Guild Wars 2

Kevin.4209:

It’s really funny how the responses have completely confirmed the first two posters’ points. Especially the above one that repeatedly uses the word “chief.”

+1000 lol

No. I think there is something about the Mesmer’s skillset that makes it hard to balance. I think in the hands of a very skilled player who deeply “gets” the class, the effectiveness is exponential.

I think the problem was in the day-to-day matches, where very-skilled players could use the Mesmer to just dominate.

I think it is more than animations. It’s a fascinating class design.

I think the basic Mesmer issue may be that the fundamental abilities of the class allow very high-skilled players to wreck everybody, so the class has been nerfed. For a long, long time now.

Average-skilled players cannot be competitive with it now. High-skilled players can barely bring it up to average performance.

If the developers un-nerf it even a little bit, the top players “just take off with it” and are too powerful.

Surely there is some way to redesign it such that it’s power scales up more linearly with player skill. And not exponentially, as I think happens.

The thing I dislike about this game is that it does not reward your personal skill directly, and often it ignores your contributions completely. Even punishing you when
you did exceptionally well in a match, if your team mates screwed up.

Not much of a skill measure. And not much of a motivator.

You have to be your own reward. YOU decide how you did. Don’t leave it up to the game to tell you if you are good and performed well.

Going for legendary right now is not much different than sitting at a slot machine all day. All for a “legendary” backpack? Is it worth it?

Floplag.4032:

Laserbolt.6731:

And if they do nerf bunkering, it will make it harder for casuals to have a useful role in sPvP. But that’s the decision the developers face. Cannot seem to have it both ways given the small population size that throws casuals in with high-skilled players.

This makes little sense to me, its the more casual players that have far less likelihood of being able to take out a bunker or play it to its full capability. If anything its likely that the opposite might be true and a more casual player might actually have a chance.

Bottom line, no class or spec should be able to hold of 2-3 people solo. Delay them a bit for help sure, but literally stalemate 2 players with one is never a good thing.

Currently there are easy bunkers for casuals to play and do well with.

And, I should add, do all these little buffs and debuffs make any real difference?

Look, I don’t want simple combat like other MMOs.

and I love the GW2 combat system, in general.

But is the current intricate complexity just too much? All the interactions between fields, conditions, short-term immunities, temporary buffs, temporary invulnerability, quarter-second debuffs, quarter-second buffs.

It just seems pointless to the main combat interactions and strategies.

It’s a GREAT basic system. We don’t need all the little junk to clutter the screen and our displays.

And if they do nerf bunkering, it will make it harder for casuals to have a useful role in sPvP. But that’s the decision the developers face. Cannot seem to have it both ways given the small population size that throws casuals in with high-skilled players.

Wolfric.9380:

Powerful all around builds are one of the bad things. It kills diversity and focuses on skill. (Cele amulet wink wink ^^)

I agree. Make people choose a role. High skill defense player cannot be high DPS as well.

It’s fine to greatly reward high skill cap IF YOU HAVE BRACKETS that cannot be violated.

But with low population that makes queue times increase, and people stop playing.

It seems like they decided to let the high skill caps be rewarded but recently threw in bunkering/buff classes for the lower-skilled players.

I remember a PvP developer panel discussion a couple of years ago where the lead designer at the time pointed out why it is so hard to balance GW2 PvP.

He said if they make a class and build that is powerful and easy enough for low-skill players to use successfully, then the very high skill players will take the build and just wreck everyone with it.

Made sense to me.

I agree that enjoyable viewing will probably be more enjoyable play.

Lyger.5429:

I read it as you saying the changes will be based on esports making pvp less casual player focused.

I said, " at least not primarily". Their changes may indeed make the casual experience better. But I think it’s mainly about eSports viewership. Use that as a guideline, and we will better be able to determine what changes will go through.

Read me back where I said it was anti-casual.

If you want to know what the new changes will be, just think of things that will make the eSports viewing experience more enjoyable. It won’t be about casual enjoyment, at least not primarily.

Given that the matcher can come up with bad matches on a regular basis when the population is low, perhaps it would be good to have a “circuit breaker” that stops the game and awards the win if one side gains a wide lead very, very quickly.

I have played more than 3500 matches, and when I see this happen, the winning team wins 99% of the time. Sure, I have seen comebacks, but rarely, and almost never when this common “pattern” appears.

And we all know that people give up and “stealth AFK” anyway when one team dominates. They don’t announce it and stand in base, but they effectively stop playing anyway to end the game fast.

If everybody gets a gold star, it isn’t worth anything.

You should not be able to grind to Legendary status. Because if you can, then it only means you spent obscene amounts of time grinding. Nothing more.

Last time they had “solo Queue” it really wasn’t.

Team queue got such a huge wait time that they started coming to SoloQ and synchronizing their “join” using Teamspeak so they had a good chance of landing on the same side in a match.

You like pets. Perhaps you should start as a very tanky minion master necro with soldier amulet. Look for the minion master on meta battle

Experienced PvP players: if you have a tempest on your team would you rather your Tempest act as a straight bunker, or follow the team fights instead?

You do not need to level them to 80 to play PvP. Just in case you did not know.

Cynz.9437:

eldenbri.1059:

A lot of the posts here are… somewhat critical… so I just wanted to say that, for me, the league has been a lot of fun.

In about 130 games (nearly all solo), I went from no ranked experience up to ruby. There were a couple blowout games and a couple of times where people were jerks, but far and away, the experience was positive. This is now my favorite game mode.

Thanks to Anet for putting this in the game, and thanks to everyone who gave me advice and help along the way.

This is why you had fun, OP. You had 0 mmr which should have happend to everyone but Anet “forgot” to do it. The system assumed you are new and paired you with new/unexperienced players. People with high mmr on other hand either were forced to cheat or forced into 50% los ratio by lovely mmr system.

Actually a reset gives you an exact middle-range MMR and the lowest possible “confidence” level that your MMR is accurate.

That means that your MMR swings wildly and gives you blowouts both for and against you much more often than should happen.

Ithilwen.1529:

Not 1v1, SOLO QUEUE for everyone playing in leagues.

1. Open a solo Q

2. Observe the waiting times for team Q to rise to an hour or more

3. Watch as immediately the team Q players start to “sync queue” to get on the same team in soloQ, fairly reliably , to stomp PUGs with a shorter wait time.

Galandil.9641:

Kevin.4209:

Did you expect that the highest pvp achievement currently in the game would be attainable by casuals?

One would expect that PvP rewards should go to skilled players, not farmers.

Wanna bet on how many PvE heroes with enough patience and time will get the backpack, even if they’re utterly bad at PvP?

Yes, and that is true for every MMO I have ever experienced. There is a population in the world that will spend 50 times the 2000 hours you would spend, to “WIN”. They will do nothing but play the game and sleep a few hours, for weeks.

It’s unusual, and you’d think it would be rare. But it is fairly common. They call themselves “hardcore”, rather than obsessed and unbalanced.

They skew the game for the other 99.9% of players who have better things to do with their time, or who have to hold a job.

Ithilwen.1529:

You lost all credibility with me at the outset. If you teamed to make matches faster, that means you teamed with lower tier players, tanking your rating and manipulating the matches.

That’s (allegedly) against the rules. Sorry… no credit due.

Here is what the OP actually said:

“I mostly solo/duo q-ed the whole journey (up till tier 5 diamond), and only had a team after that because it was convenient and faster. I started with relatively high mmr (faced against competitive players regularly) and had a 60% winrate prior to leagues as well. Point is, you can be a new player, or you can be an experienced player, both are able to climb if you are good enough "

Just wondering if there are any people trying to do the ranked league by exclusively playing Stronghold.

Does it seem any more “fair” that the Conquest games you previously tried in league play?

choovanski.5462:

mobility/support/AOE damage those are what you want for stronghold.

And in general, what class and build excels at AOE with support and mobility?

Some kind of ele? I am asking, since I have not played that kind of class.

If you could see your MMR, it would be misleading.

Because your MMR attempts to measure your level of contribution to a team.

It is not about your 1v1 skill or anything solo.

Chaba claimed: resetting our MMRs at the start of the league means "allows for a faster “sorting” to occur. "

I disagree.

The system would randomly place people in games. Your MMR would be dependent on the random actions of 4 other people. So much faulty “data” would be computed that has nothing to do with your play. Get good luck? You get a higher MMR. Bad luck = lower MMR. It would take hundreds of games for your ability to be sorted out from all the random events and crazy teams you would be place don.

I think if they really did it right and put work into properly polishing and balancing it would dominate the Twitch charts…

That would be very cool. Especially if there were a ton of maps, with some maps rewarding thinking/strategy and not so much mechanical/twitch and encyclopedia knowledge of all class abilities and “tells”.

sephiroth.4217:

Pimsley.3681:

That [Nigr] acronym was clever and the people who created it were probably being wise-guys. Their intent was more towards trying to be funny rather than hateful. Racism is so passe and uncool.

There was nothing racist about it until peoples knickers twisted and made something about it…

Oh, please. Don’t kitten on my leg and tell me it’s just raining. They knew exactly what word they were going for.

Burn.5401:

Insert the playerbase is too small excuse here

Excuse? It’s the fact. You cannot invent opponents who do not exist.

Because then the winners are the ones who played the most, not won the most.

We did that LAST leaderboard.

Harvey.7820:

The big picture is they want to be an Esport without a proper matchmaking system in place. Like saying you want to be an olympic runner but you wanna keep sandals during races.

You can’t match what isn’t there waiting in the queue.

Israel.7056:

Why would pro gamers from other games care about a legendary backpack in GW2?

Well, that’s true. I suppose it is to turn a talented PvE player into an eSports PvP playerr once they have tried it.

They have 3 million registered users now. The vast majority must be PvE, because they sure aren’t Qing up in the Mists.

They want to keep their jobs. You don’t bad talk the management decisions in public.

Minos.5168:

Laserbolt.6731:

This isn’t really a PvE-like event to earn a Legendary item.

I still think that the Legendary is supposed to draw in PvE players and lower queue times.

I agree, but that doesn’t seem to be the main thrust. They want to attract already-competent eSports players from other games. It’s faster.

This isn’t primarily a PvE-like event to earn a Legendary item.

Read this and understand what ArenaNet is doing, and what is actually important to them:

“Fowler believes that these initial prize pools will entice pro gamers in other games to compete in Guild Wars 2’s eSports.”

So this is not primarily about the current GW2 casual gamer at all. They are trying to attract TEAMS, from other eSports games.

“Corpening says ‘Unlike most other online games, there is no grind for gear and stats… When you log into PvP you have max stats and everything you need to be competitive right away.’ "

And this is why they are not likely to spend money (developer time) to create a SoloQ.

http://fortune.com/2015/11/24/areanet-investing-in-esports/

knkasa.2608:

These lists are very basics that it sounds more like “most common mistakes made by hotjoin heros”. Instead, make another thread to list things you can do to help carry the team as a solo player, for example.

The only way you can carry a bad team is by RAPIDLY killing opponents, VERY fast, and constantly, so they are always off the battlefield rezzing. That takes the right build and a lot of skill. It is very hard to do and won’t save the game for many of the bad PUGs anyway.

Aeryn.9813:

Capping > Trebuchet

Trebuchet can speed capping .

If you keep TWO opponents busy somewhere, that means your other team members can fight 4 against 3 and win on another point and cap it.

But if you fight one on one, there is no net advantage and you are wasting time unless you are trying to take a point and you are pretty sure you can kill him and cap the point.

Don’t start one-on one fights in the middle of nowhere. That’s called “fighting on the road”, and is useless.

Thanks everyone. Good stuff.

Make that patch late March, and underwhelming, in the way things are done now. The holiday buying season will be over. No more HoT expected to be sold. No rush.

It all depends on how much the two PvP programmers can get done and test a little. I am guess it is about 2 fulltime equivalent programmers right now.

Will there even BE another expansion?

Maybe something in November 2016 just to goose the holiday sales one last time.

Larger question: if you get to Legendary not by actually performing as a legendary player, but by working the existing system and playing 90% easy matches, what is so Legendary about what you did?

And what will wearing that legendary item “mean” to anyone in GW2 PvP community looking at you?

If there had been enough challenging opponents perhaps you could have demonstrated legendary play. But so far that is not happening. So. <shrug>. What’s that item worth?

One thing they said a year ago in an online interview: if you make a class that lower skilled players can get powerful with fairly quickly, the hardcore, dedicated 24/7 players will take that class and its mechanics to an insane level and use that class to crush average players.

Good points. Makes sense.

Yawz.7841:

The queuing system is literally broken. .

No matchmaker in the world can find an equal team to oppose your team if there are no players of that skill waiting in the queue.

And the answer is not to throw your team into a match that have no hope of winning against a high-MMR premade on voice comms.

An absolute requirement for a fun league is a large enough population.

How many? Well, for each fair match of 10 players you should have about 10 or 15 alternates who can be forming and playing while a match is in progress. That’s 20-25 players for each “MMR bracket”, say 1500 to 1800, 1801 to 2100, 2101 to 2400, 2401 to 3000, 3101 to top level.

That’s at least 125 players always in Q if perfectly divided into all the various MMR brackets.