The updates exclusive to PvE and PvP are hard to compare. Almost all PvP features require very intensive programmer and server support like solo queue, matchmaking, custom arenas, spectator mode, etc. Living story updates leverage existing technology to advance the story and expand content with new mobs, crafting recipes, dungeons, etc. PvP has few areas expandable by content; the main feature being maps which we release regularly. Balance updates affect all parts of the game and don’t come out for one any faster for one than the other.
Problems like this are always very hard to track down because they are so vague and infrequent. The best I can do is relay the information to someone with more insight
These are all great ideas! They are very much inline with our direction for the game. The one thing I have to disagree with as-stated is #1: “Remove hot join.” Removing hot join means removing all custom arenas, which we will not do as they have many benefits. I understand why the community wants this; to have the majority of the player base shift to a more structured format like an unrated solo arena. The best middle ground I can see is removing all ArenaNet custom arenas.
I agree there should be an option! Unfortunately players who go back to the old map will not have a great middle ground between the old a newly added functionality. In any case, it was wrong of us to not leave an option many people have gotten used to.
Allied player icons will be fixed in the next hotfix! Apologies for the break!
We’ll watch the feedback for the new minimap to determine what other changes to make and directions to take. Keep in mind not every map has had its art updated. We focused primarily on maps being played at PAX.
Dishonored is definitely working. You can think of it like this: You can leave a maximum of 5 times in 3 days.
@Kito: What you described is valid, but we’ve kept you from leaving for 71 hours.
We will continue to watch the rate at which people acquire dishonor and make adjustments as needed.
I fully support the dishonor system but I have a question. My Internet isn’t 100% reliable and in the past two days of Solo Q I have dcd in 2 matches but open my game back up as fast as it can to hop back in the match. Does every dc count as a dishonor?
You will not gain dishonor if you reconnect. We specifically chose our numbers to allow for some unintentional disconnects.
Everyone started with default ratings for solo arena. This means your matches will get better the more you play. Team Arena was not touched. As was already mentioned above, the matchmaking methods are the same for both arenas.
We’re currently working on some minimap changes that will help with the zoom levels and readability. I agree that more hard-coded actions should be bindable.
This may be because the server has reserved slots, and all public slots are filled. It would appear as not full on the browser, but unless you’re on the member’s list, you will not be allowed to join.
When designing UI, all resolutions and UI sizes need to be taken into consideration. That unused space is only there for large resolution monitors using normal and small UI size. You can see for yourself by setting the game to 1024×768 and setting your UI size to large. You get tons of overlapping UI You’d have to toggle out the skillbar to get any room.
That being said, what kind of stuff would you like to see down there?
Top of my list: side-by-side team state comparison. Points captured, neutralized, kills, deaths, healing done, damage done, condi damage done, etc etc.
Character locking doesn’t happen until the game start countdown. You still have the ready time to switch. This decision was made specifically in consideration for solo queue. We can always move when character locking begins, but when the feature launches, it will happen at the countdown. This feature is intended mostly to stop exploits where people would switch characters for different skill setups or to reset cooldowns.
Personally, I think it should lock the second you get in there OR you shouldn’t be able to see what you are playing against until the game starts.
I agree there is still the problem of counter picking after joining a match. I’m sure we’ll find a middle ground with these issues.
Character locking doesn’t happen until the game start countdown. You still have the ready time to switch. This decision was made specifically in consideration for solo queue. We can always move when character locking begins, but when the feature launches, it will happen at the countdown. This feature is intended mostly to stop exploits where people would switch characters for different skill setups or to reset cooldowns.
1) The benefit of splitting Solo Arena and Team Arena is that each can have its own rotation.
2) Random map rotation is coming.
3) Will get to when we can. There are a lot of little things like this that just constantly slip past each deadline because we’re busy working on features.
Here is how the mouse buttons function:
-Single left click selects targets and does not attack.
-Double left click selects and auto-attacks a target IF you have the option enabled (on by default) AND you have a skill marked for auto-cast (control-right-click).
-Single Right click selects and auto-attacks a target IF you have the option enabled (on by default) AND you have a skill marked for auto-cast (control-right-click).
The print-screen key can be bound in-game through the options panel, and is your keyboard’s print-screen button by default.
Some of the targeting changes we’re trying should help alleviate selection of stacked targets. Right now there’s so much overlap that even if you clicked perfectly on someone’s model, it could select a minion instead.
Please for the love of god make Tab targeting actually select the nearest player! I don’t care where my mouse is looking. When I press tab I want to target the person attacking my side not the person 50 ft. away.
This would be a separate bind called ‘Target Nearest’. Tab targeting is meant to cycle through targets with some priority that may or may not start with your closest target. For instance, tab could prefer targets towards the center of your screen, and not necessarily the closest.
Evan, since we are at it, a few months ago you were right about to implement a fix, so that when interaction windows popped up on your screen (like a tournament match), you didn’t get kicked out of your chat windows interrupting whatever you were in the process of typing. For some reason this never went through and I wonder what happened.
Any chance for this to be happening anytime soon, because it is still as annoying as it ever was.
This fix is done on a case-by-case basis. If there are more windows that need to not do that, just let me know. I applied the fix to the death breakdown (no longer relevant), the scoreboard, and the overflow redirect.
Please for the love of god make Tab targeting actually select the nearest player! I don’t care where my mouse is looking. When I press tab I want to target the person attacking my side not the person 50 ft. away.
This would be a separate bind called ‘Target Nearest’. Tab targeting is meant to cycle through targets with some priority that may or may not start with your closest target. For instance, tab could prefer targets towards the center of your screen, and not necessarily the closest.
Could you please post a detailed description of what you’re expecting each mouse button to do, and what it does now? i.e double click, single click. Could you also post a screen shot of your general options panel and your skillbar at the time of this bug happening? This would greatly help deduce the problem.
Can you do something for the right click targeting too ? I’m tired of targeting people while i’m clicking on right click on my mouse to change the axe of my camera to see around me.
Targeting should be left click, not right click since we need it to change the camera view and a lot of time it target someone because you need to be fast…
There was an option added a month or two ago to disable interact on right-click.
Mouse targeting is doing some pretty lame things. We have cleaner versions we’re trying out now. Most notably: Selection radii appears to be far too large. Also, you cannot select new targets in front of your current target.
Desaturating/fading non-players is a good idea. As for selecting targets in follow cam, are you referring to switching targets, or just selecting a target to see their buffs, hp, etc. While not a major concern, it would just have to override target of target.
+1. On our list. Seriously though, we have already been making small fixes to mouse selection. We have a whole page dedicated to targeting issues we plan to fix. How about the issue where you cant select targets through invisible walls. i.e. the dividing walls between side points and keep in Forest.
This is a great topic. I’m a big fan of mobas and would personally like to see a way to achieve similar team building before a match starts. This would also help solo queue players a lot, allowing them to form balanced teams after joining a match. The prerequisite for this would be templates.
This is a really good idea; one that we’ve already talked a lot about. With templates, we’d want to give new players a few default builds to try instead of the one. Templates would also make highlighting other players’ builds much easier.
There was a post quite a while ago describing changes that would come to the combat log. I explained how there are a ton of skills in the game (more than what you see on your bars) that need to be checked and updated before shipping a more polished combat log (it’s a long process). However, it is actively being worked on. The polish includes many of the things you listed.
As for the match stats, we’ve discussed all sorts of things to show at the end of a match, or even during the match while spectating. It shouldn’t be a surprise that it isn’t very high on the priority list though.
Solo queue is definitely on the horizon. What everyone has been playing now will become ‘Team Arena’ (group queue), and we will additionally add a ‘Solo Arena’ (solo queue). The ratings will be split, and each will have their own leaderboard. We’re also planning on shipping a couple other long-standing requests with Solo Arena that many have been waiting for. A blog post will go into details about everything.
Rewards are high on our list. We’ve been coordinating with other teams, as it has a game-wide impact. They will certainly take some time to complete and you should expect to see Solo Arena much sooner.
We hear you guys loud and clear! We definitely plan on mitigating the leaver issue with a form of punishment. I wont give details about what the punishment will be, but it should be enough to deter this form of behavior. Anything we add will be in addition to what happens now (loss and rating hit).
Got an update for you guys! Thanks to everyone for dissecting the current state of targeting!
There is certainly a bug with prolonged mouse-presses and not moving the cursor. I am fixing this. However, this is certainly an extreme case and fixing this will not solve all issues players are experiencing.
The current click timing threshold is 250ms. We are playing with a lower number internally to see if it causes problems like people perceiving clicks as not registering.
There is also window of error when clicking that could cause your mouse-release to select something different from what was hovered during the mouse-press. While this should also very rarely happen with the timing and distance thresholds, it is still a potential problem that will be fixed.
On top of all this is still player preference. Not everyone wants a single right-click to perform default actions. This is why we’re adding a toggle for it in the next patch.
There are still questions left to be answered for how targeting in Guild Wars 2 should work, and I’m sure these will be answered as we continue to iterate.
My post wasn’t meant to be negative, but to shed more light on an issue that isn’t as simple as it appears. We anticipated an increase in usability problems from other game features which is why we’ve already begun to address the problem. The current implementation will see revisions.
Disabling right-click to attack/interact is certainly the safest first approach to this issue. There are two problems, though. Anytime you have camera-look and targeting on the same input, you will have conflicting behavior. There isn’t a bug that targets are randomly selected, but rather the game trying to be smart at recognizing clicks versus camera movement. Even when you think you’re perfectly clicking on a target, most of the time you’re also moving the camera a tiny, tiny bit. There is a small threshold that determines whether your tiny movement should actually be a target selection. Lowering this threshold will reduce the chances of this happening, but is one of those numbers where we need to sit on it for a while to see if it ‘feels right’. The problem could also be solved by completely separating the different functionality of selection, auto-attacking, and camera movement. However, completely splitting those is not something we’re prepared to work on at the moment as it is a much broader-reaching change. I hope this helps clear up what’s happening and what steps we’ll take to change it. Thank you again for all the feedback!
While the bugged targeting behavior is getting reverted in PvP, our stance on the issue is the same. A lot of us here have similar feelings; I hate losing my target and then warrior greatsword rushing off a cliff! Some features and polish just slip through the cracks and/or we don’t have enough developer time to address every concern. We appreciate all the feedback and I’m sure these issues will be addressed soon
To clarify: This bug was an unintended change from enabling right-click to switch spectate targets. It only affects enemy players. Disabling right-click targeting across the game is a different change that I’m sure will be implemented given then player response.
There was a problem we were having a week or so ago where you’d be in a party, but the UI wouldn’t show up. Restarting the client should fix the problem.
We have not forgotten about this. Sometimes as certain features get used by more of the game, it reveals issues that lead to a redesign. For instance, now that you can right click on people in PvP while spectating to switch follow cameras, accidental right-clicks can be far more disorienting than selecting a new target.
If you get nauseous from the follow cam, try using free-cam. This allows you to disconnect the camera from your targets facing direction by using left-mouse.
This is a lot of really great, well structured feedback! Thanks! We’re definitely working to address many of these concerns. I would expect to see some improvements as we remove the beta status from custom arenas and spectator mode, and more in the future.
The combat log certainly needs some upgrades. It’s something we’ve already looked into. While such an upgrade isn’t technically difficult, it is time consuming. Upgrading the combat log with more information means we uncover lots of things that may not have been explained anywhere, and need to be updated with new descriptions.
Ahh the new found mantra of A-net. If you continue down this path, all of these little choices of “better than nothing” will lead inevitably to people taking the choice of nothing and moving on.
Like I said, we needed this technology anyways. It’s great that it can fill some of the roles of observer mode before we actually have observer mode
So is this then confirmation that a full observer mode with a higher limit of concurrent viewers is actively being designed/developed/tested?
It must be a disconnect in communication. I assumed, his original comment meant that there were technical limitations preventing observer mode. Now it sounds like it is something they are working on…Clarification please.
There are definitely technical limitations we have not solved.
Ahh the new found mantra of A-net. If you continue down this path, all of these little choices of “better than nothing” will lead inevitably to people taking the choice of nothing and moving on.
Like I said, we needed this technology anyways. It’s great that it can fill some of the roles of observer mode before we actually have observer mode
so basically if someone hosts a tournament with all of the top teams, they can only invite 10 people to watch and everyone else has to find a stream… lol, yea that will really build the community.
Yup, and while some shoutcasts are fine Id much rather have control of my own camera and look at what I find important, not someone else.
that is the whole point of observer mode, to be able to have your own control, view peoples stats/specs, etc. With the way it is setup, unless you are friends with the top teams, you will be relegated to watching a shoutcast/stream and hope you don’t miss whatever time they have to actually inspect the players. All we got was basically a shoutcast mode. Oh you play a thief and want to watch the thief? sorry streamer is focusing on the mesmer and ele.
Yup, I agree. The individual implementation of spectator mode is great. How they set up who can view as a spectator for a given arena is absolutely terrible. A complete step backwards from their working implementation of this feature in GW1 which is now what, 7 years old?
Guild Wars 2 is a completely different game. You cannot take Gw1 features and just drop them in a brand new engine. Gw1 was a simpler game, which made observer mode less complicated than how it would work in Gw2. For example, Gw1 did not use Havok. Of course we would all love observer mode, but this is certainly a step forward, which is better than nothing at all. The current spectator feature is still something we would implement anyways for added support of a neutral team. Plus it allows us to start iterating on shoutcasting UI.
You’d have to toggle out the skillbar to get any room.