Guild Wars 2

I actually like a lot the good solution as a “placeholder” until we get build templates.

Having one build that activates when you play a certain gamemode is something I’ve never thought on! Really interesting.

On a side note, people don’t like “Courtyard”, the map, because it has a lot of things to LoS and well, people don’t like it (+everyone seems to be obsessed with 3v3/2v2 arenas).

Finally, I think whether or not separate queues is a really TOUGH decision. On one part, people may want to fully play one game mode, but they may be stuck playing a game mode they don’t like. On the other hand, separating queues would mean a worse matchmaking and longer queues.

The later part can be minimized because they would add this with Stronghold, on the expansion, where a lot of people would come and try the game and, therefore, the sPvP.

So yeah, I liked a lot the idea on the good solution, nice suggestion!

Maybe they want another round of the Public Beta, for more feedback before making any changes at all. We’ll never knonw till Tuesday!

Aww yisss, let’s bring back Solo Arena, with all the kids QQing, where the team with more members won (because most of the games were 4vs5) with a imbalanced matchmaking as today’s queues. And of course with the lack of communication and people who thought they were “pros”.

Did I do it right? We can QQ about everything. Of course I am against the implementation of Solo Arena again.

Hello guys, Poliator here.

We are all frustrated with the new Leaderboard. We think it’s bad, it’s a farm, et cetera… and I hope it changes. (We are still getting Test Seasons, so changes are always possible) But this post isn’t to whine about it. I want to ask you, players, what is your “ideal” of a Leaderboard? What should it mean to you?

In my opinion, a Leaderboard has three different purposes:

• Showcase the most skilled players at the top of the leaderboard, so the better players get recognition and, maybe even more important, top teams can scout out the better players for their team if they have a vacant place.

• To give the player progression. I don’t like at all the old MMR-based Leaderboard because we didn’t have any kind of metric to see progression. We’d just see our rank go up and others’ go down. I want to see some kind of number that indicates me how far I am from X player or what I need to do to get to any rank.

• Also, this “metric” rewards consistency; playing the game often. For me, it doesn’t matter if a player is the very bestest and wonnered against TCG (Twitch chat ftw, I’m sorry). If a player is good, he has to demonstrate he is good every day. It’s not fair that a player, just because his MMR is high, sits on the top of the Ladder, without even bothering to play more than one match per week. There should be a balance: play often to maintain your high position vs. raw skill.

• To distribute rewards among the competitive players. This can be understood better in a “league-based” Leaderboard. At the end of the season, the highest league will get the best rewards and in that higher league there will be few selected people (think of LoL’s challenger). This way, people have to only aim at a certain interval of ranks (or a certain league) to get better rewards: “ohh, shiny! I need to get to rank 800 at least to get X rewards!” It gives the player an incentive to improve.

My preferred type of Leaderboard would be one based on points and Leagues (easier aggregation of players), like League of Legends has, but I’m not necessarily against going back to an MMR-based Ladder, as long as it accomplishes what I think a Leaderboard should mean. I’d like to add too that I’m hopeful we will get leagues with this point system in a fancy, ArenaNet-style way.

TL;DR: In my opinion, a Leaderboard should have these purposes:

- Showcase the most skilled players.
- Give the players progression.
- Reward both skill and consistency (playing often).
- Be a way to distribute rewards.

What is your ideal of Leaderboard, guys? Do you prefer MMR-based or a League system? Discuss! I’d love to see everyone’s ideas.

Really nice suggestions!

I’d like to add that we need the Leaderboard finished before or at the same time as the expansion. Competitive players will need a good Leaderboard to continue playing… competitively (something that gives them prestige for their effort and a way to see how are you progressing). A Leaderboard helps to distribute rewards based on tiers (leagues) or on skill (MMR based)!

In my opinion we are likely to see a Third Test Season (with something different I guess? Leagues maybe? huehue).

When? My bet is before July. 15-21 June week is my bet on sPvP Ladder related news! I feel curious to see how this system is going to evolve. ~

I can say they should remove the profession dailies in order to stop, at some extent, this from happening.

I still like to remind that people has 2 minutes before the match starts to change builds, swap characters and agree on a general strategy. The fact people don’t take advantage of that is not matchamking fault.

Players also wanted a “full Berserker Meta” and now that we are approaching to that kind of Meta comp, people is complaining about Zerkers being OP.

Don’t mind me there, just my personal disbelief on (sometimes) what the players want.

I still agree COMPLETELY that this Leaderboard is meaningless right now. We all know it’s just a “farm” right now. Although you give a lot of weight on wins, it’s still who gets the most wins in that case. And someone with 1000 matches will have more wins than someone with 300.

I hope we get some meaningful changes this time around. I think this two Test Season (and probably a Third son enough) were about testing this “point system”. With all the Leaderboard farmers (no offense to them, they probably want the llama and surely they had a nice time playing all the matches) ANet should have gathered enough information on their point algorythm to make a significant move.

I think we will get leagues or something like that with this point system. That we won’t get stuck in this kind of Leaderboard. Anyways, these are just my thoughts.

I will look forward to future Leaderboard changes! I still have patience for some months more.

That time, as Julian.2971 said, it’s a time where you should talk with your team and prepare a general strategy for the game, know the builds of your team, et cetera. You can too check the enemy team composition and swap characters/builds accordingly.

That no one uses this advantage is player’s fault. If you don’t want it, press Ready Up button. If everybody wants to get past it, everyone should push the Ready Up button. but people decide to AFK during that precious time. So, player’s fault again.

Oh my, I didn’t read the Edit. My apologies there, totally my bad. xD

I try to be as constructive as possible when answering posts.

I can bring my answers here based on what ANet is doing.

The lack of players on hot-join during late nights doesn’t necessarily mean a lot. There will be a lot more playing actual Queues, both Ranked and Unranked (of course there won’t be a lot there either, but we don’t know, as you said, the numbers). Remember that hot-joins are arenas for practising, testing builds, doing dailies due to its fast nature, et cetera.

Regarding their vision, I think that they are focusing right now in making Stronghold a unique, special sPvP game mode. And on the Leaderboards too, I don’t think they will leave this point system as the final product and they are testing (remember we are still in Test Seasons) this to make the system work the better possible and then, build something bigger around it.

The TDM mode that is Courtyard… well. It can be done better, but right now I think they don’t want to introduce a separate queue for just one map and they don’t want (currently, future is TBD) to spend a lot of resources into making more maps for 2vs2 or 3vs3 Arenas (or even 5vs5 like Courtyard is, of course).

Oh man, and some spectator changes are needed as you said. Making it so you pay to see some matches live from your PC (if that’s what you meant) is not the right way to do it. Can’t say anything here, I haven’t think of suggestions myself for now.

Definitely, something like a public roadmap with the highest priority objectives for sPvP would be nice, although we won’t get it, at least anytime soon.

And as Sorel.4870 said, let’s try and attract as much players as possible, so sPvP grows!

OP, if you encountered this Guild doing that kind of thing, you can do two things:

A. Go to Unranked Queue, which is unlikely you do, because you said you like to do your dailies quickly. Or,

B. Simply, go out of that map and search another hot-join server. There is hundrends of them and I don’t believe that a guild can cover them all. You simply have to go to the server list and search for one match you can enter: you don’t have to rely in the “Practice Match” button.

Sorry for you to get a guild group like that, trolls gonna troll. But I don’t think ANet can do anything about it, it’s the nature of hot-join.

About doing something while in Queue for Unranked and Ranked… they eliminated the possibility of hot-joins because a good amount of the 4vs5 were caused by loading times, crashes between loads, et cetera. So I think it’s unlikely to come, because the even changed the name to Practice Arena, and not “Hot Join”

I will maybe do a separate post to discuss about Leaderboards. As Saiyan said, the current system is flawed in design from what a Ladder should mean (which may vary from person to person).

With that post I would like to go further than just “go back to the old MMR Ladder”. More like, think of a Ladder system that could work with this point system (with possible changes for it, if proposed).

I just need to think more about it to start a post inciting constructive discussion on the matter.

As long as the Ladder is like this, there is not a “higher level” incentive fir every player to play their best (not as important as the matchmaking factor, but without a good Ladder, shifting queues would likely result in bad matches, due to lack of incentives – more trolls).

I was just throwing ideas to another idea with that thing, really off-topic, I’m sorry.

I feel, at some extent, the same way you do towards “bring back ‘competitive’ SoloQ” players.

I don’t want to play Legacy or Forest for the rest of my sPvP playtime. My favorite map is Temple and, of course, sometimes it gets a lot of votes, but it’s not the normal case, where it gets 2-3 votes max.

As I said, I’d leave the system as it is. Even if there is only a little chance to play a map, that player(s) have still the chance to play it. And it helps Developers gather metrics about maps, too, I guess.

It feels so nice as well to meet a constructive player, either on your side or on the enemy team. A player that won’t blame you, but will give you advice if he sees you fail, or who will greet you on a whisper after the match.

Overall, meeting just one positive player is just so worth the experience!

The incentive/reward part of this would come from the Leaderboards.

With another Ladder system than the current one (leagues using the current point system or MMR like the older) they could place different rewards serving as incentive. No matter if Solo or full premade in Ranked Queue, both would be able to reach that tier, if they have put the necessary effort and have the required skill.

Of course, a “Team Ranked Queue” should have a better incentive for premades to play in that mode.

For example, something as seeding for big tournaments? To accomplish this kind of thing, they should make a really good Leaderboard, but this was just an example of what kind of incentive ANet can give the players (not only premades) to form teams and participate on this queue.

Queue times, sadly, would be longer and if no teams play this queue because of a lack of great incentive, it will die.

Although, I still have hope. We are getting Guild Leaderboards with HoT, but if I remember correctly, they will only come for Stronghold. Which leaves me wondering what kind of test will they try to do with the Guild Leaderboard (apart from a Team Ranked Queue, if not adding a Guild Ladder would be a little useless if you are not fighting “Guild vs Guild”)

P.S.: Sorry for anything badly writen. I don’t like typing on the phone.

I would say that the safest choice when going Solo, is taking one of the three Celestial classes: Elementalist (cele ele), Warrior (shoutbow) or Engineer (celestial rifle, 2 kits).

You bring a lot of support for your teammates as long as good damage outcome and sustain for yourself.

However, don’t pick one of those three if there is already, for example, 3 other celestial/bunkers. You will find that your team lacks the damage. In that case just roll something like a Thief, DPS Medi Guard, Power Necro, Pewpew Power Ranger… whatever DPS you feel like. I’d say mostly Thief or DPS Guard, but it’s just my personal preference I guess.

Celestial would focus on two roles: Roaming Speed (not comparable to Thief, but fairly good in the three builds) and Bunker (with damage in this case).

Zerker Thief: Single Target Damage, Roaming Speed and Decaps.

DPS Medi Guard: Single Target Damage and argably some sort of support coming from Virtues (looking at the Hammer meta build there).

Again, this is just my opinion. Hope it helps.

Kyle.9523:

Also, thanks Poliator.7021 for saying what I was about to post about why unranked exists.

Got you there.

As for SoloQ. I’m not really a fan of it in a team game without individual snowballing mechanics. I’d love to see, actually, the current Ranked Arena, with a Team Ranked Arena (giving sense to the Guild Leaderboards they are going to add), full 5 party premade queue, that would aliviate the “amount” of premades that so much bother some players.

How stubborn people is… they can’t, in any distinct situation, remove Unranked Queue only for one reason: some people will want to queue with friends and not a 5 full party. Maybe 3 party premade, etc…

It’s a Queue that does not affect Leaderboard system, where you can just chill with friends playing matches for pure fun, aside for the rather competitive Ranked Queue (this is assuming we will get a meaningful Ladder).

They can’t remove Unranked. Period.

Won’t argue the Solo-Team thingie for Ranked Queue because I won’t get any good thoughts in that topic I have not already. Peace.

Beards or we RIOT! (^*O*^)

Jk, it’d be awesome to have more beards, I’d totally love it!

It would be really good to have a Honor System like that.

It would make much sense because you get Dishonor when you leave a match! (although I believe it’s not active at the moment huh) So if you do well you get Honor, if you do “bad” you get Dishonor.

It’d be a nice feature for sPvP, not completely necessary, but apreciated.

If I remember correctly, they changed it to level 3. Can’t check it right now but it’s as simple to level up a character to level 3 and see the level up rewards.

I’m not sure right now, but as far as I know you can enter the mists with a new account from level 3

Wolfey.3407:

This is a double edged sword issue.

There are some instances that ANET needs some slack given and there are some issues to where they deserve the flaming they are getting. For developers, if you are not obtaining criticism you or your Player Management Team is not doing their job correctly.

If you are not obtaining criticism as a developer, one of three things is going on.
1) You are God and have finally unlocked the secret to eternal happiness
2) Players are bored of your content and don’t care about your work to comment
3) The PR staff is not doing their job by shining light on the negative issues.

More time then not, it’s number 2 with number 3 sprinkled in

In my opinon, more often than not, there is criticism but in a disperse and “not constructive” way. We can take an example on both cases:

- “Not Constructive”.

I’m not denying the existence of really good writen, critique post. We have one example on the “Food For Thought For ArenaNet” on a good criticism post (the OP was excelent, even though I didn’t agree fully with him, he brought the subject in a well-mannered way, enjoyable to read).

Most posts are not completely destructive, with bad criticism, of course. But they lack something, something that the post said earlier had: both a possible solution on the problem, a direction the player want the change to go and that “spark” that lights a discussion, that brings up every players opinion in a single post.

That post is a good example of constructive criticism and a much more easier way for ANet to approach the problem, with a lot of discussion, opinions and “solutions” there.

- Dispersion.

Basically, tons of posts are made relative to the same issue, scattering all the opinions, contributions, et cetera between different posts, making a lot confusing both for the player who wants to share his concerns and for the ANet Developer.

An easy example would be the “Celestial issue”. There has been a lot of posts about it (in this case it’s less important, as this “issue” has been around for quite a while), some with more discussion, others barely noticeable.

But, because of this dispersion and a lack of a “general” post about it (maybe even ArenaNet could do an official post about it), it makes that all the different concerns about that “issue” are scattered. Some people agree that the amulet is strong, while others think it’s some profession traits, as others think it’s sigil’s fault, but then mightstacking becomes the main issue for others, et cetera.

[I know the Celestial “issue” is not the best example, but it ilustrates quite well what I try to say.]

So yeah, in my opinion there should be more centralized discussions (concentred in one or maybe two posts) where all players try to share their concerns about the matter in the most constructive way possible, because it makes Devs job much easier with a more focused objective.

This is how I see it.

P.S.: I’m not denying the fact number 3 on Wolfey’s post. ArenaNet needs to balance more, gather more direct feedback, ask for it. Things like that I guess. I know it’s partly fault of ANet too.

Do not worry about what other players tell you. You will find those both in enemy team and in your team, too.

In my opinion, just ignore them. Try to focus on your gameplay, thinking “what did I do right? What could I have done better?”. Giving self criticism is always good and keeps motivating you to improve, to get better.

Of course, do not ignore another player if he tries to give you constructive advice, as it’s always welcomed. But from my experience, I wouldn’t risk giving someone else constructive advice, as most players seem to react negatively about this.

Don’t let this kind of experience let you down. Keep playing, keep improving and – most importantly – keep enjoying this game’s sPvP.

This can only be helped rank-gating Ranked Queue. For example, you have to be rank 20 to get into Ranked Queue.

This would just make sure that, at least, you don’t get completely new people in Ranked. It could be get to Rank 60 maybe, something like LoL requires from you to get lvl30 to start doing Ranked matches.

This is just my opinion. Ranked should have “dedicated” players meanwhile Unranked should have more “casual”, non-competitive players.

Good post.

But I have to disagree in the SoloQ part. I understand if people queue solo, facing premades is not fair. But why do I need to queue solo, to face other solo players, having a considerably longer queue time, to get still a crappy match caused from the fact the population is low?

From my experience with Solo Arena, it tells me SoloQ won’t do anything. I got worse matches than in Team Arena and I had faster queues in Team Arena than in Solo Arena.

So, as long as I can think there should be a SoloQ only in Ranked (I don’t want separated SoloQ – TeamQ in Unranked. I want Unranked to be the place where I can queue up with 4 friends, if I feel for it), it won’t do anything because of a low population (at least in mid & high MMR). I sincerely find this Queues great and somewhat encouraging that you party up for sPvP.

TL;DR: I don’t want SoloQ because I will still get bad, even worse than today’s system, matches.

I agree in all the other parts. We need something to do while on Queue and a separate queue for Stronghold and Conquest!

One thing I think they are going to do, only speculation, is the “creation” of a full Team Queue (based on the addition of Guild Leaderboards). I think we will have this system in both Unranked and Ranked but there will be another queue, a full team queue.

The creation of a full team queue would serve as a “sponge” to move premades from the queues we have right now to that full team queue. This is simply speculation.

About leagues… They should maybe, but I don’t know if we will ever see them. But we still have hope because on the PvP forums it says “Structured PvP, tournaments, leagues & events”. #Believe!

Well, as my last post here, I’ll say what everyone thinks here ( I guess, obviously).

Exclusive rewards are ways for people to show off what they have accomplished in an activity. If it’s everywhere in the game, it losses its exclusivity, therefore you are not acknowledged by whatever activity you do really well.

As you said, both sPvP and PvE are inherently different, completely agree. That’s the main reason they shouldn’t share all rewards. Because both are so different of a game mode, you shouldn’t be rewarded for something that is completely different to other thing with the same reward.

That line of thinking is flawed in my opinion. It’s not the same to kill 100 mobs (as an example) than to win X matches, complete X Reward Track.

As someone posted earlier, bragging rights and prestige is what this exclusive reward tracks gives us the players, specially minillamas (and Glorious Hero Armor if ANet eventually fixes the Ladder).

Then, again (againception), I’ll follow your line so you don’t tell me “it’s not on topic” anymore. Let’s see:

" I simply do not enjoy competitive multiplayer activities, I enjoy only cooperative multiplayer, in which none of the opponents are humans. Arena Net seems unwilling to accept that I exist."

I can show you a different point of view. sPvP is a different type of activity that features playing with players versus another players, as well as in PvE you play with players versus AI.

“There were no rewards that PvP players could get that couldn’t be gained through PvE”

This, what you said, a counter-argument ON TOPIC, there were rewards in PvE that couldn’t be gained through PvP. Repeat, this is ON TOPIC as a counter argument to this very phrase you wrote.

“They’ve also been adding more and more rewards that can only be earned through PvP, like the Balthazar backpiece, the PvP armor set, and now adorable llamas.”

Again, this is ON TOPIC, as it’s a counter argument of what you have writen. It has been said already, PvE has and had Fractal Weapons, Mawdry, SW armor, etc…

“so PvP is often the only option for picking up that spare, whether we enjoy it or not.”

Nobody is forcing you to do sPvP dailies. You have the PvE dailies. If you don’t like them, then don’t do them, nobody forces you to do sPvP. As a note, if you want those 10 AP from daily, then you need to ACHIEVE them, let’s not be that casual.

" and what seems to be a continuous effort to convince players to PvP only serves to make us more and more frustrated with the game."

I don’t see what is wrong about getting players an incentive to play sPvP. Again, take sPvP as another activity you can do in Guild Wars 2 . As well as you have Dungs, Open World, et cetera…, you have sPvP as an alternate different activity.

“whether they enjoy PvP or not, and if they do not, RESPECT that choice, and allow them to go back to the elements they enjoy, without them missing out on cool rewards that they might want.”

Then, it’s respected. If you want to have a reward you have to earn it doing the activity that is sPvP. If you want Fractal Weapons (although the drop is baddly designed), you have to do lots of FotM. If you want the SW armor, you have to do a lot of events on that map. It takes an effort to earn something .

“Bring is back to the previous standards where you could ignore most of the available options if they didn’t suit what you wanted to do.”

Maybe ANet didn’t want it to be just a little walk! Maybe you should earn it .

“You gain nothing by forcing players to spend their precious time doing content that they do not enjoy.”

If you don’t enjoy the content, then you will have to miss the rewards. I, myself, “like” dungeons at some extent, but I hate with all my heart Fractals. Why do I have to miss the Fractal rewards!? Because it’s another activity with its own rewards .

Now, to finish a last quote (sorry for all the "" spam, but I don’t know how to quote at all lol), I’m making something clear:

“Now, some PvPers will argue that there are rewards that can only be earned through PvE, and they’re upset about that.”

Okay. That’s fair, there is that complain. Let me ask, what would be the counter argument to your “it’s unfair that sPvP has exclusive rewards” ? The main counter argument is that, as well, PvE has and always had better and exclusive rewards than sPvP.

When most people say that PvE has exclusive rewards too, they are not starting another topic, it’s totally ON TOPIC. Players are stating that as a counter argument. Other thing is you don’t like that argument. So… I don’t want that all my efforts put to earn a reward are all in vain, as it can be gained somewhere else.

Then, again, let’s not think of this as PvE vs PvP. Ultimately, these are two different activities. Inside PvE, I don’t see anyone complaining why they can’t earn Fractal Weapons through Triple Wurm! Different activities, with different rewards that show the effort a player has put on it, in order to earn them.

P.S.: Why do I bother, you are telling me I’m Off Topic again, and to everyone. You don’t like counter arguments to your opinion, I guess. Have a good day, peace.

Again, I think most of the people disagree with you: there is PvE exclusive things we cannot get from PvP.

You CANNOT argue that we don’t need skins or minis, because it’s no use for a PvE player to have them either, as they don’t increase your stats or something. You know, PvP players also want to look pretty!

The Fractal weapons or the World Bosses skins are examples. They are of course RNG gated, but it’s in the end PvE exclusive. If you don’t wanna try get them in PvE because you don’t like RNG it’s not our fault to be honest.

I still find this an irrelevant topic for the PvP Forums.

I’m sorry but I don’t agree.

Let’s suppose, as you, that I don’t like anything about PvE, I hate it. There is ona major thing separating PvE and PvP: gold.

It doesn’t matter how many games you play, you will never be able to craft a legendary, for example. Or whatever other crafted expensive weapon.

I think that having some special rewards is fine, as it incentives to play and to play better. So as far as 1 hour of sPvP gives that much less of gold than 1 hour of dungeons (not even speedclearing them), I will be right that we have special rewards.

On a side note, please in case you don’t, try and get your daily in hotjoins (I know sometimes the autobalancing and such is a mess). It really is at most 30 min a day to get dailies and it greatly helps you in reward tracks, that is, completing the backpiece or the Glorious Armor set.

This is my little bit. I disagree and I think we should even get more special rewards.

I would make this:

Unranked Queue being as it is right now.
“Two” Ranked Queues. One will be the exact Ranked Queue we have right now. Second one would be a “full team” Queue.

I find this more reasonable knowing we are getting Guild Leaderboards (which can maybe, only maybe, tease a full team Queue). Moreover, a full team Queue separated from the actual Ranked Queue would drain the ammount of full premade teams that there is right now on the Queues.

So yeah, summing it up: Unranked no changes – Ranked no changes – “full team queue” Ranked.

P.S.: yeah, it’s true that in offseason there is no real difference between Ranked and Unranked. Maybe a good Leaderboard should solve this, as you can see your progress between seasons, I guess.

To leave here my input:

If you are going to make all those changes for now (I hope turrets get revamped at some point, cough HoT cough), I’d say that you let players heal turrets (warr shouts, water field blasted, etc etc) or at least let them put boons on them.

Making them being critically hit and getting conditions, it will be a huge nerf (which is the point I guess) but it will maybe be too much of a nerf. With both changes turret’s health will melt a lot faster, then either making the player able to heal them or maybe adding them a little more health, would be an appropiate change.

As said, I do hope turrets get an overhaul, but on the meantime I think that turrets should come with a little buff of some sort to make up for such a huge nerf. That’s my opinion. Yey for turrets end!

Do not talk about classes with low self condition cleanse in the second main paragraph if it’s not your main focus. AoE conditions gets “nullified” by the fact that there is usually a couple of Celestial classes that are able to perform AoE condition cleanse.

“On Topic”: I don’t think AoEs are big nor spammable. They may feel a little abussive in some circumstances due the Conquest nature. Some AoE can fill a good portion of the capture point but: a) they don’t do a lot of damage if they are spammable and b) tank or classes with high sustain are the ones to stay on point, therefore eating AoE is necessary if you want to capture a game.

Outside of the capture points I can even argue that AoE are too big, being this game mode so mobile. As I said, some of them can be very effective thanks to the capture points (grenades for everyone! Yey!).

So yeah, I don’t think they are big nor spammable. And again, don’t talk about classes with low condition cleanse if then you are going to be bad mannered to other player. Peace

I think that OP, when he says “defending” he means the situation where you are stuck in your base because, for whatever reason, the enemy team outplayed you in rotations, objectives, etc… you are stuck in your base and although you wipe them, you still have to deal with some NPCs coming through the lane + you don’t have enough time to get to the supplies.

In that situation, comebacks are unlikely to happen. There, the max you can get is stalling the game and actually losing it by timer, as you can’t push at all or gather enough objectives to gain points.

So yeah, I think OP is right.

THIS IS IT MATES, KEEP THEM OUT!

-cough, cough-

I’d just like to say a couple of things. Overall I agree with all your points (but MATE, the pirate voice actor is so awesome! MATECEPTION!!)

Bad 2) I feel as well this way. Voice Communication will be same or stronger in Stronghold than in Conquest. So we can say that matchmaking needs to improve to not get premades vs pugs or, more importantly, the high MMR problem (they get balanced being paired with “newer” players).

Although you can still carry like crazy with some builds, as people is (was) still not used to them.

Bad 5) One thing I really like about Stronghold and high lvl play is strategies. We saw some interesting initial splits and tactics in the Devs vs Devs Battle of the Bands (I always understood it as Battle of the Bans on the stream. lol). So I think it may reach an interesting high level play, easier to comentate and more engaging for the viewer.

Remember that they still have plenty of things to tweak, so if a strategy is too dominant, they can tune down some numbers like scoring on certain objectives, NPCs health, nerf builds, buff any other thing, etc… seems versatile and easier to balance than Conquest! That said, only time will say if it requires what it’s needed for high level play.

Ugly 1) Why did no one said that to me! I’d have loved to try it… but I hate playing condi Thief so…

Ugly 2) Can confirm, died a few times cuz of red circles. I didn’t know what I was stepping on, but I died in 1 second. Was pretty funny to be honest xD

Donari.5237:

Or must the team wait for the chance to summon the hero dedicated to their side?

Nope. It doesn’t matter which side Hero is ready to channel, any player of any team can channel it.

P.S.: sorry for the offtopic

Stronghold will be fully available for everyone who owns the base game, that is, expansion is not necessary to play it.

I don’t know how the Guild based Ladder will work with the shared queues, etc… either

Very nice post to see here.

I agree with most of things you said. Although I’d say that they should leave Conquest maps as they are right now (they are not bad, it’s a Conquest game mode and they fulfill their purpose). With this, I’m not saying they can grab a major idea from any current Conquest map and do a new Stronghold map.

Donari.5237:

I’m no PvPer but the Ready Up has done a superb job of explaining Stronghold objectives and strategies.

I’d say the only unclear thing to me is the hero spawn: Can either side spawn a hero at either point when the three minute point comes, or can you only spawn the hero on your side when it’s up?

Glad you like it! We need to grow sPvP population for it get better.

Regarding your question: as far as I understand, every three minutes a Hero will spawn on either side (north or south). When the 12 minute mark gets, the first Hero may be able to channel on north side or south side, it’s random. Then when the 9 minute mark gets, the second Hero will be able to channel on north side or south side, random again.

This is, at least, how I understanded it works. Anyways, you can watch some actual Stronghold gameplay on Youtube, so there you should have a good view of when they spawn, where, etc… Hope I helped you.

It can happen two things as far as I know:

You either get matched against a team equal to yours, from rank 10 to rank 80, so there is unexperienced and experienced players,

or

you get matched with a team with the same average team MMR as yours, but everyone is medium experienced players, that is, not as experienced as the rank 80 in your team, but more experienced than your rabbit rank.

This may cause some imbalances in the second case because the low ranks will feel useless versus some more experienced players.

Again, this is how I think matchamking works right now. I might be wrong.

Nice, a good and constructive post on the forums.

On-Topic: I can agree on everything you said so far: more strong identification on color to better distinction between Red Team and Blue Team. I’m fine with your takes on animations that cluster the view.

Too, I’d find amazing that some elite skills or utilities like Warbanner or Portal would get, maybe a map shout-out in spectator mode. Maybe a “Portal here!” thing, so everyone knows this crucial skills are noticed. This would cause a discussion about “which skills deserve this feature?”

As for spectator overall for Gw2, as this game can’t have huge moments or huge “plays” due to its combat system, I find it can have a good spectator mode if some changes, as yours, are done. For example, the “true beauty” of the Conquest Game Mode are rotations, that is, how the team as a whole moves through the map. I’ve seen tons of matches won by a team inferior in mechanical skill, just because of better rotations and knowledge of the map.

So, maybe, objectives can be the “big plays” of the sPvP Gw2 gameplay. Did they decide to give up this objective? What are they doing instead? Et cetera. So casters can, while casting, “theorize” more about each teams movements and such. This is why I think Stronghold will be “better” than Conquest for the viewer (and in my opinion, it will be at least the same funny to play).

This is my take on this. Thanks again for this kind of post, I love them.

There is a 30 seconds grace period, so as long as you can change characters between those 30 seconds there should be no problem.

It’s acumulative, that is, if you change characters (it takes you 15 secs) and then you DC because of lag (taking this, for example 20 secs) it will count as a loss regardless of the final outcome of the match (because you have acumulated 35 seconds of DC).

Hope this helps.

OP, I’d give you a cookie if I could, thanks. I agree with you. Balance as it’s understood by most people apparently, it’s wrong.

In my opinion the meta right now is healthier than others (healthier, healing cuz of celes, huehue) but it’s not balanced at all. Not because celestial is OP; I find that balance is hard to achieve in the Conquest Game Mode, not that specs are godkitten strong, but that Conquest makes most of them look godlike.

Anyways, good post.

There isn’t universal agreement, as I don’t agree at least.

I don’t want at all Solo Queue to come back, for some reasons + I don’t like last leaderboard nor this one. I think they are planning to do something bigger with this Ladder, but it’s just a guess, who knows.

If you want a competitive queue, there you have Ranked Queue. There is no point in removing a map from Unranked, which is a Queue more serious than hot-join (custom arenas), but not competitive because that is the purpose Ranked Arena was created.

Well, the party search option on the LFG works perfectly I’d say, it’s just that people don’t want to use it.

Totally agree, maybe with some promotion from ANet like, when you try to queue up it tells you something like: “do you want to search for a party?” – You click yes and the LFG Tool starts working. I don’t know, just a really rough idea.

Maybe it needs promotion or… maybe people simply don’t want to party up. But I’d still like ANet to promote it.

Thank you for the notification Grouch. It’s good to hear that you will be doing more changes in the future!

I think they said it doesn’t matter at the moment because the Profession thingie they wanted to add for Match Making wasn’t working as planned or something like that. Don’t mind me.

So yeah, I just think it is OK, but I am not sure either.

1. Another Ladder. What I expect for a Ladder isn’t something most people want, I consider some crucial things that it should have aside for being “MMR based”…

2. Some kind of activity inside HotM when waiting for queues.

3. I want ANet to make Justin O’Dell come back to post on forums, I miss him so much.