Guild Wars 2

Rerroll.9083:

try smite instead

Haha…. Kinda funny to see if ppl switch from GW2 to Smite, just because GW2 is missing so many features… Because at it’s core, GW2 is so much better than Smite.

I couldn’t play Smite for more than an hour: The handling of the Chars is horrible, the MOBA-adaptation into 3D simply doesn’t work on so many Levels and I kept trying to dodge (still THE BEST feature of GW2; Hat’s off to ANet…. I’ll probably never be able to play another game like GW2 that hasn’t got sth. like the Dodge-Mechanic, because it makes everything more exciting and responsive and adds so much depth to the game).

Really, if a game like Smite can get more Viewers on Twitch.tv and be a more successful e-Sport (afaik they already had some decent Tournaments at Pax or sth.), then ANet needs to take a hard look at themselves, because on every level besides a few key-features, GW2 is a superior game.

About the Patchnotes: Custom Arenas most likely will not be in it, so I really don’t care.

All movement-skills and Teleports should drop the Relic – it’s as easy as that.

I don’t think that Mistform should drop it though, because that would lead to pretty much any ele-build other than full-tank would probably not be used on Spirit Watch.

I’d love to see some sort of a Mapmaker or for people to be able to implement MOD’s or sth. But I guess implementing those things would take time and ressources as well, which ANet doesn’t really have…

ShRNA.4376:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Options that we have working internally, so far, include:
Name
Password
Message of the Day
Max Players
Minimum Players
Respawn Time
Score Limit
Team Size
Time Limit
Respawn Type (Wave or Individual)
Autobalance Toggle
Lock Gear Toggle
Lock Skills Toggle
Ready Button Toggle
Spectators Toggle
No Stats Toggle
Map selection

Would like to see at least some way to change the game type. For example:
Option to toggle certain nodes off. So one could leave only one node on to make it a king of mountain type game.

I think it would be pretty much a necessity and improve GW2 immensely, if you had the option to:

1) Toggle off the 2 Sidenotes (which would make the Map King of the Hill)
2) Tweak the Point-Gain by Kills/Nodes and secondary Objectives by a certain percentage. Sth. like: Point-Gain 0%, -50%, -25%, +25% and +50%.

I don’t think that those Options would be hard to implement, but it would basically give us several new Game-Modes, I don’t see a reason why ANet should let that additional content they could generate basically for free, slip through their fingers.

Pretty nice to see Devs comment more on Threads – keep it up guys.

But what I’m a bit concerned about is that I have the feeling that Custom Arenas won’t be ready next Patch. Also, plz include an Option where you can modifiy the amount of Points gained from Kills, Nodes and secondary Objectives. This would really greatly improve the Custom Arenas!

I reaaally wanna know that as well.

Also, what will your Version of “create custom game” look like? What Options will we have etc.?

I think it would be much smarter for ANet to get out every bit of information they can about it, because:

- Expecting it to come out in the next Patch and then not getting it would be much more frustrating then when ANet would just say a timeframe.
- People could give feedback before the feature is implemented and it’s maybe too late for feedback.
- Players feel that the communication between ANet and the PvP-Community is lackluster – don’t let that get to a point where we simply associate this with ANet as a whole, that’s not a Association you wan’t your Customers to make with your Brand-name.

SAtaarcoeny.8476:

i explained it twice already. but again. if you portal something weak into something strong then the weak thing still dies.

if you just pop the portal then the mesmer is out of the fight for 90 seconds.

now if your saying that the portal makes the mesmer good because he can get back to a node and die then that is wrong.

if your saying you can commit 5 ppl to a mid fight because you dont have to worry about back node? well most 5v5 fights take longer then 60 seconds so then the portal is out of the question anyway because its gone. so 1 min into the fight we send an ele to go back cap. now the mesmer was even more useless.

after talking with kaypud and java before pz came back the last time they all agreed with me that mesmer was aweful. and you even said it in your stream that there is way better classes to back point because they can actually win the fight. correct?

I’m kinda baffled about your strategic understanding of how to use a Portal, because your Points are valid, but a good Mesmer in a good Team can easily find a way around those Situations and the lack of a Portal has much more negative Aspects (on most Maps).

First of all, you don’t need to Port the Mesmer back necessarily, but you can choose the best possible composition to go defend (or attack when used offensively), restrained only by what Chars are near the Portals. In a game where you have Chars that can hold points against multiple Opponents and Matchups that often favour one Char or one composition of Chars, you can often create favourable Situations very quickly.

Another Point is, that good Mesmers won’t use the Portal if it’s not necessary and leave a fight (if they aren’t completely necessary and winning that fight he’s in would be more important than defending a Point) to walk back to the Point they are Portalguarding, greatly diminishing the recast of the Portal. The most important Skill in terms of strategic understanding of the Game of a Mesmer is knowing when he can walk away from a fight, for the sole reason of not having to Pop the Portal. If you have this Skill, you can reduce the time spent out of combat and even do it in a way, where this lesser time spent out of combat, is executed in situations where the Mesmer isn’t necessary for a favourable outcome of the Match. This could mean you can hold or decap a Point without the Mesmer or you can loose a certain fight and maybe loose a node, but still be fine with it overall.

There are some very useful Plays you can do only with a Portal that will enable you to cap Nodes, where it would be almost impossible otherwise, by creating favourable Situations for your Team in both Number of Players and favourable Composition. Take this Situation for example:

You’re on the Forest with a “normal” Setup (3 more offensiv Chars, 2 more defensive) and the opponent has 2 Nodes. You leave 1 defensive Char at your node and try to run to the opponents Node (guarded by 2-3 Players). If you can do that undetected (invis ftw.) you have a good Chance to have created a Situation that favours your Team, which forces the opponent to send support, pop Portals etc. The smart part is, that while running to the opponents Point, your Mesmer dropped a hidden Portal in the Middle. If you can’t cap their homenode (which should have favoured your Team), you just w8 for the reinforcement of the opponent to arrive there and w8 for the opponents Portal-Exit to run out. Now you pop your Portal and your Team of 4 is at the Middle, creating another highly favourable Situation for you.

Tell me how you can decap anything against an equally skilled team with 2 Nodes and a Mesmer keeping the 2 Nodes connected, without having a Portal yourself? There is no way, because even if your Team is better in Teamfights, it’s not better if the opponent can freely rearrange the number of Players and the composition.

There are some smart ways of dealing with Portals, but they often require specific Builds (trapper to counter Portals) and they still don’t mean you cannot run a Portal yourself, because Portal is so versatile, that it cannot be “hard-countered” (which means doing sth. that simply makes the Portal useless).

But I’d have to agree with you, that good Teams (like the Top-5 Teams of each region), can win against any other Team thats not in the Top-5, without running a Portal. This is because the Skill-Gap between the Top-Teams and the Rest is huge and because the strategical understanding and possibilities of the game (not only considering the Portal, but in general), is simply not that high yet, even in Top-Teams. (This is mostly because of lack of highly skilled opposition and because the game is still kinda young).

I’m not the biggest fan of Conquest either, but we have to hand it to ANet, that they’ve made the best Conquest-Mode I’ve ever seen in any game and it has great Potential to easily be made into a solid Game-Mode by simply making secondary Objectives more important.

Phantaram.1265:

nakoda.4213:

I would not be willing to pay to do something games have been doing for free for decades.

the reason I chose to settle on gw2 is that I am also not willing to pay sub fees for unfinished products any more.

I’d say owning your own server in a video game, at least in most of the games that is featured in, is not free.

I highly doubt that you will actually own a server and have better latency, control over server-specific-settings (region for example) and other stuff like that.

What it most likely will be is a “make custom game”-function common in every competetive Game and a necessity for e-Sports – they can’t make Players pay for that.

What they can do though, is make Players pay for some kind of a “deluxe-Version”, that gave you much more freedom about the Settings and the Options. PW-Protection and Map-choice should probably be in the free Version, but they could go way beyond that and add Options in the deluxe-Version for:

1) Number of Players
2) Changes in what gives how many Points (killing/capping/secondary Objectives)
3) Changes to the length of the Game and Points needed for the win
4) Blocking out certain Classes, Runes or Amulets
5) Chance to fiddle around with stuff like %DPS taken, Respawn-Timer, time to cap/decap Points
6) Hell, maybe there could even be some sort of a Mapmaker, where you could use a current Map and then place Nodes (maybe even only 1 or up to 5 or sth.) and various secondary Objectives on them (this would be the dream! ^^’)

And I see no Problem with paying for that, because it wouldn’t hinder e-Sport or rid any1 of a crucial Game-feature and give no1 an advantage through money, just a bit more freedom on how you want to play.

Sharpy.8397:

I cannot believe that more people want another game mode rather than a ladder system!

What good is a Ladder at the current state of the game?

I could totally agree on a Ladder for Guilds (in structured tPvP) or a Ladder that’s actually saying sth. about skill (Like the QP-Ladder did), but a Ladder for individual Players in the current state of the game – it doesn’t even make sense:

1) We already have rank and pretty detailed statistics about your PvP-accomplishments.
2) What would they even base the Ranking on, now that the only thing truly saying something about skill is gone? Will they base it on your rank, which would be ridiculous, will they base it on tournament-performance (will they split it between single-join and join as team?). And how exactly does it say anything about skill if you win in a tournament where half the time one team is missing players, where the matchmaking doesn’t seem to work and where single-joiners get teamed against full premade Teams?
3) How will it make the experience in the game any better? Will ppl truly play more and farm all day to get a better ranking, when there is already a rank that will probably say about the same about your skill (not much, only about the amount of time you’ve played).

Also, who needs a Ladder if there are no ppl playing? Gotta be reaaally satisfying to see you’re in the Top100 of 200 active PvP-Players.

Also, some great and successful games have no Ladder (most MOBAS have an ELO, but no Ladder), or no “clear” Ladder (like SC2, where ppl are split up into Leagues and then split up even more into sub-groups of this League, so you could be Diamond Rank 1 in an easy and low populated Diamond-Group and still be a worse Player than sm1 thats ranked lower in a Group with higher quality and quantity of Players).

The only good thing that could come with a Ladder is a decent ELO-System and finally a Matchmaking-System that could work, but I highly doubt that this is what ANet understands as a “Ladder”. They’ll just add up your Glory and if we get REAAAALLY lucky, they’ll weigh wins from sPvP higher than hotjoin.

A working Ladder is at this state of the game useless and I highly doubt you will attract any truly competetive Players back to the game with it; it’ll basically be sth. for lowranked hotjoiners and solo-queuers, which are IMHO not what GW2 needs now – it needs very competetive Players that play with organized Teams, why?

1) Those Players are more likely to stream and actually have Viewers, which is great for GW2.
2) Those Players are more likely to seek out sponsorship and organize Tournaments, participate in them etc.
3) These Players are more likely to attract People that are looking for a great e-Sports-Title (wow; AZUBU und Curse etc. have a GW2-Team? Better check that out!)
4) But they will also attract more casual Players that haven’t heard from GW2.

The more time ANet invests into the Ladder, the later we get Observer-Mode and custom Arenas and those features will actually make GW2 grow, because it enables e-Sport to grow.

Vence.6974:

They should do something like the closer your team gets to 500 points, the more points your team member’s deaths are worth for the opposing team. For instance, if team A stands at 400 pts while team B is down at 250 pts, then team B should get like 15-20 pts for each team A member they kill whereas team A would still get only 5 pts per kill. Yet, if team B manages to comeback and the score now reads team A 480 pts and team B 405 pts, then both teams can get 15-20 pts for each opposing member they kill.

This way a team winning by a large margin has to stay alert because both secondary objectives and the above point idea can allow for sharp turnarounds. This would not work in hotjoin but can provide better tpvp.

I don’t think you should punish the better Team, thats not how a balanced game is supposed to work. Besides, as stated before, there is a very simple way to make games more interesting, give Teams a wider arrey of possible Strategies and make more Comebacks possible:

Make secondary Objectives more important!

It’s not only about scaling Point-Gain on most Maps, but maybe also make it a bigger investment for the Team (Point-Gain should also be scaled in that regards, but generally higher than now). Here’s an example:

On Forest, the Creeps could be twice as strong, but they shouldn’t only give twice the Points, but maybe four times the Points. This way, one Thief couldn’t just solo sth. within a few seconds, but it had to be an actual choice for the team and a constant tension between Node-capping and secondary Objectives.

On Foefire, killing the Guild Lord could maybe even give an instant-win, but they could add in more NPC’s (for example on the Top of the Walls near the Gates), Gates could have more HP and maybe there could even be a repair-kit that would give the Gate back some health.

In General, having multiple (equally) important Objectives in a Game has several Advantages (of course there can also be too many, but even with much more important secondary Objectives, GW2 wouldn’t run that risk). Well, here are the Advantages:

1) The Game gets more Balanced in Terms of Builds used and Team-compositions: Take the Problem with current Builds of the Ele that are very Tanky: They’d be good at holding Nodes, but when you fight against a Team using them, you could always focus on the Secondary Objective (because those Ele’s probably won’t kill anything really fast and would probably only be very strong on Relic-Runs or sth).
2) It gives Teams more Options how to play a Game, what Team-Comp to run etc.
3) Comebacks could be a possibility.
4) The Metagame would probably become more diverse and Interesting.
5) The Game would get more Skill-intensive in terms of Strategy.

Look at GvG in GW1, which was IMHO one of THE BEST Team-oriented Game-modes I’ve ever encountered. You had to worry about running the Flag, holding the Middle, protecting your base, Killing the opposing Players and a few Gimmicks depending on the Map (like a Treb or Pathways that could be opened in a certain Manner). Each of those Aspects was important and could get you the win and you had to decide on what to focus, how to play against certain Team-comps etc.

How did this great Post turn into yet another balance-discussion? Keep it together guys….

Balance is atm. a non-Issue copared to necessary features like custom servers and obs-mode.

Solution: Make secondary Objectives give more Points….

matjazmuhic.1649:

I wish someone from Anet would read this and at least reply with something meaninful and not just:“Thanks for info… we’re working on it …”

Well, the fact that they aren’t doing that is why so many ppl are unhappy with the amount of Communication between ANet and the PvP-Players…. -.-°

Besides the e-Sports Features (Obs-Mode, Custom Games and eventually a working matchmaking-system + Ladder), there is nothing inherently missing from GW2 to be a potential e-Sport.

Yes, we could talk about new game-modes, better balance etc., but those aren’t a necessity for e-Sports, because GW2 is a mechanically smooth, skill-intensive and fun to play/watch game.

The only thing besides the necessary features that GW2 needs to be an e-Sport is People playing the game. How they make it happen is another question:

1) New other Features that really make GW2 stand out, make ppl come back to it, tell friends about it etc.
2) A big Tournament with cash-prizes
3) Smart advertising of GW2 finally being e-Sport ready
etc.

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

It’s just the lack of features that stops GW2 being more successful. E-Sports we’re coming!!! Soon.

100% Agreed.

There are several examples of games being successful despite having glaring imbalances (that often lasted for very long times and were a big Issue in the community), just look at these Games:

- SC2 has been quite imbalanced for long periods of time: There were months were Zerg couldn’t win anything and every Zerg was whining, then there were months (after certain changes in balance) were nothing could beat Zerg in the Lategame.
- DotA2 / HoN: There are always certain Heroes that are so incerdibly good, that they are being banned almost every game and then there are Heroes no1 really plays.
- Warcraft III TFT: Undead wasn’t able to win any Major Tournament for years, with only very few exceptions.
- Basically every Fighting-Game has a few Characters that are considered Top-Tier and some that almost no1 uses.

But name me one Game that had success in e-Sports where:

1) You weren’t able to make own games: This alone makes e-Sports impossible.
2) Had no Observer-Mode: Without Spectators there is no e-Sport and you can’t just Stream PoV’s of Players and expect people to watch and understand it.

Then there are other Features that are more aimed towards casual Players, like a good Matchmaking-System, a good Ladder etc., but I think those are secondary to the e-Sports Features (at least in my opinion).

shaolin.9716:

PowerBottom.5796:

We even see it in the Survey; even though Warrior seems to be clearly thought of as the weakest and Ele as the strongest class, Players don’t seem to be too unhappy with the current Balance.

You need to have a deeper interpretation of these statistics. Although the happiness on game balance seems average, there is a higher percentage of players playing the more overpowered professions skewing the results towards happiness while people who stick to their beloved but underpowered profession get neglected. In reality balance is much better reflected by the questions on which profession is strongest/weakest. In my opinion, balance is more important than any new feature. Whether a player gets facerolled by an overpowered profession played by a bad player in the current game or in a future custom arena or whatever other feature, that player will still eventually just give up on the game because fights are simply too unfair.

I’m currently studying Psychology and I have years of experience with statistical analysis, but if you want to apply the same rigorous standards of science in this Survey, you won’t get anything out of it.

Just look at who is answering to this Survey: Mostly People that are still playing the game or at least visit the Forums (I don’t think the Person that made this Survey sent out e-Mails to all the people that left GW2). There are tons of People that left the game for various reasons that aren’t included in this survey, so it surely isn’t representative for the whole GW2-Community and those that already left, but at some point, were a part of it.

Your interpretation is exactly that – an interpretation, and therefore not strictly scientific. You assume that People that play the stronger classes like the current state of the balance, because they are getting favoured (ruling out the possibility of those People being objective), yet, you assume that People playing those classes are highly objective when choosing which class they feel is the strongest (common psychological theories about protecting a persons self-worth would strongly assume that Players like that wouldn’t choose their class to be the strongest, because this would basically say that they are doing well in the game not because of their skill, but because they are favoured by external reasons and therefore diminish the amount of self-worth and the satisfaction of winning they get out of playing the game).

I think that those two factors kind balance each other out in this sample, so I think it’s of value to compare the results for which class is weakest/strongest and the happiness about the current balance in the Game. It’s logically possible that the Players that still play the game aren’t too unhappy with the balance (because that is one major reason why they haven’t left yet), but that there is a strong agreement towards which class is the strongest/weakest.

It’s entirely possible that the unhappiness about the game (in terms of balance, new maps etc.) would be higher if you’d ask all the players that left the game, but if ANet wants to gain anything out of this Survey, I think it’s that the People that are still involved in the Game clearly made their Mind up about the Strength of the classes, but aren’t too unhappy with it. This could be because of various reasons, like:

1) The balance is a bit skewed, but it isn’t a big imbalance
2) The balance is a bit skewed, but they feel that there are more pressing Issues to solve
3) They don’t really care about the game being balanced

I guess I can understand what you’re trying to say here and I can appreciate it, but there are several Factors that can’t really be denied:

1) The competetive Community has greatly diminished since the release
2) Numbers of PvP-Streams has gone down and Viewership is incredibly low
3) Tons of great Teams have disbanded
4) ANet hasn’t kept a lot of what they’ve promised

So even if GW2 is a great game, no; an amazing game, I think we can all at least somehow understand the frustration of some Players.

Also, when you talk about trolling and the negativity of the Community, you have to realize that you’re (most likely) talking about the official boards and tell me which game has an official board that isn’t packed with trolls.
Besides that, you are painting an incredibly black picture of the Community, because there are still Ppl that stay constructive and positive (Just look at the Person that has made those nice Surveys, the guy that is creating a Dueling-Website and other things like that).

I can understand everyone that is frustrated, just because many competetive Players expected so much from GW2 (also ANets fault for setting extremely high expectations) and feel that the game has so much potential for e-Sports. Personally, I’ve played tons of games where I had decently high expectations and was disappointed, but after a few months of Playing, being disappointed somehow, I never looked back on them (recent examples include Diablo3 and SWtOR). But with GW2, I’m still hoping; checking out the Boards every now and then, searching for Updates on Patches, looking what’s happening on Twitch.tv and logging in every so often to see who of my friends is still on, even months after I’ve stopped playing actively (which was probably one of the games I’ve played competetively the most in the amount of time I actually played).

If you basically only take everything that accounts for Node-Control into your equation, I don’t understand why you rate the Mesmer so low, because the Portal is the most important and best Skill in this regard:

1) It allows you to not have Players on 1 Point (or even 2, if you run 2 Mesmers) defending it all the time to keep it safe.
2) It allows you to defend 1 Point instantly with the right amount of Players, making it harder to collapse on a Point.
3) You can use it both offensively and defensively.

No other class comes even close to matching that Potential.

Irenicus.9801:

While I can see them go with gems for custom servers, making every custom server require rent in form of gems would most likely make any competitor to this game giggle out of sheer delight. If there was one point where the pvp in this game could be brought back to life, that move would definitely destroy it.

Want to stream scrims? Well you better hope someone in the two teams ponied up for the priviledge of providing Anet with free ads on the internet.

I would however applause the marketing genius behind depriving pvp players of so much hope that they are willing to pay for proper ways of facing other teams.

They could always just give out a free Version with less Options and a Deluxe-Version with all the Features (there should be many though).

I see that stuff like that should be free, unless there truly are some amazing Options, but I also see that ANet will continue to spend very few ressources on PvP if they don’t see any money coming in from that end.

The only surprising thing to me is that more ppl want a Ladder than Custom Games, just imagine what Custom Games could entail:

1) Community run Tournaments with Ladders, Prizes
2) Showmatches to hype up the Game
3) Bring back the most competetive Players that could now train on a high level with just a few Top-Teams —> This would also lead to better Streams, more Viewers etc.
4) With 2v2 up to 8v8 already Confirmed (afaik), ppl that have begged for sth. like an Arena would get closer to it and if you could set the Point-gain to only kills giving Points and fiddle around with the Respawn-timer, you’d have a decent Arena.
5) Depending on how customizable they really are (but with structured 2v2 up to 8v8, even this would be beneficial) it could give us insight into how the game plays and the balance looks like when exploring possible future game-modes.
6) With PW-Protection, ppl could even Set up decent 1v1-Tournaments without the fear of others joining and disrupting the game.

—> Yes, a lot of work to make Custom Games exciting would fall into the Hands of the Community (make own Tournaments, Ladders etc.), but with the Pace that ANet currently puts out features, I’d rather have the Community in charge of PvP than ANet and Custom Arenas is simply a necessary feature to even give the Community a chance to do so.

The Ladder is just something to make the grinding a bit more rewarding; neat, but not as important as Custom Games. I mean, we already have PvP ranks, stats for how many wins/losses you have in PvP, we had a QP-Ladder etc. Good Players know they are good, does little Timmy with his PvP-Rank 11 really need to know if he’s on rank 5002 or 4998 in the World?…..

evilapprentice.6379:

PowerBottom.5796:

evilapprentice.6379:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Lukin.4061:

Is it just me or the amount of gold pvp players obtain over time is ~1000 times lower than pve players? It is interesting what does anet think about the prices of “renting”…

I’m not sure if the currency for renting was confirmed yet but I would like them to make Glory Points a form of currency for these custom arenas.

Lets be fair here – Anet is still a company, and they’ve got bills. PvE players have tons of stuff they can spend real money on – PvP players, not so much. They don’t ask a monthly fee to play the game, so if I’ve got to lay down a bit of real cash for a server rental, thats ok by me (assuming their pricing structure isnt asinine)

Actually, I think that if the Custom Servers would cost Money (Gems), it could be highly beneficial for PvP and I’d gladly pay for it, if it gives us enough Choices.

In my opinion, ANet shifted their Focus from PvP to PvE, because they make more Profit there. If they could see, that PvP-Players also have Money they are willing to spend, they may put more effort into PvP.

Yeah, that works (because there’s always the option to purchase gems with real money). It doesn’t need to be a cash-only system, it just can’t be based on glory.

Exactly, and it would actually be something that wouldn’t lead to a pay-to-win Scenario and it wouldn’t diminish the enjoyment of the game. Because Players that don’t wan’t to pay, could always join Guilds that have some ppl that pay, they could join Open Servers without PW-Protection and if ANet doesn’t completely fail at making the Custom Arenas, it also wouldn’t allow the ppl paying for them to gain certain Advantages (other than the freedom of choice and maybe knowing better how to play on their respective Settings).

Mrbig.8019:

Eremus.4506:

Done. But I’m pretty sure Anet has a lots of data actually from ingame that they are looking at a lot. By having the the numbers how many eles are running around and how much they are winning/loosing (and when) gives a much better idea on balance compared to a"feeling class x is better than y".

But thanks for the survey, since Anet will not share their data

Cheers.

Numbers regarding classes are not really relevant.

People play a class according to their tastes, i may play ranger and enge, but my main ( and the class i’m spending most time with) will still be the thief.

@OP

Very good work.

But having people saying thief & mesmer are strongest class ( they are following the ele in those results) is very, VERY misleading.

I fear that regarding class balance, this survey won’t be very representative of the actual SotG.

Being scared of unfavourable Balance-changes (be it for the Metagame or for your favourite Class) would mean ANet would actually have to make significant changes, which hasn’t happened yet and shouldn’t be the main Focus of ANet IMHO.

I’d actually be pretty annoyed if we get like 20 changes to underwater-combat and 20 other pretty useless ones in the next Patch, because thats time and ressources better spent on new Features. We even see it in the Survey; even though Warrior seems to be clearly thought of as the weakest and Ele as the strongest class, Players don’t seem to be too unhappy with the current Balance.

evilapprentice.6379:

Gallrvaghn.4921:

Lukin.4061:

Is it just me or the amount of gold pvp players obtain over time is ~1000 times lower than pve players? It is interesting what does anet think about the prices of “renting”…

I’m not sure if the currency for renting was confirmed yet but I would like them to make Glory Points a form of currency for these custom arenas.

Lets be fair here – Anet is still a company, and they’ve got bills. PvE players have tons of stuff they can spend real money on – PvP players, not so much. They don’t ask a monthly fee to play the game, so if I’ve got to lay down a bit of real cash for a server rental, thats ok by me (assuming their pricing structure isnt asinine)

Actually, I think that if the Custom Servers would cost Money (Gems), it could be highly beneficial for PvP and I’d gladly pay for it, if it gives us enough Choices.

In my opinion, ANet shifted their Focus from PvP to PvE, because they make more Profit there. If they could see, that PvP-Players also have Money they are willing to spend, they may put more effort into PvP.

daydream.2938:

What we know.
1. can make it 2vs2 to 8vs8.
2. pick map.
3. can password protect it.

Outside of that its speculation-unless theyve mentioned other things that i have not heard.

2 and 3 are basic, Point 1 is actually kinda neat…

Here’s what I would need to get excited about Custom Maps:

1) Choose how Points are gathered: set a percentage from 0% to 200% on Kills, Node-Control per Second and secondary Objectives where 100% is the Amount of Points it currently gives.

2) Length of Match and Points needed for win: Pretty Self-Explanatory.

3) a few other Modificators: Respawn-timer, DMG received (maybe ranging from 50% more than now to 50% less) and I guess if Players will not only use this service to play against other teams they know well, it would be beneficial to make Options to restrict certain Classes or make some sort of a Rank-requirement etc.

If they really wanna blow me out of the water, they give us some sort of a “Mapmaker”. It can for example only be one were you could put Objectives on the Maps we already have: Placing 1-5 Nodes (with 2 or maybe 3 Sizes) and placing one or multiple Secondary Objectives on the Map (Set NPC’s, Guild Lord, Spawn for the Relic, Treb, Shrines etc.) And maybe the ability to put down destructable/indestructable Walls…

It would probably cost a lot of ressources to make sth. like this happen, but who knows – maybe thats what they’ve been working on so hard!

Custom Servers is probably the most important Feature they can put in the game, because it could bring back the competetive Community, maybe there could even be some Tournaments (ESL or sth.).

Good Teams could specifically train with each other, without having to grind through teams that are no Match for them or without waiting for a queue to pop.

What good is a Ladder for ppl that look towards e-Sport? This is a feature for Solo-queuers and grinders and they either keep playing anyways, or they’ve quit and won’t come back for a feature like that.

Nice Survey, should be pretty informative for ANet, the only Problem is, that ANet already has all the Infos they need to make GW2 a better game in terms of PvP!

I guess it’s really about the PvP-Department having too few ressources, but at least they now have a nicely put together Survey on whats important for the community.

The only Problem I have is that Question 2 and 3 (the ones after stating your Name), should be heavily skewed, because not many Players that have quit the game and don’t read the forums etc. will answer this Survey, because they don’t come across this Post. ^^’

It’s nice to see though that ppl also like some of the Stuff ANet put in, this might show them that they can improve the game, if they just listen to the community, identify the Problems and find a decent solution.

Valkyriez.6578:

Balance is the least of this games issues and should be one of its lowest priorities outside a few tweaks.

Features, features features.

Infrastructure and features sell games and bring players in.

/agreed.

The absolute highest Priority Features are:

1) Custom Games: This would allow the Community to grow themselves, to create Tournaments, to train with other Teams etc.
It is an absolute necessity for e-Sports and it would even diminish the lack of other Features like a Ladder, because if the really good Teams play in ESL and have their own Ladder, an ingame-Ladder isn’t as necessary as before.
2) Observer Mode: If we would have Custom Games but no Observer-Mode, we could still arrange Tournaments and watch them with Streams. It’s not pretty, but it would work, that’s why the Observer-Mode is the second Priority.
But if you want the Community to grow, get ppl excited about seeing certain Matchups, to maybe establish a Streaming-Community with casted Tournaments and Showmatches, you’d need the Observer Mode.
3) Replays: Again, its a tool to get the Community involved: Good games could be safed and maybe casted or analyzed later etc.

After all those Tools for the Community, we could focus on “Ingame-Stuff”, like Rankings, new Game-Modes, Maps etc.

The big Problem is though, that the 3 necessary features above won’t bring tons of ppl back or excite anyone that isn’t already playing GW2 and is simply waiting for those features, because they are absolute Standard in basically every competetive Game.

If you really want ppl back, we need new Maps, Gamemodes etc.

Balance-Issues come after all that, because: For good balancing, you need a competetive Community, which GW2 hasen’t currently. Also, new Maps and Game Modes could change the Metagame and balancing before that would be kinda useless.

uberkingkong.8041:

Yes, Conquest is more team related. If you DM style go play WvW where people just run around in circles and fight each other.

Have you ever played GW1?

There are much more Game-Modes besides Conquest or Deathmatch and most of them Focus more on Teamplay than Conquest.

GvG in GW1 had by far the best Game-Mode I’ve ever encountered in Team-based Games: You had many different Objectives, there were many completely different Playstyles and Teambuilds available (Split-Team VS Teamfight-Oriented Team VS Balanced), the Maps were big and exciting and it was overall so much better than Conquest.

Then, there was of course the Heroes Ascent, were you had Multiple Game-Modes depending on the Map: Deathmatch, King of the Hill, Relic Run and even Maps were you had an FFA with Multiple Teams.

ANet did a pretty good Job with their Conquest-Mode and they abolished several bad Aspects of the Conquest-Mode with good game-design (good layout of the Maps and the Nodes for example: I’ve played Games were each Team basically had 1 Node for free and then you had to Zerg in the Middle. Also, the Idea with the Secondary Objectives is a very good Idea). The Problem is, that the Secondary Objectives aren’t important enough and that there are certain Problems with Conquest you can’t really get rid of (static and boring play of the Node-defenders that aren’t Mesmers and the fact that it promotes several very defensive and boring to play against builds, that then need to be dealt with with uber-aggressive Glass-Cannons: It just creates an annoying Metagame overall.)

The good thing about the GvG-Mode is, that it is so versatile, that this 1 Game-Mode is enough to keep ppl playing and you can just make some new Maps every now and then to keep it fresh. GvG was an excellent Mix of several Game-Modes:

1) Capture the Flag: You needed to get the Flag in your base and hold the middle with it
2) King of the Hill: Controlling the Middle with the Flagstand was very important and if you could win in the Middle and hold the Flag, you had a big Advantage
3) Base-Raid: Another Strategy was to Split with certain Chars and pressure the NPC’s in the Enemies base, to either kill the Guild-Lord, to force Teamfight-oriented Teams to split, to snipe the Flagrunner or to gain an NPC-Advantage for “Victory or Death”, were all the NPC’s and the Guild Lord walked into the middle of the Map.
4) All the Maps had certain other Characteristics, like a Trebouchet, the ability to open/close certain Pathways, a Node that you could hold for certain Boni etc.

It was just amazing overall and it worked very well.

I don’t really enjoy Conquest as it is, for the following reasons (not all of them are against Conquest in general, but the way how the Conquest-Mode is atm.)

1) Defensive Builds:
Conquest promotes heavily defensive builds probably more than any other Game-Mode. Yes, you’d probably also want a tanky Char on a Relic-Run or Capture the Flag-Mode, but in Conquest, you get away with multiple Tanky builds in your team-comp, because you don’t necessarily need DPS to get a Point back, but it works with Knockbacks and other stuff like that as well.

2) Static Play:
If there wasn’t the Mesmer with Portal, there would easily be 2 Players on each Team that were just guarding a Point without doing much of anything, thats kinda boring IMHO….

3) Secondary Objectives should be more important: This could IMHO diminish most of the negative Aspects of Conquest.

vespers.1759:

if classes were balanced 1v1 would they not also be balanced 5v5?

seems so to me.

1 Post above yours I courfully explained why this would not be the case……… -.-°

bhagwad.4281:

If you balance for dueling, team balance will take care of itself.

Nope and that’s where your Point falls out of the Sky. I could name thousands of examples why this isn’t true looking at other Team-based games, but I’ll try and find simple examples from GW2 itself:

1) Buffing others: A build or even a whole class could be quite weak in 1v1-Situations, because it is centered around Teamfight-abilities, like Shouts or other Buffs. If you balance those builds with 1v1 in Mind, they could easily get too strong in Teamfights.

2) Conditions: If you balance the amount of Conditions Chars can dish out and/or remove from a 1v1-standpoint, it’s easily possible that Teambuilds with multiple Condition-Chars get totally out of Hand.

3) Healing: A lot of ppl stated (quite some time ago, I don’t play active anymore), that Eles had too good Healing and most ppl didn’t even mention the AoE-Heal for the Teammates. Healing can easily become too Powerful in Teamfights, even if it would be balanced in 1v1’s. Also, by shutting out the Teamplay-Aspect of Healing, you rid yourself of a good way to balance it (more towards Team-Healing and less towards just being unkillable yourself).

4) Chainstunning: There could easily be Teambuilds that can chainstun a Char and if you don’t balance Stuns and AoE-Stability and stuff like that with Teamfights in Mind, you’ll have a big mess on your hands.

5) 1v1 is mostly just a Deathmatch-Scenario and often doesn’t take several Key-Aspects of the Game into consideration, like being able to move quickly around the Map, being able to kill NPC’s or structures etc.

6) Most 1v1 take AoE-DMG completely out of the equasion (it would only be taken into consideration for Chars that have NPC’s)

Balancing GW2 around 1v1 just doesn’t work…. at all….

I’m not trying to be the partypooper here, but I have to disagree with a lot of what the Original Post said:

Arenas: I highly doubt that many GW1-veterans are interested in Arenas at all. GW1 had game-mechanics that were much more straight-forward and not as complex and reactive as GW2 (with that I mean; no dodge-mechanic, no skillshots etc.) and basically all the incredible depth of GW1 was possible because the Game-Modes were 8v8 and had interesting Maps. A simple Arena, be it 2v2, 3v3…. up to 5v5, just wouldn’t have worked in GW1 at a competetive level.

GW1-Players liked GW1 because of AdH and GvG and they liked those Modes because they were strategically demanding and because the 8v8-format forced Players to have excellent Map-Awareness, Positioning, Reaction-Times and Understanding of the Game.

Yes; WoW-Style Arenas would work better in GW2 than they would’ve in GW1, but when it comes down to it, most GW1-Players I know would prefer sth. like a GvG-Mode (not necessarily 8v8 I guess: 5v5 or 6v6 could probably work as well). Because when we talk about different Game-Modes, ANet can’t just introduce 10 different Modes so everybody will be pleased: It would cost too many ressources from them and it would split up the PvP-community within your own Game.

Duels: Most of what I said above also applies to Duels, although I’d like to see this Game-Mode more than I would Arenas, for the following Reasons:

- It wouldn’t split up the competetive Community, because it’s just 1v1 and not another team-based Mode.
- There are actually a lot of 1v1-Situations in the current PvP (which isn’t a bad thing with such an action-oriented Gameplay) and it would be cool to have an Outlet to train them and see where you stand.
There would need to be various statistics (different Matchups), specially created Maps, Ladder with Rating-System etc. though, which means it would cost quite a bit of ressources.

Down-State: IMHO one of the greatest Mechanics ANet implemented in this Game. It gives so much strategic depth on how to react to downed players and I just love it.

I’m not even gonna go into the Balance-discussion. ^^’

Suzu.4193:

Also would like to mention that GW1 Pvp is probably more active now than the GW 2 Tpvp scene in NA. GW 1 AT’s (automated tournaments) have been going strong and yet GW2 scene is dying at warp speed.

Thinking of going back to GW1 as well: GvG’s are just so much better then Conquest….

Can’t anybody make a Mod or sth. were we could play with the GW2-Engine and Chars on the GvG-Maps?…. Why is there no decent Mapmaker in GW2? ;(

I’d gladly do the work for ANet, because they don’t seem to get why GW1 was such a popular PvP-Game and GW2 simply isn’t….

1) How many ppl actually work on PvP and how high is the priority to make GW2 an e-Sport?
2) How does the Monetary gain through the Gem-Shop look like if you compare PvE- and PvP-Players.
3) Is there anything planned to hype the PvP and bring it to ppl that aren’t playing GW2 (or at least not PvP)? Like a big Tournament with Casters or sth.

Rezz.8019:

Forest = make bosses worth 50 points
Legacy = buff gate and lord health, make him award ~250 points
Khylo = just fine
Capricorn = delete it
Temple = Make buffs more relevant
Spirit Watch = just fine, tho rtl, and any skills that wouldn’t allow you to cap the shrine should make you drop the relic instantly

You’re welcome.

Agreed – pretty much the TL:DR Version of my First Post. ^^’

I highly encourage ANet to at least try sth. like this out, because it could potentially make the game better! And although I know nothing about coding/programming, I really think that most of these changes could be made very quickly; theres no reason not to give this a try, just treat it like the “Temple of the Silent Storm week”: Give it a try for 1 week and gather the Feedback.

It won’t shy any ppl away IMHO, but rather bring some back to try it out and ppl really want these sort of possible changes and they want to test them out.

I thought about the Gates on Foefire as well and especially if the Lord Kill would be more important, giving more health to the Gates would be a good Idea. I also like the idea with the Bomb, it just creates more Options on how to play the Map.

About the NPC’s (the Slow-Moving NPC-Force or the Jungle): Yes, there are a lot of NPC’s in the game already, but I think Those Objective-based NPC’s differ from The Illusions, Pets etc. because they aren’t “bound” to a character. If you play a Character that relies on NPC’s to do DMG or other things, it kinda feels like you are being cheated when you can’t really control them too well, but I don’t think the NPC’s mentioned by me fall in this category. Of course I’m only assuming what ppl might think here based on my own opinion, but NPC’s as objectives done right can be awesome: Just look at GW1! One major Part of GvG (of certain Team-setups) was splitting into the base of the opposing Team and killing off the NPC’s, to later win in “Victory or Death” (where all the NPC’s that are left and the Guild Lord walked to the middle), or to kill of the Guild Lord.

I just had a great Idea about another Secondary Objective (or maybe this Term wouldn’t be appropriate anymore with both Objectives being weighed equally):

Jungle: Kinda like in all the MOBA-Games, a Map could have one or two “Jungles”, with easy, medium and hard to kill creep-camps that would respawn every 2 Minutes and if killed, would get you a certain Amount of Points. It could be pretty interesting to see what kind of “Jungler-Builds” would be created, how many ppl you would send to gank the Jungler of the opposing Team etc.

Although I haven’t played more than 10 Games in like 2 Months, I’m still interested inn GW2, if it actually becomes a good e-Sports Title.

That being said, I wanted to talk about the Conquest-Mode and ways to improve the Gameplay of the current Maps.

I think at this State where GW2 and it’s Community stands, it should be pretty clear to ANet, that a lot of people don’t like the Conquest-Mode very much. But what’s good about the Current Maps is, that there are secondary Objectives already in Place.

So why not make them more important compared to the capturing/holding Points aspect of the game?

It could be done very simply by reducing Points gained by holding Nodes and incresing the Points gained by the secondary Objectives. I think this would work best on Foefire and Spirit Watch, but to some extent and maybe with a few alterations besides incresing/decreasing Point-Gain, on the other Maps as well.

If we look at Legacy of the Foefire, with reduced impact of the Nodes, we could actually have sth. similar to GvG in GW1:

- It would be more important to Split to the enemy base all the way throughout the game, not only once with a 5-man rush… Ppl would constantly stay back to defend the base and others would need to attack it.
- Capturing the Nodes would become secondary and it could kinda feel like having a Flagrunner (or 2 or even more) that has to do his own thing on the Map.
- It would also increase the tension of making decisions between focusing on the own base, the enemy’s base, or the Nodes and possibly encourage new builds and strategies.

On Spirit Watch, it could also be very easily achieved to make it feel more like a “Relic-Run-Map”, where the emphasis would be more on the Orb and eleviate the Conquest-Aspect of the Map.

Temple of the Silent Storm and Forest of Nilfhel run the risk of being maybe a bit too boring, if it’s just about camping the Points where the Buffs/Neutrals spawn, instead of focusing on the Points, but with a few tweaks, it could work as well.

Battle of Kyhlo could then maybe remain the clear-cut Conquest-Map, because I actually think that the Treb works really well: It counters too strong Bunker-builds, it’s important enough to actually focus several People on controlling the Treb and it’s a lot of fun IMHO. Maybe ANet could give the Treb more HP and throw out some “small repair-kits” on the Map, that could be gathered to repair Health lost by the Treb, as long as it isn’t completely destroyed yet, by which Point you’d need to good ald Repair-Kit… Just maybe some small changes and it would be a big improvement!

Other Ideas for Secondary Objectives that could maybe be implemented on old and/or New Maps could be:

Slow-moving NPC-Force: Imagine something like 3 slow Stone-Giants or a Giant Snails or sth. per Team, that slowly walked from a certain Point on the Map to the Nodes. At any Point during the Game, ppl could attack them, heal them, slow them etc.
If the NPC’s reach the Nodes, it will be extremely difficult to hold the Nodes, because they’ll cast Knocbacks and stuff like that, so it’ll be important to kill them before they reach it: But on which Nodes will you Focus? How many ppl will defend your NPC’s or kill the opponents NPC etc.?
Could be funny IMHO… The Strength of the NPC’s should be kinda like a Guild Lord, with strong but interrubtable Self-Heal and weak attacks while on the Move, but full attack-power and Knockbacks while on the Nodes (which should happen after maybe 8-10 Minutes).

Well, what do you guys think?

plasmacutter.2709:

The biggest outreach they can do is putting an end to “global” combos.

Competitive communities develop when new entrants don’t get killed in 2 seconds from nowhere wondering what the heck happened, then immediately leave never to return.

Burst needs to be toned down in this game, no matter what the cost.

After that, bunkers can be addressed, but ANet sends the wrong message to people when they go ask one-trick mug+backstab thieves how they want to play while taking a sledge hammer to builds used by everyone who do not play thieves to live long enough to experience actual game-play.

Not to be rude, but I don’t think you get the point of this Thread.

This Thread is about reaching People that DON’T play the game yet. It’s about reaching potential PvP-Players and introducing them to the game, it’s basically totally independant from the game itself. The Game itself only comes into play, when you’ve already reached those Players and got them to play it; then stuff like that becomes important.

It’s kinda sad where this discussion is heading: Yes, we all know GW2 has great potential and ANet did kinda take their sweet time with necessary PvP-Updates, but thats not the Point of this Topic as far as I know. The Topic is about how to get new ppl into GW2 PvP, completely disregarding the state the game is currently in.

What ANet needs to realize is, that there is a huge competetive Community out there and most of them are playing actively games like LoL, SC2, Dota2, HoN, Shooters. Some of them are looking for new and exciting games to play and ANet needs to make sure that they kow about GW2.

From personal experience, I think that GW2 has good chances tapping into the players of the MOBA-genre: GW2 has certain similarities with LoL, HoN and Dota2 and with all those games being very popular, but also very alike, GW2 sets itself apart. There are ppl that like those MOBA’s, but are also looking for sth. a bit more MMO-like; more spells, more customizable Chars and Team-setups etc. – that’s exactly what I’ve missed in those games.

The competetive GW2-Community (if there really is such a thing) or ANet themselves needs to reach out to those players. So where can you reach them?

- Multigaming-Sites: get the Streams featured on Teamliquid for example
- Popular Clan-pages: AZUBU already made a GW2-Page, why didn’t ANet immediately jump on it or why don’t they do it now?
- Tournament-Organizers: MLG, IPL, ESL, Dreamhack etc. The competetive Community knows about these Institutions and if they make sth. happen with GW2, they’ll hear about it and maybe check GW2 out.
- Popular Streamers: There are tons of streamers that get viewers by being good at a certain game – really good. You won’t really get them to stream GW2… But from what I’ve heard, there are also other types of streamers that get many viewers, like Girls jiggling with their stuff or guys that are just entertaining. Maybe getting one of those to stream GW2 wouldn’t be too bad? How will you do it – Send out free Copies of GW2 to those certain individuals or whatever. If it gets GW2 like 1000+ Viewers on Twitch, it’ll be worth it.
- Twitch.tv: Really; we need to get the numbers of ppl that watch GW2-streams up; GW2 needs to be one of the Top-10 most watched games and it shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish that. How? Make the GW2-Community itself aware of those streams, advertise them on the GW2 frontpage!

It’s really not that hard: Know your target audience -> know where and how to reach them -> do it in a way that is appealing to them.

The good thing is, that once GW2 gets the necessary features (which should happen very soon afaik) the Product is very solid: Ppl from the competetive community will want to play it – show it to them!

First of all, I haven’t really been playing for about a month, but I’m not against ever coming back.

Here are my Ideas how to increase the number of PvP-Players:

Reach out to established e-Sport Insitutions:
1) ESL (MLG, IGN and other Tournament-Organizers): They wanted to create an Amateur-League, but it simply wasn’t possible, cuz GW2 has no “create own game-Function”. C’mon guys: If I was Anet and wanted to create an e-Sport-Game, I’d have immediatly reached out to them and kept them up to date what they are planning to do with PvP and planned an Amateur-Season with them. Simply by GW2 being on the ESL-Site, just a small notice like (GW2 Amateur Season 1 coming up insert date here, it would’ve put GW2 on the Map, because ESL is huge in EU and I know from personal contacts that many players where eager to compete in it)

2) Sponsored Teams like AZUBU: C’mon guys – AZUBU, one of the Top Multigaming-Organizations atm. with Top-Players in LoL, SC2 etc. signed “The Last Pride [EvIL]” and made it clear that they wanted to be a Top-Contender in GW2 e-Sport. But really, teams like that don’t play if it’s just randoming for a few hours a day. LastofMaster and Soul Wedding and some others were actively playing GW2, just not PvP, probably only w8ing for PvP to be set into high gear, but if nothing happens and ANet doesn’t communicate with them, they’ll leave, which is IMHO what they’ve done now.

Get the streamers into the public eye:
There are some great sites that feature a List of Streams on their Site. Mostly, it’s a Site dedicated to one certain Game with only showing Streamers of that particular game. But there are some extremely popular Sites (for example a popular SC2-Site…. thats kinda “teamish” and “liquid”. Since they’ve started to also feature Dota2-Streams, the number of Viewers has drastically increased. GW2 is very niche, as GW1 was as well. No1 outside the community really got in contact with it.)

Introduce it to the competetive Community:
Best way to do so is with a nice Showmatch and some good casters. If you can’t get Observer-Mode rdy, make sth. happen with several PoV’s from different Streamers – edit a kitten video, put some voice-over on Top of it and write IGN (they already feature e-Sport related content) a mail saying: "put this video in the Spotlight and NC-Soft will give you some exclusive preview-deals or demos on certain games or we will give your Site Hits by mentioning you on our Site or whatever, get creative; I’m sure you have some guys that know about all this public relations stuff…

More e-Sport Featured Stuff on the GW-Homepage:
Get Interviews of current Top-Players: e-Sport is about hype and about the ppl behind the ingame-Chars and acknowleding that they bring a certain expertise to the table. Get an Interview with freaking Hellseth and put his beautiful Head of Hair on the mainpage or get an Interview with Teldo talking with his awesome Accent: It’s also the people that bring in new Players and make the Game interesting.

If ANet really wants to start e-Sport big, they need to get the necessary stuff in place and then start a global PR-offensive.

LOVE IT!

Hoping to play paids mucch sooner npw!

XiL.4318:

Warrior are terrible in PvP because of this flawed perception. 100b warrior are poop at a highly competitive level. Thankfully Greatsword is not the only option. Once you get that idea out of your head you can start to Learn2Play warrior.

Until then save yourself the forum rant time and spend it trying new builds out.

Thx!

There are like 3+ other Builds I know of that are completely viable in tPvP……

Nuka Cola.8520:

i’d have np if they completely removed portal from pvp and replaced by something else (something useful and not a ******* utility no1 will ever use) but nerfing tw, a skill that lasts 10sec and has a 2 years CD is just NO…

If you compare TW in terms of CD, duration and the fact that it’s AoE with other Quickness-Skills, you’ll soon realize TW is reaaaally good.

- CD is 3 1/2 times higher than most quickness-skills, lets go as far as saying 4 times as high.
- The Duration is double
- It’s AoE
- It has no Drawback like most Quickness-Skills

—> So if just 2 People stand in the Time-Warp, it’s already better than most Quickness-Skills, just in terms of how much Quickness you get per Minute.

BUT; there is also no Drawback to it and it’s often more likely that 3+ ppl will benefit of the Time Warp….

But the real Problem isn’t even TimeWarp – it’s the Portal. If you play without a Portal, you play with 1 Teammember less maybe like 50% of the game. You can’t have a Node-defender that just has to stand on your Point without doing anything all game long and expect to win Teamfights when the other Team has 1 more Player (but they still have their Point secured with a Portal). It’s also almost impossible for the Node-defender (without Portal), to roam around, because good Teams will realize that he’s not on the Point and just get a freecap.

I really like the Portal though, it gives much depth to the game for both attackers and defenders, it is extremely versatile and just an awesome skill. I just don’t like the fact that it forces every competetive Team to play a Mesmer. Just give 1-2 other classes a Portal and it’ll be fine.

A lot of Teams run 2 Bunkers, but I’ve never ever seen 3 and IMHO, it shouldn’t work, because you have no DMG whatsoever.

This means that a Team with 2 Bunkers (1 Guard and 1 Ele – 90% of Teams in EU Paids run them) can def the points with your 2 Bunkers or 1 Bunker and 1 DPS on them with 1 of their Bunkers pretty easily and they still have 3 DD’s to push on one Point.

The best-case Scenario for the build with 3 Bunkers would be to keep all points neutral or get 1, give the other Team 1 and keep 1 neutral. But that’s gonna be a huge Problem on all Maps:

Nilfhel: The opposing Team will have a much easier time stealing or killing Chieftain and Svanir, because they have more DPS and with 1 Bunker on 2 Points and Portal against 3 defensive Chars, they really don’t have to fear a big push on one of their Points.

Foefire: They’ll be able to kill the Guildlord much faster than you, so they’ll probably win a stalemate. They can also safely send a Thief or sth. else to your base during the game, because they really don’t need DD’s to keep their Points capped or stop you from decapping/capping, because your Team has no DPS.

Kyhlo: Bunkers on Kyhlo can easily be killed by the Treb and if your Team is running the most common Bunker-Ele’s (not Staff, which is much worse than S/D or even D/D), they’ll also have a much easier time killing your Treb.

TL:DR – Although I haven’t played against any Team in Paids with 3 Fulltanks, I think playing with 3 Tanks won’t work, at least not against the most common build atm, which runs 2 Tanks and 3 DPS (Guard, Ele as Tank, Thief, Mesmer and Ranger/Necro as DD)

There is no question about it that Custom Arenas are needed.

I mean; ESL has already stated that they are interested in an amateur-league for GW2 months ago, but they couldn’t get it off the ground, because you can’t Make two specific Teams fight against each other. Do you think it shouldn’t be possible for the community to create Tournaments? How the hell should GW2 ever become an e-Sport then?

Besides, the implementation of Temple as a 1 Team VS 1 Team Tournament-Map, will allow Players to get Paids much more often and I think it will bring back a lot of Players, just because it will be possible to get Paid-Matches during times of the day, where you couldn’t play paids before (1 opposing Team is quite easy to find, 7 – not so much).

I’m kinda torn on this topic; i’ve always played a dedicated Healer and I really like the playstyle: I like having to closely watch the opposing Players, anticipate upcoming spikes and deny them with good protting/healing, while also trying to heal the team up, remove conditions and having good positioning (it’s always a tension between being as far away as possible from fights not to be spiked, but close enough to heal your teammates.)

I think though, that they could recreate this kind of playstyle in GW2, even without dedicated Healers but maybe moving a little bit more towards Healers would solve some Problems with too tanky builds.

- We have pretty cool skills on Ele for example that require good positioning (AoE-Heals for example, dodge-heal and the boons you give when switching to certain attunements) – if the Healing Ele’s themselves weren’t so tanky, positioning would be incredibly important while playing those Support-Eles.

- Scepter on the Ele also has 2 Blinds, 3 if you run evasive arcanna. If they made blind a bit better (instead of denying 1 attack, deny all attacks during a much shorter duration, like 2-3 seconds), it would also offer a solution to very strong glass-cannon-spikes and it would recreate the huge amount of skill that were required when playing a blinding bihatch, an Infuser or a Protter in GW1 – very fast reaction-time, anticipating spikes correctly, good positioning etc.

- I also kinda miss the tension of a fight where you had a very clear main-target – the monk. Killing the Monks would most likely win you the fights and applying pressure the them and spiking them was key. Killing other classes was viable as well, but often, you’d kill them in certain situations, where they’d overextend or where you were able to CC the Healers. In GW2, this partially exists with softrezzes – you want to kill a necro with the softrez forst, cuz if you kill another player, he’ll just get rezzed by the Nec.

Conclusion: I think a good way of solving a lot of Problems with the current Metagame (very hard to deal with Bunker-builds, but also Spikes of Glasscannons, too less Teamplay-oriented fights etc.) would be to move the current Bunker-builds a little bit more in the direction of dedicated Healers/Protters. It doesn’t have to be too much – You can for example just make it easier for current Bunker-builds, to heal/prot Teammates, while making it harder for them to just keep themselves alive.

Examples:

1) Change Traits/Runes that give boon-duration so that you get less boon-duration for yourself out if it than they give now, but longer boon-duration for boons you apply to allies.

2) Change Healing-Power so it has bigger diminishing returns when you heal yourself, but still heals allies with full force.

3) Change some of the AoE-Heals (for example the dodge-Heals from evasive arcana and Selfless-daring, so they have a bigger Radius and/or a stronger Heal, but would ONLY heal allies, not yourself).

4) Maybe change some of the Leap/Blast-Finishers on a Water-field, so they’ll only heal allies as well and in turn maybe make them a bit stronger.

Very well written indeed.

I think a Major part of why Bunker-Ele’s are so strong atm., probably even too strong, is because the Heal-Spells of the Ele still scale too well with Healing Power and the DPS-output is a bit high for a class with such high sustain.

I really don’t see anything wrong with S/D or Staff- Eles that use Zerker or Valk-Amu and the only thing I really dislike about D/D-Eles, even the ones that don’t use the Cleric-Amu, is the Perma-Fury on themselves and quite a bit of AoE-Fury for the whole team.

I think one way of tackling this Problem is by toning down the scaling of Healing Power with the Ele’s Spells and/or make the Cleric-Amu Specs more Teamfight-oriented rather than just being tanky.

What I mean with that is: Make the Ele easier to kill on Clerics (weaken the Heal on himself by scaling down Healing Powers effects on the Skills) but make the AoE Heals like Cleansing Wave, dodge-Heal on Water etc. a bit better (bigger in Radius for example), so he’d feel a bit more like a Supporter and still had good healing, but wasn’t just an extremely annoying tank.

Same could work for the Boons on the Ele: Make them aim more at Teamsupport rather than Survival for the Ele. Make it so the Ele doesn’t just pop Protection when he’s getting targeted, but that the Ele is more inclined to look at his Teammates and try to give them Protection.

TL:DR Make Ele Heal/Prot on himself weaker, but try to make his Heal-Prot for Teammates better (for example reduce Healing by scaling down Healing Powers effects on his Skills, but make the AoE on the Heals better and sth. similar for his boons.)

AoE is not too strong in tPvP…..

There are just very few individual AoE-skills that are too good, like Cantrips.

Only newbs or WvW-players would complain about AoE, I’ve heard nothing like this in tPvP, EVER.