Guild Wars 2

Yes you can buy a trashy version of the real deal in the cash shop, or you can buy said real deal the old fashioned way.
It’s worth the 50 or so extra gold any day of the week.
(lol @ people complaining about things being too cheap. Seriously, what the hell)

Vixena.3821:

Why is my 119g human t3 cultural armor worth 67g on the Gem Store (with added effects)?

With added effects? Why does it make that more valuable? Would a Blingee’d up Cézanne make it a more valuable?

I like the basic idea of giving some armors, especially the really simple or lowlevel ones like those medium/heavy ones, and alternate, more “intricate” form to buy in the cash shop.
However, undoubtedly, the idea of adding flames and a black contrast, is just the worst execution of that possible. It’s just comically bad.

Don’t drop the idea, but stop with the ugly edginess. What’s this, the fifth-sixth flame themed armor set (counting several gloves)? Will the next be a spiked-up reskins? You can do classier.

Also I don’t think making cultural armor reskins available for multiple races is bad. The outrage on these forums is rather hysterical — Pun intended. Though the differences are too “subtle” (if that is ever an apt description for flames). They should be a bit more pronounced.

kbenton.4915:

We are not a face roll glass cannon class but more a war of attrition class now

No?

I have seen this coming since the very second they announced they removed the Mana system from GW1. I have also been saying it since BWE1.

Just what holds back a heavily armored class that in the GW tradition is allowed to do DPS (warrior and other melees were premier in GW1), without a mechanic of resource management?
Very few designers seem to have asked themselves this at Bellevue.

You made the traditionally easiest balancable archetype, heavies, into the by far most overpowered. They have literally not a single downside to them. (If they do, I’d like it pointed out and I will defeat it.)
In other MMO, including GW1, your downside was your small energy pool and your range. The first is of course a non-factor here and the second is laughable, since melee does, no hyperbole, at least an order of magnitude more DPS than (non-condition heavy single target) ranged in GW2.

The disparity uniquely in sPvP right now is less pronounced than in PVE/WvW, but only because of the game mode design that encourages a condi/hit-and-run meta.
Once you add team arenas or other non-conquest formats, war/guards will once again have another area where they reign supreme and everyone who wants to take this game seriously will cry at the blatantly dysfunctional class design paradigm.

Piogre.2164:

I still play like fetid garbage, yet have free reign on my thief whenever I take a stroll with it in wvw.

wow
such roaming
player chopping tree = kill
many backstab damages
such stealhy approach
wow

Here’s a hint: You don’t take the premier roaming class to instagib players half-afqedly minding their own business. That’s like letting a tank class in other MMOs “tank” one trash mob. It’s nothing to judge the class by.

Also you’re asking for the equivalent of every class being able to tank in said MMOs, even the healer. Nope. Some classes are just by design better at something. Same with roaming. Thieves are borderline garbage for zerg vs zerg action in exchange.
Go live out your Mary Sue class fantasies somewhere else.

Lol @ zealous censor.

Wow! Such many many triumphant /laughs after a masterful showing off of 2v1 smallscale skillz! I mean of course 2 French guys against one, not the reverse that actually would warrant it, silly.

But nice to see that French people see themselves as 0.5 a Kodashi. I take it as compliment.

If you cannot kill a thief of (allegedly) equal skill who uses stealth offensively, you are bad.
Just plain. You are bad. Full stop.

As for defensive stealth, what do you think how much issues I sometime have to stop a guardian, or even warrior or necro with full DS, who just speed through any attempts to kill/slow I throw at them due to their innate defensiveness and cheap condi cleanses/blocks? Yeah, making thieves more innately sturdy, so they don’t die to a stiff breeze passively, isn’t exactly the solution we’re looking for in class balance. (Also they’re called rangers)

Cmon Surmia, don’t be sleepyheads! Drakkar are driving 550 PPT right now!
I’m rooting for you!

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Mesmer’s initially just showed on the mini-map as the Mesmer himself. I felt this was unfair to them exclusively because their class mechanics rely on deception. It made it so you basically ALWAYS knew which one was the real Mesmer because you just had to simply look at the map.

If you guys can provide a reasonable and better solution in terms of what we could do for Mesmer’s feel free to lay it on the table and we will consider it. Clutter is definitely an issue in itself; one we haven’t really solved in other areas of the game either.

If making the icons smaller across the board isn’t an option, then how about the Mesmer icons “hops” between each illusion and the real player each, say, 500ms-1sec?

This would not only worsen the blowout-aspect, it would give the weaker server not even a reason to log in anymore after the first night. In 3-way fight the weaker servers atleast can hope to dog it out under themselves for place 2.

How about servers that are about even strength-wise, say Kodash, Augury Rock and Riverside still get 1v1v1 matchups, but servers that are obviously outgunned, like Elona and Augury vs Vizu, start out as 2v1s, determined by glicko.

.
.
.
THIS IS IMPORTANT
.
.
.
Theory and conjecture is fine, but over the course of this lengthy thread, I arrived at the conclusion the best bet would be good old fashioned practice/experience.
What I mean with that, maybe Anet should stop worrying so much about the whats-and-ifs, and start doing a massive public test runs for different solutions that were collected.
Maybe one week were two obviously outmatched servers play from start to finish as one team.
Another, server pops in WvW would be equalized.
Or the outnumbered servers gets buffs and whatnot.
Or you playtest mechanics that reduce the momentum of Friday/Saturday.
Etc. etc.
And whatever sticks in the end, keep that.

This can’t be done internally. It has to be done on a natural, i.e. global scale.

All I can really say is that you, ANet, shouldn’t be afraid to introduce new areas because of a potential pop spreading.
The fact is that most areas are already fairly deserted. If you add a new one, you should not fear to delete or physically merge an old region.
And let’s be real, the current areas are rather boring from both a gameplay standpoint (event chains that are just defeat X waves and don’t matter, and yes, lack of actual quests) and from a graphical point of view (lack of biomes other than jungle, mountains and temperate woods/pastures; enemies extremely samey. You fight Skelk or Flame Legion or Earth Elementals from Level 2 to 78, for example).

You might also rethink the philosophy that maps should be homogenous difficulty wise (and the general philosophy that overworld = casual, dungeons = hardcore, the latter of which didn’t materialize). Why not an ominous corner of a map, or a whole zone even, that is exceedingly more difficult, with mobs 5 or more levels above you? Things like that enhance the thrill of exploration. It keeps you on your toes.
Everyone is always talking about UW or FoW when they mean that, but no need to look at those dedicated raids for an example. I got the same feeling from fighting through the insanely strong overworld-mobs in the Realm of Torment in Nightfall. Or the War of Kryta, remember? It was awesome.
Actually, what is probably the most talked about piece of overworld content (outside Orr)? The Fort full of level 80 mobs in Brisban Wildlands. Do something with that.

Last but not least, I do hope you will add Cantha and eventually Elona. You should push to open up one big new region per year. 2014 perhaps we’d get the Isle of Janthir and Northern Shiverpeaks, 2015 maybe Cantha, 2016 Elona and the Crystal Desert, etc.
If you do that, one map at a time would be horrible horrible horrible. Please listen to that.
Take your time. Do batches of subregions at a time. They have to “flow” into each other, to harmonize. People don’t want a hundred bread sticks, they want one big roast beef. That doesn’t stop you from continuing your bi-weekly Living Story events within those sub-regions.

Despite my late reply, I hope it still is given some thought to.

Leagues are a complete fiasco in regard to pop numbers.
Just look at it. A whole 3 matches out of a total of 17 aren’t already complete blowouts, by Sunday evening.

Do you really think some cheaper transfers or more expensive T3 upgrades will fix that? There needs to be a complete and utter revolution.

I congratulate my ex-server to their Bronze League win.
Although that exactly is why I transferred away.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

Thanks for playing and see you all in game!

I just wanted to inform you that my optimism for the future of sPvP has risen dramatically in response to your increased communication efforts with the community and the apparent strides you’re taking in-company.
Even if future results might not turn out exactly as we (or when we) wanted, there’s a certain understanding now between players and devs that I hadn’t felt before.
Of course, only the actual updates we’ll see throughout the coming months will be final arbiter if that optimism was warranted, but if Edge of the Mists, Obsidian Sanctum, WvW seasons (if mishandled) are a precedence in response to the mostly controversial feedback WvW received in the earlier half of the year, then I can only imagine similarly productive efforts for the sPvP side of things. I think ANet definitely has grown over the past half year.

What will the nature of already present and soon-to-be included objectives be? Will they be the regular ol’ WvW experience of Dolyaks, keeps, now ruins, etc., or will there be new ones?
What are the measures to prevent a giant zone zergtrain?

The handicap solutions are way too convoluted and unintuitive when the obvious Occam’s razor (excuse this freer application of the saying) solution would be to just to divorce WvW servers from PvE and make everyone chose a new one, plus fixing the more concretely gameplay issue, the momentum dilemma.

Obviously most people would flock towards a new server that shares most of their ex-server buddies (which is desirable), except for those who chose to go on a stacked server, which would then be forced to spread out and mix with the likes of Vabbi.
This would, as a I again stress, by necessity implicate regional IP restrictions. Europe/Africa, Americas, and Asia/Pacific.

DevonCarver.5370:

So, if prices for server transfers were based on WvW population, what would a fair distribution of costs look like from the lowest population servers to the highest? Keep in mind that making it completely impossible to transfer to a server puts a burden on other players. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have an incredibly high price, just that completely blocked isn’t an option.

As a rough guideline, make the top 3 over 3000 gems and the lowest 6 servers free.
That way they would receive a constant trickle of players and guilds from upper servers who are looking for a fresh start, for less zerging and less queues, etc., and once they have risen in ranking due to that, other servers who require that fresh blood would drop to their position, making them free, repeat ad infinitum.

Keep in mind that the mere act of paying gems is often greater resisted than the actual cost. I would presume even if you put on a price tag of a mere 100 gems to a transfer to a lowbie server, it would still significantly reduce transfers. It’s the same as with apps on your phone that are free vs. the one that cost 2$.

Also if you go that route, I would make it depended on the number of WvWers within a given timeframe, rather than the general (+PvE) server population.

alcopaul.2156:

I Will Avenge You

FROZEN SOIL

NevirSayDie.6235:

The game launched too early for PvP, so a lot of basic features had to be added after launch. Custom arenas, matchmaking, leaderboards, solo/team queues, spectating—none of those existed at launch.

The devs have spent the last year adding stuff like that. Most of those features still have a lot of room to improve, but my point was that the devs aren’t ignoring those features while pushing for “esports.” They’ve been working on the actual issues in the game for the last year, while we’ve been repeating the word “esports” like a chant in a picket line, as if saying it will make the devs feel bad, which will somehow make the game better.

Funny that you say that, when all of those features (barring SoloQ) are incredibly e-sports centric. Which average player cares about leaderboards?
Or spectates (especially if there was no e-sports scene to begin with)?
They all were developed at the expense of features that would actually lure in players, like new/improved game modes or (PVE-exchangeable) rewards.

Might we get some dev feedback/input? This thread is awfully orphaned compared to the other ones.

Valenthor.4052:

Anet, the only MMO developer that removes content from their game.

This is obviously your first MMO.

Phenn.5167:

Yup. I’ve asked for Dev interaction on this blatant refusal to consider the impact on PvE of these PvP-centric balances on three separate occasions in this thread, and they have heretofore been ignored.

I understand the desire to keep things roughly similar across gametypes, but the reality is PvE is vastly different to both PvP and WvW. I have yet to see a single “balance” patch directed at PvE. The only possible exception was the recent increase in “minion” HP in PvE. But that’s such a token nod to the broken reality of minions of all kinds in PvE that it’s almost insulting.

But all that being said, the PvE-focused community has had to “make it work” with every balance patch thus far, and we will continue to do so. It’d just be nice to not have to scramble and re-work everything anytime a PvP-centric balance hits.

There’s a reason for that. It’s that they can just adjust mobs instead of the skills. GS is OP because mobs die to fast to HB? Make them move out of it. DPS is overrated? Make mobs less vulnerable to straight damage, via self-healing etc., and thus raise the value of control.

PvE “balance” is not the solution. If anything, it would cement the broken mob AI issues this game has. Not to mention it’s a Sisyphean task.

Josh Davis.6015:

The good news is that players can create psuedo-2v2/3v3 Custom Arenas already, and there’s already a few rooms setup like that. I’d like to see more 2v2 type tournaments with prizes pop up in the future, and I’ve had a few people approach me saying they’d be interesting in organizing something like that.

Well it’s possible for players to create their own 2v2/3v3 tournaments, that’s true, but you can’t have proper (i.e. randomized) matchmaking with a custom arena.

JonPeters.5630:

Warrior:
We also reduced the damage on the hammer’s burst skill to separate the control from the damage. We don’t mind warriors doing massive damage, or doing great area of effect control, but we’re trying to prevent them from easily doing both.

Well but I have seen no replacement for the damage removed from Earthshaker and Staggering Blow. Are you suggesting hammer warriors somehow have supreme AoE damage outside Earthshaker? It really was their only AoE damage dealer.
Can you reply to this concern of mine?

Overkillengine.6084:

But not plenty that actually look good. If they don’t look good, they subjectively may as well not exist when it comes to actually wearing them.

Are you telling me the TA or Human T3 or Primeval armor skins look bad?

Jelger, I agree that the GvG moniker is a bit of a misnomer, since it “only” describes the act of two guilds fighting it out. Just so the devs know what we mean when we use it: We don’t mean the current WvW incarnation, we also don’t mean the mere fact of two groups who happen to share the same guild tag engaging in a PvP fight (that is more related to the matchmaking environment than gamemodes), we mean a very specific gameplay concept that would be an evolution of the GW1 one, with possibly some inspiration from other recent titles like MOBAs. It’s a carry-over term from GW1 and it’s important to mentally separate the gameplay- from the matchmaking associations, since I don’t think guild rosters should be the (only) way grouping in said game mode.
Nevertheless I do think that a specific GvG “mode” outside of the lord-kill GW1 GvG has it’s place, but like duels more in the PvE/WvW side of things. As in, a guild could challenge another to a duel and they could fight it out in the open world in a team-deathmatch, no specific maps or intrastructure needed. It’s essentially a duel, but for guilds. I’m sure this would satisfy the WvW-GvG crowd and also PvEers who aren’t as interested in structured PvP (yet) greatly.

I very much approve of 3v3 TDM as well. I think ANet should focus on those three core areas for structured PvP over the next year, with additional unstructured PvP ideas for the LS/WvW team to handle.
“GvG”
Mode: Regicide, base assault, you get the idea. Team size: 6, 8, and 10, with your monthly tournaments at a fixed size at one of those
Matchmaking: Queues and pre-formed groups. Matchmaking is depended on the average ELO of your groups member if different guilds, or your guild as a whole if everyone is a guild member. (Or you can even make it so that "GvG"ers still represent guilds, even though they are not in them, but it has to match one of the group members. This would heighten recognition value while not having a guild requirement)
Team Deathmatch Arena
Mode: Wave/individual respawn. You can use recycled Conquest maps.
Matchmaking: Hotjoin but with a 3v3 tourney queue/pre-formed teams. There’d be no specific matchmaking or tourney winners, your teams simply fights until it’s knocked out with a reward chest every n games.
“Heroes’ Ascent”
Mode: Fixed map progression, with everyone having a different mode. At first e.g. Conquest, Team Deathmatch, and crucially KotH (it’s required. It would be the last map that your teams needs to “defend” from your challengers so you can retain your current “title” as champion of the tournament). Later you can add more modes into the rotation like CTF. Team size: 5? or 6?
Matchmaking: Queues and pre-formed teams. Constantly running single elimination tournament.

Unstructured PvP:

Duels
Self-explanatory.
Guild PvP challenges
What I described above.

It sounds like more than it is, but I do not believe this would spread the playerbase to thin (especially considering that it would lure in or reactivate additional players who are sick of Conquest, like me). There’s not terribly much overlap. For example, if you have 6 buddies with PvP ambitions, you do a GvG. If you are only 3, you make a quick TDM Arena run. Just for blowing off some steam you join the hotjoin TDM arena or Conquest, or if you want an evening of team tactics but don’t have friends you join a “Heroes’ Ascent” queue.
“GvG” would be your prestige mode, followed by “HA”, followed by 3v3 TDM.

As I said, those should be the core areas for the mid-term. I would love to see asymmetric arenas like Fort Aspenwood, but I don’t think it’s feasible for that too over the next 1-1.5 years. Maybe sometime later, after the core modes are settled in.

The rank grind makes you appreciate lower level sets more.

Simple solution coming through, everyone stand back:

Objectives can only tick for a certain amount before they go flat. After that, they do not reward points to the captor any longer till they’re “recharged”, but still to anyone else who caps it. At that point they would serve mainly as point denial to the enemy servers as well as defensive structures.

It’s good that a server that manages to dominate during the night reaps a points reward. But it’s not okay that this gets greatly magnified. Remember, the losing server not only has to re-cap everything, some of which upgraded/full of ACs by now, it also has to do the exact same feat of holding them through an entire night/morning (or equivalent amount in hours) AND deprive the nightcapping server of exactly the same amount of points for that time just to break even. This is crazy.

Coupled with the both psychological and strategical effect it has that you only ever start a day with wooden towers in your thirds, and the enemy server with fully upgraded T3 keeps with waypoints in them, the effect is doubly and thirdly magnified.

However, this is only a band-aid fix to a very intrinsic problem to WvW server balance, namely the by-now functionally obsolete PvE-WvW server coupling (which makes it due to PvE concerns impossible to equalize numbers and lock pop-capped servers, which wouldn’t be the case if WvW servers were separate. Also IP restrictions.)
I will perhaps elaborate on that further in the future.

MarkPhilips.5169:

John, a mix mode is not a solution if every mode has many problems.

Well then they shouldn’t have. I don’t see the logic behind your assumption. It’s not like they would have to make an equal number of maps to Conquest, not anytime soon.

Main focus needs to be a game mode enjoyable to watch and to play.

A game mode framework that does not induce monotony is more enjoyable to watch and play.

and player know what their team mates are doing every time.

It’s called communication.

When people organized a 3vs3 deathmatch tournament, it worked very well because there wasn’t fight on a small point and with 6 people on fight there wasn’t a big confusion and it was easy to understand what happened.

Watching 6 people whacking at each other without a goal … except for whacking … sounds (and looks) boring to me.

People (spectators) and players need to understand everything in game, if there is confusion, actions splitted, it’s a fail mode.

Are you saying people are too stupid to follow split actions? Why then are MOBAs and Starcraft the most spectated games in the world?

JonathanSharp.7094:

I think 5 is the biggest team size we’d want for organized play, and we could try smaller teams, but

But this makes mid-scale strategic combat scenarios impossible (and don’t kid yourselves, WvW isn’t really strategic).
How can there be splits with only 5 players? Specialist roles like flag running? How can players role diversify to begin with, if due to the nature of small teams everyone is required to be 100% self-sufficient in both healing/support, but more importantly damage?
The value of one mainly control or mainly support player rapidly goes down as team size decreases. With 5, it’s more prudent to just take another fully-damage (+ intrinsic survivability) specced player, so that they are able to kill other players equally fast.
I know providing this “possibility” of self-sufficiency is your goal for most forms of sPvP, and it has it’s merit in hotjoin or Conquest, but really interesting organized play requires more than that.
Heck, look at WvW. The tactical team-play there (within guilds/other organized groups) is ironically much greater because the players are not forced into this one very narrow playstyle. They can diversify into control and support roles, their role isn’t just to spike a target down when called in TS.
You just don’t get that in tPvP.

Your reaction might be that we should go play WvW then. But we’re not talking about 30v30 engagements. We’re also not talking about only being able to play on an equal footing whenever the stars align.
We are talking about 8v8 GvG/KOTH/anything but Conquest, with strategic split skirmishes of 2v2/6v6, 2v2/5v5/1v1, etc. probably occurring more often than all 16 gathering at one spot (i.e. the “massive” 8v8 battles would only occur at key phases like lord battles anyway).
Where do you suggest a mesmer specced for blinds and rupts is more able to shine, in a 8v8 or in a 5v5? Where a shout/banner warrior? A supportive Consecration guardian?
You are crippling your own build variety with your insistence on 5v5! 8v8 needs it’s own organized format as well.
And if it didn’t work out you can still always remove it. It was done in GW1 all the time. Heroes’ Ascent switched from 8v8 to 6v6 to 8v8 and several game modes were shelved. You should be more confident!

@ King of the hill: We’ve actually tried it a few times internally. It usually devolves into a stalemate in the middle of the map, or one big cluster of bodies. …

This actually supports my point.
If you die in a 5v5 KotH, your team lost.
If two players die out of 10, you still have a chance to comeback. With bigger teams, there’s figuratively more buttons to push, more variables you can affect in your favour.
You played GW1 KotH, right? There were 24 players, on three sides, and the fight often raged for 10 minutes or longer. It’s not an inherent flaw of the mode in this context. I’d say smaller team sizes and only two sides make KotH, ironically, more chaotic.

Bigger cap points would be solution too. It doesn’t even have to be a traditional cap node. Make it a plaza with buildings on/around it. Or an actual hill with plenty of room to maneuever on. Why not? Or make it dangerous to approach the KotH node head-on without a plan. Put a strong NPC or traps there that will be a factor in the first 1-2 minutes or so of a game, but not after.
Of course, secondary objectives could on a KotH map exist as well, such that encourage splits or other specialists and benefit in the capping of the central node. This further increases healthy complexity. If you put to much emphasis on splitting, you’re weakening your position at the frontline. If you don’t split enough, your foe will gain an edge there. It’s ingenious.

We should appreciate KotH for what it is – it’s not a “fast paced” Arcade game mode as GW2 seems to have aimed for (I don’t consider Conquest that, since it has insane amounts of downtime just standing/running around, but whatever). It’s a battle of attrition where everything depends on strategy of resource allocation and masterful tactical tie-breaking moves.

JonathanSharp.7094:

The current thinking is that a tournament could be decided by something like (using your examples):

1st game: Capture the Flag (not saying we’d do that, but it’s an example)…

Yes, exactly! You don’t have to make half a dozen maps for each such game mode. If you bring it into one such framework it’s more than enough if there are only 1-2 per at the start. You won’t get monotony.

There is a lot of talk about introducing e.g. TDM or KotH modes, which is all great, but not really the peak of creativity. They are by themselves rather barebones. Regular daily PvP play in a RPG (outside hotjoin) needs a bit more depth so as to not become mind-numbing and boring.

GvG
Don’t look far. GW1 already laid down the basic concept perfectly. Run secondary objectives for boons, assault base, kill lord. With the improved engine I’m sure you can handle additional things that would make it even more interesting, like traps or siege weapons (not the same as WvW siege weps).
This should be a sPvP game mode. It’s only associated with WvW right now because there is no real alternative due to team sizes. Regarding that, I think you should use variable team sizes ranging from 5-20, but fixate your tourney GvG team sizes at 8, 12 and/or 15.

NPC centric game mode
With that I mean is advancing Carriers/Siege Turtles like in GW1’s JQ/FA or creeps in MOBAs, where I’m leaning towards the former rather than the latter. It just enables playstyles that relatively straightforward game modes like TDM can’t satisfy.
I cannot stress enough how underappreciated FA in GW1 was. It was the perfect bridge between the random-casual nature of a hotjoin Conquest/TDM game mode, and the organization and teamplay that a GvG required. And it didn’t even need pre-formed teams.

Heroes Ascent
This is not a game mode per se as it doesn’t imply match objectives. Rather, as you know, it was a tourney framework that was an amalgam of almost every game mode, from Conquest to TDM to King of the Hill etc., and it worked kitten well for casuals and hardcores alike. It had an insanely satisfying feel to it to progress to the next map, with a new challenge, and ultimately the halls, something you just can’t emulate with a rooster of the always same maps regular sPvP uses.
There you could also include some game modes that you don’t think warrant their “own” mode, like Capture the Flag or even KotH. It’s actually the perfect testing ground for new, outlandish modes, besides event minigames. Heroes Ascent helps you condense both all of your game modes and players into one pool.
-
-
-
-
Now, the devs will be flooded in suggestions. So let me offer you some help to eliminate a couple suggestions that came or will come. I think this is an important part of this discussion as well.

Alliance battles
I loved them in GW1. But why not simply introduce some bigger Maps for conquest instead? Those maps don’t have all to be slavishly the exact same size. Alliance battles are literally the same as Conquest, only with a couple more players – 6 of which were (usually) healers, so discounting them we actually have the same numbers as in a 9v9 Conquest match.
Two or three large “AB maps” and you get the experience – even in a semi-organized fashion in a custom arena.

MOBA wannabes
Just no. GW does what GW does, MOBAs do what MOBAs do.
The “base assault after collecting buffs” game mode is already in the franchise, and done better – it’s called GvG. The two most popular PC games don’t need another clone, when GW already has it’s unique answer to that. Besides, do you have an idea how long those were in development and testing? This is maybe something for GW3, and only if they make it what Conquest was to GW2 by pouring all their energy into it.

Remember your roots, ANet.

Castle siege
No seriously, this is just WvW. Or GvG. We don’t need even more nuancing. Focus on those both game modes instead of three or four or ten watered down ones, of which half would be dead.

1v1
I’m for duels, but not in sPvP. This should be tackled by a Living World team, not the already stressed sPvP one. The resistance to add them in sPvP mainly stems from the fact that it would channel players away from the actual team modes, matches can easily be manipulated and that it’s impossibly prohibitive to balance all classes equally, while simultaneously engendering by far the most balancing controversy/whine.
1v1 is casual PvP and it’s a fine addition to the PvE overworld.

It might not be as advertised as Solo Queue or new maps were, but I think this is actually the most significant change sPvP had since game release, and I think the devs should exploit it much more.
It might not affect tPvP much, but I believe it can reinvigorate the interest of people in hotjoin greatly (and with that, sPvP in general), since the matches will be getting much more strategic now that circle-capping points 3-4 man at a time and letting them recapped for an optimum glory yield isn’t possible any longer.

Shiren.9532:

Sounds like you need L’Oréal for those hairs you are splitting.

I had a look through the heavy female armour and I can’t understand what people are talking about.

http://www.gw2armor.com/human/female/heavy_list.php

Most of those seem to be fully covering the body. The balance of full body coverage to armour showing skin seems to be in favour of the full body coverage. This new set seems to be offering some much needed variety.

This is a moral panic. Rationality has no place in it.

That being said I do have critique for the new set(s): They’re once again steampunk to the max. Can we have just one set that doesn’t sport powergloves and isn’t covered in goggles pretty please?

Regarding the general topic: Selling a WXP transfer from one character to another in the Gemshop would be an idea.

More WvW monetization and you can retain your current WXP mechanics while reducing issues with it.

Or you could kill/CC the warriors.
It’s actual combat awareness where regular blobbing never teaches you this, so it might be alien.
But it’s how you should deal with things like that.

OP are you for real?
The issue of the vast majority of servers (basically everything but the last ~3-4 servers) is massive overpopulation during and close to primetime, with hour long queues, and when you come on the map, unbearable lag due to the number of players.
Servers like Vabbi are at the very extreme end of the spectrum.
They should drop improvements for 98%+ of players in favor of your small demographic? This is entitlement right there.

Please do not ever talk about that again until you experienced a 2 hour or 3 hour queue.

SpellOfIniquity.1780:

On top of that, a small zerg of ours took down a 20+ golem rush about a week ago and there were less of us than golems. It’s not impossible you just need to be organized and remember to evade, evade, evade.

I find it genuinely cute that you think people complain about them because of their combat abilities.

• New game modes, new maps. More (invited) player input in the design of those. (For example, I can’t imagine that many sPvP players would have endorsed Skyhammer if you gathered input from them before you released it.)

• GvG plans (yes, this should be a subset of sPvP, not WvW)

• Tournaments and leaderboards, especially for “semi-casual”/“semi-hardcore” players. For example, Hero’s Ascent in GW1.

• Dungeon topic. Plans for raids or more difficult dungeons
• Class differentiation and roles. Class balance in PvE, strengthening of non-DPSDPSDPS roles.
• General armor skins topic. We need better and more! Also at least in part earnable in PvE. This was my main motivation that kept me in PvE in GW1.

1. Clarification on ANets stance where they see WvW heading. ANet’s general philosophy for the future of the game mode, not only ingame, but positioned in the general MMO landscape

2a. Leagues & server stacking. Why nothing is being done to counteract it. How ANet imagines there to be a fair competition with it. It’s like letting a 15 man team in football play against a 6 man team. It just does not work.

2b. ANet’s stance and steps against the 100 man blobs + Omega golem rush meta

For starters, whenever I played against the bottom two tier servers I saw upscaled Invaders in blue armor in droves, whereas the closer to the top you get, the more Bronze Invaders in full exotic armor you got.
As an exception, T1 servers reverse that trend again.

I agree with OP’s concerns. Roles gave players an ideal to aspire to. Be the best tank, be the best healer, be the best spiker, be the best group buffer, etc.
In GW2 you are only really efficient if you do all of that at the same time as a secondary focus subordinate to the main role that everyone shares, DPS.

But you can have both, strong roles and largely self-sufficient characters. Countless FPSes prove that.

That being said, WvW definitely comes closest to that experience. Oddly enough, in complete contrast to PvE or sPvP, player roles (like hammerstun war, heal/boon dispensing guard, combo field ele, utility mesmer, scouting/roaming thieves, etc.) really shine there, further proving that the real strength of this game is not its PvE, is not its sPvP, but its WvW component.

This is happening to every server in the silver/bronze league twilight zone.
The servers in the twilight zone with a healthy WvW population and community hemorrhage players because they fear to be put in the same bracket with dead servers, meaning due to abysmally low player density, they won’t actually be able to play this game anymore (lol just think about the absurdity of that for a second).
Bronze league is the ANet designated trash bin for dead servers, and several server communities have to suffer because of it by being put there.

The WvW devs hope that despite (or because) of that very deliberate choice to condense the dead servers + some collateral damage, that more players will log-in due to a more “even” (i.e. similarly dead after transfers and players losing interest to PvDoor all day) playing field, actually reinvigorating the trash bin league.
Well guess what, it will not happen. See you back in 8 weeks when you can analyse the log-in numbers of bronze league. It will be a ghost town.

I agree with your assessment that it’s more feelings and delusions on ANet’s part at work here rather than pragmatic considerations for their continued sPvP favoritism and the relatively lukewarm embracement of WvW. But I would not say that they should completely drop sPvP development. Atleast not for the possibility that there still lies some ANet spirit from GW1 days dormant.
The problem is that they have completely kittened up priorities. You should not even start to think about how to make your sPvP an eSport and “exciting to watch” (as unfortunately stressed once again recently by Colin as the most important design consideration) when the fundamentals just don’t work. When no one wants to play your PvP. This dogma was not only not productive for the development of a great game, it actively hurt it in this case (the keyword being Conquest)
sPvP in it’s current state is just not a good PvP game. They need to work on those basics first and foremost. ANet’s denial lies there, not that they still bet on sPvP by itself.

It is desperately needed, and the lack of it more than a year since release makes me seriously doubt the devs play their own game much. How can the mouse pointer ever not be lost in the heat of the battle?

BillFreist.1527:

Q: My 3rd question is :If you ever have a solution to this are there any plans to lift the AoE Limit for both WvW/PvE/PvP because thats why this AoE limit exist in 1st place Isn’t skill delay in big battles (WvW or PvE like Taco) a direct result of those?
A: <<< The AoE hit limits exist for more than just performance reasons.

But do you not find it problematic that one of the most broken gameplay tactics in the game is for a zerg to just ball into a little clump so that only ever 5 players take damage from AoEs?

Can you look at the suggestion I made here? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Don-t-make-a-new-map-Solve-the-skill-lags/page/2#post2783543
Essentially, I’m asking whether it’s possible to ration object interactions so as to cut down on the runaway exponential growth of computing load.

This is great news and makes me optimistic in regards to WvW development.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ranger balance is certainly something we discuss. I don’t want to derail the thread by going into more details, suffice to say we are aware of the perception and concerns and this is certainly an area we will discuss as we move forward. The plan for Collaborative Development moving forward will allow you to discuss your concerns with the developers and brain storm idea etc.

I don’t want either which is why I keep this short, but most problem rangers face can be boiled down to your choice of making the pet an unmovable, integral part of the profession. You made pets the rangers adrenaline or initiative where they should have been a ranger’s stances or even “Steal”; highly desirable to take but not needed.
As a result, the rangers coefficients have to suffer and he has to rely on an AI without an opt-out.
You should have taken a clue from GW1 rangers, and I’m not only referring to their job as rupters. They offered a unique, skill-based midliner gameplay. Every arrow they fired mattered.
If you wanted to keep the “beastmaster” theme just make more attacks like Hunter’s Call or Feeding Frenzy that summon some animals for a short period. (Of course real pets would remain, as choice. Don’t worry, rangers are still distinct enough!)

Talking about midliners, maybe you should make the front/mid/backline distinction a pillar of class design, without returning to the trinity ofc. Clearly Ranger and Engineer (and non-single target gank thieves) are quite lost as to their job in both PvP and PvE (highly undesirable in WvW/PvE, Engi isn’t much played in sPvP either, and thieves are rather pigeonholed in sPvP/WvW). They just have nothing they excel at. Everything they do heavies and casters do better.

ArenaNet does not realize the full value of WvW. They think it is their distant third most important pillar upon which GW2 rests, the obvious more important ones being PvE and “eSports” (sPvP). It is an entrenched preconception they have that can’t be changed unless extraordinary measures are taken.

Let’s change that impression that ANet has of their own game. Let us make WvW something greater.
Because I do think it is currently the healthiest part of the game, despite all the controversies and lack of developer attention in the last months. Healthy in the sense that it provides longevity and the building of communities whereas PvE/sPvP by and large did not succeed.

The WvW community builds the most value per capita. For example, the teamspeak/mumble servers that now get utilized for some PvE content (Tequatl) were all set up for WvW rather than the other way around. The servers came together and organized around WvW, because due to the design of the game, that’s where it matters. Any medium sized WvW guild is more involved in building a community than almost any large PvE guild. You do not feel the presence of a PvE guild. They can be 500 members strong and do dungeons + events everyday and as a random PvE player you would not know their name, unlike a dedicated 30 people WvW guild for a WvW player.
WvW builds the strongest sense of server pride/belonging (atleast it did until leagues), and every departure of a guild or renowned player is a seriously big deal, whereas in PvE it literally does not matter due to overflows, guesting and a general lack of incentive to stick to a certain server, or actually any kind of content (meaning there’s no incentive to build a “Honor of the Waves vanquishing” community etc., with the exception of some RP going on on some servers).
The WvW community uniquely came up with their own grassroots PvP mode, a regular event with it’s own infrastructure.
Most server events, from my experience, like drinking raids, country raids, storytelling raids, class teaching evenings and all that are by the WvW community.

That PvE comparatively fails in community building and providing longevity is not necessarily something inherent in the idea of it, just to make that clear. PvE would likely play a much greater role both if it had proper endgame content, proper raiding, something that requires cooperation and tactics, and less broken overflow systems. However, all of this won’t change in the foreseeable future. We can’t wait for PvE to fix GW2.
It goes without mention that sPvP is in an even more desolate state. Even if it weren’t, a very individualist format like hotjoin and 5-man rooster PvP can’t exactly be the champion of community building.

And last but not least, I’m under the impression that pure PvEers very rarely stick to GW2, and if they do, they require biweekly content updates for that, whereas WvWers often log in every evening on one content update per season. That’s ok, casuals are the market ANet craves yadda yadda but that just isn’t exactly how you build enthusiasm for a game.

Capitalizing on the value WvW builds would be one of the best ways to elevate this game. As the rapidly deflating hype of the last year proves, current GW2 just isn’t much memorable as both a PvE game (the most notable selling point always being mentioned is that it is a B2P MMO without monthly fees, not actual content) and an eSport, but the WvW aspect never gets marketed, unlike with predecessors like DAOC. Why?

So let’s make WvW an equal or even the foremost pillar in GW2 development. Let’s force ANet to improve, build upon, expand the whole scope of WvW by truly realizing it’s value, with the most enticing blackmail ever: by advertising it.
Whenever GW2 gets discussed, despite our jaded, cynical view of where WvW is heading, don’t say it’s a PvE carebear game. Say it’s a RvR/WvW centric game. This is, and I think most of us can agree on that, where despite all of WvWs shortcomings the soul of the game actually lies.
Say it’s not particularly worth getting for just the PvE, but that it’s probably the best large scale PvP RPG (DAOC-style) on the market right now. Get people who like that to join instead of alienating them with bemoaning the current state of affairs.

When a PvE player asks you what you find interesting about hitting doors and being ganked all the time, do not second and tell them that WvW is crap and that Devon is ruining everything, insist that it’s where the game’s mechanics truly begin to shine (while still being more forgiving and less “hardcore” for them than tPvP). After all, that’s why we are still playing, no?
Tell the ex-WoWies that if they want the 30-40 man raids from WoW back, you literally need to get into WvW.

Grow us.

WvW is where the strength of GW2 lies. Don’t waste this potential. This goes out to both ANet and the players, who are quintessential in steering the game’s direction.