Guild Wars 2

Torsailr.8456:

Hi Chris,
I have a bit of a tangential question.

How feasible would it be for Anet to develop an editor for players to develop their own guild hall layouts? Is it beyond the scope of things you want to consider?

What you expect to be able to edit?

Conski Deshan.2057:

JonPeters.5630:

I’d love to discuss this. How would you all expect a better recruiting system to work? This is a pretty rudimentary version. What other options are there? A guild recruiting board? I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life. Some examples include:

• Clubs with special interests.
• Hangout areas that are themed

There are many steps here
1) Interacting with those people in a social setting
2) Remembering the contact info of the people you interact with.
3) Reasons to continue to interact
4) Eventually forming a formal social group.

There are probably steps in between as well but it would be good to brainstorm ways that GW2 can bridge these steps and what other steps there might be.

Jon

I do think a basic recruitment board with the sorting functions and description of your guild would be a good start even without any prior social interaction. My playgroup usually recruits new people through dungeons/fractals. If they’re interesting or prove to be really skilled in dungeon runs we invite them, however that’s a very time consuming method of acquiring new members.

If you’re the likes of a WvW guild or a PvE event guild (Teq, TT) you just need bodies and awareness which is where a guild board would really shine. For more niche groups like say a role-player guild or the 70 year old + guild which I know exist but don’t know how to contact. The guild board provides the means to locate them without having to hope you randomly run into them or search outside of the game.

When I was in college I went to the Clubs and Societies day, browsed all the clubs and then joined the ones I had already planned on doing so along with two that were on impulse from seeing they existed. I did’nt have any real social interaction with them prior to joining. Based on that, an impractical but fun twist could be a weekly guild fair held in the cities where guilds can set up little stands to recruit, it would provide an opportunity for social interaction, allow guilds to show off their active members and create a social event in itself.

In your college examples do you remember which groups were successful in recruiting you and why? Do you remember which groups you had the most fun with and why? Which ones did you attend more often? What did they do to keep your attention? Was it the content of the group? The people in the group?

Kaz.5430:

The biggest QoL feature that I can think of, that ‘only’ a Guild Hall could provide is as a Megaserver Transportation system.

If only guild members (or invitees perhaps) can access the hall, then it would be an easy place to gather a large group together and be sure to all be on the same map. There could be an NPC that each player speaks to, and by speaking to them, megaserver system is able to get an exact count of the number of players wanting to travel together to a particular zone, BEFORE they try to travel.

Rather than each player loading a zone independently, and the system using predictive logic to try and group people together, it would know exactly how many spaces it needs to have on whichever map the collective attempts to load.

While obviously cool there are some details that would be required to start talking about this.

• How big of a group would be required to create one of these zones?
• Could you join half empty zones or would you always want them guild exclusive?
• Would zones created for your guild stay exclusive to your guild?
• etc.

I’d love to see your thoughts on the details of this proposal to talk through some of the issues and see if it is in fact realistic, knowing that obviously you don’t know how the server infrastructure for megaservers works but I’ll try and be here to guide you.

Devata.6589:

Proposal Overview
Being able to send a recruit message in map chat but only show it to people on the same server however possible over multiple map instances.

Goal of Proposal
Better recruiting members for your guild.

Guilds are still very much server based because of WvW. Thats fine but because the PvE would is not so much server based anymore recruiting members for your guild has become extremely hard after the mega-server patch. (only option would be recruiting in WvW but for a PvX guild thats no option because they also want PvE players)

Proposal Functionality
An option to chat with your server basically. So map-server chat. That lets you chat with your server but over multiple instances of the same map.

Associated Risks
Not sure there are any risk.

I’d love to discuss this. How would you all expect a better recruiting system to work? This is a pretty rudimentary version. What other options are there? A guild recruiting board? I think one of the largest issues facing any guild or player looking for a guild is finding a guild that you want to join or finding members that you want to retain.

How do other social groups match people together? How do you meet like-minded people in real life. Some examples include:

• Clubs with special interests.
• Hangout areas that are themed

There are many steps here
1) Interacting with those people in a social setting
2) Remembering the contact info of the people you interact with.
3) Reasons to continue to interact
4) Eventually forming a formal social group.

There are probably steps in between as well but it would be good to brainstorm ways that GW2 can bridge these steps and what other steps there might be.

Jon

Since I started it let me list my top QOL improvements from guild halls.

1) Some way for the entire guild to physically gather in a location.
2) A more physical representation of guild upgrades allowing the upgrades themselves to take on forms that are more physical as well.
3) A place where you can do in game activities in a space controlled by your guild (technically custom arenas offer this for PvP already but the only activity you can do in them is conquest PvP.)

Jon

DiogoSilva.7089:

Donari.5237:

That said, without going into all the foundation details of what makes it worth having a guild hall I’d guess QoL might include:

I think what Jon Peters is asking is, what QoL changes would a guild hall offer to GW2 as a whole, and not what QoL changes are needed for itself (which, as you said, it’s impossible to determine without thinking of how it would work in the first place).

Halls would enhance the guild community and social experience, expand content and rewards, and improve world immersion/ roleplaying, I think.

Thanks for clarifying. This is exactly what I meant.

Ok time for a third topic.

Guild Halls.

I see this subject come up a lot in this thread and while we can talk about other aspects of Guild Halls at some point, let’s try another exercise.

What are the 3 top QOL features you think Guild Halls could provide that maybe couldn’t exist otherwise? Try not to list features that are beyond QOL, but I won’t hold it against you because its hard to do.

I’m out for the day hiking at Mt. Rainier but will try and return with my own top three later this weekend.

BrunoBRS.5178:

JonPeters.5630:

Tamasan.6457:

JonPeters.5630:

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

That statement really fills me with dread. Please do not take anything currently available away from what I’ll call a non-primary guild, and if you are going to be adding functionality, please make sure that if it is something that grants any kind of in game advantage (access to raids, buffs, areas, gear, skins, whatever) that it is available to smaller guilds.

My primary guild is about a dozen active people and another dozen or two that we see occasionally. I’ve known most of these people for years before GW2, and gaming in the same MMO is mostly what keeps us together.

However, most of my primary guild is also member of another larger guild of maybe about 30 or so people that we do missions and other random things with frequently – it started because missions are (and remain) such an enormous pain to try to do as a small guild (seriously, try even a tier 1 bounty with 5 or 8 people online). Yet I’ve gotten to know some of this other guild and I want to keep playing with them.

Please don’t make me choose between the people I’ve known for years and some kind of game mechanics that penalizes me for not wanting to spend most of my time in a huge guild where you’re just another face in the crowd.

Point taken. I was simply asking as an exercise what are the things you really use on all your guilds vs the things you use on your primary guild and what QOL things that we talk about would be important to all guilds vs primary, because I think in order to make primary a meaningful choice it has to provide benefit beyond secondary guilds.

but what of people that don’t really have a “primary” guild? personal example:

• my guild from launch, which i lead, is probably the one i rep most of the time, even though nowadays it’s more as a memento than a guild that does guild things. sometimes we get our “core group” all repping it to chat and/or do stuff, but never in a capacity that uses any guild features, because we’re too small for that and we all have other, bigger guilds.

• TTS, which i only spend time with during their events.

• a PvE guild that i only show up for their weekly guild missions, since a friend from the first guild is an officer there. i don’t really interact with the guild, it’s more “play with my friend and his friends and get some good out of it”.

• a WvW guild that i (and everyone else in it) only rep for their late night rallies.

there are really no guilds there that would be “primary”. i mean, it would probably be my own guild, but i wouldn’t reap any benefits from that, forcing me to choose some guild i don’t care about nearly as much to be put on top of others.

personally, i think tracking down a way to make people more engaged within a single guild through some priority/carrot-on-stick system is the wrong path. instead, we should be discussing how to make all guilds equally valid for a player, without having the guild’s higher ups look at all those non-repping members and think “what a waste of slot”. in fact, i’d argue that even if you added something silly like “get extra guild mission rewards only from your primary guild”, it would only serve to discourage multi-guilding, as increasing the value of a single guild, by proxy, decreases the value of others, as well as encourage the “rep our guild or get kicked” mentality.

This is precisely why I asked the question, “what would you want to gain from your primary guild?” It is an exercise in collaborative creativity to see if someone can come up with something that is actually compelling but at the same time doesn’t make you feel like you made the wrong choice. If the answer was easy, everyone would be doing it already, but most things worth doing are hard.

Seera.5916:

JonPeters.5630:

Seera.5916:

JonPeters.5630:

Tamasan.6457:

JonPeters.5630:

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

That statement really fills me with dread. Please do not take anything currently available away from what I’ll call a non-primary guild, and if you are going to be adding functionality, please make sure that if it is something that grants any kind of in game advantage (access to raids, buffs, areas, gear, skins, whatever) that it is available to smaller guilds.

My primary guild is about a dozen active people and another dozen or two that we see occasionally. I’ve known most of these people for years before GW2, and gaming in the same MMO is mostly what keeps us together.

However, most of my primary guild is also member of another larger guild of maybe about 30 or so people that we do missions and other random things with frequently – it started because missions are (and remain) such an enormous pain to try to do as a small guild (seriously, try even a tier 1 bounty with 5 or 8 people online). Yet I’ve gotten to know some of this other guild and I want to keep playing with them.

Please don’t make me choose between the people I’ve known for years and some kind of game mechanics that penalizes me for not wanting to spend most of my time in a huge guild where you’re just another face in the crowd.

Point taken. I was simply asking as an exercise what are the things you really use on all your guilds vs the things you use on your primary guild and what QOL things that we talk about would be important to all guilds vs primary, because I think in order to make primary a meaningful choice it has to provide benefit beyond secondary guilds.

But the secondary guild of one person is the primary guild of another. The primary guild will be the one that fits the player the best. And that fit would be the benefit. That fits all guilds of all sizes and purposes.

Right, in now way would certain guilds be called primary and others secondary as a guild, it would be a rating you give that guild personally. For example:

• I have a guild with my college friends that is my primary guild.
• I am also in the ArenaNet guild.
• For me I get extra functionality for my primary guild
• Someone else might assign their primary guild to be the ArenaNet guild.
• For them that additional functionality that helps attach them to that guild is tied to the ANet guild.

Here is a bad example of something I would be ok with as only being tied to primary guild:

• When a guild completes a Guild mission it gains some rewards and when it has enough of these special rewards they are shared among all of the members of that guild who flagged it as their primary guild.

This example obviously has problems but that is sortof what I am talking about. Anyway I think I’ve talked enough about that issue. I’ll look for some other hot QOL issues to respond to now.

But what would that functionality be?

I could see it as part of the megaserver map assignment. If I’m in three guilds, A, B, and C and A is my primary and I go to a map and they are each on different shards, the assignment would prioritize a map with more members from guild A as that is my primary.

But anything tied to influence, merits, rewards etc is a bad idea.

As I said the rough proposal was intended to have some problems with it. However this problem is not as bad as you make it out to be as large guild must also share those rewards with more players.

I see a lot of talk about alliances. Two questions on that front:

1) What functionality would you like to get out of an alliance?
2) What makes you want alliances?

I’ll try to answer them myself.
1) Ability to play content that is made for larger guilds. Ability to connect some of my guilds and have them be able to chat together without the commitment of being in the same guild.
2) My guild is small and there is not enough content for small guilds. I think we could make more small guild content too which would help alleviate the need for alliances.

Seera.5916:

JonPeters.5630:

Tamasan.6457:

JonPeters.5630:

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

That statement really fills me with dread. Please do not take anything currently available away from what I’ll call a non-primary guild, and if you are going to be adding functionality, please make sure that if it is something that grants any kind of in game advantage (access to raids, buffs, areas, gear, skins, whatever) that it is available to smaller guilds.

My primary guild is about a dozen active people and another dozen or two that we see occasionally. I’ve known most of these people for years before GW2, and gaming in the same MMO is mostly what keeps us together.

However, most of my primary guild is also member of another larger guild of maybe about 30 or so people that we do missions and other random things with frequently – it started because missions are (and remain) such an enormous pain to try to do as a small guild (seriously, try even a tier 1 bounty with 5 or 8 people online). Yet I’ve gotten to know some of this other guild and I want to keep playing with them.

Please don’t make me choose between the people I’ve known for years and some kind of game mechanics that penalizes me for not wanting to spend most of my time in a huge guild where you’re just another face in the crowd.

Point taken. I was simply asking as an exercise what are the things you really use on all your guilds vs the things you use on your primary guild and what QOL things that we talk about would be important to all guilds vs primary, because I think in order to make primary a meaningful choice it has to provide benefit beyond secondary guilds.

But the secondary guild of one person is the primary guild of another. The primary guild will be the one that fits the player the best. And that fit would be the benefit. That fits all guilds of all sizes and purposes.

Right, in now way would certain guilds be called primary and others secondary as a guild, it would be a rating you give that guild personally. For example:

• I have a guild with my college friends that is my primary guild.
• I am also in the ArenaNet guild.
• For me I get extra functionality for my primary guild
• Someone else might assign their primary guild to be the ArenaNet guild.
• For them that additional functionality that helps attach them to that guild is tied to the ANet guild.

Here is a bad example of something I would be ok with as only being tied to primary guild:

• When a guild completes a Guild mission it gains some rewards and when it has enough of these special rewards they are shared among all of the members of that guild who flagged it as their primary guild.

This example obviously has problems but that is sortof what I am talking about. Anyway I think I’ve talked enough about that issue. I’ll look for some other hot QOL issues to respond to now.

Tamasan.6457:

JonPeters.5630:

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

That statement really fills me with dread. Please do not take anything currently available away from what I’ll call a non-primary guild, and if you are going to be adding functionality, please make sure that if it is something that grants any kind of in game advantage (access to raids, buffs, areas, gear, skins, whatever) that it is available to smaller guilds.

My primary guild is about a dozen active people and another dozen or two that we see occasionally. I’ve known most of these people for years before GW2, and gaming in the same MMO is mostly what keeps us together.

However, most of my primary guild is also member of another larger guild of maybe about 30 or so people that we do missions and other random things with frequently – it started because missions are (and remain) such an enormous pain to try to do as a small guild (seriously, try even a tier 1 bounty with 5 or 8 people online). Yet I’ve gotten to know some of this other guild and I want to keep playing with them.

Please don’t make me choose between the people I’ve known for years and some kind of game mechanics that penalizes me for not wanting to spend most of my time in a huge guild where you’re just another face in the crowd.

Point taken. I was simply asking as an exercise what are the things you really use on all your guilds vs the things you use on your primary guild and what QOL things that we talk about would be important to all guilds vs primary, because I think in order to make primary a meaningful choice it has to provide benefit beyond secondary guilds.

Same with Chris, I am responding between stuff so it will get more sporadic as the evening moves on. Lot’s of great stuff here that I want to actually discuss but that takes longer so for now keep it coming.

Jon

SkyShroud.2865:

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

JonPeters.5630:

I see a variety of comments on feeling more attachment to a specific guild and a lot of talk of the # of guilds people are a part of and the fear that is causing a lack of attachment. This lack of attachment keeps players players from being compelled to belong to any of their guilds instead of being compelled to belong to all of them .

With all due respect Mr. Peters,

I believe the ability to join multiple guilds on this game is should not have existed at all. Very simply, it discourages guild loyalty and defeats the entire purpose of joining a guild in the first place.

Guilds are supposed to be a dedicated, close knit group of people. An ideal scenario would be a flourishing, active community in-game AND outside of the game, supported by communication programs such as IRC/forums/voice. The system now? Guilds having half the people not representing. Highly inactive/non-existent offsite interaction. Guilds are typically a hi-bye affair in the game.

People who say “I represent this guild today for WvW, then that guild tomorrow for PvE” – this isn’t how guilds are supposed to work. In my opinion anyway. Guilds are groups where people do different things together – not a “I come as I like” place. People who represent different guilds on different days as and when they like are akin to clan-hoppers.

But obviously, this isn’t just the fault of guild hoppers alone. The guild system design in this game is absolutely sub par – you want people to know as many different groups of people as possible, but do not allow players to participate in the chat of guilds they are not representing. This, to me is the biggest problem about the guild system, because it renders useless the participation of a player, simply because he/she does not know what is happening in other guilds.

I respect your decision to give people the ability to join multiple guilds, but I still believe it was a wrong one.

I can understand where this is coming from. I have played many MMORPGs which adapt the one guild per character system. So, basically, players will put their main characters in the main guild. Not only that, guilds in some MMORPGs have very limited slots. So, their alts might not even be allowed in the guild.

The players belonging to those guilds are much closer to each other in comparison to the players in Guild Wars 2. Perhaps, players are forced to interact with each other and these forceful interactions breed meaningful interactions.

Sadly, in guild wars 2, I have observed that many guilds are being treated like a service or running like a service provider while players are just numbers to perform certain activities. This type of guild is pretty meaningless, dull, uninteresting and pointless.

Some people might think that this is just a game and doesn’t have to get that serious into it; attachment, sense of belonging, loyalty, pride, etc. However, I think that a game can only be truly fun and interesting if people get that serious into it.

Great points here and I think what I am hinting at is that if there was a way to maintain the current guild functionality of multiple guilds but also add a way to really commit to a singular guild what are the features old and new that you think are important for your basic guilds vs your, for lack of a better term, “home” guild.

Jon

Also wanted to say a good way to think about a feature and losing or changing it i s to think of it in these terms.

Is this a feature I MUST have, SHOULD have, COULD have, or DON’T have to have. It’s easy to want everything but difficult to recognize which category something actually falls into for the good of the game in general.

munkiman.3068:

JonPeters.5630:

1) What is currently a part of being in a guild that can’t be taken away, and why would it be bad to take it away?
2) Is there anything that is currently part of being in a guild that could be taken away and given to a more focused guild association? What could we do to mitigate some of the negativity of taking away current functionality? For example replace it on all guilds or enhance it for the one guild that it is tied to?
3) What kind of features are there that don’t even exist yet that would really only make sense with a more fixed association with a single guild?

A lot of good design discussions come from answering these questions anyway which I would summarize as what can/can’t we take away? What can/can’t we change? What can/can’t we add? I ask them in that order because it’s generally the order that they are easiest to implement in.

Jon

1) You really can’t remove anything. If you’re talking about limiting guilds to one, you’d be removing an extremely highly used feature (TTS, personal guild banks, specific guilds for specific modes, etc.). Everything about functionality, guilds are pretty limited in features already.
2) Changing things like MotD to show in guild chat would be a welcome feature as would showing last earned achievement in the roster. Also, not erasing chat history on character switch would be nice as well.
3) Guild loyalty is a pretty vapid thing. It pretty much comes down to how you run your guild, as even if it was limited to single guild system, people would end up guild hopping anyway.

Unfortunately that leaves us with what we can add to improve the need to be in a single guild. There are a lot of good ideas kind of centered around that already here in this thread.

What I mean is what functionality of being in a guild do you really only use on a more primary guild? If the answer is “none, I use it all on all of my guilds” that is a fine answer as I am only posing the question.

I see a variety of comments on feeling more attachment to a specific guild and a lot of talk of the # of guilds people are a part of and the fear that is causing a lack of attachment. This lack of attachment keeps players players from being compelled to belong to any of their guilds instead of being compelled to belong to all of them (which was the original intention of this design of guilds as more social groups rather than as exclusive cliques).

I’d love to see some discussion on how we could create greater attachment to a single guild without taking away the current value of membership in multiple guilds.

I think that involves some discussion of the following.

1) What is currently a part of being in a guild that can’t be taken away, and why would it be bad to take it away?
2) Is there anything that is currently part of being in a guild that could be taken away and given to a more focused guild association? What could we do to mitigate some of the negativity of taking away current functionality? For example replace it on all guilds or enhance it for the one guild that it is tied to?
3) What kind of features are there that don’t even exist yet that would really only make sense with a more fixed association with a single guild?

A lot of good design discussions come from answering these questions anyway which I would summarize as what can/can’t we take away? What can/can’t we change? What can/can’t we add? I ask them in that order because it’s generally the order that they are easiest to implement in.

Jon

felessan.9587:

JonPeters.5630:

Lazuli.2098:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

JonPeters.5630:

Thanks. I’ll pass this on.

So, this is how it works? Cherry pick ONE PERSON’s “list of things I don’t like”, while ignoring 40 pages of really good feedback and ideas? OK. I’m done with this thread.

From this response from JonPeters and his initial post it is obvious that Anet is not going to fix their new leveling process or trait system except the individual tasks themselves.

I’m discouraged since I used to like leveling new alts but can live with just playing my level 80s instead.

To be clear we are looking at the system as a whole but recognize that changing that will take longer than is satisfying and are looking for ways to improve the current system until a time at which we can make a better overall system from the ground up. Specific suggestions on what traits are poorly placed are helpful for #1, specific suggestions on #2 are also welcome but are going to be read but not responded too right now.

Thank you, that is nice to hear.

Please be more honest and straight-forward like this in the future.

To be fair, we love being this honest and straight forward normally though it just ends up sounding like a bunch of talk and not a lot of walk and that is because it takes time to be this active on the boards. After today I’ll be a bit less “forum active” again but that means I am working on making the game better.

Cross.6437:

JonPeters.5630:

Lazuli.2098:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

JonPeters.5630:

Thanks. I’ll pass this on.

So, this is how it works? Cherry pick ONE PERSON’s “list of things I don’t like”, while ignoring 40 pages of really good feedback and ideas? OK. I’m done with this thread.

From this response from JonPeters and his initial post it is obvious that Anet is not going to fix their new leveling process or trait system except the individual tasks themselves.

I’m discouraged since I used to like leveling new alts but can live with just playing my level 80s instead.

To be clear we are looking at the system as a whole but recognize that changing that will take longer than is satisfying and are looking for ways to improve the current system until a time at which we can make a better overall system from the ground up. Specific suggestions on what traits are poorly placed are helpful for #1, specific suggestions on #2 are also welcome but are going to be read but not responded too right now.

So, if I’m reading this right, are you saying, you’re looking for quick changes to make the system more bearable while not confirming or denying the possibility of a holistic revamp at some point in the indeterminate future?

Because knowing that would really settle some of my anxiety about the existence of this request for feedback.

Yup. and I would replace the word possibility with the word probability…

Lazuli.2098:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

JonPeters.5630:

Thanks. I’ll pass this on.

So, this is how it works? Cherry pick ONE PERSON’s “list of things I don’t like”, while ignoring 40 pages of really good feedback and ideas? OK. I’m done with this thread.

From this response from JonPeters and his initial post it is obvious that Anet is not going to fix their new leveling process or trait system except the individual tasks themselves.

I’m discouraged since I used to like leveling new alts but can live with just playing my level 80s instead.

To be clear we are looking at the system as a whole but recognize that changing that will take longer than is satisfying and are looking for ways to improve the current system until a time at which we can make a better overall system from the ground up. Specific suggestions on what traits are poorly placed are helpful for #1, specific suggestions on #2 are also welcome but are going to be read but not responded too right now.

For all those posting specific feedback. Thank you it is very helpful.

barefootstep.7026:

nethykins.7986:

I know this sounds like a no-brainer, but:
Don’t you think a well developed, clear and concise tutorial would have at least curbed some of the issues you have with new players “understanding” the game, instead of changing the core game pacing?

This. So much this.

Actually not. Generally speaking tutorials are hard to implement, boring for experienced players and overwhelming for new players. The best tutorial is a system that slowly puts the content out to players because it gives experienced players something to achieve while reducing complexity and option shock for new players.

Simmu.9405:

List of things I dont like
-Map completion
-Personal Story
-Overgrown grub
-WvW objectives

Thanks. I’ll pass this on.

Hey all,

I see a lot of people talking but with a thread this long the details are often muddied by a large number of similar but differing opinions. I want to address some of the more straightforward stuff.

Trait Tier level increase. We made this change because despite what the more hardcore players like myself want, most players need to be introduced to systems more slowly so that they don’t get lost. Every time we overwhelm new players that is an opportunity for them to stop playing the game. Every time that happens it becomes harder and harder for new players to develop into longtime players. Without more longtime players it becomes hard for you and your current guilds to meet and find people to replace those who inevitably will be pulled away by real life from time to time.

Unlocking traits. We talked about this a bunch in the horizontal progression CDI and it came to our attention that many players were not learning about traits, how they worked, or understanding the options. When we talked through unlocking traits via activities it led us in the direction we have currently. Unfortunately, unlocking traits in the open world generally causes one of the #1 things we never wanted in the game which is players in conflict. You want might the Balthazar trait but someone is about to complete the chain and leave you waiting. This is bad for the game, but I think right now only occurs this dramatically for a few of the traits.

If you all list out the most offensive ones here we would be happy to look into changes given that we have already done so in the past when we switch many of the poorly placed map complete adept tier traits among a few other changes. Here is a list of those changes:
• Profession Trait 13: This trait is now awarded upon preventing the Statue of Lyssa from being re-taken by the Risen, as well as defeating the corrupted high priestess of Lyssa.
• Precision Adept Trait 5: This trait has been moved from Bloodtide Coast map completion to the defeat of Sharky the Destroyer in Arca Lake of the Harathi Hinterlands.
• Precision Adept Trait 6: This trait has been moved from Fireheart Rise map completion, to the defeat of Captain Jayne in the Brigantine Isles of the Gendarran Fields.
• Toughness Adept Trait 6: This trait has been moved from Iron Marches map completion, to the defeat of the Giant Blood Ooze in the Challdar Gorges of the Bloodtide Coast.
• Vitality Adept Trait 5: This trait has been moved from Timberline Falls map completion, to the defeat of Gargantula, the spider broodmother in the Wynchona Woods of Harathi Hinterlands.
• Vitality Adept Trait 6: This trait has been moved from Mount Maelstrom Map Completion, to the defeat of the Krait Witch in Timberline Falls.
• Profession line Adept Trait 5: This trait has been moved from Sparkfly Fen map completion, to the defeat of the Champion Ice Wurm in Lornar’s Pass.
• Profession line Adept Trait 6: This trait has been moved from Frostgorge Sound map completion, to the defeat of Lord Ignius the Eternal of Lornar’s Pass.

At the end of the day this system has helped spread out the teaching of the system and the feeling of accomplishment through acquisition, but it has done it in ways that are sometimes counterproductive and still not nearly visible enough to impact as many players as it could.

Guild Wars 2 is a game that is going to continue to evolve and it will be because of your feedback and our efforts so do not get discouraged from posting feedback and be patient with change and I hope we will reward that patience.

TLDR;
We added this system as a direct result from the horizontal progression CDI. We are always reading your feedback, however, we don’t always have time to respond right away or action it quickly. We updated some trait unlocks in the past but we can do more. How can you help?
1) Give us a list of the most offensive trait unlock locations.
2) Keep giving feedback and be patient as this is a big ship and it takes time to steer it.

Pro Tip: Crit Damage (aka Ferocity) can now be a primary stat if that opens up some suggestions.

Jon

I was simply stating that the problem is we are not going to address the issues that the passive sustain is creating until we make the active use have a place in combat so even if it is not THE PROBLEM, it is the blocking issue.

Jon

Was just here for some discussion and thanks for that. My posting time is limited and does tend to come in bursts. I’m out of time for now, but I will be back again some day (like Frosty the snowman.) Also expect other designers to start jumping in sometime next week as well. Looks like this forum is off to a good start and thanks for all of the current constructive posts. Keep them coming and we can make this place a rare species. The elusive constructive balance forum. :P (crosses fingers)

Jon

DiogoSilva.7089:

Self Priority is very important because entire builds can and are usually made around own combo fields. Water Staff Elementalists, for example.

Time Based should be a second factor too, so that organized teams can coordenate their combo fields well. Meanwhile, as long as a Self Priority system, pugs shouldn’t screw you this way.

Another good thing about Self Priority, is that you have control over it. You can choose to delay your own combo fields if you wish to take advantage of your party’s fields.

All good points. Just want to make sure you guys do the exercise and think about the drawbacks of self priority. I just want you to do that to understand what we need to do with every decision we make because it will help you make more informed suggestions. Overall, I agree this seems like a big win, but in order to do something here we need to vet the entire decision and all edge cases, etc.

Jon

Imagi.4561:

mahariel.4981:

Good to know you’re actively taking steps to punish good players.

In what way is shifting a meta away from a mindless DPS race “punishing good players”?

I suggest not arguing, because it just creates the impression that you want to get involved in a mindless discussion. Rather, just post your own thoughts on why the current Berserker heavy meta is in fact not rewarding for good players. That would be more constructive for this forum and for solving the problem. That being said, I appreciate your response. We are here reading and I am happy to read any and all criticism if it is actually concise, constructive, and courteous.

Totally did not mean to start all 3 words with c, but oh well.

Jon

The biggest problem is IMO is actually the active heal. If we reduce the passive without doing something to make the active useful, we are just creating a different problem. Truly the active on this skill right now is in the following place. When I see someone press it I think “No No No don’t do that!” We are discussion some options here so if you want this to be constructive give suggestions towards improving the active. Reducing the passive is easy to do but we will not do it without solving the other problem. Also we will not greatly reduce it because it is giving Warriors a sense of sturdiness that we want their profession to have. Without strong heals, Warriors feel too much like everyone else. Setting them apart with strong heals has been good for changing their playstyle feel, but we agree it needs some tweaks.

Jon

I replied to a similar thread with this as well. We are taking some steps towards shifting the meta in the near future. I suspect some concrete info will come out about this next week.

Jon

We are trying to take steps to address some of the dominance of Berserker/DPS players. More info next week, I think.

Jon

Very difficult subject here. I agree you want some form of understandable rules of which field will trigger, however I’m not certain that your own fields is the right one. I’m also not sure it is wrong, but I want to have a bunch of alternative discussion before we dedicate programmer time (which is what it would take) to address this issue.

I think a good exercise would be to list some possible systems and list the pros and cons of each.

i.e.

List Method
There is a personalized list where you get to pick the order that you care about.
Pro: You get to decide
Con: It is a pretty advanced decision that I never expect 90% of players to understand so it doesn’t solve the problem for the majority of the playerbase.
Con: Whatever you setup outside of a specific combat situation isn’t necessarily going to be the right thing once you get in combat. If instead there is a logic rule instead of a chosen one you can adapt your tactics to follow that rule and get the situational results you desire.
Con: Probably the most work of any of the currently proposed solutions without solving the problem for every user.

I think there are a few more pros/cons to this system as well but I think you get the idea.

Other ideas floating out there

• Fixed Priority – Always the same priority for all players.
• Time Based – The most recent or least recent field is what triggers.
• Self Priority – Your own fields take priority (this would have to be a rule that stacks on top of another system.

Jon

There is some merit here. This skill had such a high risk/reward tradeoff that we knew it was possible that it had a chance to become too strong or not strong enough. I do think it is closer than you all think and I would be wary of increasing it. I think the key question is going to be where do you increase, which is a better discussion. Does it need a better baseline? Does it need a better reward heal? Longer buff duration? Faster cast time? Lower cooldown? Or maybe just gadgets need some good traits to empower it more?

Hopefully that helps direct this discussion a bit. Let’s keep this thread to this particular heal. If you have concerns about the effectiveness (in either direction) of other heals either start an individual thread for those that you are concerned about, or start a general thread but keep in mind that you will have to work hard to keep a general heal balance thread focused and productive.

Jon

Dahkeus.8243:

Josh Davis.6015:

Way to go, Jon…making me look bad!

Aww, don’t be such a grouch! Oh wait…

As for the new heals, I’m sure this will be good for some classes, but on my thief, I feel like I already have some of the best heals in the game. It’s going to be tough to add something that will appeal to me more than Withdraw or Hide in Shadows.

P.s. I’d rather see more Elites added than either heals or utilities.

Oh the new thief heal is going to mix some things up for sure!!!

Hey josh. I wrote my post before I saw yours.

Chaith.8256:

Ryan.9387:

Darnis.4056:

Hi Jon!
I’ll have to agree with 5G;
It’s hilarious to talk about Clutter when minionmancers/spiritrangers/Phantasms mesmers see play. PETTING ZOO META!

It would not be clutter if you could only see the endurance bar of one guy that you have targeted. Still I would much rather see Casting bars; or both.

Could just watch and internalize the evade bar.

" He dodged, he dodged again, no more endurance. SPIKE NOW"

The problem with this is the fact that Energy Sigils exist, endurance levels are very transient and no, it’s not reliable information to count dodges or see the endurance bar atm until that’s changed.

Yeah this sums up a lot of what I was saying. The more we learn the more we can improve this aspect of the game. It is something we are very aware of but it won’t be solved overnight.

I’m not sure how you interpreted my saying clutter is currently ok? There are clearly clutter issues and the point I was making was that this is a place where we would potentially introduce more clutter. Given all of the clutter plus all the added lack of fidelity we would get into knowing an enemies endurance the information gained bang for the technical, UI and design buck is absolutely not worth it. The same could be said about our current effect clutter, but that problem a) already exists b) is harder to solve c) is being worked on and d) doesn’t excuse us making other similar mistakes.

Jon

I’m on vacation. I think it is today but don’t know when. Be patient.

In a attempt to make this discussion a bit less hostile because I’m not sure what is so contentious here I’ll chime in a bit with some of the game design reasoning for what we show.

1) Having a bunch of hidden stuff is generally bad. Being able to keep track of hidden stuff doesn’t really improve the skill cap of the game in a good way. It just creates a bunch of confusion for most players and a bunch of not fun management for those that can deal with it. I would rather their skill was being used in more controllable areas of the game that place skillful and fun demands on those players.

2) There is a cutoff for what we can show both from a UI standpoint and from a technical standpoint and from a design standpoint.

• UI: We want a glance at an enemy to provide the most important information possible and not be full of clutter. You can see first hand (skill effects) how clutter can detract from a game and this was one area where I think we succeeded in keeping clutter down. If we show endurance, what else do we want to show and how slippery is that slope.
• Technically: We want to limit the amount of information that your computer needs to have in order to play the game. This means that players with lower bandwidth can still play the game without requiring the server to relay too much information to them. The argument that I have more bandwidth and want to turn it is not going to work here because we build an environment and establish the minimum requirements to enter that environment and then it is our job to make sure not to design things that take away from the equitable nature of the game.
• Design: Once you start considering these two elements design comes in and has to make judgement calls about what is important. We have to weigh all UI clutter and other screen clutter, not just health only vs health + endurance. We have to weigh all technical limitations not just the cost of sending endurance to each client but what things are necessary so that we can save up for showing things that absolutely are necessary. Now for endurance in particular we take into account things like how static something is. Health is pretty slow moving, relatively speaking to computer cycles and network packets sent. Endurance on the other hand is very transient. It can go from full to empty to full again in a few seconds based on differing factors that have already been mentioned in this thread. For example you might see someone at low endurance so you fire a spell knowing they can’t dodge, but before you finish casting they could weapon swap, refill half way and have a dodge available. This is going to cause players to make decisions based on it that are in actually lacking the full information that they need to really make that decision anyway.

Hopefully that gives you guys some insight into how stuff like this works. For endurance in particular these different factors led us to not report it and leave it off of the UI because we decided to make that trade off in order to make other design decisions. This stuff cascades very quickly and is a large part of the complexity that is the game design of a game as large as Guild Wars 2.

Jon

Virtues are not balanced for PvE vs PvP vs WvW they are balanced for combat which is tuned for generally 1-5 combatants. Whethe or not they are effective in a given encounter depends on that encounter. Sometimes they are more useful as passive abilities and sometimes they are more useful as actives. Finally, they are not balanced against other skills specifically, they are balanced as the class mechanic of the Guardian profession which is an effective profession in nearly all if not all content.

Leonsky.3156:

JonPeters.5630:

This is absolutely working as intended. The game wide rule (minus a bug or two that we are working on) is that once a skill has given you any of the benefits, canceling or interrupting that skill puts it on full cooldown. The alternative, in this case especially, is to be able to make yourself invulnerable for 2 seconds, cancel and then recast 4 seconds later which would be very broken.

Jon

Then wouldn’t it be more beneficial to players to just get the virtues at the start of Renewed Focus instead and ride out the invulnerability duration.

It might, however that is not the only consideration when creating a skill. In this particular instance the idea of refreshing virtues is powerful and we want you as a player to commit to this instead of casting and canceling right away. It is also flavorful in that you meditate for a few seconds to renew your focus not he other way around.

Jon

This is absolutely working as intended. The game wide rule (minus a bug or two that we are working on) is that once a skill has given you any of the benefits, canceling or interrupting that skill puts it on full cooldown. The alternative, in this case especially, is to be able to make yourself invulnerable for 2 seconds, cancel and then recast 4 seconds later which would be very broken.

Jon

First of all I just want to thank everyone for the passionate energy that was put into this thread. This was an experiment for us, but I will say that it was a very successful experiment and we hope to do it again. Not just sometime in the future but really for any large balance release when possible.

I want to remind you as well that there are a ton of reasons why we do or do not make adjustments based on feedback. A lot of it goes back to portions of the original post about what is good for the game, what we have time to change, and what we have time to test after it has been changed.

This was a very positive experience for us as developers and I hope that is what you all take away from it as well. There was a lot of great discussion in this thread as well as in the specific threads on profession, WvW, and PvP sub-forums. Even if it appeared to go unnoticed, it did not. I personally read every single post in all 11 of those threads, and I am quite certain that I am not the only developer working on balance who did so.

Many things that were discussed will see the light of day in some form in the future, even though the focus of these topics were about what is going to be seen for Dec 10th. Some big takeaways for the future. We want control builds and condition builds to have more of a place in high end PvE. We want all profession build diversity to continue to increase, which we will do through more trait and skill work. We want to continue to more clearly define the play styles of the professions. We want to make the combat in Guild Wars 2 better for every single person playing.

Thanks one more time for all of your great feedback here, for all of the thanks you gave us for trying this experiment, and for all of your patience as we work towards improving this game that we and you both already love.

I’m going to go ahead and close this post now. I will leave the profession sub forum ones open as I think they can still be a good positive place for discussion. Finally, I will leave you all with one more thing to keep you thinking about Dec 10th for a few more weeks.

What was posted here is everything we were able to talk about at the time, but there are a few other exciting things coming to that patch, but you will have to wait a little more to hear about those.

Jon

Please respond to some of the more serious, well reasoned arguments concerning this change. There have been a dozen solid arguments as to why this is a bad idea, which take into consideration how S/D is forced to Spec and gear if it wants to remain effective, and also how thief was designed as part of the lowest Base HP pool in the game, with no way to block, go immune or psuedo-immune, no access to protection or stability.

When you make a statement like this, it is important to re-read the original post in general about how to give feedback. I appreciate the passion here, but literally this breaks every rule that I laid down.

How to give good feedback and what to expect.

• Be constructive. If you think a change may cause issues, say why and give examples. Try not to argue with others – make your point and then accept that other people may have different points of view.
• Be concise. Our time is limited and we can’t read walls of text because it will prevent us from having the time to read as many posts as possible. Bullet points or numbered lists are very easy for us to read!
• Be specific. “I expect this change to accomplish A, but I think it will actually accomplish B”. The more specific you are, the better we are able to understand where you’re coming from, what type of content you play, and it helps us to understand the context for your feedback.
• Be objective. Keep in mind that just because you may not like something, that doesn’t make it bad. Others may have differing opinions. They may play a different type of content, or they may play a different profession, so be objective and keep in mind – we have to balance the game for EVERYONE, not just you.
• Be respectful. This goes for your fellow community members as well as for devs. Respect the ideas and opinions of others.
• Be mindful of scope. These are the changes we are trying to get in for the Dec. 10th balance patch. That doesn’t leave us with time to rework entire classes, or redesign entire weapon sets with this update. Keep scope/work/time/resources in mind when you make your suggestions.
• Be mindful of context. Power creep is something we’re trying to avoid. Sometimes a profession may not receive as many increases as other classes. A lot of times, this is because that class is already performing very well in the current state of the game. So keep the overall context/state of the game in mind when giving feedback.

Volrath.1473:

JonPeters.5630:

Maugetarr.6823:

JonPeters.5630:

Sondergaard.8469:

JonPeters.5630:

Infiltrator’s Return
The thing I have heard the second most discussion regarding. This is a big change to this skill, but we beleive it is a necessary one. In many cases this is not going to matter. There are only 2 situations where this is a truly impactful change.
1) It stops you from using this skill while stunned, which puts more burden on Sword/Dagger thieves saving their stun breakers. This is the kind of gameplay we want to encourage because it puts more risk in using a rewarding skill like Infiltrator’s Strike.
2) Mostly in PvP, this skill can no longer be used by S/D thieves to teleport stomp someone. This is actually the more impactful moment as it occurs more often, but I think it puts the burden on these players to run a second weapon set that can help them in these situations (OH pistol for instance.)

No, no, no, and no. The reason I absolutely am 100% against this change is the entire thief class is built around the idea that abilities are instant with no cast time with no cooldown (on weapon skills), because they are the only class with a resource pool for their abilities. Make it cost more initiative or give a debuff that slows down initiative gain. Reduce the damage, change the range, etc etc… I don’t care about that. What bothers me is the adding a cast time to a class who’s core mechanic is all about no cooldowns and being able to quickly maneuver around.

I’m not sure what you mean by instant, but this is currently the only instant weapon ability. We are not adding a HUGE cast time to this skill. This skill is going to have a 360 millisecond cast time. ~1/3 of a second.

Jon

With no access to stability (other than a 90 second elite) the ability to avoid the following hit if you had a good enough reaction time seemed like part of the design of the sword. It currently doesn’t break stuns anymore, just moves you (possibly) out of range. Would you be adversed to the idea of making the return in the 600-450 range instead of putting a cast time on it so that the immediate next (melee) hit can avoided while it does not completely remove pressure from you?

You can still avoid follow ups with this. 360 milliseconds is faster than almost any attack and certainly faster than almost all dangerous ones. The only loss here is using this while stunned and using it to teleport finish an opponent.

yep! so in sum you are basically removing the only usefulness of this ability and making it a gap closer, no one will hit that button again until it switches back to Infiltrator’s Strike.

Why not remove the shadow return all together? it would be just another Shadow Shot with a insignificant imob instead of the blind… It would be alot more usefull then the new (worse) shadow return.

It is currently for 3 initiative:

• gap closer
• 1s immob

for 2 more initiative:

• escape when not stunned
• remove 1 condition

With the new base regen that means you can gap close and immobilize and remove a condition every 5 seconds. Even if you spread that initiative over 4 skill slots that skill can be used every 20 seconds.

Jon

Imagi.4561:

BobbyT.7192:

The only thing black powder can’t provide is protection against carpet bombing down targets.
Keeping in mind we can still teleport stomp, with shadow step, but we are still giving up a utility/actual stun break to do.

From what I understand, using IS requires using a utility anyways, or burning your Steal.

Yeah you burn your steal (35-20s cooldown) with it, instead of burning shadowstep (50-40s cooldown.)

Jon

Rennoko.5731:

JonPeters.5630:

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.

So just lock that skill out from working with epidemic? Like a stun or a daze.

How about 2 necros using this…

Rhyse.8179:

JonPeters.5630:

Great post, and yes we considered that, but its nice to get some good back and forth. The other drawback is that its PBAoE not ranged… Food for thought.

Wow that was fast. What timing. I’m impressed.

Since you’re here, I’ll leave a semi-relevant brain fart. Siphoning is lackluster and really hard to balance because of it’s simultaneous heal and damage. What about creating a Necro-unique condition that drains health into life force? It would fit into the sustain paradigm of the Blood tree, and create some DS/condition synergy as well. Obviously, not a suggestion for the coming patch, but it popped into my head about 3 minutes ago while reading the last couple pages of this thread and thought I’d throw it out and see if it catches.

We talked about a condition like that, but it blows out because we would want to balance it when you only had 1 target to apply it to, but if you epidemic it it now is hitting 6 targets and is wildly OP.