In general: high toughness works for builds with abundant healing and cleansing, high vitality works for builds without. It’s ineffective to pool healing and vitality, since large a large health pool with minor mitigation will quickly outpace your healing. And it’s ineffective to amass toughness without healing/cleansing, because a small health pool is difficult to sustain with only mitigation.
Necro have some of the best condition and boon cleansing and swapping in the game. With some decent AoE effects on top of that, it puts them near a solid, though not core, support position. Otherwise, they can nearly keep up survivability with other tanks through intelligent use of death shroud and defensive stat stacking. Not quite enough to properly fill either position, but close.
Elementalist is probably the only class that can keep up with Guardian in terms of sheer survival, with warrior and engineer tagging along after. They require a much higher skill cap than guardian, but are overall no less effective at the task. But it’s a trade-off. You are by no means an offensive Ele at that point, and for a lot of tasks (solo PvE, WvW, and some dungeons) you’re overall more effective as a damage dealer.
It’s fine that you haven’t leveled past 20, just so long as you understand that the game play continues to change up til 30-40. Not necessarily getting more difficult, just becoming more complicated and, often, longer. This is why Thief falls short of acting as a core support or control class: while they have some impressively useful skills (group stealth, blinds, some access to repeatable interrupts) they don’t successfully provide group benefits over large scale or long duration events.
Arguably, a fully venom equipped Thief with Venom Auras makes for the most successful support build they have. It functions well enough in small battles, but for dungeon bosses and large skirmishes you’re left with a couple uses and then a longer stretch absent of support. Since Thieves have basically no weapon skill based support abilities, you can’t keep up the support actions in the downtime. And while venoms have useful effects, they aren’t situationally critical like Shadow Refuge or Smoke Screen.
While Thief, like all classes, has a multitude of ways in which you can tweak their damage output, damage type, range, and utility, they don’t bring the reliable consistency and wide array of benefits (including combos) that core support classes like elementalist and guardian do. Their condition range is rather narrow (poison, bleed, vulnerability, blind) outside of two certain venoms, nor do they have much proactive hard control, which is required of a full time debilitator. And their defensive measures are largely derived from evasion, which will naturally shift aggro to other group members in PvE, whereas true survivalists can mitigate and even intercept damage to save other players. Thieves are damage dealers. They have very adaptable methods of dealing damage. More so than most classes. But ultimately they remain, solely, a damage dealer.
Keybindings that I’ve personally set (ctrl+w to toggle walk, ctrl+f to toggle the UI) will always work without fail. But somewhere along the line, I’m not certain when, ctrl stopped showing interactable objects in the world, and I can no longer link items in chat.
The how or why this is happening are beyond me. It isn’t mechanical (aka keyboard malfunction). Furthermore I had no incentive to use these features until recently, so I don’t know if it was a problem from the beginning, or just recently. But now that I do want to link items, it’s killing me.
Level 10 is not sufficient to show you whether you like a class. Believe me, I have 5 classes leveled to at least 30 (but no level 80’s), because I have massive alt-itis. The skills, strategies, and overall aesthetic of play changes dramatically a few times in the first 30 levels. You can’t expect a stable concept of how each class feels until level 30+. And as much as it helps to head to the Mists and try a lvl 80 build, it does not effectively replicate the moment-to-moment feel of PvE gameplay.
It will feel something like this: 1-10, nearly everything goes. Mobs act relatively brainless, rarely come heavily grouped, and have significantly small health pools. That last part is especially important to note. Once you hit the 10-20 stretch, many of the simple skill combos you used to quickly annihilate mobs now only deal half of the mobs health. That, or you’re fighting five mobs and only killed two with the combo. This can very easily take a class which you thought was incredible and drag it down a few notches on the awesome meter, and suddenly you get the urge to go back and play a different class whom you also remember breezing through 1-10 mobs. You didn’t do anything wrong, and the class didn’t get worse, but the game did get more serious.
20-30, the mobs won’t get substantially worse, but your character will begin to fill out their own niche. You finally have enough choices to make your character feel less defined by their weapon choices than by their trait and utility build. And after 30 you continue to more sharply define this focus. But it takes up to this point before you understand what the class truly feels like to play. Don’t get too caught up early on in what the class might become.
As for which character to first take to 30? If you’re looking for varieties: Ele is the quintessential jack of all trades and can spec for just about anything. Guardian can strongly spec to damage, survival, or support, which gives you a fair variety of options. Most other classes fall into one or two major capabilities, without strongly adopting a third, although Engineer and Necromancer come close.
On the other hand, the Clock Tower was maddeningly difficult enough to warrant some epic lewtz. This puzzle, while fun, is nowhere near that difficult.
No. blablablabla
Well have fun with that jumping, pretty soon we will be able to get a plumbers hat and some suspenders for some in town clothes.
I would buy it. With money.
I desperately tried to get higher. I don’t think it goes anywhere farther.
Things such as keybindings that include ctrl+whatever. They work just dandy. But the standard functions of ctrl, like highlighting the names of interactable objects or ctrl-clicking items to link them in chat, those don’t work at all.
Has anyone else dealt with this issue? I suppose I could consider it a bug, but I hardly know what to say about how or why it happens, so it seems a bit early to submit a bug report.
Alas, if only these features were bindable in the keybinding options.
On the topic of Dungeon Bosses, particularly concerning the frequent complaint of their health pool sizes: everyone here can see the symptom, but few have noted the actual problem. When someone claims, “bosses have too much hp,” they actually mean, “we spend too much time fighting bosses to enjoy the tactics required to beat them.” The boss fights all lack depth.
The solution is simple: Good boss fights have Phases.
Imagine a boss that takes ten minutes to kill. You can expect to spend the first minute adjusting to the situation, mechanics, and teammates; another minute pinning down your skill rotation and utility timings; and then eight minutes of routine action. King Adelbern, the final boss in AC Story, is a good example of this. So long as you stay out of the fire and save a defensive utility for the Pull, you spend the fight pushing your damage buttons when they go off cool down. Bloody Victoria (CM path 1) is another great example: cleanse her bleed when she reappears from stealth, deal damage, and win.
Tactically, these fights barely differ from regular trash mobs; aside from (often) a single unique mechanic, the battle will take substantially longer to play out, but will demand the same basic acts for as long as it endures. Anet cannot improve upon the experience by tinkering with boss’ stats, either. Diminish the health pool and you bring the boss closer to feeling like an ordinary mob: more nuisance than interesting event. Heighten the level of danger, and you end up ostracizing those players who do not or cannot react perfectly. These sorts of changes only damage our experience in the long run.
Instead of stronger or weaker, we need more complicated bosses. The fights need more layers- more dimensions. Fighting a boss should feel like an exploration. Pretend, for a moment, that a boss fight is like hiking into a cave: at the mouth, at the beginning of the fight, the scenery looks different from outside, but the new surroundings are not overwhelming. Two miles further down the cave, near the end of the journey, we are surrounded in a completely separate ecosystem. It’s the same cave, but an entirely new vista. This keeps the experience fresh, and a boss fight needs to feel the same way.
This is where Boss Phases come in to play. To explain: when I say Phase, I mean any distinct shift in the method or tactics required to kill the boss. Classically, this refers to a system where at certain points in their health bar a boss will adopt new attacks, sometimes accompanied by a change in appearance. For example, a boss with a bow will, at 50% health, swap the bow for a Greatsword. Master Ranger Nente, in AC story, is an example of classic Phases. At ~60% and ~25% health he abandons his archery post to pick up a sword and summon a companion.
The Phases do not need to feel so rigid, either. A change in scenery (bosses that can be kited), adding distractions (bosses that summon adds), or simply sending your team scrambling (near-total wipes) can produce the necessary change of pace. Ralena and Vassar (again, AC story) showcase this point. At no time in the fight does either boss change their behavior, yet your party’s strategy can shift drastically if the bosses get too near one another. The sky is the limit here. Let the boss use the surrounding environment (see: Snowblind Fractal), let the boss force our scenery to change, you can even let the boss put the players themselves against each other.
But whatever you do, don’t make us fight the same routine mechanic for 10 minutes at a time.
I would buy a makeover kit if it didn’t cost the equivalent of 7 fsm kitten gold.
50 silver is a gift. 1 gold is reasonable. 7 gold (currently my cost for 350 gems) is ridiculous.
First of all, thank you everyone for the responses. Helpful stuff.
Your character level/traits/weapons will help us a lot in helping you.
35. D/F for PvE stuffs, Staff for WvW sieges and sPvP. Traits aren’t set in stone. In sPvP I’ve enjoyed 30fire/20earth/20arcana, and 20air/10earth/30water/10arcana But things change, and I haven’t Ele’d in sPvP for a while now so I have no real commitment to those builds.
Another factor would be swapping between damage, defense, heals, and control. There’s no good way to explain this, I think it comes with experience. You’ll have to learn how to swap to which attunement as necessary in general when the situation calls for it, based on what skills you NEED to use, not to just spam.
This is, probably, the part where my tactics fall apart. As an Engie I’m well accustomed to swapping skill sets based on the needs of the situation. If anything, I feel overwhelmingly adapted to this act. So much so that, as an Ele, when I swap to Water for one moment, then attune to something else, it frustrates me that I cannot immediately return to water again, and my control of the situation simply begins to fail.
It seems that a combat system based on stances (attunements, weapon kits, conjures, etc) naturally approaches the act of stance swapping from one of two directions: restricted or unrestricted. A full set of toolkit utility skills as an engineer, for example, showcases great unrestricted stance combat. Equipping or discarding a kit creates no global cool downs; the timing feels more chaotic, dancing in and out of each stance as this or that skill becomes useful; the necessity to linger in each stance diminishes beyond use of that particular skill; each kit may not, on its own, fulfill the needs of the moment, and it benefits the player to equip more stances as that allows for greater situational adaptation.
I expected the Elementalist to outline the counterpart: restricted stance combat. Global attunement cooldowns would mean each stance should feel more robust and independently functional. Rather than constant stance popping merely for this or that skill, you’d swap less frequently to adapt to more general situations (vs group, vs single target, vs heavy conditions, vs incoming control, etc), but with largely similar efficiency across the board. Except this is not the case. By and large I have no reason to leave Fire attunement, except to hamstring my damage output for some single effect with a prohibitively large cool down. Yet I feel compelled to swap stances, because they exist, and because sometimes, very rarely, it behooves me to heal or debuff. Unfortunately the swap often leaves me wondering why I bothered to attune for Water to heal, when simply killing the mob(s) more quickly would have kept me alive just as easily, if not more easily.
Granted, I’m doing something wrong here. I must be. I’m not certain what, exactly, I do wrong, but enough of you are content and proficient with Elementalist that the current design cannot be wholly problematic in the way that I see it. So what is the deal with attunement swapping? Do you all stay in fire, barring necessary circumstance? Or do you pingpong between two of your favorite elements and somehow magically bring the non-fire ones up to par in terms of damage?
I love my Ele, but (tl:dr) I just can’t get this attunement gig to work for me.
@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.
That would be really nice. I hope it works out as well as the plan suggests.
Even if you can’t do it right at the start, just check the scoreboard occasionally during the game to see if anyone has left or joined the game, then one of you can switch. My roommate and I play together in sPvP and end up on the same team about 95% of the time this way.
Well doesn’t that largely defeat the purpose of refusing to guarantee 2 players a spot on the same team?
Plenty of non-armor identifiers already exist: Nameplates, for the standard “red is dead”. Hovering your cursor over a player will outline them with a thin red or green glow, depending on opponent or ally. Selecting a player will place a ring underneath their character model, again either red or green.
Problem is, spectators don’t have cursors. And they might not get nameplates either (yet to be seen). So most of those methods are bunk. They’d work fine when you’re playing in hot-join games, but they won’t work for an audience at a tourney. Thus, team colors.
Hey Jon, as long as you’re (hopefully) watching this thread, quick question: A lot of advocates for team hot-join have suggested separate servers for hot join to split full random from groups. Do you feel this would have more detrimental than beneficial effects (in terms of team quantity balance, team matching, match consistency, and so forth)?
Disclaimer that we understand your answer doesn’t mean you advocate the system or that we’re getting it at some point. And that you might not be able to talk about it anyway.
The custom teamcolor pattern which nldixon already mentioned sound pretty neat.
Oh snap. I completely missed his post. My bad.
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.
I understand you’re not able to talk about it, but I still want to throw this out: let the team choose their Jersey? Doesn’t even have to be a full scale dye system. Just have ’em pick one or two colors and use that as the team template.
wow. how did this thread get to be this long when the simple answer is: if you want to PvP on the same team with your friends then join free tournaments.
We do not all prefer tournaments. They are not an objectively superior type of play. If you enjoy them more than hot join, well that’s totally okay. But that doesn’t cut it for all of us. If we felt merrily content just playing free tournaments then we wouldn’t bother with this thread. But we are not content.
The answer seems simple because it’s the only option we’re allowed to take. That doesn’t make it a good option.
List of things that are not OP:
Conjure Fiery Greatsword.
if stealth is for survivability then why are they spamming the hardest hitting abilities in the game while still being invisible?
Exactly my question.
Don’t forget that thieves are still subject to damage while stealthed. You may not be able to target them directly, but AoEs, Melee attacks, and even luckily aimed projectiles will hurt them. The most common problem I’ve seen from players who have difficulties with thieves is that the inherent expectation that invisibility somehow equates to invulnerability.
Stealth can get used for survivability. It can also get used for sneak attacks, misdirection, and outright escapes. Given the pitfalls of stealth (still being subject to nearly all attacks), I’d say it fully merits the potential damage boosts and their statistical trade offs. Not all spells must be strictly defensive or offensive, and Stealth is a fantastic example of that.
It’s not the other team, nor the other 2 teams playing in your tourney that your 5th player didn’t join the game at all. Why should you make 15 players wait for you if you couldn’t even bring a full team correctly?
Because thanks to how the system is designed, tPvP is the only place you can guarantee getting teamed with a group of 2-4 friends. Believe me, we’d be just as happy to not get shoved into the same gig as all the premades. GW2 will be a much happier place once the small group team support gets properly worked out.
Why don’t people complain about mistform stomps/resurrection more often? Because no one gives half a kitten about ele’s right now. But if fotm whining centered around Ele’s, you’d probably see this exact post, but with Mistform instead of stealth.
Point being: stealth rez is not some bizarre fringe tactic. It’s one of many ways in which players can get a free rez, and most classes have some form of rez/stomp protection. And like Gelrod pointed out, in some ways it’s weaker than the others.
Well, Bunker builds do only one thing well: survive while outnumbered. So that’s about the only platform for reward you can give them.
Skirmisher is a kill scored while not near or on a Capture Point.
1- Okay, I’ll concede that point. Serious players will happily pay for tournaments. No argument there. But you go on to suggest that this will make the free tournaments more approachable for small group pugs. The division between serious and casual is not the problem at hand, the problem is that small groups are shunted into the space between full random and full teams, and have no appropriately structured environment to call their own. Taking out the portion of players who would prefer to pay in to a ranking system may weaken the symptom, but it does not resolve the problem. And this is a problem.
2- Glory is not the issue. The issue is the ability to play in the manner which makes players happiest. Some of us are happiest in a group of 2-3 friends. Some of us can only get together a group of 2-3 friends, regardless of whether we’d like a full group of 5 or not, but we try to feel happy with that.
In your words, it’s never a good idea to let pre-made groups fight PuGs. If so, that counts for small groups in tournaments as well. We can queue up as a group of 2-3 players to PuG a tournament, sure; unfortunately, that can put us up against a fully pre-formed team. And if that’s unfair for hot-join PvP, then it is also unfair for tPvP. Since some organized groups will still show up for free tPvP, then paid tournaments have not solved the issue. And the issue certainly exists.
(edited by Pinder.5261)
As soon as Paid tpvp starts, free tpvp will turn into the pug town. Very few organized groups will go in. So it will be the prime place for 2-3 people to form a group and pug.
Your statement presumes:
1- That all “serious” players will happily pay money to congregate upon a singular channel of PvP, which is highly implausible.
2- That organized groups as a whole wish to avoid fighting against PuGs. Which is entirely opposite from this thread’s popular consensus that, if allowed, pre-made groups of any size will invariably attempt to stomp pugs. Not all of them, but enough to ruin the game for single players.
So, no, paid tournaments will not solve any of the current issues.
Long thread on this topic right here: Why can’t I PvP with my friends in the BattleGrounds
I promise, all of your arguments, and more, have been proposed and retaliated there.
The “so i cant play with my friends argument” is the one Rift listened to and smaller groups of organized guilds are still in there stomping pugs as I type this post. Pre-made vs pug should not happen under any circumstance limited or unlimited. Anet is smarter than Trion and they made the right call.
There’s the rub. By forcing small groups into PuG tournaments, Anet has not eliminated the problem, merely swept it into a different corner of the room. (Arguably) not a bad decision for hot-join PvP, as it preserves the free for all environment. (Arguably) a horrible decision for any group of 2-3 players, who are now often forced into the very situation Anet wished to prevent: larger groups stomping small groups.
For those of us who can only manage a group of 2-3 players for sPvP, this restriction is not the right choice.
WoW allows people to enter BGs together and I never heard a complaint regarding it. Using Rift as an example is a weak argument.
WoW has a massive history of PuG vs Premade rancor. It took years for their matching system to separate full-team premades from multi-small-team premades from full-randoms. Prior to that separation, Battleground Guilds ruled battlegrounds absolutely. Guilds became their own ranking system: we didn’t rate players by their ELO or Armor, we rated them by their guild.
And as the expansions came and went, this precedent slowly bled away. Nonetheless, people did complain. They complained like peons under the iron fist of a merciless lord. The PvP history of WoW and Rift are very strong examples for why Anet needs to be wary about the way they implement groups. Not that they shouldn’t implement small group support. Just that it needs to be done cautiously.
@Vandal-
They could implement a Team Jersey system instead: each player selects 2-3 dyes in the mists, and the team wears whatever colors the player in the “leader” position chose. Viola: dye utilization and team identification combined. Throw in some ways to prevent both teams from having too similar a color choice, and we’re all set.
1. Give players points for showing up to retake a contested node. Even if it’s already been neutralized. If their team owns it, and someone wants to take it away, any teammate who shows up to defend should get points, just for showing up.
2. Give players points per 10 seconds for holding a base while in combat and outnumbered. Because, really, that’s the only claim to fame a true defender owns. And if that’s what they can do, then they should get credit for it.
Defenders should get points, but not for sitting alone on a captured point. Anyone can do that. Even the least capable builds can sit on a point when no one is around. That doesn’t make them good defenders; if anything, it makes them a drain on the team since they aren’t elsewhere helping their comrades push or defend territory. If you’re willing to pay attention to the map and actively respond to situations that require defense, or if you’re such a dang good defender that you can hold your own while outnumbered until people show up, then you deserve points.
I’m a bit surprised cPvP hasn’t caught on for 8v8, given how many people refer to it as Casual PvP.
Warrior, Ranger, and Guardian are generally the least complicated professions. Very straightforward skills and effects, weapons seem clearly intended for either conditions or power, and each has a portion of utility skills with broad usefulness.
Warriors and Guardians can both build semi-tanky without sacrificing a lot of defense, and Rangers can build more heavily towards offense while staying alive by intelligently using ranged attacks. Building with defense in mind for your first few tries, even if it sacrifices some damage, will help smooth out the combat spikes and help you stay alive long enough to make sense of the chaos.
Also, if you haven’t yet, make sure you test out your build on the faux-player npcs in the north center of the mists. It’s a nice, isolated way to focus on how you’re using skills, and how they’re getting used on you. Granted, if you go in with a Ranger, they tend to just attack your pet. So I’d fight them first on another character.
Another thing to consider is that hot-join servers are subject to constant fluctuations in the roster. It’s common for one team to be down a player; also common for both teams to have one or two slots constantly occupied by transients (players who are only available for part of a match).
This doesn’t make much difference in an 8v8 game, since one or two missing players generally will not hand the game to the other team. But in 5v5, an open or transient player slot has a much more detrimental effect.
TPvP can function on 5v5 more easily given the demand for remaining active and in-game for the full duration of the match. SPvP, on the other hand, has no guarantee, and adding more player slots is about the most simple and effective way of smoothing out the problem so long as they continue to use a hot-join server structure.
(edited by Pinder.5261)
1. It isn’t meant to punish you, it’s just a choice to make well timed interrupts more useful. Preventing an action for only half a second (like some dazes do) doesn’t really help the daze user at all. Why even bother giving a skill a 0.5 second daze in that case? So in one way, it helps reduce the collective time of all CCs by not forcing them all to last 2-3 seconds or more to be useful.
2. Stomping is not always the best answer. Sometimes it’s better just to force the downed players to bleed out. That said, another part of this equation is that you let his teammate revive him. Were you packing ample Control effects to prevent the revive? If you cannot be absolutely certain that you’ll get the stomp (stability), then it’s far better to keep attacking: you’ll still be taking down the downed player, and the reviving buddy is taking damage with no defensive action. People can go down quick if they sit around to revive while getting attacked.
Is it worth fighting? Depends on a lot of factors: Do you have teammates around (who might revive you)? Are you within the boundaries of a capture point? Does your opponent have 10% or less health? Is there a group battle around you that could occlude you while you rez? If so, fight on. If you’re alone, severely outnumbered, or in the middle of nowhere: die.
The resurrection timer works by the clock. Every 20 seconds starting at 0, if I remember correctly. If you’re on 01, 21, 41, might as well fight. if you’re in the relative teens, quicker to die.
It’s a competitive game. Also anything that adds more decisions and actions per second adds complexity to the game. Whether that complexity is good or bad is a different matter, but it’s not really up for debate.
If you have 3 choices you can make at any given second, and I have 7 then my skillset is more complex. It’s also more rewarding.
You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Excess actions do not always equate to complexity. Most often they just add labor. Complexity is a compounded interaction of parts. Combat in GW2 is complex. Strategic decisions used to direct map control are complex. Swapping weapons while traveling between destinations only adds busywork.
Now, if there existed a whole host of selections for Out of Combat weapon choices, then you’d have some complexity. If each profession included an interesting set of decisions where some OOC weapon swaps might be more beneficial than others given a certain situation, you’d have some complexity. If your OOC buff weapon worked differently depending on your current weapons, you’d get more complexity. But this is not the case.
In the current state, the go-to weapon is the only one with a swiftness buff. Warriors: warhorn. Mesmers: focus. Elementalists/Guardians: staff. These are not sets of multiple parts whose interaction with your primary weapon choice facilitates new outcomes. These are not interesting decisions. These are singular resources much like quaffing a speed potion or hopping on a mount. Not complex. Just simple work.
If I have 3 choices to make, and you have 7, but four of those are just buttons to press when you have nothing else to do, our skill sets are equally complex. Mine may have greater downtime, but provides equal rewards while actively used. Yours just has extra busywork.
You are 6 clicks away to give urself a movement boon and instead of learning it – u complain about it.
What makes you think i dont do it? I am doing it alright, but i dont like doing it.
And therein lies the problem. Out of Combat weapon swapping isn’t something we do to enjoy (although I’m sure some of you do; nothing wrong with that). We do it because other people do it, and now we are forced to join in to compete. This is entirely counter intuitive to a system that promotes unique character choices, as it requires all players to make the same choice.
^
Why should it be looked at? It’s a tactical decision and good play. It’s fine as is and actually makes for a more skill-based competition.Btw engi’s do this too for instance. On my engi I will swap to a rifle for the leap and kickback abilities as a fast movement burst before swapping back to my pistol’s and engaging in combat. It adds more dynamics to the game overall.
TLDR: It’s fine and adds more complexity/skill to the game.
Not necessarily true. It gives an obvious edge to players who have hardware with macro capability or the know-how to run hotkey macro programs, placing people at a disadvantage just because they cannot/will not run the same 3rd party equipment or software.
Nothing about that involves in-game skill.
Besides, allowing OOC weapon swaps doesn’t improve upon character choices. Nor does it add interesting complexity. On the contrary, it removes complexity. It invalidates certain weapon choices and forces certain play style decisions. It reduces strategic choices, both for your character and for your team. The game is cheaper because of it. Warriors, as a profession, are not improved by the ability to warhorn between bases, they are required to do so in order to keep up with all other competitive warriors. And that’s bad by design.
play tournies. and btw it’s more fun to kill friends in pvp.
That’s just, like, your opinion… man.
Waiting 5+ minutes for each tourney match to start is both fun and efficient.
You could always go onto the fringe servers. There’s normally a couple that can never quite fill up.
Anet’s claim that they were modeling hot-join PvP after the FPS server formats was one of the greatest things I’d ever heard (about a MMO). Hopefully it’s still on the table for them. And not just in the way of renting servers. I mean seeing servers set up with specific map rotations, team sizes, and rule variations, with a UI to display all that and ping, too. That would make a massive improvement.
I’d certainly like to play with my friends in pug groups, but I also fear for collateral damage.
You and I both, Milo. You and I both.
Not to worry, Milo, you aren’t dismissive. The concern is legitimate, and I understand the worries it implies. Still, if you don’t mind, I’d like to clarify two points, mostly so that I am not misunderstood :
First, I don’t presume 3 organized, skilled players cannot make a significant difference. I wholeheartedly believe they can. But I would argue that the severity of said difference, is in question. To avoid pugstomping the goal isn’t to save players from ever losing; but to prevent them from losing so terribly that they feel it was a waste of time to PvP in the first place. Especially when that loss repeats over and over. I believe this is out of the question for just 3 players. Though they might have a significant advantage, it should take many more variables to turn an advantage into a stomp.
Second, the reason I believe stomping is out of reach for just 3 players (in an 8v8 game), is because the scenario already exists. It is not currently impossible for three comrades to get on the same team. Not easy, but not impossible. If 3 players could possibly stomp a whole team, then they’d already likely be doing it. Adding persistent teams for small groups would not introduce a whole new balancing platform. If anything, it might even help balance small groups from taking over matches as it raises the chances that both teams include a small group. Or at least, with good implementation it would work this way.
As for matchmaking and stack balancing: separate issue entirely, but I feel it’s of high importance for group and solo play both. Hopefully we’ll see it soon.
(edited by Pinder.5261)
That’s a very good point, Milo.
Rather than using it as a platform to shut down small groups, why don’t we brainstorm ways to protect PvP from that sort of exploitation, while also allowing friends to play together?
Restricting group sizes to no more than 3 players is one way to do this. Large enough to allow friends to group up. Small enough to prevent larger groups from controlling entire teams. Larger groups can split into two groups and, while they still will get put on opposite teams, at least they’ll still have some friends along.
Or you could allow friends to join in large groups, but if the group has 4 or more players, force the team scrambler to place them on separate teams at a 50/50 split in every match. Likewise, lock them onto those teams, turn off the ability for players in groups to switch sides. That way, friend/guild group are never allowed to completely control one team, and you can still scramble the rosters every match.
Speaking of which, there’s always the option for the Devs to code in antagonist modifiers that will balance players who try to override the small group system. If two small groups on the same server have players in the same guild or friends list, the game could automatically place them on opposite teams. That’s a clean way to ensure players won’t attempt to abuse the system for glory farming.
We’ve already proposed separate servers to segregate purely solo and those willing to play in small groups (I still wouldn’t advocate full teams, even if on their own servers). That way you have a much higher chance of seeing small groups on both teams. Much more difficult to abuse the system when the scales are balanced.
There’s a lot that can be done to preserve the integrity of hot-join PvP while still allowing friends to play together. And it’s true, some players will attempt to abuse the system no matter what the design. But that doesn’t make the addition impossible. It just requires the developers to be thorough with their implementation.
i started right now a tourney, i won 2 match straight easy. 2 premade men were in my team. why do you put emphasis in casual players = completely noob players? why do you think there are only premades in tourney?
if you are so unlucky sorry, but i start often tourney alone just to make something and i can’t find what’s wrong with them for casuals and for hardcore.
stop blame yourself guys and play
Why so serious?
This isn’t about the difficulty, or the chance that We’ll run up against a premade and get stomped, or that we may not win at all. Entirely the opposite, this isn’t about winning. We put an emphasis on Casual play because Tournaments have a completely separate philosophy that we don’t wish to involve ourselves in.
Above all else, Tournaments are about playing to win. You bring your game face, you try hard, and you do the very best you can to help your team win. Bailing out of a match midway is unacceptable. Screwing around is unacceptable. Not being good enough is unacceptable. Teaching your newbie buddy how to play is unacceptable. We don’t want to disappoint our PUG teammates with our casual antics any more than they want to deal with us not taking the Tournament seriously.
For people who want to be really serious and give it their all, I think Tournaments are a fantastic place. For groups of friends that really want to show off their skills, Tournaments are a fantastic place. For anyone who really wants to prioritize winning, absolutely, put them in Tournaments. For players who like to try hard: Tournaments.
For the rest of us, for the Casual players, we don’t want to take the game so seriously. We just want to enjoy playing, without the pressure of needing to win. We just want to bring our friends in with us for good old fun times of just playing to have fun. And the Hot Join servers give us exactly that. Minus the friends part.
It’s not that we like to lose, or that we want to sabotage otherwise good games. We like to feel impartial about winning and losing. It’s very difficult to be impartial when playing a Tournament, because Tourneys are all about achieving wins. That’s why we find them wrong for Casuals.
How about creating separate play types; leave one in there for new people learning to play the game and maybe add a separate" solo join only lobby" and a another lobby that allows group or solo. That way those who don’t want to face groups have two other options to play.
If Anet feels that the best way to handle small groups in non-tourney play is by creating servers to specifically house grouped games (though I’d still say only 3 players per group at maximum), absolutely, we are all thumbs up. Because we get what we want, and solo players get what they want, and the Tourney players can still go to Tournaments. Fun for everyone.
In this thread: a lot of people confuse high skill ceiling with underpowered.
There is no reason small group allowances would turn in to a guildstomping landslide just because groups were allowed in some small form. That’s illogical and presumptuous. A 3 player group is an excellent maximum (groups of 4 or more can easier deal with being split 2v2 since they still get a guarantee with at least one buddy), and so far all of the people who have advocated for friend groups have agreed. No one has pushed for more.
I’m glad that you and your wife can enjoy every aspect of the game. Kudos to you both, I hope you have a fulfilling and wonderful life together. That doesn’t mean the rest of us feel just as happy when we go to opposite teams. We’re just not as happy when we fight each other. Besides, some of us don’t get to see our friends as much as you see your wife. With what little time we have together it’s important to play cooperatively, not antagonistically. I hope you can appreciate that lack, since I imagine that if you only got to meet up with your wife for an hour or two a week, the two of you wouldn’t feel so happy about being forced to compete over anything.
And indeed, this is chaotic, desperate, unorganized fun. That’s why we like to play Casual sPvP. That’s why we don’t like tournament PvP. Tournaments are stubborn, dry, and regimented. We like to screw around. We like to test our curiosity. We do not want to be shoved into games with try hards and win-fanatics. We just like to play.
So, please, try to believe us when we say: we do not want to see premades stomping games. No one wants to see stomping. But we also believe there exists a more reasonable concession to playing with our friends than, “tournaments or deal with it.” And if we had any inclination to believe the losses outweighed the gains, we wouldn’t push the issue. But so far as we can conceive, the losses do not outweight the gains. On the contrary, the gains far outweigh the losses for everyone, not just ourselves.
In addition to Milo’s answer, people come to the forums very often to voice opinions on topics where skill/gear/balance/etc isn’t involved. For instance, the Downed State always has a heated discussion. The mandatory Red.v.Blue color dyes. Grouping with friends. Etc. These topics tend to rile people up as they have no definitive answer beyond the basic “yes please” and “god no”, with all arguments deriving from one or the other. Enter one thread, get riled up, and head on to others in the wrong frame of mind to act as a positive addition to the community.
One of the many reasons I think the P.H.P. forum is brilliant.