Guild Wars 2

Oh ya, wanted to add: yes, we’re watching Mesmers, bunker Guardians and tank heal Ele’s. Forgot to add that.

Sup. I wanted to give you guys some quick updates and talk about a few things:

• Blog post. So I thought I’d start with this and explain some stuff real fast. When any of us writes a blog post, it’s a group effort. My name may go up on the newest post, but a lot of other designers and members of other teams gave feedback and ideas on it. Once we go back and forth and everyone (marketing, community, design, etc.) sign off on it, we still have to get it edited. This takes a while, and usually means I sit with an editor going line by line making sure that my intention is preserved through the editing process. If any of you have written dissertations or college papers for a strict professor, you know that the editing process can take a while to get correct. That’s just how it is in the real world. I don’t just slap stuff down in notepad and then get it uploaded to the GW2 or Anet web pages.
  
  Then, another thing that takes a while is localization. I’ve been reading the threads lately, and I’ve seen some people say, “Screw it, just release it in English as soon as it’s done!”
  
  No. That’s not fair to everyone. We want everyone to get the information at the same time, so we wait until it’s localized into all our website supported languages before we post it.

• Balance. Really, balance is pretty good. We’re very observant of the meta, we read the forums, and we’re playing the game with you. We don’t want to make knee-jerk balance decisions. And if did whatever the community wanted, what would happen to balance? How many threads are basically: “NERF X OMG!!” “Learn to play , X is fine” “Omg no, we can’t beat X at all!” “Just saying, none of the people I know even run X anymore” “Hey you guys forget X, let’s buff Y!”….then this just repeats over and over. We can’t just do exactly what players ask for in relation to balance, because different players at various skill levels view balance differently. So what we do is balance community feedback with gameplay results. We don’t want to play whack-a-mole with balance, so we don’t just nerf/buff everything as soon as someone posts about it. It would ruin the game if we did. We try to be patient, see if the meta fixes itself (because a lot of times, once you learn how to deal with something, you realize it may not be as imba as you first thought), and then make long-lasting balance changes. We don’t want to nerf X, then realize no one uses it, and buff it again, then have to nerf it again, etc. etc.

• New features. People are saying that X feature is more important than Y feature for sPvP. Others then jump in the thread and say Z is actually more important than either X or Y. The truth is – you’re all right. I think a lot of the features mentioned in these threads are important, so we’ll use our best judgment to get them out in the correct order that makes the most sense. I talk about new features in the blog, so I won’t spoil them here. Just know that my team and I are devoted to PvP and improving it, so we’re working hard to get you guys the features that GW2 PvP needs. We are not ignoring you, we’re just busy working, which is why you don’t hear from us more. If we’re on the forums posting all the time, we’re not working!

So that’s it. Just wanted to give you guys some quick notes on where we stand right now. The blog post is still incoming – it’s just working its way through localization for ALL languages.

I am watching this thread (and everything else in the sPvP forums) closely. I’ll post something tomorrow to update you guys. Sorry I’ve not been posting more, I can’t be in meetings and on the boards at the same time.

Thanks for all the constructive posts. I know you guys are frustrated right now, so thanks for being so organized, well-written and metered in your responses.

@PeteyPen: Ya…was gonna say. Just wanted to be sure you know you can MANUALLY swap teams in a random sPvP game. Mouse explained how this is done so I won’t repeat it.

@Pinder: This will already naturally happen once we have both free and paid tournaments online. The problem right now is that everyone is in the same “pool”, so the randoms are getting matched up against the really good organized teams. Eventually, the really good teams will gravitate towards the paid tournaments, which will create a more casual feel (which is more PUG friendly) in the free tournaments.

PeteyPen.7136:

@ JonathanSharp

But we sync well together when we play in tPvP. The problem is we do not sync well with the other 3. In sPvP if us two were paired it’s not enough to decide the outcome of the battle. Also, the othe.r team is just as out of sync as my team since it’s random.

You can always just swap teams once you join a map together. Granted, there may be autobalance sometimes, but you can still play on the same team a lot of the time (that’s been the case for me when I PUG w/ a friend).

Ya, I would really recommend playing free tournaments together. That’s why they’re there – so people who want to play together can play together on the same team.

If it’s just you 2, that’s fine, you will be matched up with 3 others.

We’ve actually talked about making some changes to how this works, but it’s stuff I can’t talk about yet.

I don’t wanna be a tease, but I CAN say that a lot of the things you guys are asking about are things we’ve talked about in meetings.

Justttttttttttt can’t say too much yet.

Ok, I’ll let the programmers know again. Thanks for the report guys, we’ll look into it and why it seems to hit such a small % of the players.

Yes, we’re already thinking ahead to esport commentating. It’s much easier for new players to see the blue/red teams.

Think about any sport you’ve ever watched. Imagine that each player could wear whatever they wanted to look bad kitten It’d be much harder to tell who’s on which team.

So for us, the blue/red essentially equates to team jerseys.

Etc.

milo.6942:

Is it an intended design choice that different regions cannot tourney together? In other words can we expect it to be changed in the future?

Yes, for now. We’re worried about the lag issues that may arise, which would be unfair to one of the regions. Sucks to lose tournaments because you’re lagging and your opponents are not.

We may revisit it later, but for now, that’s how it works.

Just to clarify – the way it works:

• Your pvp lobby (for example, Stormbluff Isles) is separate from other lobbies. If I’m in server A and you’re in server B, we can’t see one another in the lobby.
• The game browsers are shared ACROSS ALL servers. This means that all US lobbies play together and all EU lobbies play together. So even if one person is in US lobby A (Stormbluff) and another person is on US lobby B (BattleNinjaParadise), they can still play in the same pub games or tournaments, even though they came from different lobbies.
• You can play with friends on different servers even if they’re not in your lobby, as long as your friend plays on a server which is in your region (US or EU). So 2 players on different US servers can play a tournament together, but someone in the US and someone in the EU could not.

Hope that makes sense.

K bye.

No. It’s a moa.

@Geff: this is what I was wondering as well. Did the other people who posted in here eventually get chests once the tournaments finished?

Short answer – no.

The reason is that we are working towards an esport based on skill. I realize some of you want your items to matter, and if you want that, WvW gives you that feeling.

But we feel it’s very important that you are on equal footing with your opponents when in sPvP. We want skill to be the single largest determinant in who wins in sPvP.

We may add more aesthetic choices down the road, and maybe the stats on the amulets can change, but overall we want to stay w/ the “no power grind” system that we have established.

Hope that makes sense!

Thanks for posting everyone!! Programmers are already on it. We’ll have a fix in as soon as we can.

Just wanted to point you guys at a thread for clarification on this.

Gaile has responded to a similar concern in another thread, so I wanted to let you guys know about it:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/account/Policy-for-posting-videos-on-Youtube-others/first#post182021

There were technical reasons why we had to implement it this way, but thank you for voicing your ideas and opinions.

I worked on it more over the weekend, still working today. It’s to the point that I think I may need to write 2 blogs. We’ll get it up as soon as I can guys, thanks for being patient.

@Mickeye, I’ll let the programmers know. Thanks for keeping me posted!

Hey all!

We may not have time to respond to all of your threads because we’re so busy, but we are watching! Thank you for all of your ideas, concerns, critiques and suggestions.

Very soon, I’ll be posting blogs about the things we plan to do, so watch for those. You know our policy – we try not to make empty promises, and we try to tell you about things only when we feel they’re ready to be talked about.

So in the upcoming blogs I’ll be updating you guys on things coming out soon.

Stay tuned!

Carrot Nebula.5984:

JonathanSharp.7094:

we’re in meetings with our teams to get you guys the stuff you need.

-Chaplan

What I need is to be able to play tournaments in general. I have been stuck in a bugged out tournament roster for two days now and as I am part of a competitive focused guild this is incredibly frustrating. It’s nice that you guys are working on tournament stuff that you said you would work on but please fix this horrendous bug that seriously hampers the pvp experience for myself and others.

I’ve been told by Steve (our server programmer) that a fix just rolled out that should cover this.

Let me know if your issue is resolved in the next live build.

-Chap

Carrot Nebula.5984:

JonathanSharp.7094:

we’re in meetings with our teams to get you guys the stuff you need.

-Chaplan

What I need is to be able to play tournaments in general. I have been stuck in a bugged out tournament roster for two days now and as I am part of a competitive focused guild this is incredibly frustrating. It’s nice that you guys are working on tournament stuff that you said you would work on but please fix this horrendous bug that seriously hampers the pvp experience for myself and others.

Fix for this is already incoming.

Speaking of meetings, I’m off to one now – will write more when I can.

-Chap

I’m gonna be posting about this soon. I’m working on a blog post right now to outline the features that are coming, the big picture, what we’re working on now, etc.

If you don’t hear from us for a while, it’s not because you’re being neglected or forgotten, it’s actually the opposite – we’re in meetings with our teams to get you guys the stuff you need.

Stay tuned, I’ll post more info as soon as I can.

-Chaplan

We’re putting in some measures to stop this type of stuff. Thanks for bringing it to our attention though IDICERI!

-Chap