Guild Wars 2

Hey everyone,

I had a blast playing with [CERN] on Tarnished Coast! That was some of the most intense WvWing I have experienced hands down. How fast everyone adapted to the new trick and the tactic every world brought to the table was amazing! The guild I was in was super nice and very hospitable. I really can’t say enough about everyone as the community playing and showing such passion for this game type, really thank you everyone. I hope I can see more of everyone in the coming months as I bounce around playing WvW and PvP.

See you in the mists . . . either friend or foe. . . prepare for glory!
Hugh

I remember when I met up with Anet folks (many moons ago) playing TF2. I remember listening to Mr. Chap and Mr. Izzy talks about balance, design, and combat for GW2. I also remember Chap really taking me under his wing when I tried to get into the gaming industry. Chap has always been a great friend, role-model, and designer that I have always hoped to aspire to be. I will never be able to fill the void that Chap has left on GW2 and ArenaNet, but I promise to give it my all. Good luck to you Mr. Chap in everything you do good sir!

Awesome Guide! Thanks for taking the time to write this up.

Hey everyone,

The golem is doing more damage then we intended and we appreciate that you all brought this to our attention. We are working on a fix to get this handled as soon as possible.

I have signed up with the mighty [CERN] on Tarnished Coast! I wanted to say thank you to all the guilds that wanted to host us Devs for the Fall Tournament. I hope to see you on the battle field! All your bags are belong to us!!!

I said it before and I will say it again! Thank you for keeping this constructive and civil, that makes coming to the forums very refreshing.

Next I wanted to say my purpose for being here. My goal every time I come to the forums is to create conversation and try to truly understand what each of your thoughts are on a particular topic. Anyone can write “I want XXXXXX” and that doesn’t really mean anything to someone who is not willing to read between the lines. The first question I ask when I see such a statement is, Why and does is affected by that decision?

Luckily our community (yes I mean you fine gentlemen and women) are very good at explaining yourselves and giving great feedback on both high level and a detailed level, and for that I again appreciate you as a community.

Now back to the topic at hand.

I really enjoy the multiple ways that people are trying to solve this specific issue. I know people have been asking for it and that is why I am here. The goal here which a few of you have touched on is that this request actually meshes with a few high level design decisions. For instance:

1. Does this request (bank in the mists) fall into convenience or core functionality?
* Free, Gems, or gold
2. Should this be a reward for PvP’ers only?
* Based off rank, achievements, etc.
3. How do we gate it?
* Time, Prestige, etc.

I don’t think these questions are unsolvable by any means, but that still need to be solved. Many have already weighed in on these questions and came up with really good points.

These are awesome suggestions. Thanks for keeping it civil and constructive.

Marcos.3690:

ens.9854:

Okay bank just for rank 80 pvp’ers

Special hub in the mists for rank 80s. Includes trading post and bank

What are you trying to accomplish by gating this special area by player rank?

Zelyhn Lekovitch.2867:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

• Is that player going to stop playing PvP or GW2 all together?

I have a hard time believing this has ever been a source of concern for any developer at Arena Net, ever

No offence

:)

The question can be asked for any game type, but we have asked it.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Ondriam.9862:

Agreed. I would even pay a one-time (or yearly, or whatever) fee in gems to have a pass to a restricted area with a bank and a TP. Just stop making me load 2-3 maps every time i have to do something.

Do you think this would cause any uproar in the community if we did a change like this, and if it did can you think of a better way to implement it?

Wild Throw.9437:

Why complain about having a bank in the mists? I would say MOST people can just press “B” click their home BL then run right around the corner to the armorsmithing station and bam…a bank. And it is free, so just give the PvP pop a bank as well. I know I would sure love one.

Someone already put up a good argument point for this statement, that WvW isn’t always accessible. Sometimes there is a queue which for players in a hurry will cause them to spend some silver to get to a place with a bank instead of going to WvW for free.

Lolololololol someone says gems and look who shows up.

This makes me sad if nothing else. I want to start a conversation between players and developer and instead I get bad mannered. I still love you though.

Yoh.8469:

One a separate note, how dismissive are you? Saying that people would have to learn a 2nd set of numbers if you split skills. How stupid do you think people honestly are?
Your basically saying people are so stupid, so lazy that they can’t read a skills description, and can’t comprehend that they work differently in different game modes.

I’m not saying this is intentional on your part, but it’s sounds so ugly and dismissive of your player base. Personally it just sounds like a cop out, and excuse to put as little effort and resources into balancing your game as possible. And forget about new anything to professions, what a joke.

I don’t think that was Mr. Jonathan’s intention at all Yoh. I believe he was merely saying that skill changes between game type(WvW, PvE, and PvP) can be hard to understand and cause confusion to some players.

As a mock example, Lets say you play PvE with your awesome build that gives you 5 seconds of fury when you use a skill and your build relies on it being 5 seconds. However, we split that specific skill only in PvP and you go play and realize only after playing a few engagements that it only gives 3 seconds of fury. Then you go to WvW and realize that the skill is back to 5 seconds of Fury.

• How does that player feel?
• What questions is that player going to ask?
  * Is this a bug?
  * Why is it only different in PvP?
• Who is going to answer those questions?
• Are they going to try and seek out someone to answer these questions?
• Is the person they (if they do ask) going to know the actual reason for this change?
• Is that player going to stop playing PvP or GW2 all together?

The simplest change can have a huge effect on a player in any game, and when you start splitting skills and causing inconsistencies on top of balancing multiple game modes it can get a bit crazy for players to keep up. I hope this helps everyone understand what questions and thought process we go through as a team when deciding on splitting skills.

Ondriam.9862:

Agreed. I would even pay a one-time (or yearly, or whatever) fee in gems to have a pass to a restricted area with a bank and a TP. Just stop making me load 2-3 maps every time i have to do something.

Do you think this would cause any uproar in the community if we did a change like this, and if it did can you think of a better way to implement it?

Wild Throw.9437:

Why complain about having a bank in the mists? I would say MOST people can just press “B” click their home BL then run right around the corner to the armorsmithing station and bam…a bank. And it is free, so just give the PvP pop a bank as well. I know I would sure love one.

Someone already put up a good argument point for this statement, that WvW isn’t always accessible. Sometimes there is a queue which for players in a hurry will cause them to spend some silver to get to a place with a bank instead of going to WvW for free.

So to clarify the thought behind:

1. Must be able to be hot join-able

One thing we really want to do is promote and grow the player base. Now, what does that mean? When a new player (either to PvP or to the game) joins PvP for the first time they go to custom arenas to play and learn the game in a less competitive environment. We want those players to retain and work their way up to the competitive game modes: Solo or Team queue. So the meaning behind that statement is that the game mode must work for both casual and competitive environments to help grow the community.

I am really loving the discussion going on in this thread. This is a testament to how awesome our community is! Alright so now that we have flushed out some ideas let me give you some guide lines and let me know if we can design around it.

1. Must be able to be hot join-able
* Not easily griefed and allow players to be able to jump in and out
2. Must fit the 5 on 5 standard
3. Can fit our standard PvP match time (15 mins)
4. (Would Be Nice) Shout castable

Alright let me know how your ideas fit or change with these standards.

Hey I appreciate all the feedback and suggestions we have gotten on this topic! I have seen people refer back to the original CDI thread we did awhile back and I appreciate that as well.

My goal here was to spark intelligent conversation between the community and myself with perhaps a newer audience then when the original CDI went out awhile back. I also will say that I am glad to see that people participated in this thread and are still here from when the original CDI happened. Thanks everyone for keeping this constructive!

Let me set up a quick recap of the thread so far:

• You guys/gals seem to really like the idea of a MOBA style game mode
  * Unlocking Skills, Traits, consumable, bundles, and ect.
• An idea about cap points that can be captured but then reset to address the problem with bunkers and stagnate point defense
• GW1 Jade quarry and Fort aspenwood
• Arenas 2v2 3v3 5v5
• Attack/Defend map with rounds
• 500 points doesn’t feel like a fun or rewards goal to hit in PvP
• Free for all Arena
• Trait/skill restriction game mode

BlackBeard
Would this be for more of a Deathmatch second objective or what current game mode do you see this fitting into?

KarasiB
Can you try and come up with the mechanics and secondary objectives behind this MOBA like game mode in our game?

These are interesting ideas!
We have always tried to stay 5v5 to be consistent with the Conquest game mode, but I like what you were trying to solve there with the restriction of skills/traits.

We really appreciate you helping us with the tourney and in the wise words of the Lesh Prince, " You guys are da best!".

Congratulations to TCG for winning the whole thing, they really played well and earned the right to be EU’s Legends of the mists!

Also a huge thanks to all the teams for playing as well!

Also thanks to Blu/Sireph, the Authorized Shoutcasters, DPS, our ESL admins for running the tourney!

I can’t wait till next weeks NA Legends of the mists tourney!

#HypeTrain!

I appreciate the community coming together to help the community. Thanks OP for taking the time to write this up and the rest of the community to help grow this thread. If we help each other we can not only make each other better, make games less toxic, and grow the community at the same time.

+1 on threads like this.

Hey everyone,

This is a wording bug not a content issue. The design behind the dungeon tracks was that players would need to run the track multiple times to get the entire set of weapons and armor.

19 – weapons
18 – pieces of armor (6 light, 6 medium, and 6 heavy)

Upon completing a track you will get 3 weapons and 1 piece of armor all your choice including stat combo. Upon running the track multiple times you are able to either save tokens for legendary or use tokens to speed the process up of getting the full weapons/armor set you are working towards.

The fact the text says “set” is a mistake that we are going to update soon. Any other questions just let me know.

Is the guaranteed item only a green, or can it be any tier starting from green to anything higher? Like, is there any chance that we get a gold or exotic out of the guaranteed green roll?

yes, the minimum you will get is green but there is a chance that you can get better quality item.

And is there any “special” npc chest, even if at higher track tiers, that gives us a guaranteed gold or higher tier?

There are specific rewards that guarantee exotics on dungeon tracks.

When you do receive Npc reward box on a reward track you will receive 2 of them and each box counts towards 5 “Npc” kills. So opening the 2 boxes is like killing 10 bears. Also to make sure the boxes feel rewarding you are guaranteed 1 green per box so 2 greens total.

I can also confirm that Magic Find will affect the Npc boxes(Example Skelk Reward box, Bear Reward Box) on the reward tracks! Those boxes are there to represent players killing that kind of mob in PvE, but without being in PvE. As loot from killing a monster in PvE is affected my magic find we wanted a similar system in PvP so we came up with these Npc Loot Boxes. So salvage all the things and get ready for April 15th!!!!

On April 15th all reward tracks will have 8 tomes of knowledge on them. As there are 8 tiers of rewards on each reward track that means that every tier will have 1 tome on it. So it WILL be possible to level the character you are playing in PvP with the tomes you receive from rewards tracks or you can use them on another character on your account because the tomes are account bound.

Hope this helps
Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk

MarkPhilips.5169:

Hugh, but if i unlock all story mode dng can i get progression on all dng bars at the same time or i can activate only 1 at time and doing my progression only in one?

I don’t know if i was clear enough lol.

I believe what you are asking is if you can progress all the reward tracks at the same time. You will only ever be able to progrekitteneward track at a time ever, but by unlocking the dungeon reward tracks you will have access to all the dungeon rewards on your account.

Sorry we weren’t super clear on how this whole thing works so let me try and clear it up here!

The dungeon tracks are on a 2 week rotations and only 1 will be active if you don’t unlock them. When a track you were currently progress

So when the 4/15 build hits you will need to complete the story mode of the corresponding dungeon reward track you wish to unlock permanently on your account. By completing the story mode on any character you will be able to run the repeatable dungeon reward track whenever you so please forever.

Even if you have run the dungeon in the past you will need to run it again after 4/15 to unlock the reward track. The reason for this is to put both PvE and PvP players on the same level once the 4/15 build hits. So PvP only players wouldn’t be the only people that need to run the dungeons on 4/15.

You can unlock the dungeons at anytime AFTER 4/15 regardless of where it is in dungeon track rotation. So on 4/15 if you complete the story mode of all the dungeons you will have all 8 repeatable dungeon rewards tracks available to you day one.

Mike.4830:

Grouch can you give a vague idea of who will be future dragons (60, 70+)??!?
ALSO with the change to jewels, will I still be able to run soldier zerker, or carrior rabid or whatever?

Everyone in the upper mid 50’s and up will become a Dragon!

Hey everyone,
I just wanted to jump in here as well and say thanks for everyone that is posting constructive and insightful feedback on the ladder topic. It’s great to see all sorts of player types commenting on this subject.

To copy Colin I would consider myself a competitive person in games. I love challenging players better than myself and learning from my mistakes. Rewards that inspired me were being part of the community, going to community events, and beating other teams/players that I was friends with to see who was better that day. I come from a fighting game background so for me having new combos, set-ups, and character knowledge to take to a local tournament to be number 1 pushed me into training mode for hours on end. For me something to show my time spent or accomplishments to the community is what I would play for the most.

Keep your ideas and feedback coming everyone!

Iretha.7625:

Do you guys do dungeons/fractals/wvw/spvp together? If you don’t, and you pug, how does your group react? Do they still do all the tricks people normally do to make dungeons go faster, or do they take an extra 20 minutes to look good and innocent? :P

And finally… are you even able to turn that anet tag off?

Do you guys do dungeons/fractals/wvw/spvp together?
I have done all the dungeons with both Anet folks and with friends, fractals up to like 15-20 with friends, WvW a bunch with both friends and Anet folks, and sPvP again with friends and Anet folks.

And finally… are you even able to turn that anet tag off?
Wouldn’t you like to know. :P We are always watching. . . . always >=)

Josh Davis.6015:

Prysin.8542:

y u no Power Ranger?

I’m not mighty morphin’ enough.

Well said. . .

I play Warrior mainly and I dip a bit into guardian and necro. Warrior has been and will always be my favorite, I played it during all the beta weekends and will continue to play it. I mainly run Ham/Bow and Sword/Sword + Bow, but I usually run the most glassy warrior I can run and then go all in. When I am feeling saucy I run my old Axe/Shield + Rifle build.

felivear.1536:

aussieheals.6843:

felivear.1536:

Josh Davis.6015:

felivear.1536:

what does this line mean: “[Grouch] just won’t be as active on the forums or behind the scenes.”

Hmm, that did sound a bit ominous! Don’t worry – I’m still here, I’m just switching to a different team. It’s true that I won’t be as active on these forums, but I should still be active “behind the scenes” unless someone forgot to deliver the terrible news to me. -.-

Guild Wars 2 PvP is the main reason why I came to ArenaNet. I’ll always have my finger on the pulse, whether that’s from reading the forums in my spare time, or logging in to play after work.

Something something, touching moment, something something, this is not goodbye.

Your new title says, “Anet Alpha Team”. What exactly does an Alpha Team member do? Your new title is intriguing. I’m thinking you’re now the member of an elite squad with black suits, sunglasses and earpieces. Maybe your work is classified.

Wait…don’t tell me..because then you’ll have to kill me.

Obviously, The A Team

Was so temped to create a meme with Grouchs face on Mr T, would of been epic

Why can’t I like this post more than once!!!!!!

Yes there is a Ready Up today at 2 pm pst

I would like to say that we really appreciate posts with reason, well thought out points, and that inspire discussion. The OP post hits all these points and then some. I would like to thank everyone who has contributed to this post. I know the Skills and balance team has looked into the balance of all stat combos recently specially Berserker. I will let them give more details as that is their project, but I just wanted to step in and stay thanks to everyone (specially Blood Red Arachnid).

Seems Legit. :P

Lux.7169:

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

I didn’t know Harry Potter worked on Guild Wars 2. . . . wait that is . . . touche :P

I really really REALLY need to know if you’re the actor who plays McLovin in Superbad!

Sadly I am not.

I didn’t know Harry Potter worked on Guild Wars 2. . . . wait that is . . . touche :P

docMed.7692:

John, your ‘live call’ was well played. Lot of good stuff coming out of this stream so far; looking forward to more episodes and future patches (especially ones that include new game modes).

Thanks! We tried to have some fun while showing off the stuff PvP and skills and balance have been working on. Make sure to catch us in a few weeks (12/20).

Interesting . . . No wonder Grouch hasn’t shown up to work today. . . He is sleeping in the mists.

Great idea! Thanks for putting this together for our community Ken. /bow

Stalefish.7615:

My fabulous Warrior

D: I am uber jealous of your War!!!!

I wanted to step in here and hopefully clear some things up. Our primary goal is to improve the foundation that PvP is built-on by improving our existing features and expanding with new ones. More specifically, our goal is to make PvP fun and engaging. We agree that PvP isn’t where we want it to be – and that’s what motivates us to do better. Our hope is that with the rewards updates, matchmaking improvements, and various other updates on the horizon we can begin to cultivate a more competitive, engaging, and fun version of Structured PvP. Once we have everything in place, we can nudge things in the right direction, but it will ultimately be up to the community to take the competitive scene one step further.

Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk
PvP Designer

I really appreciate all the feedback everyone is giving us! I wanted to let everyone know we are listening.

Nice job everyone! This feedback is extremely helpful to us!

Hi,

I wanted to just touch base with everyone and say that we are looking into making a few changes to the Sky Hammer map layout. The goal of these changes is to preserve the overall feel of Sky Hammer(Positioning = good), but hope to relieve the spam knock backs and get kills feel. We are listening to everyone both in-game and on the forums. Thanks for the feedback and see you in-game.

Hugh “Nightmare” Norfolk

That was a great tournament and Denial Esports came out on top! Great job to Denial Esports and everyone who entered and participated!

Thank you for letting us know! We have a fix for this and will be putting it out as soon as possible.

New wallpaper for sure! Hope everyone enjoyed the stream and see you on the battlefield!

Fuzzion.2504:

Hugh, wear body Armour, carry a bazooka , buy some ear-plugs, tuck some whiskey in your vest, bring a bottle of valium and most importantly, hire 14 bodyguards.

I agree with all of this except the Whiskey, I would take hard water instead.

Hard Water = Water with no ice.

I love our fans and can’t wait to meet as many of you as I can! I will have my vigor buff on just in case I do need to do some dodge rolling though. :P