Removing the ticket system which was one of the main things that destroyed the competitive population is finally here. Micro-transactions for not even ranked tournaments has got to be one of the worst ideas in pvp history.
I hope MMR prevents the month 1-2 situation where hardcore teams were just farming pugs in frees all day, but I have my doubts due to the low population.
Will it put the esport heroes into a long queue to get an even match, or just put them against the next lowest team for 5 hours even if it is a total mismatch?
6x Knights Armor
1x zerker or soldiers weapon
2x Knights earings
2x Ascended zerker rings
1x Ascended zerker amulet
1x Ascended zerker backpiece
with 0-0-30-30-10 this results in 15.6 k health close to 3k armor with 41% crit and 75% critical damage.
With the high crit empowering might + altruistic healing + omnoberry pie/ghost for lifesteal gives the build a huge amount of self healing.
There is no ascended cleric gear, and healing power generally scales poorly especially with altruistic healing so people tend to build the least amount of defense necessary to survive high end content then going full offense.
Anet would rather sell gold to the PvE crowd then compete with Leage of Legends.
A free trial isn’t even needed, tons of people already bought the box for spvp and left.
If you can’t get the people who already paid full price for the game to play, good luck bringing new people in.
All that will happen is some new people play for a bit, realize it isn’t that great and then leave, with the difference being Anet doesn’t get $60.
They also put out that show match at Gamescon in August 2011 (~18 months ago) which I assume required some sort of private server functionality – http://youtu.be/lUB677OVIus
This was used to market the game to PvPers and the fact that it is still not in, nor have any details been talked about recently is very concerning.
My speculation is that adding private servers would kill the other modes since the 2 teams that still play would never queue again.
I also suspect that Anet does not actually want people hosting tournaments and leagues since the problems with the mode would become very evident and potentially embarrassing.
The most obvious problem is the lack of a spectator mode which make it pretty much impossible to broadcast matches from different player perspectives.
There would also be gameplay issues like the narrow meta which results in every game being a near mirror-match of the same classes and builds which is boring.
The lack of stats tracking would also make it fairly difficult for a commentator or viewer to understand anything that is happening in detail.
So what is Anet’s plan on promoting this game now that its getting better?
so we all know Anet is doing a awful job getting more ppl into the community so if they don’t want to help then we as a community shouldn’t be pushing more ppl away but if they do respond with a way they are helping then we need to keep the new ppl around.
are you trying to get them back or are you going to reach out into the gaming world and try and get new ppl?
Go look on any mmo website and GW2 is the number one game. It also has a 90 meta-critic score and has sold more boxes than any recent mmo game.
GW2 does not have a visibility or a marketing problem.
As others here have pointed out, spvp is simply not appealing to most gamers. Its not like a marketing campaign is going to make competitive players ‘see the light’ and start playing 40 hours a week when the mode itself is incomplete and not up to standard.
A lot of hardcore people tried the game in the first 2 months, but there was no reason for them to stick around because:
1) Basic competitive features that are available in other games, including free2play games are not in GW2
2) Conquest mode x5 maps is incredibly boring after a month or two for most people
3) The meta is stale and uninteresting
4) Hot join is only appealing to the extreme casual players who will never play much
I agree with current players that the combat is better in GW2 than any other MMO, but that isn’t enough to get people to keep playing when everything else is missing.
We are 7 months in and we still can’t even create a private match, which was promised over 5 months ago, and was displayed at a gaming event well over a year ago.
Really people shouldn’t use stream numbers as an indication of much. Its better people playing than watching the game. And there are technical issues with twitch which are effecting alot of the smaller unpartnered channels. Twitch seems to be struggling to cope with the massive demand from league stream/tournaments and this is making most of their other streams unwatchable for a large number of people.
Yes but many other games experience the same issues, but consistently have much higher viewership like Smite for instance.
As for the patch, adding a new map is pretty much a smokescreen for not adding competitive features or structural changes that people are asking for. It also makes little sense when they are currently locking the paids map.
Spvp could have 50 of the tired and played out conquest maps, it won’t bring in anybody for more than a few days.
6 armor pieces:
- Orr Karma Merchants
- Dungeon Tokens
- Crafting / Trading Post
Weapons:
- Dungeon Tokens
- Crafting / Trading Post
Trinkets:
- 2x Earrings from crafting / Trading Post
- 2x Ascended rings from fractals or laurel merchant
- 1x Ascended Backpiece from fractals
- 1x Ascended Amulet from laurels
It really shouldn’t be that surprising, the exact same problem happens in team queue for league of legends.
Match-making doesn’t benefit hardcore players all that much. Once a team has reached the top of the rating spectrum, the queues get longer as there is less and less competition.
The alternative is to let hardcore teams stomp even more noobs all day which has already destroyed the population.
This is why a solo queue is necessary. By constantly mixing up the teams and skill levels the game remains challenging even for hardcore people.
I am noticing a lot of the posts about end-game gear are not including ascended gear which has more limited stat choices.
It seems some people go with knights + ascended zerker gear for DPS, but I am looking more at tankier builds for carrying PUGs in fractals and dungeons.
For the standard 0-0-30-30-10 AH build the gear I am looking at is:
Armor:
knight x 6
Trinkets:
Knight x 2 Ear
Ascended Soldier x 2 rings
Ascended Soldier x 1 Amulet (Laurels)
Ascended Soldier x 1 Back
Food:
Omnoberry Ghost – 70 prec, 66% life steal
Master Maintenance Oil – 6% tough, 4% vit to precision
The gear is very defensive, but should still have good precision with the food. I suppose an ascended berzerker piece or 2 could fit into one of the ring or amulet slots.
I am pretty much looking for other peoples opinions as the ascended gear stat choices are quite limited.
Truth be told: If I wouldn’t have a team myself I know that I probably wouldn’t play this game at all right now, sadly. Even though I really enjoy it.
Yes this is exactly the situation so many people are in right now.
The moment matchmaking becomes a dice-roll and a solo player faces a premade team and losses rating, the system falls apart. People will stop queuing and we are right back to where we started which is highly experience 5 man teams stomping everyone and the casual playerbase dies.
If a legitimate solo queue is not added, spvp is done.
Helseth is right.
Someone with a high rating who queues solo will be more likely to be placed against a pre-made team.
Solo players also do not want to be stuck with 2-4 player premade teams and then go up against a full 5 premade.
Perhaps JP can clear this up, but the it seems like the competitiveness of this system falls apart pretty quickly the moment 3+ man teams are matched up with or against solos.
right… and the problem is there is not enough hardcore players.. and i wouldn’t even call it hardcore.. i’d call it.. “competitive”.
game needs more incentive to bring the competitive players back to the game or to make existing players want to be more competitive.
don’t talk about pugging and competition in the same light…
even in league of legends.. you solo queue just to show that you’re competent, then you join a team to move on to the real deal.
in this game, there are free tournaments where you can pug, and paid, where it requires a team. plain and simple bro.
I should have said solos vs premades.
By pug I am referring to people who queue up solo and get placed in a random team then face highly experienced premade teams.
The way to create incentive for competitive play is to allow solo players vs solo players so that people actually have a legitimately even playing field where a player can build up his personal skill.
lol. premades vs pugs is not a fail by anet or their design by any means… that’s your fail. if you are not serious about winning and just want to throw together a bunch of noobs to play paid tournaments, of course you’re going to get your kitten kicked by people much more organized and serious than you.
if you’re not going to put in the time to find serious players, create a group or team of friends that you can win with, then you simply don’t deserve to win. keep playing in hot join.
Oh look another forum tough guy who thinks blaming players for not being ‘hardcore’ enough is a smart way to design a successful competitive PvP game.
Stomping Pugs or noob teams over and over again is not exactly exciting for the hardcore players either.
The fact that it is shrouded in secrecy and they don’t just flat out tell us the formula is reason enough to be skeptical.
I suspect there are probably some flaws in the system which they know the community would not find acceptable.
Agreed.
The two major failings of sPvP:
1) Premades vs pugs
2) Charging casuals micro-transactions in order to LTP at a competitive level and ultimately charging people money for losing to teams that play 10 hours a day.
Now we have no population despite what the Devs keep saying and we see the results which is a MMR that makes the same two teams face each other for 6 hours because there is no competition.
I cannot believe that J Sharp went into that story about how it was fun to take a team of solos and fight premade teams in GW1.
That didn’t happen until after a team WON 10 STRAIGHT GAMES AGAINST OTHER SOLOS.
Solo queue is the only way sPvP is going to be able to build a large skilled playerbase.
The answer was about splitting up the playerbase.
I suspect that they are worried that a solo queue would mean there wouldn’t be anybody in the other modes.
Unfortunately I think that is a death sentence for growing spvp for most people who don’t want to ‘play 10 hours a day’ like PZ.
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This stat combination seems strange to me, but it does seem like it could be good with a crit/AH build.
Healing power isn’t that great, but it does work well with dodge rolls heal and it pumps up the various regen sources.
I wonder if it would have any benefit over knights.
Nice bait attempt. Let me save you some time.
Theif backstab + perma stealth is OP
No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes, No, Yes……….
Balance discussions among players are for the most part pointless.
When a player is winning the game is balanced.
When a player is losing its because class X is OP.
Without access to aggregate data fro many people playing its pretty much impossible for a player to know if something is balanced.
Also factor in that GW2 is three games in 1 which complicates things even further.
Sadly we knew this problem was coming for months. Powerr has it right, and people like myself, Pray and many others made big posts about how the ticket grind/pay 2 queue system was completely unsustainable.
The current 2 teams farmed everybody to the point where it is to expensive for average teams to bother playing in paids.
A new team isn’t going to pay time or money for tickets to lose to PZ 100 times in order to learn the game.
MMR won’t fix any of this because it won’t work if there isn’t a large player base. The hardcore teams will still get matched up against noobs. Even giant games like LOL commonly put together completely uneven matches. It will be even worse in GW2 which has so few teams.
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A rating system would be an improvement, but If the ticket system stays then spvp is still pay/grind 2 play which has little appeal to new teams who are probably going to lose a lot in the beginning. Its very disheartening to lose hard earned tickets over and over again and it ultimately becomes too expensive to learn how to play at a competitive level.
Its no wonder why the hardcore would-be e-sport heroes who sit in queue all day farming new people have barely any viewers or competition. Beating newer people over and over makes it impossible for them to keep playing because they have a net-loss of tickets so they just leave since farming frees or buying gems over and over is lame.
I agree solo queue is the only way to build a large number of skilled players.
A lot of people do not want to commit to random teams and prefer to build up their skill in a solo queue.
It improves competition in the game by providing a large pool of people for teams to recruit from, and it allows solo people to prove their skill level.
Healing builds are just not that great because the actual healing output is way to low to justify such a large damage dps decrease. Elementalists are also far more efficient as supporters.
1500 range grenades are by far the best thing engineers can bring to dungeons. The risk vs. reward for the other kits is generally not worth it.
Option 1 tanky condition damage
— Rabid precision, toughness, condition damage
— 30, 10, 0, 20, 10
+Higher survivability
- Can get high bleed and vuln stacks, but condition damage has questionable effectiveness
Option 2 GC Zerker
— power, precision, crit damage
— 30, 10, 0, 0, 30
+ Extremely high dps even on grenade 1 (now that weapon stats factor in) and still good vuln stacks
+ Tool kit also has gigantic damage for meele situations since auto attacks and #3 can crit for 5k on bosses
+ Rifle also has high dps, especially on 3 and 5 but also has good boss control with 2/4
- Very squishy which means defensive cooldowns such as elixir s, toolkit 4, blind grenade, chill grenade and net shot must be used effectively and range must be maintained
I am torn between the two since I don’t like playing GC, but precision and crit damage are vitally important for the engineer to be effective as a dps. Knight or soldier gear is very lackluster. Condition damage synergizes better with toughness for the engi, but it isn’t that that great in dungeons.
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spvp isnt a good measure because you can only get to ~70 critical damage whereas in pve it can get close to 110.
Anet is not some poor unfortunate victim. They brought this on themselves by misleading players. There are so many angry posts and people because these feelings of frustration are entirely legitimate.
Issues like charging time or money for new people to even queue up and play in a competitive mode has fewer features than what is offered for free in other games hurts the population more than the forums ever will.
They just made millions of dollars, they can handle a few critical forum posts.
Not only do they deliver sub-par pvp that has no MMR, ladder or solo queue, but they also have the nerve to charge people micro-transactions in order to play it.
I would love to see how many tournament tickets are being bought in the Gem shop.
I wonder if that dollar amount was worth misleading and stringing along the very pvp playerbase that put Anet in business and on the map in the first place with GW1.
They sold out pvpers and instead got into the gold selling business, it was doing pretty well in China.
Healing power just isn’t worth it on engi, and spending 30 points in a fairly bad trait line for such a minor heal is a waste.
The only class that healing power works semi decent with in pve is elementalist due to getting team regen by swapping to water attunement and having multiple water fields and blast finishers which do a larger AOE and much larger heal than bombs.
That said going kit refinement with elixir gun and using healing turret can still provide a lot of good aoe supplemental healing and regen as well as long duration light fields which remove conditions from teammates with projectiles.
Pretty decent team support that only requires 1 10 pt. trait and 1 utility slot.
The OP is right, no gear grind and total freedom to build a pvp character is all brilliant stuff. A lot of people thought Anet had all of this figured out over the 7+ years of GW1 which invented the concept.
Other interesting things in pvp are the non-trinity class design, dodging, no auto-follow tab 1-2-3 attacking.
The only actual combat mechanic I don’t like is the lack of a resource system like energy (GW1) or mana which means combat is largely about spamming every cooldown as fast as possible — hence the out of control burst specs.
/agree
An incredibly easy way to get loads of people into the mists.
I suspect that the danger is that it would give the impression that spvp is a farming mini-game, rather then a stand-alone competitive game.
I guarantee all of these chest thumping pve heroes already farmed all of their mats in the EZ mode.
Changing it now will just make people stop playing because pugging just got way harder.
They care more about making this a competitive game than you realize. Also, just because they don’t make everything public does not mean they aren’t doing anything.
Blind faith is just not good enough for most people these days, especially on this long of a time frame – just look at what happened with DWi.
As much as I’m kitten with A-net atm i have to defend them here, these games are uncomparable, PS2 is a first person shooter and infinitely easier to balance than an MMORPG were each profession has a plethora of abilities to balance. PS2 has 3 professions and a hand full of weapons, there is very little to balance there its dow to player skill.
Its like comparing chess with tic tac toe…
True the games are entirely different, but it is a case of 2 companies trying to develop an ‘e-sport’. Balance has nothing to do with holding events and creating partnerships.
Also, one would think GW2 is a lot closer to an e-sport than planetside, so why isn’t it working with MLG?
All I see is more hype, and as much as I would be fine with PS2 succeeding, most of the hype I’ve seen in the gaming community just leads to eventual disappointment. I’ll wait until something actually happens before deeming any victories for PS2.
It does, however, make me wonder if ANet has considered partnerships like this.
I agree there are no details, but if MLG is willing to partner and help them develop competitive features there it isn’t crazy to believe there is some level of merit to the claims.
Personally, the second I smell a capitalist business decision involved in my game, it’s a major turn-off. I guess it’s a savvy e-sports maneuver, but the last time I watched a Planetside stream, the person was sitting in a tank and firing off into the distance for several minutes, or crouching behind a wall and healing people who were popping out trading pot shots. I wish it well, but no thanks.
Greedy company = tournament ticket system
Boring gameplay = capping and defending empty points, bunker or burst stale meta
Its not like GW2 streams are doing that great either. PS2 dev stream events that can use free form camera get like 10k+ viewers easily.
PS2 just seems to me to be a lot closer to an esport than GW2, and it wasn’t even supposed to be one.
Also GW2 is more guilty than anyone of using e-sports as a marketing ploy.
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http://www.planetside2.com/news/2013-roadmap-mlg
“Over the next few months, the PlanetSide 2 and MLG teams will work closely to develop ideal competitive gameplay features and settings to showcase the game…”
Very interesting to see a game that unlike GW2 never promised anything or even was designed for competitive esports is jumping on the twitch and MLG bandwagon.
I am very interested to see how long it will take PS2 to develop ‘competitive gameplay features and settings’ when we have been sitting here for 6 months in spvp and only now are testing single matches.
Is it possible that planetside might have an esport event before GW2? With this and the Smite announcements, I really wonder what is going on at Anet.
They are moving in the right direction, but its at a glacial pace. MOBAs are getting bigger and bigger every day while sPvP has maintained a low stagnant population for months that months.
Heck even planetside 2 has partnered with MLG which came out of nowhere. Meaning its closer to an e-sport than sPvP.
People will try new stuff out on patch day, but check back in a month and see how many will stick around.
Even if MMR and ladder somehow get into the game there are still several fundamental issues:
1) Ticket system is a barrier of entry to learning the game at a competitive level as it limits the number of teams who can afford the grind/money it takes to continually queue.
2) After 6 months and 5 nearly identical maps, conquest mode is played out and promotes a stagnant meta that forces everybody into a semi-mirror match
3) Lack of solo queue means the competitive population will always be limited to a small number of hardcore teams. It also means the viewership will remain low.
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While single matches are a decent start, sPvP will always be highly niche as long as the pay / grind to play ticket system is in place, making it very expensive for anyone to just learn the game.
If LoL forced people to play normal games in order to get currency to play ranked it would not be the powerhouse it is now.
People can have opinions (though I think they should be able to defend those as well). However, if someone claims that something is true without any support, it isn’t an insult to request they defend it. If they take offense, it’s probably a sign that they’re blowing smoke for the sake of blowing smoke.
I have provided plenty of evidence which you conveniently ignore
Sitting around pointing your finger at everyone else when you bring nothing yourself to the table is just lame.
I didn’t imagine you’d cliche-forum-poster as hard as you just did. I’m flabbergasted. I didn’t even claim you were wrong, I was just looking for sources, and unsurprisingly, the population claim is purely anecdotal.
Why would you ask someone who never actually made a claim to prove something? That’s just babytown frolicks.
Did I claim to have proof of something?
The only people who can give you exact numbers are Anet… good luck getting an answer out of them. If you are to lazy to look at twitch then that is your problem, nothing anecdotal there just look at the number of viewers.
Also, look at queue times. The chances of playing in non-prime time hours are basically zero which means a game that apparently sold 3 million copies can’t even find 40 people to play competitively on a consistent basis. Nothing anecdotal here either.
Look the the QP leaderboard. If gives a general sense of the number of active competitive teams who play consistently and it isn’t very long.
By every measure available to the player spvp is doing poorly. The only people who claim it is doing well are the cheerleaders at Anet, a few hardcore players, and the occasional forum fanbots / apologists. Do they ever provide any specific sources or evidence that show spvp is doing well?
I get it, you must be the new self-appointed forum cop who has taken it upon yourself to decide who is right and wrong on a gaming forum. I really don’t care if you accept my facts or not. Please stop pretending that people post on here to satisfy your own personal delusions.
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Go look on twitch at virtually any time, its really not that hard to figure out.
Compare a queue time in paid GW2 tournaments to queue times for arranged team matches in Smite.
Please provide me with your sources and data that show GW2 is closer to an esport than Smite is.
The way to make pvp profitable is to make it so fun and interesting to play that people buy the box like Starcraft.
GW2 actually accomplished this, it just didn’t retain very many people because:
1) The game was missing all of the features a competitive crowd is looking for
2) Microtransactions that essentially charge money for losses drove away a lot of players who were bored with pub-stomping in frees
What we have are a few teams who are getting a free ride because they win. Their competition is forced to pay if they want to keep playing which drives them away and results in all these threads by people with QPs trying to build a community even though they indirectly killed it by making the cost to high for average people to compete.
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My point is, quit comparing an MMO (this is what it is…) to games developed completely for tournaments. Oh and $100k is nothing and as they have literally no sponsors this would immediately spell the death of this game if the tournament fails, which is quite possible because SMITE is the most garbage game I have ever played.
Anet is the one claiming that GW2 will resemble what we see in other Esports. Most of the sane community here has been calling BS for months.
Also, Smite destroys GW2 in terms of viewership and number of PvP teams and players, so if you are going to criticize its viability as an Esport then spvp in GW2 should rank even lower.
If by some miracle all of the basic competitive features get in to sPvP, its not realistic to expect an esport overnight. There would still probably need to be a season 1 or equivalent which means at least a year on top of the current development period.
Are players really going to take spvp seriously after what could be as long as 2 years after release?
When you add in the box price + ticket fee + private server fee how are they going to even remotely come close to the viewership and interest that even Smite has generated, let alone LoL or Starcraft?
GW2 has already made its millions by selling a pve game. They will probably eventually throw a bone to the pvp crowd, but the last 6 months of development have not proven to us that spvp and the whole esport thing are anything more than an after thought or side project in Anet’s big picture.
Why build an esport when you can sell gems.
1) When can we expect anything on the promise list that is copy and pasted every single month to be in the game? What updates will be in which patches?
2) Can sPvP really be expected to grow when Anet is charging people a full box price, a ticket entry fee, and presumably a private server fee in order to play in competitive modes that are offered for free in other successful pvp games?
While its interesting to see something different than what has been we have seen for months and months, its still going to be difficult to spur innovation:
1) PZ is an experienced team that doesn’t have to worry about farming for tickets so you can afford to run experimental and/or troll comps.
A new team who has to spend multiple hours farming in frees or straight up buying tickets just to even enter paids will be less likely to try a troll comp and likely lose them, especially when they can only participate in a limited number of paid matches per week.
2) You may have won some matches, but running a standard comp probably would have made those wins even easier. Grats for being able to win while trolli… err experimenting.
Lets be real, if anything was on the line like an actual ranking based on wins and losses, people will only run the best comps. That is why PZ has so many QPs in the first place. Its only recently that the vast majority of people consider QPs a joke although many figured it out 2 weeks after paids launched and most teams quit.
3) Ultimately there is such a small pool of players and teams that this is an example of bored people trying to make a broken, unsatisfying system fun. A few hardcore people can try all day to get people to play the game, but when Anet as a company beyond 2 devs doesn’t care about spvp, players won’t either.
Look at something like superior divinity runes – ~50 gold for a full set right now.
Farming that long just for standard runes is very annoying and it would cost $50 for the gems which is the entire box price of the game. 6 Runes are worth more then the entire game?
I know demand yada yada…. Still Anet controls the drop rates and thus the price for basic equipment. A gold seller would charge near 1/5th of Anets price.
I am fine with farming for things that cannot be bought like dungeon and fractal tokens, but when Anet is charging 4-5 times the price of a gold seller and all someone wants to get is standard gear its going to create a black market.
For a lot of people the risk of getting banned is worth it since they probably would just quit anyways if the farming grind is so completely ridiculous.
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A healing build can be decent due to the large amount of aoe regen from healing turret and elixir gun with refined kites and the ability to do 2 blast finishers in a water field with shield and healing turret.
spending 30 points for bombs heal actually isn’t very good since even with over a 1000 healing power they only heal for around 240 a bomb.
Guardian symbol healing is just far superior for meele range healing and they have shouts for condition removal.
Elementalists can also apply team regen and condition removal for 1 trait and swapping to water attunement as well as do use water fields.
The engineer has to rely on skill shots with elixirs for team cond removal outside of healing turret overcharge so all in all going support engi just can’t perform up to the level of other classes.
The gripes are because the main auto attack skills all scale pretty poorly now with the nade nerf.
The engineer has a lot of ways to avoid damage and control a target, but those don’t matter much in dungeons where many bosses are immune to CC.
sPvP is a dumbed down version of PvE.
90% of viable builds:
bunker = cleric
condition damage = rabid
roamer / port mesmer = zerk
e$ports PLZ
For the life of me, I’ll never understand why people devote so much time to being negative. As if more snarky and sarcastic comments will somehow make Anet’s work progress faster.
Sure we should all just sit around in the mess that is apparently the next big esport and be happy that Anet pretty much ripped us off.
Think I am wrong? Pick an average sever, go into the mists and try to get a paid tourney group together and see how well that goes. sPvP is only playable for ultra casuals in hot joins, or ultra hardcores who don’t mind sitting in queue for many hours a week and playing the same 3 teams past round 1 over and over.
The blog was just the same old promised feature list we have been seeing for months.
Why can’t they just tell us will be in the February patch? Private servers? Match Making? Nothing? The priority list keeps changing.
The secrecy makes zero sense at this point. We can only assume that the reason they are so paranoid to give us any sort of release timeline is because they know there is no way they can get anything important out in the near future.
I am calling it right now that the February patch won’t have private servers, MMR or anything they have been promising.