Why wouldn’t they just say to the community, “so this is what we’re thinking, opinions?” Rather than this, “shhhh don’t tell them ANYTHING whatsoever… They are only allowed to know once were completely done and doing nothing other than final touches.”

If I were a game developer, I would be more interested in people’s opinions long before were doing final touches. These are the people who are buying the game, and yes it is a buy once and done game, but they still need an income. So it makes sense that one of the first things they will be implementing is a way to make money. I understand that, and I am ok with that, but please just let us in on your little secrets. I see no reason to have such a shut curtain mentality about your development process.

“balance” as a single player will always always always be worse than any other choice. There are support style characters, utility characters, dps characters, tanky characters, and together they form a team build. There has never been a game I can think of where if you chose to be something that just sort of did everything, it was successful. As a player on a team, you specialize in something and you expect your teammates to pick up the slack for your short failings.

You need to pick an objective that your character wants to achieve and work to do that as best as possible. You can’t expect yourself to pick a build that can do everything, if such a build existed then 5 of those builds would simply be over powered.

Balance in terms of other games is a team build in which you can handle basically anything due to the setup of the team. You should be able to have some counter to any weighted build. The problem is that there are a lot of weighted builds right now that are more effective than they should be. For example, a team with 5 tanky characters is generally very effective, or more effective than most other options. The thing that could counter this is a buff to a pressure style character.

It is not interesting to set the game up as

x > y, y > z, z > x. It is something many people have done and it is very rock paper scissors in mentality. Guildwars 1 had this and also didn’t have this. There were gimmicky builds that fell into this set of category and then there were balanced builds. Balanced builds could theoretically beat all of those, but they were far more difficult to play. To me, that is how a good game should function. The rock paper scissor mentality needs to exist but not be the entire game. That style of play is a great way for newcomers to learn the game by playing a lower skilled build and still get some wins under their belt and build confidence. Then, there should be a high skill option where playing it comes down to who plays it better and perhaps only minor changes along skill choice and trait choice that have more a play style effect than anything else. This build should be hard to master and honestly hard to play but capable of beating everything other than a better played balanced build.

Guildwars 1 had this for a very short period of time. It was deemed boring and entire classes were changed just to “shake up the meta.” It was a remarkably disappointing adjustment in the meta and forever changed that system. It is a system I would love to see appear again.

ANYWAYS… point being, you can’t be a balanced player, only a balanced team.

Added: btw, this concept of balanced teams is very hard if not impossible to implement in a conquest style game where it focuses on short sided fights more than anything.

kKagari.6804:

…

Ya, I would agree with much of what you said. To go even further, an informative observation mode is, in my opinion, the most important thing you could possibly include.

The trick however, is to be informative without presenting too much information. So things like being able to add and remove certain bits of information would be nice.

Of the information I think ought to be included are the skills bars and an easy and quick view of condis/boons. It would be nice to see an option for a LoL style UI where you can see all 10 skill bars and the current skill usages/cooldowns. I loved how in GW1 you could communicate to other people observing the game, I think that needs to remain. Basically, find a way to shove as much possible information in as you can while still providing a way to remove information for people who just don’t want to be overwhelmed.

wuzzle.1368:

I like this thread, it deserves to be on top. Even if I did not play GW1.

<3 (no kitten

thank you,
I appreciate when people enjoy my writing.

IMO retal would be best used re-actively to burst. It shouldn’t have anywhere near the uptime it has. It’s a skill that takes any amount of little skill a guardian takes to play, and throws it out the window making it a face roll profession. IMO make it so that retal does a decent chunk of damage back on next hit and let that be it. You could then do a little more with it and it would have to be used with a bit more foresight.

Eir.6921:

Mikali.9651:

Hexicz.8450:

The main difference between GW and GW2 in terms of sPvP is the amount of content. In GW you had HoH, GvG, arenas, FA/JQ.

In Guild Wars 2 you just have one game mode split into tournaments and browser PvP….

They also need a ranking system

HA, HB, RA, TA, GvG, AB, FA+JQ.
8 modes for PvP in gw1!

Dont jumpg the gun here,

If i remember it correctly at the start they only had RA and Tombs.
and added TA and GvG before FActions.
During factions they added: AB FA and JQ
Nightfall was HB cause of the introduction of Heroes.

But still Tombs + RA>>>>>GW2 PvP
GvG>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>GW2 PvP

That’s not right. They had GvG immediately. Although it cost a remarkable amount of money to be able to compete. It cost a sigil to make a guild hall, and at the time there was only one vendor to buy one from which you could never get one from. Instead, you had to win in Tombs to get a chance to get one which you could sell for an insane amount of money. To get to tombs, you basically had to nearly beat pve (all but fire islands). RA was not max level, it was I think, 15-20 or 18-20. There was no pvp island. You could swap armor mid combat (people like me, on a ranger, abused that by swapping to different elemental sets.)

So yes, guildwars 1 pvp started off WAAAAY different than where it ended.

The difference, however, is two fold: At the start, they wanted the game to have pvp and pve combined together into a single cohesive game. They did that pretty decently and they were where they wanted to be at release. They didn’t proclaim they wanted it to be an e-sport and just happened to start that far off. The second point is that they didn’t spend about 6 years claiming, “not until it’s ready” and still end up way off the mark they shot for.

It’s a simple matter, I don’t mean this to be an attack on Anet, I truly think they achieved a lot in their game. But the fact is they released a game before it was ready despite them proclaiming, “not until it’s ready.”

I always thought the GW2 environmental weapon system would make a CTF a fun mini game. Get new skills based on the flag for flag carriers. But I would not like to see CTF be a competitive format.

I don’t mean to be mean, but that is an awful idea :/

They stress they wanted to make a game that promoted risk taking, I am all for calculated risk in games. Dieing for 2 minutes is a great way for a team to change their focus and not want to die. And what happens if you have a team who pretty much never dies? You just sit there and watch all game? That would be simply terrible. A suggestion that achieves the same thing and would be slightly less terrible is to just let the max be 5 people on each team.

I apologize if that seems a little.. aggressive.. but this idea should never be implemented, sorry.