Guild Wars 2

Just wanted to jump in and say that I’m reading this thread and taking it all in. Keep it civil (don’t get yourselves banned! ) and let those ideas flow.

I know some of you are upset with the change, but really, this is something we were planning for a while. WE MAY NOT LOCK DOWN utilities down the road, so that you can still have some adjustment when out of combat, but at the same time, we do not think weapon swapping mid-match is good for the overall health of the game. Just wanted to remind you we are here, and I am watching the forums, and your ideas are being heard.

Keep it constructive (and really, overall you guys are doing a FANTASTIC JOB OF THIS!), and carry on!

Class balance philosophies
We normally try to employ metered and controlled balance changes with each pass, rather than huge reductions or improvements to classes. We want to get all classes on the same playing field, and we want to avoid “whack-a-mole” style balance. HUGH increases and HUGE decreases lead to meta instability, and thusly, we try to make multiple small tweaks rather than putting in massive changes that we have to later correct.

When designing and balancing the classes, we try to make sure that class roles and identities stay intact. So, in doing so, we make sure that there are rules and boundaries outlining the capabilities and weaknesses of each class.

• Warrior
  • We want the Warrior to be capable of good melee damage in a sturdy body. They can still do some decent damage at range, but they aren’t as good at it as the Ranger (with their pet). They have a hard time taking enemy boons down, and instead, have to just go through them with raw force. They may have a hard time with enemy conditions, and may need to ask for ally help in order to keep themselves free of hampering conditions.
• Guardian
  • The Guardian is a heavy armor class who relies on boons to make up for their low levels of innate health. They focus on area control and punishing enemies for the position on the battlefield. We want them to feel very powerful when their boons are active, but if those boons are removed, they will start to feel pressure. They can remove conditions more easily than the Warrior, but share the Warrior’s need to be in melee range to dole out maximum damage.
• Ranger
  • The ranger class combines its own innate abilities with the skills of their pets. We’ve balanced the class around the idea that you always have a pet with you to aid in any fight. The fact that the ranger can have multiple pets allows them to combine their pets in ways that most impact the current fight. We want the Ranger to have some of the evasion enjoyed by the Thief, as well as the mobility other classes employ. The class is able to deal physical or condition damage, and it can do this in melee or at range.
• Engineer
  • The Engineer is a highly versatile class. While it doesn’t have the long range capabilities of the Ranger, or the melee capabilities of the Warrior or Guardian, they are comfortable at medium ranges in most fights. They have a lot of control, and use their boons to keep themselves (and allies) alive in a fight. They can use different kits based on the situation, but this extreme versatility comes at a cost in damage on their main hand weapons.
• Thief
  • Thieves are the masters of mobility, stealth and high single target damage. They can be very fragile if you counter their stealth with area of effects or large stacks of conditions, but they trade this fragility in order to have some of the highest burst damage in the game. They are able to help allies through traps, venoms and the mobility to flank most encounters.
• Mesmer
  • Mesmers rely on illusions in order to accomplish their goals. They need illusions to accomplish some of their highest damage and control, and without the illusions, they become fairly fragile. They can deal with enemy boons better than most classes, but enemy conditions can often be a problem. They share some of the stealth and mobility that the Thief enjoys, but suffer from a low health pool if you get past all their tricks.
• Ele
  • We see the elementalist as the king of versatility. The skill ceiling for the Ele is exceptional, as the ability to leverage all four attunements at the right time is crucial for understanding the elemetnalist. The Ele boasts some of the best team support and control abilities in the game, as well as some great area of effect damage.
• Necro
  • The necro boasts the highest natural health of all the caster classes, and also has death shroud to extend that life total even higher. While they don’t have some of the escape or damage reduction capabilities that other classes boast, they do have a lot of ways to win attrition fights. They have access to poison on multiple weapons, they are able to combine condition damage with raw damage, and they have multiple disables to interrupt enemy skills. Necomancers also have multiple movement disabling abilities, while allows them to chase down enemies who are low on health.

Going forward

• Tank vs spike vs physical DPS vs condie DPS. We want to keep making balance changes that allow all classes to have various builds they can use. We don’t want tanks dominating the game, and we don’t want spike builds dominating. It’s healthy to have multiple types of builds in the meta, so we’ll be improving the balance to facilitate a healthy meta.
• AOE balance. We feel that in PvP some AOE builds are too strong for the opportunity cost, and we’ll be bringing those in line in the next few patches.

Here are some additional notes, describing some of the balance changes and why we made these changes in various aspects of the game.

General balance

• Engineer Kit Sigils. The Engineer now benefits from the sigils on their weapons when they swap to a kit. So, this means that you will have the ability to get sigil procs on your Flame Thrower, or Grenade Kit, etc. This means we had to tone down some of the kits accordingly, the biggest of which was the Grenade kit.
• Engineer Grenade Kit Changes. We didn’t want to totally take away the power of this kit, but when it is able to proc sigil abilities, it becomes very strong due to its powerful AOE nature. So we’ve toned down this kit a little due to the sigils now working on engineer kits.
• Mesmer Phantasm changes. We decreased the delay for the initial attacks on Mesmer phantasms. This will make them more responsible when they are first summoned.
• Mesmer Portal. The Mesmer utility skill Portal now has a maximum # of times it can be used before it disappears. This means that 1 Mesmer can no longer send an infinite # of allies through a portal. The current # is 20, which may come down more later. We still want the Mesmers to feel cool for having such a powerful ability, but we also want to put a limit on the # of players a defending team needs to worry about coming out of 1 Mesmer Portal, especially in WvW.
• Underwater fields and interacts. We’ve gone through and improved our underwater combat experience. Many professions had a distinct lack of fields and/or interacts, but now have them so as to improve the player interactions with one-another for underwater combat. Most professions have the same fields as they do above water, but there are some differences as well, such as the Elementalist who now has a smoke field on their Murky Water skill.

PvP specific stuff

• Downed HP. This went from 75% of the old amount up to 85%. This has been something we’ve listened to players about, and many of them felt that the old # was slightly too low. The new # should mean that stomping is still VERY important, but if you need to safely DPS someone from range, that’s an option as well.
• Locking skill bars in free and paid tournaments. This is a change that will prevent people from cheesing the ability to swap skills and weapons in-between fights in a competitive game (either a free tourney or paid tourney game). This will mean that once the game starts (the countdown is done), you will be locked into your weapon sets, utility skills, elite, etc.

Sounds cool. I’ll see if some of the other devs can show up with me and we’ll try to jump in there too!

It will depend when the build gets distributed, have to see how late it is here in the office.

FluffyDoe.7539:

I have a question here; How come Mr.Sharp was so eased on saying “we need to do a better job communicating with the players”, but he has yet to agree with the fact that having ranking/matchmaking at launch would have made the ‘state of the game’ much better than where it’s at now?

I spoke of this on Friday, but let me reiterate.

We could have had rankings, but without tournaments or a way to get teams playing against each other in an organized fashion, they would have ranked…..nothing. Just the pub play matches. That’s why we wanted to set down a framework first, then add in the custom arenas (for practicing/developing organized matches) and rankings. Having rankings without tourneys or a matchmaking system literally wouldn’t do anything…you would just have rankings based on random pub matches where teams would be anything from 1-8 players. Seems bad to me. That’s why we made that decision.

Does that make sense?

J

felivear.1536:

Just a quick question if you are still monitoring this thread. Do you agree that the scoring system in hot-joins is not conducive to team play and actually causes it to be the main reason you see so many theives and mesmers? Because they are very well suited for that type of play (i.e. Kill, quick hopping between points, cap and leave).

Also, are you completely set in stone on the no solo queue option? Many people including myself do not have the time or have an odd schedule to form teams and play at set times, we want to be able to queue in tournaments with people who also want the same thing. That would by far be the most popular type of SPVP played if that was added.

Edit: are there any plans to make hot-join keep parties of at least 2 people together? With Christmas rush I plan on seeing a few new friends joining and I would like to stay on the same team in hot-join.

• Scoring: As I said in the interview, we want to make changes to this system once other key features are finished!

• Solo queue: We want to try the system I spoke of, where individuals can join and be grouped together, and then get an aggregate rating. It’s a complicated formula, but once we’re closer to releasing it, we’ll do blog posts to explain how it will work. So we will be addressing the issue you raise.

• For hot joins, we’re going to see what happens after custom arenas go live. We think hot joins will change how people view casual games.

• To the whole newb/noob thing: I did NOT mean this to be derisive. I was simply using it as a term to describe players who are new at the game. I did not mean to deride, explicitly or implicitly, player skill. Sorry that it came off that way to some of you. I simply feel very passionately about making an E sport WHILE ALSO PROTECTING our new players with the fury of a 1,000 burning suns. If we don’t protect and teach our new players, then they can’t get into the game and learn. If we don’t bring in new players, there will be no interest in the higher levels of competitions. I think that in order to have a successful E-sport, you need players who want to watch high level players playing. You also need to bring in new blood into your game to keep the game growing (think of any sport in the world….you have high school -> college – > professional).

So I didn’t mean that to be demeaning at all, sorry if it came off that way. I tried to explain what I meant by newb/casual (new players, or those who just play casually), sorry I didn’t do a better job – I’ll work on that one.

J

Hey all.

Just wanted to thank Grouch/Frozire and all the players for being involved in this. Sorry if some of the questions felt “soft” to you guys, but we’ll try to do more of these in the future. I thought the players asked great questions and voiced legitimate concerns. I know there are many other concerns out there, and we’ll just have to get to them in due time.

Thanks for listening, and thanks to everyone involved for getting it set up!

J

We’re here, we’re listening. I’m sure a lot of this will come up in tomorrow’s talk. We’ll have to keep it quick though, as I think the talk is slated for an hour.

Thanks for the feedback all. It sounds like it’s happening with different criteria for some of you, so we’ll keep looking at it internally and listening to your feedback.

Sorry it’s frustrated some of you, we’ll keep looking at it.

Phira has it right. Once we have the key features we need for the core of the game, we’ll look at doing other game types.

felivear.1536:

I definitely appreciate this level of openness. It is refreshing. I still think that some of the fixes take an odd amount of time (which gave legs to the whole 2 people argument). Again, these kinds of posts are a delight. It’s nice to get a feel for what’s going on. We may not agree with some of the directions but at least there is transparency. I, for one, welcome that. I do however realize that you all are incredibly busy and posting is not always possible. I wish there were just someone actively on the SPvP boards whose entire job was to post here. He could speak for you guys more often and quell the fear of the masses and update us on things going on.

That’s what I’m trying to do. We can’t spend our ENTIRE days on the forums, but we try to make an effort to take a break from development as much as we can to address your questions/ideas/comments/concerns.

And the reality is, you guys go for stretches of time without seeing anything new from us (patch to patch)….so even though we’re making a ton of progress, we can’t show it until it’s ready. Which means there can be long gaps of communication if we’re not careful. But things are still happening, features are being added. We just can’t talk about them until they’re ready.

We’re looking at this now, the more detailed your reports, the faster we can fix it.

I’ve pointed the programmers looking into it at this thread, so thanks for all the details you can provide!

Syeria.4812:

Thank you so much for this post. I’ve seen that “two developers” comment taken so far as to have people claim that only two people in total work on all of PvP.

It’s ok, given what was said, and the way human communication works, it’s understandable why players were saying that. I just wanted to clear it up a little.

A while ago Jon Peters said something that has been taken out of context. He said that only two people were working on the things he was working on (which was true – but he meant it differently than how it was received) and people have taken that to mean that we only have 2 people working on balance, or PvP, or both (at this point it’s morphed into different things in different threads).

Based on what was said, I understand how it could have been construed, so I wanted to be as transparent as I can be, so that you know what’s happening inside the studio.

PvP
On the PvP team we have programmers, designers, QA and an environment artist (Darrin Claypool – he’s the guy who just finished making Temple of the Silent Storm). Many PvP features need all members of the team, but some are programmer intensive, or art intensive. For example, while we’re still working on custom arenas and other core features (which involve server programmers, UI programmers and gameplay programmers), designers and artists were able to build the recently released “Temple of the Silent Storm”. Because the map required no code, we simply worked with art, design and sound in order to support this map’s needs. Work on custom arenas requires zero environment art, so those two features (custom arenas and a new map) don’t impact one another greatly, as far as work flow goes.

WvW
For WvW, we have a similar setup. We have designers, QA, programmers and environment artists. WvW is a massive piece of the GW2 pie, and the WvW team is able to focus on WvW needs. While many of us in the company may give feedback/ideas/suggestions to the WvW team, they are the ones who actually implement and carry out those changes.

Balance
When it comes to balance, we have multiple people who give feedback/guidance/suggestions, even though a smaller subset actually implement those changes (which is what Jon was saying in his post). After we have balance meetings, a few of the designers implement the changes. If it’s a WvW change, the WvW designer will implement that change. If it’s a PvP change, one of the PvP designers implements it (again, this is what Jon was saying). If it’s strictly a balance change, then we have a designer do it that has the bandwidth (sometimes it’s me, sometime it’s even Izzy, but usually it’s Karl or Peters). Currently, when we have balance meetings, the following people are present in various combinations, depending on the topic:

1. Jon Peters – game designer
2. Karl McLain – game designer
3. Representatives from the WvW team, including QA and design
4. Representatives from the dungeon teams, including another game designer
5. Representatives from the live response team, including QA guys who play ALL aspects of the game A LOT
6. Other representatives from the PvP team, like Tyler Bearce (designer) and Roy Cronacher (QA)
7. Izzy – lead designer
8. Myself – game designer

When we’re in those meetings, we’ll talk about hot topics, and issues that are currently a big issue for a certain piece of content. We also listen to high level players, we read the forums (sometimes we even take the best-written posts, print out 10 copies, and bring them to a balance meeting), and we play the game to get a feel for ourselves. Just because you don’t see a change that YOU want, keep in mind that someone else may disagree. Just because we don’t do every single change YOU want, doesn’t mean we don’t care about you or the game. We just try to make the best changes for the greatest number of players.

I just wanted to clear this up to let you guys know a little bit more of what happens here inside the studio so you understand more of what Peters was trying to say. He’s just as busy as we all are, and with a lot of us gone for Thanksgiving (he’s not here right now), I just took it upon myself to try to clear this up a little.

Cheers

Hey all.

We’re going to bring down the res timers from 20 seconds to 15 seconds. A lot of people have posted about how they don’t like the new system, and a lot of people have posted about how they DO like the new system. So, let’s set the record straight:

We want the best system for the game, the best system for the community, and the best system for growing the game’s Esport’s potential.

So we’ll keep an eye on this. If the entire community feels that wave spawn timers are better for the game, then we’ll go back to that. However, right now, it seems that some people like it, feel that it “rewards” each kill (before, someone could die and hit the res wave timer such that they would literally be back in a few seconds) and doesn’t require players to have to memorize the clock wave respawn timings in order to be an effective killer. We’re watching the threads on this issue, so keep posting your thoughts.

TL:DR – We’re listening to you and we’ll iterate on it until we find the best solution for the game overall.

Dueling is not currently in development. Some of the other things mentioned, however, are.

felivear.1536:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Ya….when we designed this, we were thinking that it’s very important to keep “tabs” on the opposing team when you go for an NPC kill on Forest. You want to have 1 “killer” on your team who finishes the NPC while the other people on your team stun/knockback/daze/blind/immobilize/chill/knockdown opponents to keep them from getting the last hit and winning the buff.

I think the idea in theory is great, the only problem is that a thief can go undetected and then stealth/steal/heartseaker in without any knowledge of his whereabouts. So, all of those strategies, imo, are moot for it.

Keep in mind that Thieves can’t just stealth through a trap, or a necro well, or a necro mark, or a Guardian bubble, etc. Thieves should be all about stealth and landing the perfect blow at the perfect time, but I think organized teams have found a LOT of ways to deal with them.

In pub games this is obviously harder to do than in an organized game, so I totally agree with you there.

Wow, what an amazing thread. Thanks for starting it tOss!

It’s a great idea and one that represents a very different point of view. You guys can do a lot to push the current game, and I applaud you for making an effort.

But at the same time, some of this still falls on myself and other devs. We will continue to listen to your posts about balance. We will continue to push features forward that help you to enjoy the game (like custom arenas, matched tourneys, QP rankings, leaderboards, a way to spectate the game, etc).

I know it sucks that everything isn’t done right away, but just know that we’re still working on the features we’ve mentioned before.

Until you get custom arenas, you can definitely use the current PvP browser to set up 5on5 matches and settle disputes via 1on1 duels. We don’t want to tell you how to enjoy the game, and we commend you for using the current systems as you wait for future features to come online.

Ya….when we designed this, we were thinking that it’s very important to keep “tabs” on the opposing team when you go for an NPC kill on Forest. You want to have 1 “killer” on your team who finishes the NPC while the other people on your team stun/knockback/daze/blind/immobilize/chill/knockdown opponents to keep them from getting the last hit and winning the buff.

Great thread guys. Some positive posts in here. It’s always great to see you guys passionately voicing how the game needs to improve.

I think that dueling is a great feature, but I don’t think it’s as important (right now) as ratings or a leaderboard is. With custom arenas, people will be able to duel all day long (1v1, or 2v2, or 3v3), so it seems to me that we need to focus more on rankings and leaderboards.

To that same end, I think that other game modes are something we’ll look at down the road, but for now, I think other features are just more important (like rankings, custom arenas where people can practice in private, leaderboards, spectator mode).

Thanks all! We’re still watching this thread and taking your feedback into account. Darrin Claypool, the map artist, checks it daily. So just wanted you to know that he’s in here, watching, even if he doesn’t post!

Thank you sooooo much for all the great ideas/feedback/suggestions!!!

We’ll be watching this thread over the weekend to see how everyone feels about the map!!!

aydenunited.5729:

leman.7682:

aydenunited.5729:

5v5 hotjoin alone makes it worthwhile. Thanks, Anet!

It doesn’t just for the simple fact 8v8’s are listed first. Also baddies will always prefer to play 8v8 so they can hide their lack of skill and brains behind numbers of the group.

Go troll somewhere else.

So don’t play 8v8? I know I won’t be. I don’t understand your point in calling what I said trolling. The “baddies” get to keep their 8v8, and people like me get 5v5. It’s win/win.

That’s what we were thinking. Lets people have the best of both worlds. Glad you like the 5v5’s!

We can watch the servers to see which players use more. If 5on5 is seeing more play, we can change the order and put them at the top of the lists. We’ll just keep an eye on it and see what the players gravitate towards.

Tyler just updated the QP thread for us again. We’re going to try to update it every morning we’re here in the office (during the week) to give you guys quicker feedback on QP changes for players.

Sorry, I totally misread that. As many of you have stated, I thought you were asking for the ability to PUG in free paid tourneys, which is what I responded to. Sorry for that. I was coming from one meeting, going to another, and tried to quickly get on the forums to at least read/post something. I apologize.

It’s not that we don’t care, is that’s we’re really busy adding things to the game. Custom Arenas are the current focus for my team. A fully 100% random tourney system (where all teams are random and no teams are an organized 5-person team) is something we can look at down the road, but I think there are many other things that are more important to get finished first (which I spoke about in my blog).

Again, sorry for the misunderstanding, and I’m heading out to another meeting.

More cheers,

J

felivear.1536:

Pray.9751:

In my humble opinion the best quick-fix for the whole problem would be to introduce single/duo queue free tournaments (or just single games) with a strong matchmaking mechanic.

Best regards Pray

Great post and this part is a great idea. Simple, quick solution while they iron out a good ladder system. This way, queues will still be somewhat quick since many many people queue solo or with 1 other friend, and you won’t have to get throat punched in Khylo anymore!

You can already do this.

Cheers.

Hey everyone!

These are the leaderboards for paid tournament qualifying points. Here’s how it works:

1. Qualifying points are gained only in paid tournaments, and are awarded based on your placement in a paid tournament.
2. We’ll be updating these leader boards daily (during the week) to show the progression of the points.
3. We’ll be displaying roughly the top 100 players for both the US and EU servers. We’ll finish off the top 100 by showing all players who tie for the final position.
4. This method of displaying the QP’s is temporary until the full system comes online.

Enjoy,

PvP Team

Ya, it was a visual culling bug. It will be fixed next patch.

Cheers.

So, quickly, on the design philosophy at play here (you can feel free to disagree, but this is what I feel):

We want the Thief to be the class that most “slips through your fingers”. Other classes like the Ele and Mes have some of it too (and rightly so), but if anyone is escaping a fight, that should be a slippery Thief.

The Necro, on the other hand, should be the dude you CANNOT get away from. It’s an attrition based class, so the idea is that if you lock horns w/ a necro, know what you’re getting into: you’re fighting a class that’s built for attrition. It can dot you, dps you, rip your boons, and severely hinder your movement. AND it also has the ability to soak up a lot of damage. So the longer the fight goes, the stronger the Necro should get. That’s the idea behind Death Shroud, but little escape ability.

So we don’t want that attrition class to also have great ways to escape. This used to be the case, and we felt the Necro was just too strong if it was great at attrition as well as movement/escape. We wanted the Necro to be more about attrition, and for other classes (Thief, Ele, Mes) to be more about escaping and mobility.

Hope that makes sense.

Fellknight.4820:

Thanks for all the positive comment’s and feedback guys. This is probably some of the most mature and constructive responses I’ve seen on a post yet.

Was just about to say the same. Great posts, great suggestions.

denyitbattle.2609:

The thing I’ve been the most encouraged about from the devs is their apparent ability to let all the rage and stupidity go in one ear and out the other.

Being confident that you know your product better than idiots yelling baseless claims is something that seems to be in short supply in this industry.

I am a little nervous about the up coming November patch as ANet has stated that they will be touching about all of the classes and I think things are pretty close to good as it is (plus we still need a lot better visability of the high-end with spectator mode and skrims for the meta to shake out). But I’m sure I’ll be impressed again ( I mean they really nailed the whole healing eles being a bit too much to handle thing) and my faith will never be higher =).

PvP designers, in my experience, have very tough skin. A lot of us grew up in competitive environments (for me that’s everything from international Starcraft and Guild Wars, to live fighter game tournaments, to high school and intramural sports, to high school and college debate), so we’re used to having to calmly deal with conflict.

When in conflict, I’ve found that the most important thing to do is to breathe. If you keep your eyes open, your head clear, and stay in your breath, the answer to any problem will eventually come to you. You just have to keep breathing, one breath at at time (this is especially important when you’re doing Brazillian Jiu Jitsu!)

And, when I said we’d be hitting all classes, I meant that we look at ways to give all classes more enjoyment from their builds and balance, not just the current build of the week. We try to spread the love around as much as we can.

We’ll be looking at the prices for the paids. We’re also looking at how easy it is to get tickets and the rate at which players acquire them. We want to find a good balance and we’re listening to the playerbase.

Thanks for all the great suggestions in this thread.

Positive/constructive threads like this are GREAT! Keep it up!

Paranoid.9542:

Doomdesire.9365:

Thieves who are against this nerf need to speak up. If you are against this, make your own thread, so anet can hear us out

Awful idea, wow. I’m all for getting yourself heard, but everyone making your own thread is a freaking stupid idea.

Ya, no need for multiple threads – it’ll just clutter the forum. One thread is sufficient.

We’ll be touching most of the classes, if not all.

Capricorn is more geared for pub fun, and it’s not in our tournament rotation for a reason.

And yes we’ll be doing another PvP blog post to coincide with the next patch.

NP. Death Shroud is very good, and gives the Necro a lot of power, but it obviously can’t answer all issues the Necro has. If it did, then by definition, it’d be OP.

Just wanted you guys to know we’re looking at this specifically right now. We will probably bring down the raw spike DPS for some builds, but we’ll be careful to increase other areas to compensate.

People are upset because they’re passionate about the game (which is awesome) and they want it to live up to its full potential.

I don’t take negative posts personally. Rather, I try to put myself in their shoes, listen to what they’re really trying to say (once you get past the rage), and try to find a way to fix the cited issues, if I think they’re good for the game.

Knote.2904:

That was all we needed Jon, just so you know.

Just something to show us we’re not invisible. Lol.

Na, it’s ok. From your point of view, it makes sense: you feel like no one is responding to threads, which must mean we’re not listening or that we do not care.

But as I’ve said before, we read the forums, takes, run to meetings, etc. We’re here, and we’re listening.

I understand your position and it makes sense. I just wanna let you know that we’re here and we are working hard. We just have our heads down as we fix bugs and put new things into the game.

Just wanted to jump in and say: posts that are well-written and constructive are a HUGE help. I realize that sometimes people get upset, and I honestly don’t mind strong language if someone is voicing an opinion different from my own. As long as both sides are passionate (which may lead to some strong points of view) but still OPEN to opposition, threads are a great way to come up with solutions.

And yes, I know that the reason you guys are SO strong in your posts is because you love the game and want it to improve. So while I may disagree with someone’s point of view, I can often still think, “Hey, this person is really enjoying the game, and they want it to be even better than it is. Due to this, they’ve gone to the forums to try and reach out to others in an effort to fix an issue they hold dear to their heart.”

And, to quote a brilliant thinker, Chris Rock, “Ain’t nothing wrong with that!”

Please don’t boycott the forums. Even if we don’t have time to respond to each of your threads, we still use these threads to get tons of information.

As I’ve said in other posts on the forums, we are watching, even if we can’t post in every thread. We are working to fix bugs for ALL classes, Necromancer included. I’m sorry we can’t do everything as fast as you’d like, but GW2 is a massive game!

We may not agree with every post from every poster (and, as you know, you often disagree among yourselves) but these forums are still a great tool! We’re here, we’re listening, we’re just also super busy trying to make this the best game possible.

leman.7682:

Well, it is nice for what it is.

There is in my view a major design flaw with the conquest mode and the mechanics though. Not to mention the awful class balance (which is mostly a derivative of ever-present bugs in pretty much everything) and even worse meta (thanks to guys embracing the bunker and exploits).

I’m still enjoying it, but cannot play it for too long. Gets too boring.

Chap, any update on when you guys with Jon are planning to push another batch of bug fixes and profession improvements?

Cheers.

We’re always looking at balance, so we’ll be putting out another balance patch w/ the next major update!

Thanks for keeping things civil in here. It’s obvious that a lot of you have very different ideas on this subject, so thank you for communicating your disagreements in a productive manner.

Just wanted you guys to know that we are here, and we are watching. We take your feedback to heart, even if we aren’t responding to every single post.

I have a balance meeting in 20 minutes, so I’m gonna bring up some things I’ve seen on the forums today, so thanks for being constructive with your feedback!

-Chap

Thanks for the positive feedback guys! We’re still working to improve a lot of things, but it’s nice to know you guys are enjoying things!

We’ll keep chugging along on all the features we want to add!

-Chap

Sezu.8564:

Games used to be about having fun, at least that’s why I play them. PvP is just a more competitive twist on the game.

Also people who say there is “no point” to do something are absolutely right. There’s really no point to anything at all. Do what you like to do, it’s your existence.

20 minutes later, I’m still chuckling. The existentialist in me salutes you good sir.

First. Kittens kittens kittens.

Just wanted to jump in and say that yes, it was meant as a joke. I’m a lifelong PvP’er (I go all the way back to Quake 1 LAN tournaments), so sometimes I like to remind people that yes, I’m a gamer too. Sometimes I talk like a gamer….because….well, I am one.

Hence the PS. Wasn’t meant to be offensive.

morrolan.9608:

This is why balance changes should be iterative not big bang.

Plus the lack of communication as to what anets thoughts are on class balance and why they buff or nerf various things eg. the 7/10 patch is lacking and should be improved. While its obvious why some changes are made eg. changes to thief other changes are not obvious eg. the changes to elementalist.

Agreed. We’re trying to work on that with the patch note process. We’ll try to do a better job of explaining things as we do them.

Keeping an eye on something means we’re watching it, seeing how it plays out, and making sure we don’t make knee jerk reactions (nerfs or buffs).

Having said that, Dagger/dagger Ele needs help. Some defensive Ele specs are too good. Some of their sustained damage is too low, while some spike builds are pretty rough. Keeping an eye on it means we’re not going to nerf/buff it without thinking very carefully about it – that’s what my first update was about.

We’re also keeping an eye on Thieves, both in regards to damage output and sustained defense through stealth.

We’re also looking at the balance for all the downed skills for all classes. Some are riding the high end of the power curve, while others feel weaker in comparison.

Anddddddddddd we’re also looking at buffs/nerfs to all classes as apropos – I’m just not listing every single one. For many classes this means that we want them to have different builds that are equally viable, and making sure that no single build outshines all others in efficacy. Also, this means that JUST BECAUSE I DIDN’T SPECIFICALLY CALL OUT YOUR CLASS in a post, that DOES NOT MEAN WE’RE NOT LOOKING AT IT.

Communication in-and-of-itself is a complicated thing, and the inherent complication of human communication is further exacerbated when it’s done via a web-based medium. We’re trying to do our best to communicate with you, so please understand that just because I say “keeping an eye on something”, that doesn’t mean we are nerfing X from orbit with a Nerf nuke – as it’s the only way to be sure. It simply means we’re keeping an eye on it.

/salute