Guild Wars 2

Totally agree with OP.

I just want to give you my 2 cents:

In my honest opinion, I think that if Guild Wars 2 would have implemented GW1’ skills system but removing secondary professions for being more casual-friendly and more easy to balance, this game would be AWESOME.

I mean, imagine if we didnt have weapon sets and mandatory-healing skills and, instead, we have about 60 skills for every profession, each one tied to a specific trait line which should be focused on:
– Direct damage: crits, deep wound, etc.
– Damage on time: conditions,hexes, etc.
– Control: armor, crowd control, etc.
– Support: healing, boons, etc.
– Profession-specific line: have skills of all roles but using the profession mechanic.

This way, we had a more clear system, more easy to balance (less skills than GW1, more focused on a role than GW2), casual-friendly (you just invest points on the lines you want to play and use those skills) and gives room for creativity on builds.

First of all: thank you so much Evan for giving us some answers and a real transparency, I think we all really appreaciate that

Second: about the 4th point, you said that an unlock system should be in the game but because of time and tech you couldn’t implement it. I wonder now, how is that? I mean… why not doing it like in the original Guild Wars? Glory cost for every rune and sigil, you pay the price, you unlock forever the item.

I missed this system since day 1 and I was surprised it wasn’t in the game, its absence make this new PvP system much boring than we had on a older game :/

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Critical damage should be the warrior mechanic. Solves the game balance

I think that solution would be a bit “jump the gun” but possible anyway.

On another note, I think we should focus on the topic (Balance split into PvE/WvW and PvP) so they won’t have an excuse for closing the thread

I completely agree with the OP.

Devs have been telling us since day 1 that they want to avoid splitting skills for PvP and PvE/WvW because of new people on PvP will get overwhelmed with the same skills they use in PvE/WvW are different in PvP.
The problem is if they continue in this way…. there won’t be any new players for PvP because it’s already dead.

The solution? One could be that when the first time a character goes to the mists, show a window, an alert or something else that skills have changed their functionality for PvP.
I don’t think people will become very overwhelmed with those changes. They already have their weapons fixed skills for newcomers, a limited amount of utility skills for the same reason and only one PvP mode. Do you really think it isn’t enough? Are you making the game for 5yo kids? Because every problem with PvP I see in this game is because of trying to not overwhelm newcomers.

Hey necromates!

Finally we got the UI changes to our beloved DS, yay!
Now, it’s seems logic at least that we need a 5th skill on our DS set to match other transformations right?
This post isn’t for discussing if we need/deserve or not that 5th skill, it’s just for make a brainstorm about what skill should be that just for fun ^^

I’ll start saying that it should be something related to conditions (since conditionmancers get almost nothing from DS). Maybe something like a buff that gives your next x attacks on DS an extra bleed stack?

What do you think guys?

Snafoo.2869:

Basically: weakness should reduce crit chance, since crit chance (and the synergy with +crit damage) is such a large part of bursting in GW2 it’s rather odd that arguably the main defensive condition doesn’t affect this at all.

I agree with your idea of buffing weakness but, there is a problem with that: people right now (as you said) focus on protection & regeneration, if you buff weakness without touching those buffs, burst will become trash because of weakness+protection+regeneration.

I think it will be better buff weakness and nerf a bit protection (I already saw this suggestion several times in sPvP subforum). How about protection being reduced to 25% instead of 33%?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Options that we have working internally, so far, include:
Name
Password
Message of the Day
Max Players
Minimum Players
Respawn Time
Score Limit
Team Size
Time Limit
Respawn Type (Wave or Individual)
Autobalance Toggle
Lock Gear Toggle
Lock Skills Toggle
Ready Button Toggle
Spectators Toggle
No Stats Toggle
Map selection

It’s really nice to hear that, you made my day Tyler

Anyway, I have to point out something that worries me a lot: rank points in custom will be the same that on hot-join for example?
Because if the answer is affirmative we will have a problem with people farming PvP ranks on their private servers with friends/guildies.

Hey there.

I hope this won’t get infracted because of calling out devs, it’s not my intention to flame or something like that, I just want some answers.
If you guys take a look on the professions subforums, severals months ago there were some devs posting there a bit (not every day, even not every week but they were there).
What did happen that changed that? Where are the transparency you always talk about?
I’m not telling you to post every single day, I just want (at least) the same level of talk that we had in the past, is that asking for so much?

What do you guys think about this?

PS.: Sorry if my English is bad, it’s not my natural language and I’m still learning it

The problem is that since devs don’t want to make risky patches, we will have to wait another 6 months or so to start to see necromancers in their attrition role.
When they say that 2013 is for change their core game to make it better that means that they have should released the game in late 2013 and not the past year.

Yep, DS is a transformation but is laking all the good things about a transformation because of, you know, when we master DS we will reign over all other professions…

Caveth.3268:

It seems that Arenanet just has random rules for everything in death shroud – it’s one messed up transformation…

I said several times in the necromancer subforums that DS was released in a beta state.
It is half transformation half downed state and it has the worst things together: 4 skills (instead of 5 of every transformation), no UI to see boons, conditions, your own health….
Even more, we cant be healed while in DS… it’s so chaotic.

Pretty interesting suggestions overall Wolf.
I love all them, in particular the last one, those crazy “achievements” will result on a funnier PvP

Anyone hopes that we will have reponse to this topic in the SotG today?

Another bump. Because the topic deserves it.

Bump this. /15chars

I’m terrible afraid of they will never implement something like HA or GvG in GW2. Take a look on the question number 11: Interview with Colin Johanson Part II

Maybe I’m wrong, but “if people love exactly GW people should go play GW” sounds to me like we are not implementing the same thing from GW1 so…. go play tournaments guys or go back to the original Guild Wars…

Bhawb.7408:

I had read a post a while ago from a guy who used it to keep up AoE weakness in Fractals. I would think within a setting like that, it could be very strong, however I can’t imagine it being all that great in standard PvE because you really don’t need to worry about that.

That’s why we need a serious split in skills. It’s perfect in high-end PvE and, maybe, in WvW when you are facing a zerg, but in sPvP is totally useless.
If we had tons of skills like in GW1, there won’t be a problem if some of them are useless for sPvP but it’s not the case.

Zinwrath.2049:

There are a lot of really cool pvp games coming out, hell new gears of war next week, couple nice fighting games came out, and new starcraft expantion etc.

I have to admit, if the patch isnt stellar for march. Most people are gonna find something else to play and forget about this. I already got 3 other competitive games on pre-order so….only got so much free time, unless the patch makes this pvp better than the competition, wont see me here.

Since I’m pretty sure that March won’t have anything related to sPvP (except balance and maybe some minor tweaks), I hope you are right and the game starts to lose more and more people.
Seriously, devs need to face the truth and having an exodus will probably open their eyes because these forums are not working for that….

It is obvious that we need more game modes to make this PvP fun.
If they want to make it an e-sport, no problem! Just keep conquest only for e-sport if you want, but give us more pvp modes.

sirnibb.4709:

Source?

Just look at the sPvP forums, they never implement something new or change anything significatively without announcing it everywhere. Take the Spirit’s Watch map for example, they announced it even with a blog spot.
Anyway, I think they told in the last SotG that march won’t be the month of sPvP, but I’m not 100% sure about that.

Meret.5943:

Runiir.6425:

I love how the pvpers whine about no death matches.
…
Death match pvp is the most boring thing imaginable.
…
Crying that you can’t dominate pugs?

It doesn’t necessarily have to be either/or. You prefer one type of pvp gameplay, others prefer other types. I happened to find wvwvw boring as all get-out, but I won’t try and put you down for thinking it’s the cat’s meow.

Meret is right.
This game needs diversity. Devs were claiming since development that they want to try to please everyone. Hardcore and casual players. PvE and PvP players. Open world PvP and structured PvP players….

The only real problem about HA in GW1 is that it was elitist, but from a gameplay perspective, it was near perfect.
It had tournament format with different modes so there were some OP builds, that only served to farm the first and second map (deathmatch) but if you were interested in claiming the Hall of Heroes, you need to bring up a better build, more balanced to win all those different modes.

So, at the end of the day, you had different strategies for each mode, which result in a funnier game that what we have.

So, in conclussion: GW1’s HA had diversity but elitism and GW2’s conquest has not elitism but it has not diversity. Give GW2 more PvP modes to give us more diversity and it will be perfect.

Calae.1738:

People are expecting a huge update to PVP this month. PVP is the only thing holding me to this game. The PVE is such a chore. Nothing is even remotely challenging. Arenanets definition of a PVE challenge is laughable at best and insulting at worst.

This month will decide wether I give a kitten about this game.

I’m sorry for being a bringer of bad news but they already announced that March won’t be the sPvP month, they are focusing on PvE (as always) and on WvW.

For sPvP, expect some light balance like always, because they don’t want to risk anything and nothing more.

This suggestion is simple: make an world only for testing (or one for NA and other for EU).

It’s like almost every other MMO out there and you will get feedback from players interested in improving the game instead of releasing things in beta mode on the live servers (happened to Temple of the Silent Storm).
This way, you can avoid people raging about issues when new things comes up (like load screen bugs) and release content more reliable.

Bump this. I won’t let that this thread gets buried under suggestions.

I totally agree with you guys that something is wrong about traits and certain skills of necromancers.

But I don’t expect at all a rework of it now. It seems like devs don’t want to make some risky movement about balancing the game so… better not hope for a rework and live with it as well as you can.

Draehl.2681:

Cast times are mostly fine. The problem is projectile speed. See: Dark Path, Spectral Grasp, Staff autoattack…

^This.
I have no problem with cast times. Think about it, we are pretty hard to kill (yes, I know we have no escapes at all, only damage sponge) so having fast cast skills will result on something pretty OP…
But having slow movement projectile speed is something really bad in a game with fast combat like this, since people can make you fail those skills simply by walking away without dodging at all.

I’d like to hear what do you think guys but my level of spoken English is terrible and I’m pretty sure there are a lot of people like me so I have a suggestion!

Why not make a transcription too? If you have the time and want to do it, it would be pretty awesome and you will reach more people

mbh.8301:

I’d love to quote& paste one of my other comments, but I’ve already posted it 10 times and it doesn’t seem to make a bit of difference since you people don’t read it.

I’d like to do the work for you dude since is one the best post I’ve ever seen in these forums since the launch of the game.

mbh.8301:

The interesting thing is that GW1 gave a lot of leeway in terms of balance because it was self balancing to some degree.

Look at: http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2009/August/356/ (when you hover over the skills it shows how they are currently, so you need to look a bit lower on the page to see how they were pre-nerf)

That ranger bar was the silliest nonsense. Everyone was running it. It was stupid. It moved fast, it attacked fast, it died slow. But look at that necromancer bar and that mesmer bar; those guys has buttons which are good against that overpowered ranger bar. Both teams knew this, and whichever team was better prepared for the mirror match won. Yes, this was a meta which was HEAVILY impacted by the presence of a grossly overpowered build.

In gw2, builds are made by the devs. Players have very little to do as far as being creative goes. Players have the task of figuring out how each weapon loadout is meant to be played and what gear / utility / traits maximizes that role (which normally comes down to maximizing damage in some way or another).

By giving the players few options, the burden of balance falls to the devs. Ironic, in a way.

If this “matchmaking” were put into the game 2 or 3 months ago, maybe it would have better results but right now, it’s a bit late.

This is what happens when you over-hype the game saying things like “e-sport”, “balanced game” or “skill-based pvp” and, at the end, they are not true: the game is still not an e-sport (its logical, because it needs time), the game isn’t balanced at all (GW1 had better balance and there you didn’t have fixed weapons and fixed slots, but you had secondary professions and more than 100 skills available per profession) and right now, they are trying to make the game skill-based introducing the matchmaking which does not work very well.

Larynx.2453:

Well, you would know it wont ship with decent PvP if you’ve been following it at all. The only PvP it has is WvW, with the standard level to cap and gear out routine. It doesn’t even have any sort of small scale or battleground type format.

The game’s focus isn’t on PvP, and Elder Scrolls is an RPG series in the first place.

Well, you are probably right but the original Guild Wars was a PvP centered game (and had one the best PvP I have ever played) and we were told about Guild Wars 2 taking PvP on MMOs to the next level making it an e-sport…. and what do we have now?

A really nice PvE game, with decisions in the storyline, soft end-game, etc.

So until I can see and play ESO by myself, I will hope that there is not a siege PvP game

GW2’s PvP gets old really fast because of the weird decision about having only 1 play mode.

Truth is that games like League of Legends have only 1 competitive mode (Summoner’s Rift) but it has a lot of champions to choose from. And you have 3 trees of masteries and runes for customize them as well.

Meanwhile, we have 1 mode too but only 8 professions.
That would not be a problem if there were, at least, 5 viable and different builds available per profession so you can play for a whole day and probably not encounter the same setup more than twice.

So this game needs one of those things: increase work on balance and diversity, or increase the modes availables (this will result in new builds designed for those modes, so you have an indirect diversity).

1. Do you think that trying to make this game an e-sport before its PvP is fun to play is a good idea?

2. Are you planning to hear many of your PvP playerbase about their desire of having GvG and/or HA back to the game?

3. Why 7 months after release, we still don’t have 8 devs to have a look into a single profession(1 per profession)? This would serve people to know that someone is always working on their class especifically.

XerreX.7196:

Only a handsome of top tier PvP players remained because there is simply nothing to play for anymore.

If Elder Scrolls Online ships with a decent PvP and if it’s not subscription fee based , you will see a massive exodus from this game.

I can’t believe that they have moved to Suggestions subforum another interesting post.
Trying to hide this topic behind thousand of suggestions threads does not solve the problem.

It’s a shame that instead of talking seriously about this they are just moving it to a place where nobody cares. And later, they will take the credit of being an awesome and transparent company…. what a lie.

They are transparent only on things they want, and when their original customers and fans (GW1 players like me), who miss GW1 PvP system a lot, are trying to get some attention about getting new modes inspired on the old ones because this game’s PvP is dying really fast, they don’t talk about it and bury the topic into suggestions.

You used to be my favourite videogame’s company and I used to have faith on you. And the worst thing of all: there are too many people who thinks like me.

mbh.8301:

Suzu.4193:

Devs are too focused on balance.

The interesting thing is that GW1 gave a lot of leeway in terms of balance because it was self balancing to some degree.

Look at: http://www.gw-memorial.net/builds/mAT/2009/August/356/ (when you hover over the skills it shows how they are currently, so you need to look a bit lower on the page to see how they were pre-nerf)

That ranger bar was the silliest nonsense. Everyone was running it. It was stupid. It moved fast, it attacked fast, it died slow. But look at that necromancer bar and that mesmer bar; those guys has buttons which are good against that overpowered ranger bar. Both teams knew this, and whichever team was better prepared for the mirror match won. Yes, this was a meta which was HEAVILY impacted by the presence of a grossly overpowered build.

In gw2, builds are made by the devs. Players have very little to do as far as being creative goes. Players have the task of figuring out how each weapon loadout is meant to be played and what gear / utility / traits maximizes that role (which normally comes down to maximizing damage in some way or another).

By giving the players few options, the burden of balance falls to the devs. Ironic, in a way.

^This is totally right.

Everyone (including myself at beginning of GW2) used to say that having weapons with fixed skills, the heal and elite slots, the less skills than GW1 and the non-existence of secondary profession would result on better balance. Even more, since we have only 1 pvp mode, the balance should be near perfect by now, 7 months after release. But we were totally wrong.
Do anyone seriously think that we have nice balance?

GW1 had a better balance than GW2 having more pvp modes, more skills per profession and secondary profession and the reason of that is what mbh said, players themselves were balancing them. That was a thing pretty awesome about GW1: people designed really unique builds and people again designed the counterbuilds of those builds.
Of course, sometimes, things were too much OP but then, the devs, were there to change things.

I honestly think that if we had more modes in GW2, about 20 more utility skills per profession, selectable weapon skills and 20 traits per line per profession, the game would be very much FUN and balanced that it is in its current state.

PS.: +1 to the OP of course.

I’ve never experienced this before, only with Death Penalty.
Try to reproduce more this “bug” so we can know how to avoid it until ArenaNet fix it (in case of being a real bug)

Bhawb.7408:

Actually ANet is by far the most transparent game development company I have ever seen. They talk to the community a lot, there are AMAs, plenty of interviews, they post fairly often in forums, and overall there is a pretty decent sense of what is happening in the near future.

But they can’t just say “we are planning to fix necros” without getting bombarded by people wanting to know the exact second of the exact day that those changes are coming out, and wanting to know the specifics of what is being changed, why, and how. Instead they give very general things (we all know there are going to be bug fixes), and then only announce specifics when they are actually nearing the release of that.

Also some of the beauty of GW2 is you can quit for 2 months, for whatever reason, and just jump back in later. That said, they are not going to lose many players. People always say “If you don’t change everything right now everyone is quitting”, but it doesn’t happen. They might lose a few players here and there, but it won’t be a big deal in the overall scheme. Also, they are introducing another event tomorrow (seriously, this game has had an event almost every month since Halloween).

Yes, they are very transparent but only with things like events, new features and things like that, not about professions.

If they were truly transparent, this forum should have more red posts… I invite you to for the 5 first threads with red posts….

The thing is, they messed up necro in betas, when they realized that it was very OP (on times that DS was our Downed State) and they just gave us another Downed State like every other profession and left DS like it was, with the UI of a Downed State.
Conclussion: unfinished profession.

Furthermore, I consider myself a hardcore gamer and I like to play everything: PvE, WvW and PvP. But think now of people only interested on PvP… they really don’t give a kitten about those monthly events and that’s why this game is getting the tag of a “PvE game”

leman.7682:

I’m already writing two posts for two different occasions – one in case the UI is fixed tomorrow and second, more harsh, in case it’s left as it is for the introduction of matchmaking and ratings.

All my bets are on the second one

I know they always wait to the last second to tell us something about new features, but this one in particular was announced more than a month ago and they said that this was the first step of the Death Shroud… so they have in mind more changes to it, that’s why I want at least and update about that.

We don’t need a date, we need an update of what’s going on, that’s all.

EDIT
I’ve searched the original post from JP and it’s from 2 months ago, not 1.
Here you have: Jon Peters on DS Changes Post

kobi.5236:

I want my relique ran back .. Bodyblock for da win ! … 3 man full stuck <3

Oh man. That brings me some nice memories about my days on HA. Tons of fun there… playing with balanced builds to be able to win every map and finally hold Hall of Heroes… that was glorious.

Best PvP in a MMO ever for me: GW1’s one (I know GW1 wasn’t a MMO per se but you get the idea )

Hey guys.

Will we have someday an ETA of DS UI changes? I can remember devs said more than a month ago that they were working on it…. so what’s up? Any update about that? Something for the beta-state profession to be happy with?

I can confirm this bug too. It happened to me several times in PvE, sPvP and WvW since the last patch.

TheDaiBish.9735:

They said that it’s still in the designing stage, but it isn’t actively being developed.

^This.
Right now, I’m more concerned about the new legendary weapons they will implement.
I can remember they told that they were working on new legendary skins and reworking existing ones (this last thing happened in the last patch), so I hope we can get new legendaries before summer… my necromancer really wants to have a dark magic staff

Let’s wait to the 28th and see what changes. Personally, I have a big hope since this is the next big balance patch after they said their goal is to make necros an attrition class.

I honestly think that we should be able to do it.

From a role-play perspective: it’s the same that the OP posted, we are the masters of death, sacrificing our life force to help someone survive fits very well with the profession.

From a design perspective: thieves for example can stealth stomp/resurrect enemies/allies, professions with quickness can quickstomp… why can’t we resurrect people on our damage sponge mode? We are still vulnerable on Death Shroud, so why not?

Hey. This is very simple: when will we get build templates? I’m very tired of changing traits and skills when I go dungeons-wvwvw-spvp.
I can remember that AN said they were working on it (or at least, it’s on the to-do-list) but they didn’t say anything about that in the last stream.
Can we get an update for this please ?

Thanks for answering guys I still have hope we can gain access to it when we kill Kralkatorrik ^^

Hello folks!

I’ve played about 3500~ hours the original Guild Wars, from PvE to PvP, dungeons, anguish, fow, uw… to HA, GvG, RA, TA…

I’m a bit dissapointed that Guild Wars 2’s PvP is based on tournament format instead of Heroes Ascent but anyway, I want to know if something happened to the Hall of Heroes.
It’s lore was pretty nice, champions fighting each other to get there to earn the favor of Balthazar.
Can we expect a future implementation of this? Or did happen something to it lore-wise?

xiv.7136:

That makes no sense.

It’s like saying every class should have aegis, protection, equal numbers of knockdowns, and a pet.

The classes don’t all need the same abilities, they just need to be balanced against each other.

And right now the strongest classes are the ones without quickness, so giving them quickness would make things worse, not better.

I didn’t say that. What you are saying doesn’t make sense as well. I didn’t say every class should have aegis or protection, it’s not the same thing. You are comparing aegis to quickness? Very funny.

So thieves with appears on you from stealth and kill you with 2-3 attacks in 1-2 seconds and quick-stomps you is not bad?
Me, as a necromancer (main character, I play guardian and ranger too) can’t do that.
That’s why I said quick-stomp should be removed and everyone should have quickness, since aegis, like yourself said, is an specific guardians’ boon from their class mechanic. Quickness isn’t specific to a mechanic, it’s a type of non-removable boon which is pretty OP and only 5 professions have access to it.

In my opinion, this topic should be handled like this: quickness for everyone or nothing.
Plain and simple. Having double speed on some guys and not on others is just lame in the context of this game (fast paced combat) and quick stomp should be looked at.
Don’t remove quickness, just remove quick stomp and give quickness to everyone (necromancers, elementalists and guardians) and the complains will stop inmediately.