Guild Wars 2

I’m getting one shot by thieves from stealth, again.

Mesmer already suffered years of being a certain kill for thieves and now we’re back to it again.

I just adore being laughed at by thieves who can attack from stealth and kill me in less than a second.

Next, I’ll start being told I’m “just bad” and “l2p” right?

I think Courtyard would be a huge mistake. After all, a major reason population is low is massive stomps. Courtyard promotes just that.

No, please… It’s dead, let it lie.

I agree. Glint’s Realm and the Special Collections area of The Priory are works of art.

They deserve to be used.

Wow, this really could have been a lot of fun. The discussion of the history of Glint is great and the environment is beautiful. The storytelling is a home run.

Sadly, the mechanics are set up so that I have to stand and wait 10+ minutes for conditions to coincide so that I can move forward against the “Malevolent Memory.”

Once again, fun takes second place to “hard.”

-Edit- I did notice that the puzzle has been nerfed and reworked as have some of the fights. I’d have preferred the puzzle left as was. It’s the fights that annoy.

ANET seems to nerf Mesmer much more than other classes. I don’t think the nerf to SoH was fair or in any way needed.

Imagine what DH would look like or DD if ANET were so careful to make certain they couldn’t be overly powerful.

The return of Courtyard or any other form of tdm would be a disaster.

Without going on a long rant, Courtyard probably drove as many players out of PvP as it pleased. It certainly produced huge stomps and a lot of general bad feeling.

From where I sit, it looks like one or more devs believe that heavily unbalanced matches are good and “fun.” This is seriously flawed thinking.

I’ve just come from playing through the living world again. The Battle of Fort Salma is fairly easy to win, if annoying.

The problem is this; The achievements are basically set up to be nearly impossible without an organized group. ANET should re consider this idea of more or less forcing group play.

I’m totally stuck on the instance. I need to interact with Scarlet’s diary, but Rox is standing too close and overlays the interactions. The NPC’s won’t move. I wish I could command them like henchies.

So now I’m pretty much unable to continue.

Well, at least since I last played it.

I just played through this segment of the personal story again. Now I remember why I love this game. “It’s the story.”

The graphics have been improved and polished, especially in the final Zhaitan fight. It looks lovely. Nice work, ANET.

The Spectral Wizards and the new Spectral bosses; Flame caster and Blade caster were a pleasant and interesting surprise.

I did die once on this solo run. An Orrian Gorilla caught me not paying attention and knocked me off the platform.

Some bugs I noticed:

The Orrian Eyes [turrets] don’t activate until one is quite close. This makes it easy to stand back and pick them off while they are still passive. Those eyes are powerful it’s true, but I think they’ve been nerfed too much.

When [Winds of Chaos] or [Confusing Images] are used, they are mis-rotated. This started happening after leaving the Dragon Tooth defenses platform.

[Confusing Images] appears to strike from the sky. It’s as if it’s being targeted by the facing of the target, which is to the sky.

[Winds of Chaos] is sometimes turned 90 degrees in Z as it flies away from the caster.

Caithe’s dialogs don’t always turn off after being used.

That’s a pretty good looking skin. Well done to the artist. What’s more it doesn’t feature a peplum or long tails.

Well done, nice skin. Now I’d pay gems for a light armor set for females that had no skirt or peplum. You can’t even walk fast in a ball gown. It just feels weird to wear one into combat.

Kuya.6495:

To think that anet could have avoided all this whining if they hadn’t allowed players the ability to choose traits or weapons.

One of the major reasons I play GW2 is the choices and freedom offered. I’d have left long ago if classes were fixed to one build.

Another factor is the emphasis on “the meta.” There’s a lot of social disapproval if you play anything other than what was last played in ESL or in any other style.

In Chess, it’s a sign of good sportsmanship to extend the hand and recognize you are in an unwinnable position. It’s Déclassé to force a game to play out when a side has clearly won.

Sportsmanship really isn’t a prominent feature in GW2 pvp, sadly. If it were, I suspect we’d have a larger population.

You missed my point. There’s no reason for heals to snap to an enemy. It’s a functional nerf for ground targeted heals because it requires that the player stop attacking and change target to use the heal.

Logic suggests that ground targeted heals not snap to the enemy.

Ground targeted heals should not snap to target.

If using snap to current ground target, ground target heals will hit the enemy. This is a serious liability and an effective nerf on any type of ground targeted heal.

You have to de-target, ( press escape,) and if using auto targeting you must not attack before activating the heal. On top of that, you have to wait the cast time for the heal before you can attack again.

(Thieves may also note issues using SR and SB2 if using auto targeting. )

Heals should not snap to ground target.

@ Olrun

As an ESL player and one who plays with coordinated teams, I’m not the least bit surprised you don’t like my suggestion.

I do, however, suspect that you would find the games much more difficult if you were solo queue’d in ESL as I’ve suggested. That would also be a more accurate depiction of how PvP is played in GW2 on a day-to-day basis.

An anomaly caught my ear. I’m out of practice, but it sounded very much like it was “speaking” in Morse Code. Sounded like a replica of an old spark transmitter I heard operating once.

If I get a chance, I’ll record a sound clip. I’d like to know what is being said, if anything.

If anyone catches a sound clip, I’d like a copy.

Whether or not allowing randoms in pvp was a bad move, ( and I think that’s highly debatable, ) it was the decision that was made.

Attempting to change it at this stage of the game would be a near certain disaster. I hope that the devs and execs at ANET note the lesson of City of Heroes, a sister game that was closed after an attempt to radically change PvP. I miss CoH and regret that I never finished my ascension there.

The main pvp population is randoms. The company needs to work with that rather than dream of a radical transformation. It’s not going to happen.

Well.. if the company could make a reality tv show based on playing Esports and organized team play.. then somehow recruit a large media conglomerate to back it.. anything might be done.. but I don’t see that coming to pass.

@ Rolisteel.

I agree. There are many players who have similar play skills if you take away the support of a rehearsed team.

While a minority believe that the mode is designed for team play.. It’s really not. It’s designed for “teams” of randoms. It is not designed for farm teams against randoms.

A prominent and very successful ESL player has announced that they will be working a regular job. Why is that, do you think? One possible explanation is that they don’t anticipate PvP remaining a good situation.

So, here’s my idea for the next ESL tournament. Make it solo queue. Let’s see how those players do, without the support of a carefully organized team. Oh, and no voice comms. That would be a lot closer to how PvP in GW2 is actually played.

I’m dead serious. If people saw that group playing solo queue, it might reduce some of the entrenched attitude that it’s somehow “OK” and “competitive” to organize and stomp randoms.

It would also be perhaps a better test of the ESL players’ skills in playing GW2.

I’ve just quit a game, 200 -20 in the first couple of minutes. That was the third heavily outmatched game in a row.

This is the fault of the game, not the players.

I think you misunderstand the word “competition.” Using teams against non teams does not qualify as competition. Some words that come to mind are: farming, exploiting and trolling.

A solo que will bring things closer to a true competition. By definition a game is competitive when the sides are closely matched and each must play hard if they want to win.

Motivation to form a team was tried. The game even offers a chance to join your teammates after a match. Many people, like myself, don’t wish to play on teams.

What we need is motivation to play PvP.

Sadly, ANET offered a legendary backpack as motivation. Then they made it too hard to get. This soured quite a few PvE players who came to try for the prize. It won’t be easy to lure those players back.

A leader board would probably be productive.

@Saiyan

Sorry the reality in-game contradicts what you are saying. It has done for 4 seasons now. Farming is very much a thing in PvP.

I’ve just come from another awful match and 400 point loss. This is all too common. Over and above any “balance” issues, the reason that ANET eSports hasn’t come to pass is the matchmaking.

If ANET cannot provide fun and fairly even matches, PvP will continue to decline.

I’ll wait as long as needed if they can produce a fair matchmaking scheme.

arkaxify.3258:

And so here again I see the classic thread about the class stacking ‘issue’ and again I cringe.

1) Class stacking restrictions were added to ESL as a result of the season 1 meta. Teams could compete with only 2 builds, bunker mesmer and condition mallyx. ArenaNet has vastly improved their game since then in terms of balance and the builds that were simply broken in season one such as cele ele, scrapper and the ones mentioned before are now balanced. The only exception being bunker mesmer which was overnerfed out of the game.
2) There is no class in this videogame worth stacking more than 2 in one team. Sure, maybe running 4 dragonhunters or 4 reapers can get you out of amber quickly but I’d say at around Sapphire people have already learned how to dodge and the setup stops working. Complaining about multiple dhs, necros and pretty much any class but revenant is just a l2p issue.
3) Being able to change your team’s setup accordingly in the pre-game is one of the better features we have in PvP, I suggest you learn how to use it.

I don’t agree, having multiple dh or druid is a major advantage. Yes, I remember the season 1 farm teams of 5 dh.

DH stacks have continued to be a problem, but some of the anger may be shock effect from the way overtuned traps early on. They got the reputation of being way OP.

Each time Mesmer rises above trash tier it has to deal with screams of OP, so welcome to the club.

I would like to see class stacking eliminated. Doing so improved ESL.

The problem is that ANET has consistently left some means of farming in every season. I think that this is deliberate, though I can’t fathom why.

Perhaps they hope to appease some particular player population.

I’m continuing my 3rd or 4rth world tour. ( I forget which ) The last skill point for Snowden Drifts was the Raven Shaman.

She disappeared leaving 2 Phantasms in her wake that all did similar damage to her and had similar hit points. More accurately she looked just like her phantasms.

Players with any experience are not confused by clones or phantasms.

One way to potentially make phantasm builds,( and other types,) work would be to make the clones and phantasms mimic the actions of the Mesmer. They would display whatever animation the Mesmer was currently using. You’d need to add some wandering to the clones so that they didn’t end up following the Mesmer in a blob like necro minions.

If a transformation to “Phantasm Form” were possible, it would be a real mind bender. This could even be an elite skill. The Mesmer puts out phantasms then transforms to look like them. Now you have 2-4 targets that look and act the same. I’ve seen this trick in WvW. A Mesmer was using a tonic to hide among phantasms.

Such a change would be a buff to Mesmer without actually increasing anything. It would also make Mesmer closer to the spirit of the class as presented by ANET.

I think the Bot Game mode is the best idea for a tutorial I’ve heard yet.

That and matchmaking needs to be improved significantly. To whit; putting one “good” player with 4 randoms in an attempt to make a “balanced” match simply is not going to work.

A voting system would be instantly abused. The level of recrimination both in-game and here on forum would be epic. Though, it would be fun to get people to exclude a certain ESL Engineer from any rewards in a match.

Bottom Line, matchmaking needs to be improved so that gross mismatches are at least not common.

You can actually get the POI. The heart is another matter.

Same issue here. I also posted it in another thread.

-edit- I notice that you are actually placed inside the bandit compound and are then kicked. So, I’m guessing that it’s not the teleport from the npc, directly.

@ Lord Hammer Hand

In point of fact I didn’t come to PvP for the wings. PvP was an alternative to WvW. Since I tend to play at “off” hours for my server, I was constantly facing blobs that outnumbered my side by as much as 20-1.

You assert that no system can measure player skill by algorithm and you might be partially correct in that. One of the major factors that screws up matchmaking is pre-made teams. Using off-world VOIP and organized play is an overwhelming advantage.
It makes bad players into “Legendary” players.

There are potential alternatives. For example, the MatchMaker could pick up people with similar win rates. Another viable alternative would be pure random matchmaking with only solos. In the long run this would be fair for the same reason that games like poker are fair in the long run. Everyone will eventually see the same cards.

Whatever system is chosen, it must be attractive to newcomers. To do that, there are a couple of prerequisites.

There need to be rewards large enough to attract PvE players. Those rewards need to actually be accessible to PvE players. The attempt to attract PvE players with a reward, then deny them the reward was … well it was kittened.

Incoming players need to be taught how to play. This was my reason for suggesting a booster. It would give newbies time to learn.

A series of tutorials ala’ B & S might work. A beginner’s league might work. The trouble with that is new accounts with old players taking advantage. One of the posters on this page mentioned taking advantage in this way.

New players must not be exposed to murderous odds. A friend of mine, ( a pre HoT Altruistic Heal Guardian ) came to PvP at my invitation. In the first match he was stomped repeatedly into the ground trying to camp home. The second match happened to be Courtyard and we lost 500-0. He vowed never to return to PvP and he hasn’t.

Speaking to either of the seraph spies (at seirnan’s camp) puts me underwater, I land close to Aethervolt Labs.

This puts me underwater, under the world.

@Ghotistyx

What do you mean? African swallows or European swallows?

@Tiefsee

I think the solo/duo thing will mitigate the rotation advantage somewhat. It will be more difficult to get entire teams on TS.

Also, with fewer players locked up in teams, the matchmaker will have more to work with. Hopefully the net result will be better matches.

If that’s the case, ( and that’s a big “if”, ) then a stat bonus to new accounts would be effective.

@ Crinn.

I was making an observation. Based on what I’ve seen playing PvP. I think that the system uses players well above the average level of a team some of the time. This looks to me like an attempt to balance the teams by adding one very strong or weak player to a team.

I don’t agree despite anecdotes of big comebacks. It’s pretty easy to perceive sometimes that you are simply going to be stomped. This is all the more true when you see the other team has some ridiculous stack like 2 dh, 2 necro and an ele.

The stacked matchmaking ( of s2-s3 ) has created a strong impression that some matches are simply predestined and I really don’t see that changing anytime soon.

@Blaquefire

First, I completely agree that class stacking should be eliminated in ranked. It was eliminated in ESL with good effects.

A tutorial would be amazing and I have promoted that idea in past posts. Sadly, I don’t think ANET is willing to invest the development resources. There used to be a tutorial, though it did not cover rotation. There is also a practice area with class representative dummies.

When I first entered Eye of the North in GW1, I was given a quest to teach me how to position and use henchies. B&S actually calls players to training sessions and they are taught combinations by an npc friend from the introductory session.

As to safety nets. They were needed, since the progress toward the backpack was based on pip progression. Too many knockbacks would have driven away even more people than the matchmaking did.

As to making the leaderboard “mean something”; Well, I think that the only possible means of doing that would be to force all solo ranked play. In each of the past 4 seasons, people have walked to legendary on pre-made farming. Oddly, many of those were among the ones claiming that “Legendary” rank was a mark of skill.

-edit- You complain that my idea of a booster is “pay-to-win.” My counter argument is that HoT is pay-to-win. If the booster were restricted to paid accounts, it would have the effect of giving players initial success in pvp. Hopefully, this would encourage them to keep playing.

@Crinn

I don’t agree. The low population and the way the matchmaker is set up seem to match newbies with top players in an attempt to make “balanced” matches.

The problem is that it’s hard or impossible to quantify. Is an esl quality player worth 2 noobs? 3? What about the effects of synergy that diminish rapidly with new players?

To a certain extent, Solo/duo queue will mitigate the synergy issue.

As a sidelight, I throw out this idea: Suppose there were variable team sizes? 7 noobs vs 5 experienced as an example?

Exactly why I propose the booster. Give the newbies a strong edge so that they are “well blooded.” In other words so that they are successful in early matches.

The new people left because they got stomped without mercy. If they had a grace period where they were boosted and won a few..they might decide to stay.

The problem: PvP is generally not accessible to newcomers. As a result, population is quite low. This makes matchmaking difficult and tends to make queue times longer.

There have been a couple of attempted solutions;

Making one class noticeably stronger each patch round. I suspect this is partly meant to help newcomers.

In the stacked matches of s2 and s3, newcomers came in with an average or better mmr. If things worked well, this would mean that at least part of the matches were stacked in favor of the newcomers.

Sadly, both solutions are short circuited by the community. People bandwagon to the strong class, destroying it’s usefulness as a booster for newcomers. In s2 and s3, experienced players used the advantage of a new account to farm easy wins.

Proposed Solution;

Create a booster for new PAID accounts in pvp. This consumable booster would be strong enough to give a noticeable edge to newbies, giving them a taste of success. Since it would be for paid accounts, it would not feed into the culture of exploiting and farming by more experienced players.

-edit- Hand this booster out to all paid accounts with , say, less than 1000 games. (this would preclude both my main and alt accounts ) This would have the effect of drawing people in to pvp and giving them a couple of relatively successful matches. There ought to be a net gain in population.

I used to believe that it was bad sportsmanship to quit a game. Then again, it’s bad sportsmanship to set up a match stacked for one side to win.

The problem is the matchmaking.

I’m not a fan of Revs. Having said that, I think ANET knocked them down a bit too far. The company is consistently heavy handed with changes.

I main Mesmer and for most of the past 4 years have struggled with excessive nerfs.

The game as a whole would be better overall if the “balance” team made much smaller changes, but more often.

First, there is a lot of resistance and cleanse available.

Second, ANET has consistently nerfed power shatter so hard that it’s not usuable. Condi gives a fighting chance against perma block dh.. super burst rev.. perma stun warrior and what-have-you.

Light armor power for Mesmer and Ele sucks. The OP paints condi as fire and forget. That’s not true. Condis have to be maintained and reapplied. The other side of the argument is that power builds can take out a light armored condi build .. sometimes in less than a second.

This is a learn to play issue.

You didn’t even mention the spec I put out in the voting :P

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

ah yes the prophetic insight of OP about pvp. did u ever got our sapphire in 4 seasons? serious question.

I made Ruby twice in 4 seasons. and Sapphire twice. Each time, I stopped playing before the end of the season. It simply wasn’t fun.

I did however finally win my wings on my alt account. I busted my kitten to do it, too.

I will alter what I said a little. By “truly balanced” I mean that every class has a build that can reasonably 1v1 any other class.

This would of course mean having multiple useful builds.

I noted the recent posts about one of the ANET devs doing well in Streetfighter V “eSports.”

Streetfighter and it’s many spinoffs were fun in the arcade, back when I was in my teens.

Those games were set up differently though. There is very little long term investment. You drop a quarter in and play. Then you move on. Guild Wars and Guild Wars 2 are inherently different. They require long term commitment.

More to the point;

1v1 tournaments would please a lot of players. The classes are not suitable at this point though. Some of the matches would be almost predestined by the respective classes. I believe that should not be true.

A game like street fighter, with it’s two dimensional action and fixed builds should be comparatively easy to balance. This is what frightens me.

For years now there has been a trend to simplifying classes. The trait system overhaul was a big example.

In my opinion, ANET may well be considering fixed builds. Solve balance issues by simply denying options. I sincerely hope not. The spirit and flavor of GW2 would be severely damaged by that course.

DEVS: we need less control. The long term habit of trying to control and “shake up” the “meta” has not worked. A laissez faire approach with truly balanced classes would work much better.

By “truly balanced,” I mean that any given class would be able to 1v1 any other class with a more or less equal chance of winning. I assume of course that the players are equally skilled.

This is the one lesson ANET might take away from “eSports” involving arcade games. In such games, there is not usually a glaringly weak or OP class or character. When there is, the game doesn’t do well.

If ANET went with fixed builds, it would be enough to make me quit the game. I suspect many others feel the same way.

There are already quite a few complaints that the classes are railroaded into one build/role.

I rolled a thief first. The concept is so cool and I still run it regularly in dungeons.

WvW convinced me I needed something different.

Mesmer captured my imagination and has been my main ever since (4 ish years. ) It hasn’t been a an issue of stopping enjoying the class. The issue has been trying to find ways to enjoy the class I really wanted to play. I’m waiting to get to a place where I can enjoy the class.