Guild Wars 2

This is intentional for performance reasons. We’ve been very clear on the limitations of the in-game spectator mode and how it is not a global observer mode. An observer mode that allows thousands of live viewers is much more difficult and complicated technology. What we have will still go a long way in fostering community building, learning, and shoutcasting.

From sPvP team member Steve:

Hey guys,
The way reserved slots work is after a certain point only players on the member list can join. So if you have a 5v5 arena with 4 spectator slots, and no spectators allowed, then once the server population hits 6/10 only members can join. Or if it’s all member slots then only members can join.

Also, owners can always join their own arenas, even if it’s full. That’s a good candidate for a question on our FAQ.

We’re also aware that we have a bug where the server population isn’t showing up correctly right now. The good news is we have a fix in the works and it should be going out soon.

-Steve Bikun

MithranArkanere.8957:

Will we be able to spectate from a party member’s point of view while defeated and wayting for waypoints to be enabled?

Currently no because of some conflicting features, but its something we’d like to add.

Seth.4927:

Does it have an “automatic camera” mode, so I can leave it on and just watch as if it were a stream or will it stay static?

There is not an automatic mode that switches camera and players for you. We’ve also talked about adding this in future updates.

There will be many possible additions for spectator mode. Like all features, they would be prioritized with everything else we’d like to do. Consider this a starting point

Ursan.7846:

Evan Lesh.3295:

pullnointer.1476:

preset cameras? that didn’t look too well :< why can’t I just click anywhere on the map?

edit: and maybe move around with WASD and pan the camera with the mouse..

We discussed having free-cam, but decided on not including it for this patch because of performance and positioning issues (We don’t want people flying outside of maps) I won’t say it will never be included though

Is it possible to just put in a “character” who’s completely invisible? And thus have no worries about rendering or anything.

Anything is possible with the power of code! Like any feature, we’ll listen to feedback and make decisions from there.

pullnointer.1476:

preset cameras? that didn’t look too well :< why can’t I just click anywhere on the map?

edit: and maybe move around with WASD and pan the camera with the mouse..

We discussed having free-cam, but decided on not including it for this patch because of performance and positioning issues (We don’t want people flying outside of maps) I won’t say it will never be included though

Bluxgore’s House of Paincakes

Exedore.6320:

I realize custom arenas won’t be enabled for all players until some testing has been done. However, does that transition require a major patch, or can you just flip a switch at any time?

There will undoubtedly be fixes and polish tasks generated from beta. These will require a patch.

Zeke Minus.5720:

Hmm…

If Custom Arenas are replacing hotjoin and they cost money, and hotjoin is free…

This could potentially kill off the population of prospective PvPers that don’t have gems/lots of gold. This will truly make PvP quite a “small town.”

It doesn’t cost gems to play on a server, only to own one.

Metatail.1306:

What about people who managed to purchase Custom Arena Starter Kits due to a bug before? I know ANet said they will be usable when CAs get released but does it apply to beta too?

Yes they will be fully functional.

Varonth.5830:

Goorman.7916:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Collections can clearly support more than 1 item per slot, as seen elsewhere in the game. The problem is that it takes 8 times the amount of space to support more than 1, and PvP has a ton of items. In this case, “technical limitation” means size constraints.

To make collection store 2 items instead of 1 is only twice amount of space.(2bits instead of 1), and you also don’t need 2 slots for all the items, only for specific weapon types(e.g. daggers), so i suppose it is maybe 10% larger at max.Such small fix would definitely help untill fully featured unlock-system will come in place.

Well while this is true, it also requires quite a bit of programming time.

I cannot recall a database type which stores 2 bit. I can just recall BIT storing just 1 physical bit. Even standard mySQL BOOLEAN stores 1 byte.
So if you want to have 1 or 2 bit varying you probably should take some sort of selfmade data type, using CHAR.
There are currently 1901 items, so you need that many bits atleast. That is 237.625 bytes or 238 bytes/chars which is needed at the moment. At the moment they could instead use 1901 fields of the BIT type instead, and easily query each on seperately.
If you want to have certain weapons twice, you would have to start thinking about some sort of bitmask used for each type. Basically you have to make a decision whether you give that item 2 bit or not, and then ‘track’ which item is associated with the n’th bit in your char(x).
So lets assume you give those weapons, that can be dual whielded 2 bits.
Dagger, Pistols, Swords, Axe, Mace.
This would increase the amount of bits to 2174 or 271.75 bytes rounded to 272 bytes.
So we need a field for each account which stores 272 bytes. Within these 272 bytes we define that bit n or the bits n+(n+1) are used for the weapon x.
Now, when you query the database for the items within your PvP locker, you would query that 272 byte string which contains unreadable data, because you are interested in the bitstring. You would then have to run through each byte of this 272 byte array, and apply several bit masks with a & operator, at minimum 4 and up to 8 (one for each bit, if each bit represents one weapon/armor piece, or a bitmask which actually has 2 bits set to 1, if the item allows storage of more then 1). After that you have to compare if the result is true (>0) or false (0).
Ultimately not ultra hard to program, but unnecessary if you are going the scrap the system later on anyway.

Of course you also have to get a logic running which will convert the old database to the new schemata (also not that hard, as you are adding stuff, not trying to compress it further).

The other possibility, which is far easier from a programming standpoint is to use a byte/char for each field.
But as Evan said, that would require 8 times the amount of space per account for the PvP locker.

TL;DR Going from bits->bytes is a trivial change, but takes 8 times the space. Going from 1 bit to 2 bits is a much more complicated change. In any case, people shouldn’t focus on why collections only store 1 of something. People should be thinking of why we don’t have something entirely better than collections.

Apolo.5942:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Julius.1094:

16- Ability to stack more than one piece of the same gear in locker, 2 would be ideal.

16) The limit of 1 is a technical limitation.

I thank you for your time here, but dude that is plain sad, where did you outsource the code for this to?.

Collections can clearly support more than 1 item per slot, as seen elsewhere in the game. The problem is that it takes 8 times the amount of space to support more than 1, and PvP has a ton of items. In this case, “technical limitation” means size constraints.

can’t quote because of post size

1) I agree that targeting has been a point of contention around here since everyone has a different opinion on how it should work. We have not forgotten about this issue, but it is pretty low priority, unfortunately. This polish would fall under the umbrella of a combat team.

2) This would certainly be cool. There was a thread on this not too long ago. This is non-trivial polish that requires some back-end tech to be possible. This feature would also fall under the combat category.

3) This is a combination of how the reward system was designed, and the fact that we can’t have different rarity items in PvP for technical reasons. Once this is solved, each item could have a correct rarity and not always ask for salvage confirmation. This is a feature that the PvP team would be responsible for.

4) Vendors and collections were an existing way to get PvP items into the game. Ideally there should be a proper unlock system, but time and tech prevented this from happening. This is a feature owned by the PvP team.

5) I really don’t like suggestions like this, because its a complete band-aid solution to something that should just be redesigned for PvP. Why do you need to even buy free items to apply it 6 times? This is a feature owned by the PvP team.

6) This is some good polish, but it only affects these two specific collections out of the entire game. I would go so far as to say we shouldn’t need these oddly working collections in the first place (see 4). This particular part of collections is a feature owned by the PvP.

7) Haha yes. This. Polish owned by the PvP team.

8) This is a big one! Expanding our skill tooltips to buffs, traits, and items is already on our radar. No timeline. This is a feature owned by a combat team.

9) The reason for making people go to the mists is because the transition from PvE to PvP is a big one. If I new players were to queue directly into a PvP game, they’d have no idea why all their armor, weapons, and traits were different. Making this a two step process helps to eliminate this confusion. However, we realize that the flow of PvP is not efficient, and plan on working on this. This is a lot of features and polish owned by the PvP team.

10) Something I started, but never had time to get back to. This is a feature owned by me.

11) Not sure how this would work. What problem would this solve?

12) You cannot have bank access in the mists because anyone can port there for free.

13) Sounds cool. I don’t see why not. This would be a feature/polish owned by the PvP team.

14) This is a definite must for the future of the game. It is planned. It will come in time. This is a feature owned by the PvP team.

15) This requires some back-end reworks to become possible. This is a feature owned by the gameplay programmers.

16) The limit of 1 is a technical limitation.

17) This will not happen as it affects way to many things in the game. Why do you have that many things stacked at once as to need a stack size of 1000? The problem is not the stack size.

I hope this gives a rough idea of the kinds of things different teams own and the difference between a feature and polish. Anything I can do to make development more transparent is a win. A lot of people wonder why certain things aren’t “high priority” for the PvP team. Sometimes it’s because some other team is in a position to do it. Our team usually is not scheduled to work on game-wide polish or features, because we have so many PvP specific features to do!

Chaos Archangel.5071:

As both a PvPer and PvEer, I can’t help but fear..

Do Custom Arenas eliminate the chance of a Duel option in the PvE world? Cuz that’d really suck. I can’t even recreate my PvE build in the Mists.

No, this is not the case.

evilapprentice.6379:

Custom arenas are a perfect example – why these weren’t fast-tracked and out in January, I’ll never know.

Because nearly all players wanted match making, and we agreed it would be better for the game at the time. So we re-prioritized. Perfect example of us switching gears based on player feedback.

evilapprentice.6379:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Oni Link.4621:

You should put ALL SPvP matters as top priority, because if you want GW2 to have a feature, you must do it. Otherwise it will die very soon. Everyone is saying that, because it is sooooo obvious.
I do not doubt you’re working, but you are working slow with wrong priorities. Wake up.

Working on every PvP feature we want concurrently is obviously not feasible. Everything must have a different priority. Dueling is a feature that could happen anywhere in the game, and could be picked up by a team other than the sPvP team. As far as our team’s priorities go, dueling is certainly not above custom arenas, spectators, shout casting, split queues, etc. I know everyone may want a specific feature first like dueling, and it sucks we can’t please everybody at once, but that’s the priority we’re working with.

How is that list of (mostly) basic features still so long when this game launched at the end of august 2012?

I wouldn’t call those features basic, but I can fully understand that they’re expected from the community after seeing other games like Smite or LoL. Those companies were dedicated to those games from the start though, while we at ANet were, and still are, making a massive MMO.

Torgal.8345:

Dear customer,
we are not working on the requested feature. We know what you actually want and will decide for you what is important and what is not…

Don’t take me too serious, but that’s the feeling I get while reading red posts in the forum ;-)

I’m sure it can feel like that sometimes, and that’s no fun. You should believe us that we really do listen to player feedback. If we aren’t prioritizing a feature, its because there simply isn’t enough demand, or there is some, but we’re really confident it would not help the game as much as another feature.

Oni Link.4621:

You should put ALL SPvP matters as top priority, because if you want GW2 to have a feature, you must do it. Otherwise it will die very soon. Everyone is saying that, because it is sooooo obvious.
I do not doubt you’re working, but you are working slow with wrong priorities. Wake up.

Working on every PvP feature we want concurrently is obviously not feasible. Everything must have a different priority. Dueling is a feature that could happen anywhere in the game, and could be picked up by a team other than the sPvP team. As far as our team’s priorities go, dueling is certainly not above custom arenas, spectators, shout casting, split queues, etc. I know everyone may want a specific feature first like dueling, and it sucks we can’t please everybody at once, but that’s the priority we’re working with.

Jax.5261:

It’s like saying “sometime in the future when we balance the game balance won’t be a problem so don’t worry about it now”

…well ok…
I respect you as a dev because I know you’ve personally handled some important quickfixes (really quickly too) but your solution is just silly.
Your game is dying right now, you have to do something right now.

We have been working on things However, we’re nearing the end of a development cycle, so there is literally nothing more I can do right now to help with the dueling “problem” for this patch. When custom arenas are out, you’ll have a much easier time finding the kind of server you like to play on.

With custom arenas, the play-now functionality will be revamped to better place you in servers.

It is true that custom arenas will “replace” hot-join, but they can fill the same role. If someone wants their server to be setup exactly like our current hot-join servers, that’s cool!

https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en

This was actually brought up not too long ago. It will be addressed when spectator mode is released.

This sounds like a problem we have recently fixed, but I’m not 100% sure if its the same based on these reports.

Did the game end in a way that showed the score screen, who won, etc? Or did you all just get redirected to the lobby?

This could be one of many many problems. We would need more information to track the bug down. Were you able to submit a crash report? If not, do you have exact reproduction steps?

Mods are much more flexible because people can pick and choose exactly what version they prefer. Since we don’t have that luxury, we need a catch-all solution. Or customizable UI.

I would love to find of a solution to this problem. Its a big barrier for new players learning the game.
Brain dump:
How many of your own cooldowns must you know to be effective. Skills? Traits? Sigils? Runes? Attunements? Kits? Transforms? Everything?
How many cooldowns are too many cooldowns / whats the minimum number to know?
Same question for enemies. How much skill is involved with remembering enemy cooldowns?
Would this new piece of UI benefit PvE the same amount?
Where could this UI live?
First thing that pops into my mind would look just like the quick-loot tray on the right side of the screen with a scrolling list of ordered cooldowns showing name/icon. (No loot in PvP)
I can’t think of any way this could work for enemies.

pedrst.3127:

Evan Lesh.3295:

The problem is that player customization at the level you’re describing isn’t possible with how our content pipeline is set up. It’s much less work to just make a polished map built specifically for something like death match even if we don’t support the game mode officially.

But something as: Holding objectives grants no points or you simple cannot hold an objective. Something like this is possible yes?

Yup, we’ve talked about having the ability to turn off capture points.

The problem is that player customization at the level you’re describing isn’t possible with how our content pipeline is set up. It’s much less work to just make a polished map built specifically for something like death match even if we don’t support the game mode officially.

Dirame.8521:

I was thinking about Custom Arenas recently and an idea popped in my head; could we be allowed to set the boundaries of a map? For instance, could we be allowed to say only the middle of Legacy of the Foefire is a combat zone and everyone gets spawned around that area?

I believe having the ability to set boundaries around an area allows for less “running away to heal up” scenarios in the inevitable deathmatch arenas we’re going to get from customs.

I think we’d make new maps before we would do something like that honestly.

Ostricheggs.3742:

so whens the hotfix coming out? I’m still bugged, not getting any pops/team matches at all.

Aiming for tomorrow, hold tight.
/soon

Lordrosicky.5813:

1, Let players be seen on the map and in the team window however far away from you they are on the map.
2, Show enemy players who are visible to another of your players as a red dot on the map (most key change)
3, Put a number instead of a green dot as your players on the map. So player 1 in the team will be a green “1” and player 2 will be a green “2”
4, Add in game emotes – So people can call out that they need help or that everything is fine where they are.

1) This will be addressed when spectator mode is released.
2) This would be very helpful, though I have some reserves on its potential correctness.
3) See below.
4) We’ve certainly brought this up before, but it hasn’t gotten traction yet.

Mithir.7460:

i would prefer a class icon instead of the number

We’re experimenting with this right now.

Ratings were not reset.

ensoriki.5789:

Evan Lesh.3295:

I looked into this and have updated character select to work with PvP equipment and town clothes. Whether it goes into this month’s patch is questionable.

Surprised how I am always hearing you get things done.
They should double your salary, cus I don’t know what anyone else does.

I just happen to ninja the easy fixes and steal all the credit.

I looked into this and have updated character select to work with PvP equipment and town clothes. Whether it goes into this month’s patch is questionable.

This is a good idea! In fact, we’ve already discussed this. It’s done and will be in the next patch.

Don’t see it on the patch notes, but the random error when using ‘Join Solo’ should also be fixed.

aaron.7850:

reading areanent’s replies here is disheartening.. its like they walk one step foward and two steps backwards

It just makes our next step that much bigger :P. Honestly, its great to really get to the exact root of problems in a constructive way so we don’t implement features that only half solve the issue.

Arisal.9740:

Evan Lesh.3295:

This is a performance optimization. People who are too far away from you do not show up in the world. PvP is a special case because you always want to know about your teammates. Another drawback is that your teammates will disappear from your team UI. We have one version of a solution to this in the works.

Is this something that is coming with the rumored culling patch next month where we can tweak it in options? Honestly I never had a problem seeing people on my team until recently… not sure if I am just being more observant so I have no idea how long it has actually been like this.

No. What you’re seeing in PvP is people going outside the maximum range we’d ever tell you about a player. That range almost covers everything in sPvP maps, but not quite. In any case, it is a different problem than culling.

This is a performance optimization. People who are too far away from you do not show up in the world. PvP is a special case because you always want to know about your teammates. Another drawback is that your teammates will disappear from your team UI. We have one version of a solution to this in the works.

hharry.1967:

If you add the possibility of taking critical hits to the LA dummies (i dont know why they dont atm) then they would do fine.

The dummies in LA are probably like turrets and walls in that they can’t be crit have have conditions.

First, we need to solve the problem of people leaving before the game begins, its simply a flaw in our roster design. Then we need to determine a suitable punishment for people who leave during a match, and do not return.

On top of these, it sounds like some people are describing a bug forcing 4v5’s. We do not know what would be causing this or whether it is a new problem or not. It’s hard to tell when there are multiple ways a team could be missing members.

To clarify, bugs take higher priority over features like custom arenas. However a punishment system is a feature that takes considerable more time, and must be weighed against our current features plans. We always have the option to re-prioritize just like we did with matchmaking.

Sprawl.3891:

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sprawl.3891:

you think? of course that is one of the problems, the other is people joining and seeing they are on a full pug and facing a full premade and quitting, or seeing they are on a 5v4 and quitting, making it 5v3. And since you don’t punish them what do they lose? the invisible rating they don’t care about? They log-off for 10 mins avoid a spawn camp stomping then log back in.

Learn from Rift, if you get DC’d their system gives you short amount of time to re-boot/log back in and puts you in the same warfront you were in. If you don’t log back in quickly it fills the spot with a new player and when that person eventually does log back in they have a 30-min deserter debuff and can’t queue for pvp. I’m guessing just another thing your system isn’t built to do.

If someone is constantly DC’ing due to crappy ISP or quitting without leaving their roster they should be punished and stick to hotjoin rather than making 4 people suffer a curb stomping 5v4 matchup.

The sad thing is this has been an issue basically since release and doesn’t sound like you have any fixes in the works. Like i said in another thread this is something Rift did a hotfix for shortly after release. And I only use Rift as an example because it was one of the more recently released mmos. pretty much every other mmo pvp also has quitter debuffs/penalties.

The two problems deserve different solutions. If a player is in queue for a bit, but needs to log off to do something else, that player shouldn’t be punished because they didn’t leave the roster first. This is a completely fixable problem. Punishing people who knowingly dodge is a much more difficult problem.

why is it so difficult yet every other game has a deserter penalty? If you log off once you have been put into a match you have 1-2 min to log back in, if not game fills spot with another solo queuer and the person that didn’t log back in quick enough gets a 30-minute quitter debuff and can’t join any pvp until it’s up. Rift does this, WoW does this, Warhammer did it, etc.

I don’t even bother playing this game anymore because as a solo queuer more of my matches are 5v4 than 5v5.

This is a very real problem, but we can only work on so many things at once. I would still place it at a lower priority than Custom Arenas.

leman.7682:

Larynx.2453:

Evan Lesh.3295:

So a Mega Dummy with 10x hp would be better?

Please add “Mega Dummy” as a title under its name if you do add it.

Why not just call it a “Evan’s Mega Dummy”?

That has a nice ring to it.

Sprawl.3891:

you think? of course that is one of the problems, the other is people joining and seeing they are on a full pug and facing a full premade and quitting, or seeing they are on a 5v4 and quitting, making it 5v3. And since you don’t punish them what do they lose? the invisible rating they don’t care about? They log-off for 10 mins avoid a spawn camp stomping then log back in.

Learn from Rift, if you get DC’d their system gives you short amount of time to re-boot/log back in and puts you in the same warfront you were in. If you don’t log back in quickly it fills the spot with a new player and when that person eventually does log back in they have a 30-min deserter debuff and can’t queue for pvp. I’m guessing just another thing your system isn’t built to do.

If someone is constantly DC’ing due to crappy ISP or quitting without leaving their roster they should be punished and stick to hotjoin rather than making 4 people suffer a curb stomping 5v4 matchup.

The sad thing is this has been an issue basically since release and doesn’t sound like you have any fixes in the works. Like i said in another thread this is something Rift did a hotfix for shortly after release. And I only use Rift as an example because it was one of the more recently released mmos. pretty much every other mmo pvp also has quitter debuffs/penalties.

The two problems deserve different solutions. If a player is in queue for a bit, but needs to log off to do something else, that player shouldn’t be punished because they didn’t leave the roster first. This is a completely fixable problem. Punishing people who knowingly dodge is a much more difficult problem.

So a Mega Dummy with 10x hp would be better?

Nikkle.4013:

Evan Lesh.3295:

We think one problem is that people join into a roster, then before the match is ready, quit the game. Disconnecting does not remove you from the roster, so the game starts and finishes like nothing happened. A lot of these 4v5 games could be completely unintentional from the person leaving. Solving this is a technical issue. We could kick you out of the roster if you disconnect, but you should still be able to switch characters before the match starts.

Will this be for solo que’s only? What happens if you dc not by choice and try to reconnect to your premade team only to find out they got thrown into a match with some random.

That’s a really good question. Rosters that were submit full could easily not be put into matchmaking. However if a partial roster queued, it would indeed be a problem. Maybe it should work more like Dota2, if the game can’t start with all 10 players, it doesn’t start at all. It could happen once the match countdown is done.

daydream.2938:

Ive often though this, testing conditions over time is hard because the dummies die fast…whereas a player would heal, have protection, etc etc. I dont know what the lions arch dummies are like but that sounds like a good idea if its simply infinite life dummies.

Yup, they never die.

Would something like the Lion’s Arch target dummies fill your needs?