Guild Wars 2

Rising Dusk.2408:

Aetherpath, for context, has been poorly received by the community on the whole because of time-gating and puzzles that rely minimally on combat expertise and just drag things out.

I don’t think so. It might be a reason for more experienced dungeonrunners but most PUGs will be scared away because it’s too difficult. I like aether, since it’s one of the few dungeons which needs some kind of talking and coordinating players.
But some groups will fail at the oozes or will have a hard time at the clockheart, for example. Many/Most players in the dungeon forums are not the average player. Look at their guilds, names, knowledge. The speedrunning fraction might be the “top 1000 dungeon players”.
To get a better impression of different kind of players I recommend to PUG a lot.
It’s an advantage to know each side.

In my opinion there are at least two different kind of players: good player searching for a challenge – and players looking for fun/success/teamcontent.
GW2 offers not much teamcontent (only dungeons), so you will find those different playergroups in dungeons. I think it was a questionable decision to implement only dungeons as groupcontent – which results in players looking for some easy teamcontent entering dungeons and players looking for a challange. Try to balance it for both groups…

Imho you can see this conflict in others topics too. Have a look at those anti-zerk or trinity threads: they exist since release. Haven’t read them here, but in other forums I read players saying they want to play as a team and not “5 people solo”: play together, work as a team – not playing “standing near each other and thats it”.
Better groups will have some kind of trinity (might stacking, stealth – roles). PUGs with five warriors might have a smooth run but they experience GW2 in a different way (autoattack + 100b only should work in most dungeons).
A player starting with zerk-gear has to learn a lot, will die a lot – and he might get scared away from dungeons because of that.

If you scare away too many players (too difficult content – aether) there will be less dungeonplayers. Less active dungeons might result in Anet paying less attention to dungeons and focussing on SW-like content.
So it might be a good idea to think about content which offers challenging bosses – which can be easily but slowly defeated if you (for example) range them (SE3 – car).

“Elite Players” (like most here) can tell you a lot about challenging stuff, bugs, how to improve stuff – but keep in mind that there a lots of average skilled, bad or inexperienced players.

A long time ago I suggested to bring back GW1 style missions and teamskills. They don’t need to change anything at the current “highend-meta-gameplay”. Maybe a skill which adds strenght related to vita/toughness can improve the dmg of a low-dps group – but it won’t have an impact on zerker groups since they don’t have that much vita/toughness. Zerk should stay on the dps top – but skills like that can close the dps gap a bit. PS-War is a nice teamsupport, hammerguard can offer a lot of defense/stabilize a team: sharpen those teamsupport roles can help bad groups to have a more satisfying dungeon experience.

tl;dr: there are not only good players. Keep an eye on average or bad players and try to understand their point. I think it’s possible to bring both sides together, instead of playing them off against each other.

Stacking in corners is still usefull. It makes sure no one runs around like a headless chicken. Everyone is in reach of everything and stands in every field. Have a look at some “non stacking bosses” like COF1. Someones dieing? He runs away so you can’t rezz him. Or he’s out of reach of your F2 heal (guard). Lots of people stay on max range, won’t stay behind your wall, will use ranged weapons only even when they are warriors or guardians. 100b will miss if the boss is moving. Warriors can whirl against a wall – they can trigger lightfields to remove conditions or to save a dodge.
You can dodge against the wall which is sometimes usefull.

But most important: it avoids chaos. Everyone knows where to stand, good.
Run in and do some “more experienced stuff” and it will end in a chaos.
PUG tactics: easy to play tactics which are “standard” and everyone knows them.
A fews seconds more doesn’t matter.

I think you should collect proof. Take Screenshots etc. to document what has happend, how often, since when etc. Send a collection of it to Anet’s support and ask for help, descriping exactly what has happend since when etc.

If nothing happens or you want to take further actions:
in Germany are some organizations helping victims of stalking, maybe you got something like that in your country too.
Are you sure you need a threat to your life to report him to the police?
Even if they can’t do much, they might cause him so much trouble that he starts thinking…

coglin.1867:

Your option is to not play for a very long time, while the system waits for others to near your rating level to queue up, or play with other who are relatively close, based on system perimeters set.

I prefer to wait a few minutes longer instead of getting a team which seems to be for the first time in a pvp match. I’ve played a few matches and I prefer to get teams which have also played a few matches (hotjoin doesn’t count).

coglin.1867:

I agree, no one enjoys that. I feel most people have more difficulty understanding how to rotate on a PvP map then anything. Many seem to simply assume the ability to fight another player defines this game mode. This has nothing to do with matchmaking fairness though.

It’s more about “enjoyable matchmaking” less on “matchmaking fairness”. Anet could place the best two players and the worst 8 into a match and it would be fair. But the good players won’t enjoy the match and the bad too.

The matchmaking is horrible since the last pvp update. I think the main problem is: it mixes experienced soloq/teamq players with unexperienced players.
Mixing good and bad players is less worse than mixing experienced and unexperienced, maybe a player (like me) will lose every one vs. one, but at least he can cap/decap and help other players out.

I’m not a good pvp player but I don’t enjoy teams with three people going for close at the beginning. Which will wait there untill it is capped. Or the whole team always keeps running for the next point leaving everything unprotected.
You don’t learn basics like “always fight on point” “never leave a point unprotected” in hotjoin. So maybe the soloq/teamq/ranked/unranked experience should get more wight.
The matchmaking was way better before the last pvp update. Don’t know what went wrong, but maybe just undo the changes…
Its really frustrating knowing the match is lost when its 50vs30 points or something like that. You cannot giveup or leave. I’d like to see /resign back.

You can pull the eles to end of the room. Just let two people enter the room, kill the oozes and guide all eles to the end. The other three people have to wait for them outside of the room to avoid getting aggro.
Now those three people can “safely” pull the respawned ooze to the end of the room. Often it won’t get attacked by the eles before it reaches the gate (depends on luck/position) – and even if the ooze gets attacked you will be close to the gate. Bring some defense (wall, blinds,…) and try to pull it quickly into the gate (pay attention to the other ooze, both should start pulling at the same time to reach the gate at nearly the same time.) You can also try to kill the eles before the oozes get too close.
There’s no need to fight in this room, no need for three guards or something like that.
(good spots for tanking: on the “left part” close to the gate on the left hand behind the burning oil up the “hill”; on the “right part” in the corner on the right hand of the gate).

I’d like to see more permanent content in the LS. Teamcontent maybe like the GW1 missions – too difficult to do them solo, easier than dungeons, telling a story and repeatable.

More permanent content will develop GW2 steadily forward.
Adding a mission every month or maybe every three months could develop GW2 into a game with more teamplay. Atm its more like “mhh…what can we do as a guild?” “dungeons”. Missions could add a new option, especially for casual players – dungeons are often too hard. There are alway discussions “too hard” “not hard enough”. Split it up into dungeons, storytellingquests/missions/storydungeons and maybe elitedungeons instead of having only dungeons as real teamcontent.

(you could even add something like the “Zaishen Challenge Quest” – “do mission X today and get a reward”. Titels “done 10 different Missions” or hardmodemissions with seperate titels/rewards.)

The LS Dungeons could be permanent content: introduce a new “aetherdungeon”, each new dungeon could be a path of it. Some exclusive skins or items used to craft exklusive skins could drop in this dungeon – maybe like the “shards of mist” in the fractals.

1.) Population imbalance
2.) too fast capping of towers etc.
3.) useless NPCs

1.) (easy) Teamplayquests/missions
2.) Teamplayskills
3.) Elite-areas (Underworld, Fissure of Woe, something difficult and giving you nice rewards)

(easy) Teamplayquests/missions:
I liked the GW1 missions and this is a huge point for me (and some guildmates).
In GW2 we’re running dungeons, but dungeons are for some players too hard. There should be an easy/casualfriendly type of teamcontent. GW1 style missions and quests would be really really nice. If your living story adds more permenent content some teammissions could be added as a “living story personal story”. Or an easy dungeonstorymode.
Or maybe “heartquests” which need a team or are (a lot) easier to do as a team.

Teamplayskills
I’d like to see more teamwork in the fights. GW1 had a huge amount of skills and classes which interacted with each other. GW2 feels more like “uh, there are other peoples, but I don’t know what they’re doing”. Most effects are “5% more dmg” and stuff like this. I end up pressing the same buttons in all situations.
Maybe Singletargetspells like “+1000dmg to each attack of target player” “target player gets a 50% chance to evade attacks” could add more teamfeeling.
Or feelings like “uh, I saved his life” “whoa, this increased the dmg a lot”. Changes like this could leed to more teamwork – more talking, more communitybuilding, more builddiscussions in the forums,….
Maybe a reduced number of group"targeting" skills has the same effect. The remaining skills could be buffed to see an effect. Two stacks of might don’t really increase your dmg, so it doesnt feel good to “help other players to do more dmg”.

I like playing a supporter (monk) and in GW2 I feel often like “deal dmg or be useless” and “dodge or die”.

GW1 is an extreme teamgame and has tons of skills and synergies. GW2 could add a little bit of this to create more feelings like “yeah, we’re a team” “well done XY”.

Sorry for my poor English.