Guild Wars 2

Here’s a list of questions that I’ve either read on forums or came up with. I’m assuming that most of these are probably going to be addressed at today’s stream, but just in case:

-What happens with unopened chests after the 18th March patch ?
-What happens with items from those unopened chests ?
-What happens with mystic forge materials and glory boosters ?
-What happens with our collections ? I distinctly remember a dev hinting something along the lines of completing collections being beneficial in the future. Is that still the case ?
-Will we be able to use PvP armor in PvE ? (tbh. 60 gold for an armor that I could use only in PvP is too steep for my tastes, but I’d open my wallet in a second if I could use it in PvE as well)
-Does cultural armor bought in PvP count towards the Emperor achievement/title ?
-How will we earn new skins with retirement of chests ?
-Will we still have access to Mystic Forge after the patch ?

Locuz.2651:

322 votes, within a community this small, gives a pretty solid indication of what the overall opnion about this map is. 80% of those that voted disliked it in the soloqueue.

If it was a poll that was held on the LoL forums, sure.

And yet there are people even in this thread that do like Skyhammer or don’t mind it enough for it to be removed (like me, I’d much prefer some minor tweaks to the map). Besides 322 votes is still miniscule compared to at least 15k players and that’s not counting NA.

Shakya.6351:

I dont get why Anet haven’t still removed this crap from solo q… 99% of players hate it, a lot of time we have to play 4v5 because ppl dont wanna play it…and it’s still there

That may be true, but on the other hand 127% of players love it, so your argument is invalid.

On a more serious and less melodramatic note, I get why some people don’t like skyhammer.. Tbh, it’s not my favorite map either, far from it. But these claims of “overwhelming majority” and forum polls are just anecdotal evidence and as such they are completely useless.

^ What he said. +1 to you OP.

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah. about 5-6 servers still do him – let’s say 150 people each. 900 people. Let’s say there’s double that number in overflows – 2700 total. Most people doing Teq are the same each kill – so, let’s say around 10k people still participate in this event across all servers. Considering the amount of active acounts, that’s single digit percent value (low single digit percent value) of the whole population. And not all participants actually even enjoy it – i know a number of people that do it quite often, but only because they hope to get Teq unique skins.

There’s allot of speculation in your post. Arguing numbers without proper research or access to metrics is never a good thing, so I won’t do that. However I will say this:
Tequatl was the first revamp boss, something to test if the people were actually interested in harder content.
Following the public reception of Tequatl, ANet (the only guys who know how many players on how many servers actually do Teq) decided to follow up with not one but two boss fights. That means that, in their eyes, the participation on revamped bosses is enough to warrant an increase in resources spent and continuation of boss revamping.

Backward Sass.6791:

ArenaNet should hold a staff meeting for this.

ba-dum tsss

Bjorn Wolfen.4752:

The red worm is clearly Photoshopped…I mean, just look at the pixels!

The green worm also has the wrong hue… Nice try OP, but we ain’t falling for that !

Gunsnroll.2657:

Wintersday merchants will stay 1 week or 2 I guess, maybe, but they sell some crap anyway.
The glory vendor is not a part of wintersday, and Anet said they’ll tell us when this glory vendor (and the glory) will disapear.

I meant the other vendor that trades glory for gifts which you can sell on TP.

Currently I’m saving glory for cultural armors, but since we still don’t know what will happen in the end with PvP skins I wanna use a portion of my glory to get some gold.
It’d suck for me if this were the only time I could do that, and if it were I’d like to know that before the event ends.

Since we only got a teaser trailer for upcoming release, I’d like to know how long will LA merchant that allows us to exchange wooly stuff for items stay. And after removing the similar merchant from PvP, will there be an alternative trader in the future or is this the only chance we’ll get to monetize our glory ?

I’d expect some more info on the subject but since nothing was mentioned during the Ready Up and there are no release notes, with only 2 days ‘till the release I’m a bit concerned.

leungctm.1362:

give me reasons why i should carry on playing gw2 pvp. since hardly any team plays anymore and is getting less and less competitive.

You’re welcome.

I play this game to have fun. I think devs are having fun while making this game and interacting with each other. And all of that is perfectly fine with me since I prefer the healthy, laid back atmosphere to serious business meetings.

Also, did you look at the chat during the stream ? If you want them to behave like corporate bigwigs on a shareholder meeting you might want to “fix” the population so they don’t behave like a room full of feces slinging monkeys.

DarksunG.9537:

yes, it is. I mean you’d have to have the sound off or look at the ground during most of their sections no to notice. You come out of a cinematic right next to a vendor that everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is… you have to be pretty focused to miss that.

Well I guess my head is buried in the sand, because I (and everyone else for that matter.. I’ll remind you that the lesbian thread appeared only after dev stream) wasn’t aware of their “relationship”. Probably because it didn’t even start yet.
And, as someone already said, one line in probably hundreds of lines of dialogue doesn’t quite constitute as “everyone & their mom is using to have fully voiced dialog about how hot they think Kasmeer’s nakedness is”. And to be honest, that line sounds much more like resigning then flirting.
IMHO you are reading novels between the lines that aren’t even there.

DarksunG.9537:

The truth is there is little mature with how it’s done. It’s more like it’s been packed into every other conversation for certain characters to say: “Everyone look! homosexuality is cool, sassy & hip!” They make sure there the dialog is directly in the forefront of any story parts & the fact that they need to put more major lesbian relationships into the game than strait ones is indicitive of the writers person choice or some kind of pc social message. I think the fact that people have been attacked for being critical of these choices is.. interestng. There are always red flags popping when you can’t be critical of xyz. I’d like to have some strait romances I can connect with that don’t revolve around a loveable idiot male & the perfect female genious.

Is it that much obvious or flaunted tho ? I wasn’t following the story intensely in the beginning, so I might have missed something, but first time I learned about Caithe and Faolin was in the Orr vision. As for Casmere and the other one I learned from developer stream, not from the game (in fact the lesbian topic popped up right after that accidental reveal, not because of any implicating dialogue in the game). I do agree that more hetero relationships need to be worked in (and worked out.. it’s painful to watch Logan and Jennah, and not in a good way).

DarksunG.9537:

I agree, but that’s not what the OP was saying. I also disagree with moral ambiguity, since in moral ambiguity there are no stakes. Real depth come from when you have a difficult time in trying to make the right choice, not when there is no right choice.

I didn’t mean the OP, I meant some of the other replies from both sides of spectrum
And I think that what we consider morally acceptable is a matter of personal choice. For example to one person “an eye for an eye” is perfectly acceptable by their moral compass, for another “sanctity of life” or for another yet “the good of the many” with vast majority of us hanging out in gray areas in between any number of morally easy standpoints.
I’m not at all against bringing some hard moral choices to the game, but choices that hang on our own moral priorities and watching them unfold with expected or completely unintended consequences is more griping and has more value in the long term. my2cents ofc.

I think some people have issues with equating maturity with gore.

Personally I wouldn’t care much for more gore, tho I wouldn’t mind more flashed out dark/macabre content especially considering the game back story is built on massive disasters, sacrifices, grievous errors and what not (Guild Wars, Searing, Cataclysm, Mad King etc.). However, that’s not the point.

To put it more simply: if I had to choose between adding some graphic gratification with the same one dimensional characters from the vanilla GW2 OR deeper characters and factions with the tone of the game remaining the same then I’d definitely choose latter, but why chose in the first place, why not have both ?

What about blues and whites ?

Rym.1469:

PEGI 12 of Guild Wars 2 allows for something more than unicorns, rainbow, fairies and poor Scarlet plot and character. We deserve something more about our next Living Story/Personal Story companions. The main concern about them shouldn’t be if they’re sexy pixel lesbians or not. The concern should be:
Did I make a good choice? Was it the best way? What can I expect from that guy? He’s a murderer, but he wants to help. What are the consequences?

I’d be right with you and would love to see some of Witchers morally gray choices that are difficult to make and almost always end up haunting you later in the game, or at least some of Planescape Torment’s originality.
However, I don’t think bringing up homosexuality is a childish thing, like you implied several times. In fact I find open approach to the subject somewhat refreshing (sexy lesbians or any other means notwithstanding).

That being said, allot of the bad guys are for the most part just regular B rated villains all neatly packed with cheesy dialogue™, dramatic expositions™ and evil laughter™.. The game user base might be in their 20’s and 30’s, and the game was marketed mostly to that kind of crowd but unfortunately, story wise, for the most part it feels more like something you’d see on Saturday morning cartoons.

Lastly, not to end it all on grim note, I do believe that ANet writers are at least trying to bring up some maturity to their characters in LS releases (for example Canach is a step in that direction, being more then your regular one dimensional hero/villain and Scarlet might be as well, if what ANet and magazines who had access to story are to be believed, EDIT: forgot about “Destiny’s Edge 2”, any one of those guys have more character value then entire original DE put together).

As people stated, they are convenience items. A player who has done some LW stuff and cares enough about the introduced mats already has a character parked at home instance. Now they have even more reason to log in that character once a day to mine the nodes, especially with speculators increasing the price of silver/gold.
Again, they are convenience items (as in “I don’t have to bother with buying these mats for whenever I’d need them + I can get daily gatherer without moving more then 5m, yaay!”) not something that will bring you short term, or maybe even long term profits.

Lastly, goes without saying that if you find the cost acceptable you’ll buy them. If not, you’ll pass them for something that’s more worth your gems. I know I have.

I don’t see why some of the more invested people from both sides in this thread have any kind of disagreement since both sides are clamoring for a change in AI and encounters, not in the gear…

The fact that I can run any dungeon and any encounter (with the exception of Lupicus) with 4 zerker/assassin people who are playing for less then a week just by stacking, spamming offensive skills and using Endure Pain, Virtue of Courage, Arcane Shield etc. when they are close to dying means there’s something wrong going on, but is nerfing zerker damage to the ground (herp deerp) really the solution, or would it just transfer the problem to next best gear set ? I’m guessing it’s the latter.

I know I sound kinda stupid repeating like a parrot what has been said and what everyone already knows, but here I go:
-Toughness on some enemies needs to be increased, along with accessibility to protection. Toughness grants some space for condi builds, and protection is only available to dredge, and they spam it till kingdom come making boon removal/stealing a bad investment.
-A work over for unshakeable and defiant mechanics. Like giving mobs actual stability and condi removal, something that can be countered by active play.
-Reduce the HP of all elite/champ/legend mobs, somewhat compensated with healing skills. Again promotes active play and hard CC’s.
-Condi applying from mobs work over as well. They either don’t apply it enough or they, like the dredge with boons, spam them till kingdom come making me not care for condi removal since in first case its enough that in a party of 5 only 2 guys bring a utility for condi removal to get rid of that nasty 2 minutes stack of burning that boss just channeled and will do so again in 30 seconds or so; or bringing condi removal is useless since stupid ooze is applying half of the condis in the game on kittening autoattack…
-Faster and more varied attacks, less of telegraphed “hurr durr I keel u” attacks. Contrary to the popular belief, spamming aegis/blind/dodge/invoulnerability for a 3 seconds wind up attack does not make a skilled player. Also makes room for supports applying protection, regeneration, vigor, weakness, chilled etc. AND makes confusion finally useful.

I’ve probably missed allot of stuff but its late and I’m kittened that people are too entrenched in either “noob jelly PVTs” or “stupid zerks exploiters” view of things to see that (those more informed on the subject) people from both sides of the argument are basically saying the same things.

Well, I went from my example where it’s “doable” on a server that’s probably in the bottom third population wise. But as someone said, mechanics wise the required number could be reduced to give a bit more incentive for lower pop servers to do it.

However, if LA is empty on reset I doubt that even doubling down on required personnel would do much good to AR.

Pifil.5193:

Do they? Which ones? My server never seems to try and the slayer guild that I joined stopped trying to organise it about a week or two after we killed him the first time.

I think Baruch Bay and Desolation maybe ? I’m not that big into PvE, so sorry for not providing more info.
I do however know that there’s a Teq kill squad on NA numbering around 10 full guilds and a similar alliance on EU servers with several guilds as well. AFAIK you can join NA alliance through forums and EU from reddit.

webtoehobbit.4201:

I am so confused, the trailer gave us nothing except that everything we’ve been theorizing has just gone out the window…..

I’m not sure of that one. Lorewise, my hopes throughout the LS were that Scarlet’s story arc will end with introduction of jungle/earth dragon Mordemorth (who’d probably arrive in an expansion or at least a 2nd season of LS).
A giant worm that (at least as far as game mechanics goes) resembles other dragon lieutenants comes quite close to what I’d expect.
My2cents ofc.

I don’t see requiring allot of people to complete the event as something bad tbh. I’m on High server (I believe all NA servers have bigger pop, and most of the EU as well) and even we down him every couple of days. Some servers start fighting Teq before noon and continue doing it for the entire day.
However, I do hate the spawn window. I’m not a patient player and afk-ing for 1h is not worth it for me.

Mrbig.8019:

Conquest needs coordination to be played succesfully. In LoL you can effectively write an play ( in solo q) , gw2 is too fast paced so you NEED voice-chat in order to play in the proper way.

Solo q basically makes no sense in this game, reason why you’ll find team q pros being able to dominate in solo q while the opposite is kinda rare.

I would have somewhat agreed with this statement as well, that is until ANet introduced map icons for both friendlies and engaged enemies. Now it takes literary 1 second to look at the map and figure out at least 70% of what’s going on. But people are still trying to play the hero part for some reason..

Mrbig.8019:

if i can say mine, it’s just that people really have poor understanding of conquest mode.

I agree with the above theory. You can see this after one team wins mid fight when for some reason most people switch their brain to hotjoin mode and run to the nearest contested node leaving at best a bunker alone against almost entire enemy team that just respawned or at worst getting wiped on far node and being 3capped (opposing team employing the same brain dead “strategy”).
What’s worrisome is that this sort of behavior is consistent across all levels of play…

Bump.5471:

I’d mainly be playing to Soloq pvp not sure what queue times are like etc

I have more then 350 ranked soloque matches (EU server) and haven’t seen que times longer then 6 minutes.. on average I’d say que times are between 2 and 3 minutes.
During peak hours I’m guessing que times are around 1 minute on average.
You might want to check out teamq as well. Wait times can be up to twice as long, but rewards are quite enticing with ~1200 rank points per win, nice sum of cash and gifts (more cash).

As far as overall population goes, it is allot better then it was few months after release, but it is still ailing.

DuranArgith.1354:

Lets make it fair, every pvp player should require 4 hours in pve a day else he drops ranks from the pvp leaderboard. Sounds good right?

Right.

Wrong.

Achievements and achievement leader boards aren’t exclusive to PvE since you can get AP’s by doing pretty much anything in the game, and that includes both PvP and WvW.
So, no, that wouldn’t be fair at all.

Order of Venvardis.6073:

“Tyria will burn, while I remain.” Yeaaah… I don’t think so. :s

(Of course it hasn’t been confirmed that Scarlet is the speaker in the poem, but it’s pretty presumable)

She is trying to save us by killing us so dragons won’t be able to kill us.

I also have it on good authority that players will get to choose between red, green and blue background color for LS final cinematic.

CobaltSixty.1542:

Thread of the year? 12 days in.

Only if we petition the mods to save it from garbage bin (where it will probably end up in any minute now).

I’m a player that strongly dislikes the fact that they only optimal way to play both PvE and dungeons is in zerk gear.
That being said, I think that straight up “nerf” (and here I’m assuming that means overall damage reduction for zerk builds) is wrong approach and a band aid fix for a much bigger problem.
What I’m talking about is the fact that combat system in this game evolved past the usual “here I am, here you are, let the smackdown spamfest begin” you see in your run of the mill MMO’s, but AI remained the same with same behavioral patterns (aka zombie mode) you see in all the other MMO’s.

IMHO, the solution to the problem would be introducing some semblance of basic intelligence to the AI in general.. Spatial awareness is extremely hard to code in, especially in an open world, but it could be mimicked with sets of much simpler scripts, especially in the case where engine allows you options like dodge, stealth, blink and a lot of gap closer or control skills.
In short: AI is the problem, not zerk gear.. Current AI has 3 telegraphed attacks in 20 second span, moves in straight lines to the player and doesn’t care about dem AoE’s and such. Increase the frequency of attacks, drastically improve the skill pool and add in some randomization and to compensate reduce the overall health pool of mobs. IMHO that’d work wonders (and bring much Q_Q from the people who only know how to “zerk behind the corner”) for the overall health of the game, return skill requirement to dungeons and increase build diversity (something a straight up zerk nerf wouldn’t, since I suspect everyone would just flock to next best thing).

Qaelyn.7612:

At any rate, the fact that you use the term “ELO hell” and refer to yourself as being “lucky enough to evade” it means we aren’t really that far apart on this issue.

I am mostly referring to it as ELO hell because before reset soloq ratings were similar to teamq ratings, so if you aren’t in a good position from the get go chances of getting there were much worse then with the current system.
And I had no doubt that we had similar view. The only thing that we disagreed on was my claim that you will get to where you belong and that speed depends solely on individual player, while you claiming that the climb is highly impractical or maybe even improbable.

Silentshoes.1805:

I like this answer better. I will accept your evidence that if you play at peak concurrency times you will not tend to get the lowest rank people.

Well that is what I (and everyone else for that matter should) base all assumptions on. You know, I know, hell even developers them selves admitted that they dropped the ball and then shot it a few times for a good measure on entire PvP infrastructure, the result of which is abysmal PvP population..
At this point, blaming the system for encountering a guy with Phoenix rank while being teamed up with a guy who says something along the lines of “This isn’t Lions Arch…” while queuing in 5 in the morning is just plain silly.

Silentshoes.1805:

But of course, due to the Skyhammer exploit, we know that rank does not always correlate with experience in PvP, and thus probably does not correlate with MMR as well as people suspect.

This means that you still could get some pretty poor teammates (with decent rank) at the higher levels, and be forced to carry them or drop in the leaderboard.

I submit that you should pay close attention to the choices your teammates make in your higher level matches, and when you lose, recall if perhaps they were doing noobish things…regardless of their rank.

You have to remember that those Skyhammer farmers would still have to push their way requiring at least some semblance of skill (or a long lucky streak).
That being said, the usual “noob” plays I encounter are mostly pushing for 3cap after winning mid fight, a player still pushing for specific point after team agreed to change priorities, a hero who tries to push (not decap) far point 4 times in a row just to be shut down every time.. but most of the time people have all their bases covered both in matters of skill and in matters of tactics/strategy/awareness and sometimes even synergy.

@ OP: Would you feel better if for example Gift of Exploration would be created from Gift of Exploration (PvE) and Gift of Exploration (WvW) ?
Or, Gift requiring only PvE exploration, but Gift of Battle requiring instead of 500 badges something like 5000 ?

I’m asking because I have no idea what warranted such a strong reaction, especially considering PvE exploration in itself has elements that some people find undesirable (jumping puzzles or grinding hearts for example), or WvW players wanting their shiny legendary, not to mention PvP’ers who don’t even have the ability to use legendary.

Fair point. However, practical evidence suggests otherwise:
As I previously stated, I can’t remember last time I got anyone below r10 (or r20 for that matter), with average being ~r40-45. Today for example I was in matches with between 2 and 4 r60’s and I don’t recall seeing a single player below r30. Also, any of the other things that people in lower brackets complain about such as 5v4 matches, team mates who don’t know basic game mechanics and such… I can’t remember when I last saw any of it.
If I am not too lazy I might upload some SS’s so you’d see I’m not lying, but I’m afraid you’ll have to take my word for it for now.
So, as far as player pool size goes, we can all agree that they are quite small. However, my example, as anecdotal as it seems, still throws a long shadow over the suggestion that player pool is too small.

And about specific numbers, I’ve been actively monitoring my position after reset, which is probably the main reason I’m defending the system as much as I am, and from what I’ve gathered, at the moment you need to be in 94% to get to leaderboards (used to be ~92% few weeks back), so entire soloq “active” population numbers between 15 and 20k (talking about EU). Now, those are all the people who after the reset played at least 10 soloq matches… So you’d have to subtract allot of those due to not being active, not playing in same time slots and whatever else affects pool numbers, but after all said and done, if you are playing in peak hours, it’d still provide you with a healthy pool of players with deviancy of 10% from your current position.

@ Romek: In team queue all bets are off, and especially in off peak hours.
As you said, ANet rolled out PvP with no infrastructure and waited for far to long to start improving it, so current population is abysmal (but improving).
But in any case, teamq is not a good measurement of MMR because the random factors of soloq are in most cases not random in the least bit. Your example of being teamed up against a top team proves that.
And, in soloq, top players do indeed get queued after waiting long enough without being paired up with someone who’s close to their MMR, but isn’t that in itself a counter to the entire “I am better then scrubs in my team but I can’t carry” argument ?
Lastly, I’ve played at least 200 soloq matches since the reset, and while I see some familiar faces, they are few and far between.

@Qaelyn: It wasn’t a strawman, it was a mockery of your rigidness. It was probably out of place, but put yourself in my shoes where almost every argument goes something along the lines of “I am better then others but I can’t rise because people I play with are bad”, and most of the people with that same argument scoff when someone mentions being more adaptable as their solution.

As far as the system working as designed goes, I have (anecdotal) evidence to back myself. Both before and after reset I ended up in solo/team leaderboards. While before reset I was lucky enough to evade ELO hell, after the reset I was stuck in it on both solo and team queues. But eventually I dug myself out of both because I was more communicative/more adaptable/more aware/more skilled/more whatever then the average player in my/opposing team.

Qaelyn.7612:

And there are some characters that would do well at the higher levels but will never get there because they do not function well on a team with 4 people running around like headless chickens. (I’m not necessarily saying the one I play is in this category, just taking issue with your “look it’s so simple!” silliness.)

As far as one’s build choice/communicative skill goes (or for that matter any of the other individual aspects that are what truly represents your MMR), it is these that are the only limiting factor for individual players standing and those are the things that should give you a chance to rise above the muck.
That’s why a person that always takes initiative and tries to communicate and form strategies, changes class depending on team/opponent composition, or according to map, with best map awareness, fastest reflexes, best knowledge of theirs and opponents classes and builds etc. will end up on top. The more listed qualities one possesses, the faster his rise will be.
Or, to put it simply: hypothetical person that can’t adapt to playing with 4 headless chickens against 5 headless chickens is no better then the said headless chickens.

Qaelyn.7612:

Freeelancer, I’m pretty sure you and I have had this discussion before. As I said then, your argument is an example of this Albert Einstein quote: “In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not.”

The math is technically correct but ignores the sheer amount of time required to actually move up the board given the small pool of players and huge variability in their ability and desire to even play properly.

Your argument also ignores synergies and interactions. There are builds that work well in a team of good players and not in a team of clueless ones.

And any and all of those factors are relevant for the opposing team and every individual player.

But let’s ignore everything and assume that player X is always teamed up with braindead useless scrubs while the other team is tip-top… because that makes helluva lot more sense then statistics, maths and logic.

Silentshoes.1805:

Freelancer,

Most people understand the logic and the theory. But what really happens, I think, is that if your MMR does rise, you soon get assigned 3 or 4 new players to “balance” your high MMR in the team average. You cannot carry that many, you lose a lot, and your MMR falls again.

I am going to call it the Leaderboard Trampoline Effect.

See, now this is a perfect example of people actually not understanding the logic and theory… As your MMR rating rises so does the pool of available players change. When you are 90% you will get far fewer r1’s (if any), glory farmers or whatnot. What you will be teamed up with are players that are much closer to your skill level then when you were at 40% or whatever.
The hypothetical peak you speak of is at the top rankings on the leaderboards. If you reach it, you are actually teamed up/against lower ranking players. And even then you have equal chance of getting better or worse players in your team. The Trampoline Effect you speak of is non-existent, unless you had a lucky streak and ended up in higher tiers then you should have.

Silentshoes.1805:

Follow the threads from a few months ago and you will see people eventually concluding that it is nearly impossible to “carry” a set of 3 or 4 of new players that are assigned to your team >if< the other team does not have a similar set of low-skilled players.

That’s why ArenaNet has announced that they are scrapping the leaderboard system for a ladder system.

Bolded for emphasis. Again, try to understand that, unlike old system, pool of 10 people is split up so that the average MMR on both teams is as close to one another as possible. That does indeed mean you will be stuck with people you have to carry, especially in really low brackets, but that doesn’t mean that the other team won’t be stuck in the same situation next game or the game after.
Again, I’ll repeat it for n-th time: this is a numbers game, where numbers are the amount of games played… The only thing that could ruin the system is playing in off peak hours, since results from those times are completely skewed.

And ANet is trying to mimic more involving and successful system like ladders in order to draw more people to the desolate PvP, not because current system is failing.
Furthermore, ladders won’t make any difference in the speed of getting to the adequate skill level if player pool remains the same.

Silentshoes.1805:

Jinx.7258:

And how did u decide that the fault wasnt yours for losing the match? …A skilled player will have no issues whatsoever to climb up the ladder and fight with/alongside equally (or close) skilled players.

Jinx,

You obviously have not played all that many SoloQ matches yet to say something like this.

Or else you are just trolling hard here.

Anyone who has spent significant time in the current SoloQ knows the limits of what one player can do when the other 4 player on their team are losing all their fights and not capturing points.

Actually he just follows simple logic… Both teams have relatively close MMR. If you as an individual play better then the average you will enjoy better win/lose ratio which will eventually lead to a rise in your MMR, meaning better average player skill and better games with higher average MMR. And so the cycle repeats.
Now, due to poor state of pvp, population wise, and due to off peak hours having low coverage, your position is allot more volatile then in similar comparable games, but the above principle still holds as a general rule.
Most important thing to remember is that you might lose a game or ten, but in the long run your rating will rise up, assuming that you indeed play better then average in your current bracket.

Here is an great questionnaire and extensive reply by a developer on quite a few lore questions that rose during the Living Story:
http://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/1usdvw/unanswered_ls_questions/cel8hpa

I’m hoping the reply will be expanded and be made more known to general community.

For forum visitors, I’m talking about this:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Many-Questions-so-Dev/first#post3475412
There are answers to 10 frequently asked questions in that topic, but it’s in a 20 days old sticky, so I’m guessing most have missed it. At least I failed to find a dedicated thread about it.

A suggestion for forum mods: I think “Many Questions so Dev” should have its visibility drastically increased. It’s in a 20 days old sticky, and if I didn’t look at Dev Tracker I probably would’ve missed it.

Covis.6037:

Geff.1930:

The matchmaking gets better as you get higher ELO. The first 10~ games you will be matched with utter noobs. As you get higher you get matched with people who actually know what they are doing.

Im sorry but this is not true i think even Anet doesnt know how their matchmaking system works really. I see level 1-10 players regulary (im around top 200-600 yolo queue leaderboard.) in games.

Been on solo/team leaderboards both before and after reset. Don’t remember last time I’ve been in 4v5 match (that includes Skyhammer matches) or teamed with/against lvl20 and below. In fact I’d say most of the time average rank is between 45 and 50. The only negative thing I’ve seen increased is the amount of trash talk. I should probably note that I don’t play in low concurrency time slots.

Because, just as you said, rank is the amount of time one spent in PvP, not a measure of skill. ELO is the thing you want to keep an eye on.
@OP: As someone already said, get higher rating and enjoy better games.

KrisHQ.4719:

Churning Earth still only hits for the same amount as the infamous Earthshaker. And yes, the speed needs to be toned down a notch. Not to match MOBA games, but atm it’s way too spammy.

Actually, if I’m not mistaken, churning earth has triple base power of earthshaker, that’s not including 8 stacks of bleeding. There are a few WvW videos of small organized groups rolling mesmer portal and 3-4 churning earth eles, they are quite hilarious (would be even more if AoE limit were higher).

KrisHQ.4719:

It does not matter if they have found use in PvE or WvW, we were talking about PvP.

Well then, while we’re at it, we might as well talk about viability of rifle warriors or conjurer eles in PvP.. Or any of the of dozens of skills that are more or less viable/essential in PvE/WvW while being useless in PvP.

I agree that more choice is always a good thing, but what would exactly this change accomplish ? In the old Teq fight, you could auto attack while sipping coffee. You can’t do that now (or to elaborate, if enough people did that the event would fail because of the turrets/batteries mechanics, their protection and insufficient DPS).

Now, correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t leaving the old Teq fight just bring one more way to farm ? And if braindead farming is the goal, I’d reckon that what is most efficient way is the best way, and that is Frostgorge Champion train (AFAIK).
So what would be the purpose of leaving the old fight in ?

KrisHQ.4719:

Yes. Some skills are already well telegraphed with a risk/reward factor, but take a look at those skills again.
How many of them are actually used in the current meta? Earthshaker and Eviscerate. I’d argue that Backbreaker is not well telegraphed.
These two skills are well telegraphed and can be fairly easily dodged, however they have no risk-factor. If you miss the attack, your adrenaline level will not fall and you benefit from the minor trait Adrenal Health, so you can basically spam this as you want it will always be in your favor.
Many of the other skills you mentioned are rather useless. Skills like Churning Earth hit for way too low dmg compared to how vulnerable you are in the situation. In a duel situation, you will never hit with a Churning Earth against a mediocre player.
Light of Deliverance and Judgement? They are NEVER used, because there are much better alternatives with instant casts and no risk. I really hope though, that more skills would be like these.
More importantly, because of the major vigor/boon inflation the chance of actually hitting a person without stability or dodging is almost non-existant.

Well, to return to your example, you can’t/shouldn’t use SK’s ulti in 1v1, since without secondary mechanics like BKB or blink dagger or both (stability, blink) you won’t do squat with it. Even in team fights it’s hard to pull off, just like churning earth.
As far as general viability of long casting skills go, IMHO it comes down to the speed of the game, and GW2 is arguably much faster then DotA. Should GW2 be slowed down to DotA’s speed ? I personally see no reason to..
To me this is an argument similar to implementing holy trinity in GW2. Just because some other game has chosen this path doesn’t mean this game has to as well.

KrisHQ.4719:

As for the new healing skills, yes I agree they are more active which was kinda my point. What I tried to explain was that because some of them actually have counter-play (You can stop attacking the warrior, make sure he does not heal) they are too risky compared to the current heals. Why would anyone take the new heal instead of Healing Signet? Healing signet heals you 400 pr. second in full berserker armor, and the new heal will most likely not heal you more than 4k in a standard tPvP situation. That’s only 10 seconds of having Healing Signet active, and it cannot be countered in any way, there is absolutely no downside to this ability.

And as I said, you should look at the new heals outside of PvP. For any of the skills I can automatically find a place where they can be useful if not even superior to the old ones, whether that is in open world, dungeons, boss fights, WvW zerging or PvP.

warllockmaster.1379:

Time to destroy your fun boys

Yes Scarlet and Mr. J has very little in common But.
a few things people are too agitated to see is:
1# Scarlet resources are not unknown.
2# The people who work for Scarlet are not exactly the most clever, and the world is filled with people that won’t see the world needs to unite- even three orders first recently united to stop Zhaitan.
3# 80% of your so-called hate is because she is a Sylvari that my dear Scarlet haters is a part of it, if you read her lore, you would see that slowly a pretty neat story is forming.
3# As I mentioned before Scarlet does not posses unlimited supplies, she gain her supplies through back ground trades, and the alliances she trick different sides to form.
4# Scarlet has pretty much ran out of actual soldiers, but hey she stole the watch knights, which is how she keeps putting pressure.
5# If people would read the story they would see how Scarlet has experimented on mixing different magics- and technologies. Dredge and Flame, Nightmare and Krait.
6# The Reason why Scarlet is not dead, is because she is not that stupid, she did the fighting herself during the Jubilee, where she had her kitten kicked and almost died a few times. No way she would risk it again.
7# As for the Nightmare tower, the cut scene where she appears and leaves through her usual portal is very logical: One when ever we like it or not Scarlet is actually kitten Dangerous, of course our character’s wouldn’t simply jump at her- secondly we are messed up the toxic, so we don’t know if Scarlet really did appear in front of us or not.

I for one am yes starting to get a bit tired of scarlet being there all the time, But I do like a Villain that stays alive and has some influence.

I mean we have already killed off a lot of big bad guys just alone during our leveling.

yes now I had my fun destroying your fun

#1: They aren’t ? Isn’t her running gag that she appears with a new alliance ever few patches ? In fact I think there’s a thread somewhere on forums with people coming up with all sorts of ideas on what alliance pops up next.
#2: Exactly. It took a Dragon that would destroy everyone to get orders sworn to protect Tyria together in a reluctant alliance, but here we have a criminal syndicate, a totalitarian regime, a race of fanatical xenophobic slavers and a bunch of rebels without a cause marching hand in hand because reasons…
#3: My main and my favorite alt are Sylvari. While I do agree that some people hate her because she’s a cabbage, your arbitrary number is a gross over exaggeration.
#3.5: Trades she pulls out of her kitten , or so it seems. I would love to hope I am wrong, and that eventually ANet will give us a masterfully written logical explanation for her ability to attract every baddy in the universe, but that’d be same as hoping that Indoctrination Theory was somehow the real ending to Mass Effect 3.
#4: Yes, and after Watchnights came Nightmare Court and Krait.. So no, she still had new chumps to throw at us after Jubilee.
#5: She did indeed. I’m missing a point here.
#6: I don’t want her dead, I just want her to behave less like a cartoon villain.
#7: IMHO, this “issue” was just nitpicking on the part of players who took the cutscene too literal. If a dev set her to running speed instead of walking speed, or if he pulled the camera so it doesn’t show us nobody would mention anything.

I fail to see how you destroyed anything.. Unless your statement was a kind of a comic relief in itself ?

KrisHQ.4719:

@Freeelance
So games like Dota 2 are staring contests?
There has to be more focus on strong skills that have a hish risk/reward factor. Think of a skill such as Sand King’s Ultimate from Dota. He is incredibly vulnerable while channeling it, but it can turn the tide of a fight if used correctly.
GW2 is right now one huge clusterkitten of spam.
There have already been tons of posts on how to adress this, and how to for instance revamp alot of the elite skills.
Another good example though is the new healing abilities. Instead of buffing the new ones to fit the likes of Healing Signet, the older ones should be nerfed in efficiency to match the new ones. Skills that can actually be countered and requires active play are much better than passive abilities.
The game won’t become a staring contest if the nerfing is done properly.

Churning Earth, Meteor Shower, Eviscerate, Earthshaker, Backbreaker, Dragon’s Tooth, Barrage, Judgement, Light of Deliverance.. probably missed a couple. All telegraphed skills and allot of them put you in a vulnerable position (unless you use blink, just like SK uses dagger, or some hard CC), have long CD’s and can turn the tide of the battle.

I will agree with you that faceroll builds are in most cases on par or even stronger then builds that rely on fast (re)actions, proper use of combinations and saving your CD’s. In fact, IMHO, this is one of the biggest flaws of PvP system now that the rewards have been introduced.

As far as new heals go, I find most of them usable in one part of the game or another. They are, for the most part, more situational then old healing skills, but that doesn’t make them inferior to the old ones. For example, when I WvW in zerg with my warrior I always switch to new heal, which by the way promotes allot more of skill/active play then a ticking signet, don’t you agree ?

Lastly, while I do appreciate your willingness to improve sPvP in this game, I’d like to remind you that not every person shares your point of view.
For example, what I’ve heard mentioned regularly as the biggest flaw of PvP is that it’s based on capture and hold system and that people want to fight other people and not to stand in circles..
If ANet “listened to tons of posts on how to address this”, and for example replaced current system with pure DM, you’d see an instant and massive rise of gimmicky stealth builds that would go from something no one uses in higher tiers to a must have spec. The balance would be completely ruined and instead of having “only” 2-4 viable specs for each class, you’d end up with only stealth thieves and PU mesmers being viable…
Similarly, I am most positive that allot of the “revamp” posts fail to address the balance issues that would occur if a complete reboot of the combat system would occur.

Trololololololo

KrisHQ.4719:

I hope Anet realizes that sPvP should move in this direction, which means:
Longer cooldowns and less of everything.
Nerf DMG, Nerf Condis, Nerf self-heal and boon spamming, Nerf Condi-Cleanse and most importantly Nerf Vigor and remove Sigil Of Energy.

I agree. I’d much prefer if PvP was a 15 minute long staring contest.

Lopez.7369:

If you’re getting paired up with people like this, you’re a rating that most likely deserves it.

The PvP community needs less experienced players, particularly those from PvE and WvW, to grow. The latest changes have been a good thing.

This guy. He gets it.

In a way I agree with the OP.
I strongly dislike playing as warrior. My cup of tea are eles, mesmers, thieves and engies, but I decided to grind the Champion Legionnaire title for completionists sake. So I opted for the easiest approach: pop my hambow build and strap in for some heavy duty braindead grinding.

Thing is, when you reach leaderboards, most people you play against know how to read your animations, and know they should avoid your highly telegraphed attacks. Now I am able to adjust and fake/read/counter the enemy (and even if I fail, hambow is one of the most forgiving specs to play) so I still manage to come out on top allot of the time, but as far as the usual hambow user goes, most of the time they faceroll on keyboard… There have been countless times I’ve encountered a player running the same spec as I am and managed to kill him without him landing a single important skill on me…

In summary: By default, hambow and allot of the other popular warrior builds (condi, banner, eviscerate etc.) are lazy and for the most part forgiving, and people are used to playing them as such. When they encounter someone who knows warrior class they get obliterated and they don’t know how it happened, and more importantly they do not even care.

Temp merchants will be removed once glory is retired and ladders are introduced, which should see return of some of people who left because of the lack of progression in the game.