It’s fine that you don’t care about esports, it really is, but it’s what’ll drive people back to playing PVP. If you like it or not it’s a huge promotional tool that Anet should use to create a draw for PVP.
From more competition brings more demand for balance and more resources that can be allocated to that balance.
So honestly, if it’s not fundamental things like balance and being boxed into a mode that relies on having 4 other people on your team making all the right choices to win, why did so many people leave? Was it because they wanted a gear grind? Was it all because there was no spectator mode? Are they coming back now for the leaderboards?
It’s a fair question, and sure to be full of a lot of opinions, mostly you can chalk it up to payoff from the hype that PVP was given, but that’s vague and not very useful.
So what does that support mean? More modes? Lets look at some of the very competitive games out there right now (Taken from the top games streaming on Twitch):
LoL – One competitive game mode, one general map with few variations.
WoW – While it’s expanded quite a bit since it became an esport it started with one mode (death match) and only a handful of maps.
Starcraft 2 – Really only one competitive game mode (Generally 1v1) on a few maps. If you recall the original SC competitive matches were played on around 5ish maps.
CS – Not really familiar with competitive CS so I won’t comment.
DOTA 2 – One competitive game mode one map.
GW2 – One game mode, handful of maps.
Most of these games do have other modes but they usually aren’t considered competitive and are not taken all that seriously.
More modes might bring a few more casual players to the PVP side but it won’t drive the game to be taken seriously.
I have a lot more to say on this but I’m going to eat now so I’m going to stop for now.
I disagree entirely.
This game is actually relatively well balanced. That is not to say that there are obvious imbalances between classes, there are but for a game that is less than a year old it’s shocking how even it feels.
We don’t really need more game modes, they’d be nice but it’s not going to tip the scales towards esports, in fact less is usually more for esports. Why do most esports tend to gravitate towards a few select maps with only one mode? Because it’s easier to achieve the appearance of balance with less variables. More modes can be fun but won’t help the game be any more competitive.
We need structures around the current game that makes it more fun and rewarding to compete. Leaderboards are a step in the right direction adding incentive to compete at a high level.
Spectator mode would be a good next step. There’s nothing that can accelerate a esport more than allowing others to easily add commentary to high level matches and for viewers become emotionally invested in teams.
Does the game need balance? Sure, tweaks here and there will be needed but games don’t magically become esports because they are well balanced. They become esports because they are become accessible (Through casters) and people become emotionally invested in high level players.
Typing is actually a really bad way to communicate in these types of games. You essentially have to disable yourself to do it, which is usually a bad idea because a fraction of a second could mean losing a point and getting killed or killing someone. So we just don’t do it and have to rely on third party programs or everyone just knowing what to do.
It’s also hard to memorize the names of every single point to communicate where there is a problem, especially since they change names on different maps. Not only is it risky to try to type something out but there’s no guarantee that your communication is going to make sense to anyone without them going to the map and trying to figure out what point you are talking about.
All these little things compound into very little communication. Usually the only time you have to communicate is when you are dead.
From the best to the worst in spvp wvw and pve combined:
Gold Medal : Ranger
Silver Medal: Necro
Bronze Medal: Guardian
Runners up: Mesmer, Thief, Engineer, Warrior
Wooden Spoon: Ele: Since double daggers got massively nerfed in to the ground.
Can’t tell if serious or trolling.
I’m fairly certain the OP is wrong. They probably play a lot, even during work hours because they have to test things they make. I’d venture to guess that most of them enjoy the game. They probably aren’t as hardcore as a lot of players on here because they have jobs they have to do but they probably play very regularly.
Just because you can’t see the logic in the choices they make doesn’t mean they never play the game and are just making arbitrary changes based on nothing.
What they do has reasons, it just may not be reasons you agree with.
I thought the daily was just 1 per day per account? The monthly is 10 for each?! So you can complete both PVP an PVE monthlies for 20 laurels?
GS is certainly better for tagging mobs but staff is still an excellent weapon. It’s great for it’s group support with it’s defensive capabilities.
I generally run Staff + Sword/X in almost everything I do.
I don’t really like GS (Mostly because 3 is almost completely useless) as it seems too passive and scepter… well it just doesn’t cut it.
spvp all about who knock first from point, nothing intersting
That’s kind of like… your opinion bro…
I have no objection to a trinity.
The objection I have is when certain classes can’t do at least 2/3 roles. That was the biggest problem in WoW. You had some classes that were always valuable to groups because they could switch things up while other classes were confined to one role so they struggled to find groups.
I find all roles of the game fun and equally challenging in different ways but it’d be great if we could get more refined roles in PVE rather than everyone just doing whatever they want…
I have three warriors.
Is this a common thing? Why would you need three of the same profession? Is the cost of switching traits really hitting your pocketbook?
Thanks for putting that together. I made my inputs.
One question that I felt was a bit off was the:
“Feelings towards ANet’s communication towards players”
I feel like this needed to have some sort of comparison to be appropriate. For instance:
“Does ANet communicate to players better or worse than other gaming companies?”
The reason being is if you as ANYONE “Should this company be more open about what it is doing?” the answer is almost unanimously going to be “Yes”. But I feel like ANet does a pretty good job of communicating with it’s players, compared to other gaming companies (Frequent blog posts, Q&A’s, interviews, it’s almost daily that I see something new from them) but the question is very leading so of course they are going to say “I WANT MORE” because consumers always want more.
I don’t hate the conquest style. I see that it has strategy and a good amount of tactics.
But I do miss WoW’s arenas and brutal fights to the death.
And I don’t agree with the person who says that most matches would be over in 1-2 minutes. Maybe at lower levels but I can foresee a lot of scenarios where 2v2s could take forever to down anyone, especially if there are areas where you can LoS.
this is still my favorite look
I really like those shoulders. What armor are they from?
Why so many complaints about Staff? It’s pretty much our best weapon. Why don’t we complain more about freaking scepter?
Some people do need a clear goal with a clear path. Some people HATE that. I don’t really want to be led around by the nose. In fact, Guild Wars 2 does this too much. I’d rather have less constraints than more constraints.
At any rate, having options shouldn’t be a bad thing. People need to learn how to have fun all over again, instead of being told what to do.
It’s not really about being told what to do or having constraints in any way it’s about how the game directs players and gives cues as to what you should probably do next.
For example: When you hit 80 you receive a mail that opens a map overview like those that the Scouts give you, which describes what your next few steps COULD be (Where to find 80 armor, how to begin building a legendary, etc). This wouldn’t force you to do any of those things but it would give players who don’t know what to do a path to follow rather than saying “Alright, what now?”.
Get a legendary.
Try to get maximum Fractal level.
Experience the world.
Try to become rich.
Meet new people.
Do guild missions.
Rage in PVP.
Rage in WvWvW.
Complaint on the forums.
Collect dyes.
Collect Minis.
Annoy people with Endless Bells.
Do the living story.See? plenty to do
While this is a great list I feel like these posts are always missing the point. It’s not that there isn’t plenty to do it’s that there is no clear goals once you hit 80.
1-79 the objective is clear: get experience.
After that it’s kind of like… Okay now what? I have to do a bunch of research to figure out what path I want to take.
Basically this game doesn’t do a good job of curbing analysis paralysis. We have an abundance of options but we don’t really need more options we need a clear goal with an obvious path to make sure we are motivated to do something.
What do you mean destroy shatter winter? What would be the point of that?
Shatter spec. It seems that most believe it’s our most viable spec in sPVP. I think this is fine, as long as they buff other areas to compensate, diversity is welcoming to me as I like to experiment with builds rather than playing the same one 99% of the time.
Yeah I’m fairly certain it’s a piercing:
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/377719641
At about 44:22 is when he starts talking about it.
I’m fairly certain this was being presented as a “buff” not a nerf, so I don’t think it’s a “can now be reflected” kind of change.
Sounds like interference, not multiple hits (unless traited?).
To me, it seems like it would be a projectile block instead of a projectile pierce.
Sounded to me like it would hit everything between you and the target. He talked about it being able to hit pets and their owners. I think the details are still somewhat vague though.
According to the SotG interview with Anet developers “Beam” abilities will have the ability to hit enemies in between you and your target.
Thoughts?
I agree.
I’ve always felt the whole inventory/bank system in this game was very standard in such an innovative game. They thought about how we level so much that they completely forgot that about one of the biggest annoyances of playing any RPG is dealing with bags.
Why can I ONLY put collectibles into a bottomless bank slot?
Why do my sPVP items show up in my inventory while not in the sPVP world?
Why isn’t there better visual indicators to sort through gear quickly?
Those are questions that pop into my head when I’m frustrated with inventory issues in this game.
As far as invisibility goes, that’s just how it works in this game. You can continue hitting anything that is invisible. Go find a mob that stealths itself (panthers) and wait for it to go invisible then continue to spam your 1. Chances are when it comes out of stealth it’ll be dead.
Just something you have to remember and adapt to. It’s not like in other MMO’s where you go invisible and you are immune for a small amount of time until someone pops you out.
Otherwise I agree. Another one is Phase Retreat, randomly getting stuck in walls is REALLY annoying. Especially in a boss fight (This happened to me the other day, luckily I was able to debug myself before I died). More often than not you can’t even blink out because get game considers you on a lower plane or something.
People equating the generic combat in WoW make me giggle. Once I mastered the rotations on my pally tank or hunter I could tank or dps with the best of them. Ah, the good ol’ pally 9-6-9 rotation…
No thanks. I prefer combat that makes me know my skills as well as their secondary and often tertiary effects and allows me to consider using them situationally as opposed to what some spreadsheet has pre-determined I should be doing.
Agreed. Once you learned a rotation, DPS, Healing or Tanking were pretty much cake with a little bit mixed in in case of a rogue spike of damage.
That’s precisely why I suggested watching a video of it originally. Skilled players don’t simply execute a ‘rotation’. And, when most people talk about rotations they are thinking old school rotation that you executed rote. In current gaming rotations are priority-based, situational, and managed. The ‘rotation’ dismissal only works on those unfamiliar with gaming. It’s kind of like saying that GW2 requires more skill. An experienced gamer knows the statement is absurd.
And, given a rotation of some kind, there are situational factors that take precedence over ‘rotation’ and call for a specific skill to counter specific situations. This is especially where you see skilled play rewarded and again why I suggested you actually observe the combat. There is no comparison really. GW2, again, is kindergarten on training wheels compared to WoW.
I think you missed the point I was trying to make before, that your comparison based on skill is flawed because GW2 hasn’t had the time to develop players with such skill. It’s like trying to compare chess to a modern turn based strategy game. Because chess has been around forever it’s evolved it’s own complexity and skill based on the players joint adaption to each other’s tactics and it’s probably still more skill based than any modern turn based strategy game because of it.
GW2 players will evolve such complexity over time. Even with seeming simple design complexity and competition can still arise.
Regardless this discussion of more/less skill is counter productive because there is no way to truly measure skill. Trying to say one game takes more skill than another and it’ll always be that way is very short sighted, as it’s nearly impossible to say so beyond personal opinion.
Skill is in the eye of the beholder, and the eye is heavily influenced by emotional factors.
I always chuckle when someone justifies the combat system in this game by saying it’s “more about skill than damage output or stats” or something similar. Look, the trinity wouldn’t even work in GW2 because the professions here are kindergarten on training wheels. It’s easy to demonstrate this. Find 2 good warriors, one playing GW2 and one playing WoW. Now, youtube. Watch the skills being employed to execute, shape, and control the fight. There is really no comparison. WoW requires far more skill and response to the situational awareness that good players bring to both games. When you talk about combat roles or the trinity, please just stop with the GW2 is more about skill. It isn’t.
The fact of the matter is that GW2 is a new game that is struggling to find itself in terms of its combat. There are good aspects and bad aspects. The lack of meaningful combat roles is one area that frequently comes up for people.
First of all, no one is really talking about the skill cap in this game. It’s not really what this game is about.
Secondly GW2 is barely a six month old game, comparing player skill levels to a game like WoW that has been building and maturing players for over 8 years and multiple expansions, is a terrible comparison. It’s like saying a five year old isn’t as good at playing basketball as a young adult, of course they aren’t! But if that five year old continues to play basketball when they reach the same age as that young adult they are going to be equally as good if not better.
The game has to evolve and so do the players.
WoW has had years of highly competitive PVE to motivate the best players to min/max their class and find every single trick that will get them ahead, GW2 doesn’t have that yet but I’m sure they will eventually.
On topic, I think the intent was not really to completely kill roles from dungeons but rather to make sure ever class can do either a little bit of all of them or choose one to specialize in. I don’t think we’ll ever completely get away from having support/tank/DPS type of builds but at least their is a lot of variety within classes instead of each only being able to do one, maybe two roles.
Sorry I don’t like that idea. I shouldn’t be able to get an armor set from a dungeon I never ran.
Why not? This line of reasoning usually associated with the fear of losing prestige or ego through some sense of accomplishment.
Maybe because some dungeons take 10 mins while others take an hour? Sorry, but this is an MMO, there has to be prestige and accomplishment or there just isn’t any point. To convince yourself otherwise.. well, you might as well go play a single player game.
So reward more or less depending on the difficulty of the dungeon? Developers should be able to determine what dungeons will take more time than others and adjust accordingly.
People will always min/max the system to get the best reward but that can be ironed out with balance.
Yeah let me just run cof p1 everyday and then I can buy Arah gear!
No. Earn your dungeon gear by doing that dungeon. I don’t see why everyone has a problem with multiple currencies.
There’s a problem because it’s an unnecessarily complex system.
If Arah gear is better than CoF gear then it should naturally be more expensive right? If I want a certain type of gear but hate that particular dungeon why should I be forced to run it? Why can’t I run a dungeon that I actually enjoy doing?
Sorry I don’t like that idea. I shouldn’t be able to get an armor set from a dungeon I never ran.
Why not? This line of reasoning usually associated with the fear of losing prestige or ego through some sense of accomplishment.
I like this change, simply because there is a daunting amount of currency in this game. It’s ridiculously hard to figure out and memorize what all these difference currencies can give me and how many I need for the item I want.
This game is in desperate need of currency consolidation. Ideally I’d like there to be two types of currency: Gold & Collectible tokens (achieved through dungeons, dailies, monthlies, ect).
But I realize that’s probably not going to happen so I’ll just support any sort of currency consolidation that may be possible.
This has never happened to any game ever during their early days of match making…
oh…
wait…
-.-
I know that some abilities have been nerfed/changed for balance in PVP. Is there a resource to see what abilities are different?
Bad news. Turns out we can’t have more than 25 seconds retal in all (assuming each stack gives only 5 seconds). So gotta spread them out a bit that’s all I guess.
I’m not certain but I don’t think it’ll affect this build that much. But some real life experience will clarify that.
So say you stacked to 25 seconds and then didn’t add any more after until you have 5 seconds left and then you try to add retaliation again. Will it refresh to 25 seconds or do nothing?
I’d try this myself, but I’m at work. :P
Reduced the number of maximum of stacks of Retaliation allowed to five (was 25). Duration still stacks.
How is this going to effect this build? The wording of it is kind of confusing, I guess I’m not 100% clear on how Retaliation works.
This idea is the silliest idea that people come up with (no offense, it’s my opinion).
When you say that this game mode should be free to play you are implying that PvP would thrive if only there were more people to play it. I’m going to put 2 sentences together and you tell me what they add up to.
- GW2 is being touted by Anet and media outlets as “The Fastest Selling MMO of all-time”. Some saying well over 3 million copies
- PvP in this game is on the verge of extinction
Do I think they need to do something to get people playing? Yes. But those things need to be ways of incentivising PvP and KEEPING players in here once they try it. Currently, the problem isn’t that they aren’t trying it, it’s that they are, and hating it.
This.
It’s not the number of players that’s the problem. Plenty of games have a strong presence in the esports community and have a relatively small fan base (See Heroes of Newerth) because the systems are in place to make it happen (Simple MM system, great Observer mode, support for competitive coverage).
The player base is plenty large, but the PVP system is too complicated and unrewarding to keep players around so it’s simply hemorrhaging slowly.
I think the general objection is that the top tier of content is fed to those who can get a large group together multiple times a night. Also that raids tend to be the top tier of progression as well and people feel forced to raid to get the best gear.
This is the fear.
I personally don’t feel like it’s that big of a deal, but I can understand why people don’t like them.
Alpha in CoE used to give me that adrenaline rush that you’re talking about. Not anymore though. T.T
Can you elaborate on why?
I didn’t really want to spawn a GW2 against WoW debate, it’s just the best example I could come up with. I don’t really want to talk about what WoW/Blizzard does well I’d rather focus the conversation on how we can improve the feeling of immersion and accomplishment in GW2.
I think the formula for an epic experience is a combination of challenge and scale.
Currently:
Meta dynamic events bring a lot of scale, but rarely any challenge as they are usually done with far more than the scaling cap of people so it makes it pretty much trivial.
Dungeons bring a fair amount of challenge (Lets just agree for the sake of argument that they are somewhat challenging) but lack (to me) a sense of scale.
So how can we bring challenge to meta dynamic events and scale to dungeons?
you were saying the dungeons were too overwhelming two weeks ago OP.
I was arguing for a better introduction to dungeon mechanics for new players. I still feel like this is an issue.
I’m not arguing for more difficult dungeons either, I’m simply wondering if there are those moments in this game that I’ve experienced in other games. I’m not saying dungeons create them, in fact I gave an example of how I almost had this kind of experience outside of a dungeon but it wasn’t quite there (The Shatterer).
I believe that a game can slowly introduce new players to dungeon mechanics while having those adrenaline fueled moments later on in the game and I’d like to be involved with a discussion about how this can be accomplished.
Anyways I find the dungeons fun and interesting. I found Arah to be “exhillarating” the first few times fighting Lupicus. Fractals were in a way too but at low levels it was very easy to go thru content. I still find GW2 dungeons to be fun. I guess its like anything else… GW2 might not be everybodies cup of tea.
It’s good to hear that there are a few encounters that I can look forward to.
I don’t believe it’s GW2’s business model that is at fault, I genuinely think they are trying to provide great content. After all very engaged players, or those elusive “Whale” gamers, are the most likely to buy gems. Thus they need to create great, engaging, long lasting content to make money in the long run. Plus word-of-mouth doesn’t work unless players absolutely love the game. So I don’t buy the “They took our money and ran” argument.
There are a ton of things GW2 is doing right but it still feels like there are a lot of missing pieces that need to be found for it to be truly amazing.
I recently ran this as well.
We died a few times but I felt like it was mostly due to having very little room to maneuver. The quarters were very very tight inside the mansion and when we got jumped there wasn’t a good place to go to try to kite or regroup.
Otherwise we did it just fine, a few wipes here and there but nothing I don’t expect from a dungeon run.
I play games for the adrenaline rush.
When my guild killed Lady Vashj in WoW it was a huge adrenaline rush. Everyone executing to their fullest potential to bring down something very complexed. I felt this multiple times while playing WoW, usually while raiding.
I keep getting slivers of that adrenaline rush from this game but nothing to be fully absorbed by.
I felt it for a fleeting moment when The Shatter landed and dozens of people opened up on him. Then I realized there wasn’t really any threat as everyone stood in a specific spot and shot bolts at his feet until he fled. It just felt cheap, so much work had gone into The Shatter himself but his actual mechanics were being completely overwhelmed by sheer numbers and exploiting him.
I’ve tried a few dungeons (AC, CM, TA) so far and they all seem to fall into the extremely underwhelming category.
I’m just wondering if it gets better? Are there moments in this game where you feel completely overwhelmed and immersed in the experience? Or are those all experienced through Dynamic events that just get zerged?
Yeah this skill annoys me to. It’s so kitten effective when it works but I’m always afraid of using it and just seeing it go on cooldown. I really wish it just wouldn’t activate if you are out of range (Like Blink doesn’t activate if you try to blink out of range) but I guess that’s part of skill of knowing the range of your spells.
Actual TLDR: The OP isn’t forced to group by game mechanics so he doesn’t group, even though there are some benefits and no downside to grouping. For some unexplained reason he sees this as a problem.
No, it’s more like: I find group questing to be slightly more tedious than in other games and I’m trying to understand why this specific mechanic was intentionally left out when it seems, to me, to go against the game’s manifest.
Do I see it as a problem? Sure. Is it a game breaking problem? Not really but I never said it was so don’t make it sound like I’m whining, because I’m not, I’m simply trying to understand the rational behind this design decision.
If you allow heart completion without actually participating in the task (for example, gaining some credit for a mob kill without even tagging the mob) you allow people to be get AFK completion without actually playing the game. It could also allow people to farm via multiple accounts and gain five times the renown heart gold reward than your typical player.
If you inflict some sort of penalty on group members for ‘sharing’ their progression, then you allow accidental leeching whenever someone fails to tag a mob in time. (Or purposeful leeching, which is even worse)Those are the problems I can see, anyways.
Yeah I can understand that, but I also think those are extreme examples. In past MMO’s this has rarely been a problem (Partying with someone just to leech or AFK complete a quest with someone).
You could say the exact same thing about mob tagging in this game: Theoretically a player can just run around hitting mobs once and letting someone else kill them and “leech” from that. That’s the reason mobs have had “ownership” in past MMO’s to prevent people from leeching. ANet decided this wasn’t in the spirit of cooperative gameplay which is why they did away with that, but it doesn’t make sense to do away with the cooperative questing mechanic in the same stroke.
Extreme examples can always be made about how fringe players will abuse and manipulate the system but I believe the bigger question is will a change to the mechanic encourage players to group together more? And is that a positive thing?
Grouping does let you keep track of everyone. Try running with Guildies or friends w/out grouping. Its pretty easy to lose each other in this game.
Sure, and that is helpful no doubt. I do like that you can track the progression of other people in your party. But I still don’t understand why you don’t get group credit for completing objectives. It’s not like the mechanic is something new and they simply don’t have the resources it’s being intentionally left out and I really want to know: Why? It just doesn’t seem to fit with everything else in the game.
It does deter, at least for me, from wanting to form a group with a friend. Example:
Before I learned how the questing worked with parties I was excited to party up and run around the map with friends.
Now if I see a friend log on I second guess if I want to message them to do quests. Usually because I’m in a different zone and going to them and helping them quest doesn’t seem all that helpful, I’m basically a warm body helping them to dps mobs down. I can’t run around gathering resources for them or activating devices, they have to do that by themselves. I can’t really offer any meaningful assistance other than damage on mobs they tag.
I often find myself saying “Ehh I’ll just keep doing what I’m doing”. This just seems inconsistent with ANet’s overarching philosophy and I’m wondering why this is.
TLDR : Group questing doesn’t align with the ideals of the rest of the game to promote cooperative play.
This aspect has confused me for a while. It seems to go against the ideals ANet has put forth that helping other players achieve goals is a good thing.
I basically see no advantage to partying up, other than party chat, when I’m out and about because I cannot cooperatively complete hearts.
This mechanic makes questing together more difficult as I’m usually more worried about tagging every mob I can and making sure everyone tags them as well rather than actually killing them because if one person is a bit slower than the others and misses mobs every once in a while it’ll take longer for us to move on to the next heart.
That’s the other issue this brings up: It’s harder to move as a group from one area to the next. If I’m slower than my party at completing the quest they might decide it’s taking too much time for me to complete it and simply move on, where I get further an further behind.
Everything about this game promotes group play and a group mentality towards completing bigger goals, except the party system.
Why?
(edited by Pandabro.8743)
This game doesn’t really do a good job of making Buffs/Debuffs (Yes I’m using that term because that is what they are known as in the wider MMO genre) easily understandable. They are tiny and hard to mouse over during intense combat and as you are leveling you aren’t really taught to take note of them. There is rarely a situation where a buff an enemy gains makes a huge difference as we are exploring the world and we die because of it so we tend to start ignoring them.
Then suddenly a situation comes along where it does matter but we’ve been conditioned to ignore them so we continue to. You have to make an active effort to understand them and most players will simply choose not to do that.
We are human beings, we seek the path of least resistance whenever we can so if we learn that something is inconsequential early on we will regard it that way until we are shown otherwise.
I’ve tried this build in sPVP and in a Dungeon. Really didn’t like it in sPVP. The action is so constant that it’s hard to find time to charge mantras.
I really liked it in the Dungeon though. I was able to keep a steady stream of healing coming to my team which helped minimize the impact of individual’s mistakes. I’m thinking about dropping Mantra of pain out of the utility though. It seems very lackluster to add to the standard rotation and keeping three mantras charged can take away from other valuable actions I could be taking.