Guild Wars 2

Sanduskel.1850:

yep. We are quitters. does that make you feel better about yourself. it’s funny because one goal was to deny you the pleasure of the one sided fights you so yearned for. I guess we succeeded. It is ironic that the “quitters” are the ones enjoying Eotm and happy, yet the “winners” are so angry! Some victory.

I’m not on BG or JQ. And your post is incredibly childish.

Balefire.7592:

SoR could easily fully quit if we wanted to. Instead of continuously pushing a Sisyphean rock up a hill, we’ve moved our game play elsewhere. To me, EotM is the pinnacle of what I was looking for in WvW: a large scale PvP experience. There are no coverage gaps. There are fewer map population imbalances. Hiding in your structures achieves very little. And there are multiple other benefits. If that doesn’t match your or ANET’s expectations of WvW, then you can petition for/ANET can edit the T&C or the EULA to reflect as much.

Don’t get me wrong — I fully understand your frustration. And I think most of the blame for this situation rests on Arenanet’s shoulders for not properly addressing the underlying problems. Instead, they’ve put in a new map that makes things dramatically worse.

Sanduskel.1850:

we care about winning. we don’t care about taking objectives.

The cognitive dissonance is strong in this one. LOL.

Samhayn.2385:

Whole lotta telling people they are quitters because they don’t play they way you want them to play going on in this thread.

They’re being called quitters because they are quitters. It’s not about them playing the way someone else wants. It’s about them suddenly deciding they don’t want to play the way they played when they had matchups more favorable to them, and the way they will play again when they have more favorable matchups.

You don’t really think this “we prefer EotM playstyle” bullsquat will last more than 10 seconds after they get paired with weaker servers, do you?

Warlord.9074:

We don’t want to WvW anymore because BG and JQ play for PPT and just blob, sit In T3 towers with Arrow carts and then blob from one tower to the next tower thats the only time you will see them. And when they don’t run in the blob the fights are fun but short lived because then they blob back up and hit you with overwhelming numbers.

In other words, they are playing WvW the way it was designed to be played — and doing exactly the same things you guys did when you thought you could win, and will likely be doing again after you’ve ignominiously sunk out of tier 1.

You “don’t want to WvW anymore” because you don’t think you can win. That’s all this boils down to, nothing more, nothing less.

DivineBeing.2086:

Reslinal.2359:

I think WvW dev team is the worst among ANET teams in communicating with players and address real problems in game play. SPvP team got lot of heat but they actually do show up on forum to answer player concerns. WvW team just don’t talk at all and don’t even try to address the “elephant in the room” balance problems in WvW.

Seriously, just scrap WvW already and make some tweaks to EoTM.

What is the point of EotM by itself?

1. If I want to fight for my server, WvW is far better.
2. If I want loot, PvE is far better.
3. If I want serious PvP where my skill matters, tPvP is far better.

Fine, EotM appeals to certain playstyles. But I really think most of the people there right now are there only because of unfixed problems with real WvW. The solution is to fix them, not destroy what could be a great playstyle for no reason.

Was even worse when I just rechecked it.

—

Jade Quarry +595
Blackgate +50
Sanctum of Rall +50

—

This is insane. Does Arenanet realize what they’ve done? I really hope they will speak up on this.

I think I may have to revise the title from “damaging” to “destroying”. At least in NA, I can’t recall ever seeing such dysfunctional matchups as we have this week.

Current snapshot of tier 1:

Jade Quarry +595
Blackgate +50
Sanctum of Rall +50

This is horrible regardless of what server or area you play on. Pretty soon there will BE no WvW except for people trolling each other on this new map.

This is extremely disappointing. Makes me want to go check out other games, to be honest.

Arenanet, please speak up on this issue. And sooner rather than later. Thank you.

Jade Quarry +535
Blackgate +75
Sanctum of Rall +85

EotM sure is doing great things for WvW.

I don’t have a problem with SoR (well, other than natural rivalry).

I just wish you guys would keep fighting rather than giving up and then pretending that you didn’t care about winning in the first place. shrug

Server pride and camraderie is what makes WvW work. Not just killing random people for bags.. I can get better rewards in PvE. At least IMO.

Again, I know it can be disheartening to lose every week and I wish they’d mix the matches up a bit more and do something about all the stacking. But even so, come on guys, at least make a game of it!

Lord Kuru.3685:

If sPvP players generally aren’t getting their dailies in a reasonable amount of time, perhaps they should feel cheated by Anet.

I never see these complaints coming from those who actually like PvP and play it for its own sake. It’s always a small handful of people who have convinced themselves that they “must” remain “competitive” on the AP leaderboard but don’t actually enjoy going after those APs.

Fermi.2409:

Got to love the completely meaningful “victory” of getting the most points that don’t do anything by holding some random points for hours and spamming 1 in huge laggy blobs. It sounds like so much fun, too!

And yet, in 2-3 weeks when you guys are fighting easier servers, this will magically become fun again. Amazing how that works. :P

Sanduskel.1850:

We don’t like pv door and luring bg from their keeps.

I seem to recall you guys liking “PvDoor” well enough when you were beating us.

Do whatever makes you happy, but the motivations are pretty transparent.

And regardless of the reasons, the bottom line remains that it’s healthier for the game as a whole to have three tier 1 servers that are at least somewhat reasonably matched, rather than two that are close and one that’s thrown in the towel. I’m confident that TC will at least put forth the good fight, even if we don’t have a shot of beating the big two. But Arenanet really needs to take a broad look at this whole issue of server balance and guilds being paid to transfer around and so forth. In the long run, it’s simply not good for anyone.

Oh, and I have a funny feeling you guys will magically regain your affection for “PvDoor” as soon as you are facing opponents you think you can beat.

The “sour grapes” responses from some of the SoR people are predictable, yet still disappointing. I remember fighting against you guys when the league was on, and you had better coverage than we did at TC and usually came out ahead of us, but we still tried every time. I remember one week we got second place and everyone was happy about that.

Now suddenly it’s “we can’t win so we are running off to EotM”. I mean, it’s a game, do what makes you happy, but it still comes across as quitting. And it’s really not what I expected.

Ever since I started GW2 I’ve felt that the constant transferring around of people and guilds made WvW into something of a joke, and this is all part of it. I chose TC when I joined knowing that it wasn’t the most populous server, and that we’d lose a lot of matches. It’s possible that once SoR is finished shamefully throwing their matches so they can “on purpose” go to T2 that TC will end up in T1. And win or lose I will do what I can to fight the good fight, without making excuses or trying to find someone willing to give me gold to abandon my friends.

If you guys end up in T2, I’ll be rooting for our current nemeses, SoS and FA. At least they make an effort most of the time.

Irrespective of the e-kitten-waving contest between BG and JQ, as of this writing SoR is ticking +20 in the middle of a weekend, and that’s not good for anyone.

The Gates Assassin.9827:

They think there’s nothing they can do about it. The point of this post is that they are completely wrong and there is actually A LOT you can do about it.

Yes — you can switch to a class designed for a combat environment oriented around constantly being CCed.

Garillo.1349:

While an overwhelming amount of players seem to lean towards disliking the Skyhammer map, myself included, afking the game mode isn’t the correct way to go about it.
…
Quit being a child and go about things the right way, your post is little more than a tantrum. Be constructive.

Agreed. I’ve been vocal in my opposition to Skyhammer being in the solo queue rotation but I would never subject 9 other players to an unpleasant experience just because I didn’t like a map.

Suck it up and fight for your team, or don’t go into solo queue.

Alissah.9281:

All professions have something to easily counterplay pulls and pushes.

No, they don’t. Remove “easily” and maybe you have an argument, but even there it’s dubious, ignoring the massive differences in the tools available for dealing with CC effects.

These “L2P” style posts are incredibly frustrating in the way they deliberately oversimplify reality and misrepresent what actually happens in Skyhammer matches.

Maybe for you. For me, that wouldn’t be WvW and I wouldn’t likely have much interest in it. Not to mention that I don’t care that much for the EotM map itself.

It goes against human nature. We are social animals and we care more about those close to us than those far away.

aspirine.6852:

It’s always said that this update is for t1 servers and man how it shows this to be true.

Not sure how you define “t1” but I view that as the top 3 matchup which is now a top 2 matchup. I’m on TC and the way it looks now we will basically end up swapping places with SoR every other week getting stomped by BG/JQ, ad infinitum.

I hope we’ll put up a good fight as we always try to do. But how can I tell people on my server to fight a lost cause if they find EotM sparring more fun?

That could balance things from a technical perspective, but not by radically changing the entire concept behind WvW.

I personally don’t care much for EotM at all, and one reason is because I genuinely do like my server and want to fight for it. If WvW just becomes one big fight between groups of servers, I likely simply won’t participate in WvW any more. And in fact, it might even motivate me to look around for a different game, because there’s not really much else to do of interest at level 80.

I think the same would be true of a lot of people. I’ve seen folks on my server literally pull all-nighters to eek out a win on a tough matchup, and I doubt anyone will bring that sort of passion to a fight that’s just generically “red v blue v green”.

In general, people care more about things that are local and that they can have a direct impact on. As my guild leader commented the other day, he can help our server more in a few minutes flipping a camp in the BL than 4 hours in EotM. And without feeling like what you do matters, why do it at all?

As I wrote in the EotM forum, I think this update may, unintentionally, end up having a major negative impact on WvW as a whole. I’ve never seen such lopsided matchups in tier 1 and tier 2 in NA in the months since I started playing.

It makes sense on an individual level for people to prefer playing in EotM over getting destroyed in a matchup they can’t win. But it’s going to be really bad for WvW as a whole, due to guilds abandoning servers that aren’t even trying to win, and other effects. Especially tier 1, where we now have 2 dominant servers and no third to give them a run for their money.

While it’s only been about 12 hours since the reset, I can’t help but notice some rather disturbingly lopsided scores in the current NA matchups. In particular, the BG/JQ/SoR fight and the Mag/SBI/BP matchup. I’ve never seen such imbalances before in my few months of playing, and I don’t think it’s a coincidence that it’s happening the first new cycle since EotM.

I think a lot of people on servers that have basically no chance of winning are choosing to get their “WvW fix” on EotM instead. It makes perfect sense from an individual standpoint, and I might well do it myself in that situation. But the long-term impact on WvW would be very negative.

Getting destroyed in actual matchups will cause more serious WvW players/guilds to leave the weaker servers, creating further imbalances. And especially in tier 1 there’s a big issue with having only 2 extremely strong servers and no third to match against them.

I see some very severe unintended consequences here that may need to be addressed.

Ferik.3127:

However, disagreed. The cannon is a complement to DPS and point control, and traditional PvP skills are still the major factor on Skyhammer. Shooting people with the cannon does not get you scores. Capturing points and holding them does.

Nice in theory, but wrong in practice, because the damage done by the hammer causes it to dominate any point fight where it is focused.

I have played a few dozen Skyhammer matches in hotjoin and solo queue:
- I cannot recall a single instance where I was able to capture a point when the enemy had the hammer trained on it.
- I cannot recall a single instance where I was UNable to capture a point when an ally had the hammer trained on it.

The hammer is too strong and fires too frequently in a wide area, requires no aiming skill, and can be repositioned in a few seconds. It makes actual PvP skill in capturing points largely irrelevant, so the only PvP that really goes on most of the time is capturing the hammer itself. And that’s 90% a cheese fight that depends on whom you were (un)lucky enough to get paired with.

On a rare occasion you can get an actual fight on a point for a while. But it usually ends either with some cheeseball breaking-glass move or the hammer being moved to it. Because it’s just too easy to do (compared to something like the treb on Kyhlo.)

Ferik.3127:

In my limited history of SoloQ, teams that commit more than 2 people to grab the hammer usually become too split to react to any node capturing going down there, thereby having the hammer in firm control but losing the game.

This (sometimes) happens IF you actually NEED two people to hold the hammer. But because the hammer is so important, you usually have 1 or 2 people on the other team also trying to capture it, so the 3v5 scenario you portray again doesn’t happen in practice.

If the other team isn’t challenging the hammer, then it’s 1 guy spamming 10k AoE uncounterable death all over a point more than supporting a 4v5. I’ve never lost such a match, nor won one where the enemy did it.

And the real problem is that some classes don’t need 2 people to hold the hammer, but can require 2 opponents to get them off. The map exaggerates differences among the professions by overvaluing certain CC effects and making other classes/builds all but useless.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Nope, it’s much, much higher than that. We have real metrics to observe these things.

Okay, so ballpark, how many GW2 players play at least 1 solo queue match per week, for example? Can you tell us?

Allie Murdock.8152:

edit: I’ve talked to a lot of people personally, and the feelings are mixed. I’d say it’s actually close to 50/50. Regardless, talking to random people is not a real metric for the consensus of the playerbase.

No, but it’s a strong indicator.

But really, even if it’s 50/50 — and I have my doubts that half the people like that map and want everyone to be forced to play it — that’s pretty horrible. Can you imagine any business sticking around if half its customers were unhappy? This isn’t a business, but still, that’s a terrible satisfaction rate for something that people have no way of avoiding short of not playing solo queue or shafting their teammates.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Look, we know how passionate some of you feel about this, which is why I’m talking to you about it and why we’re looking into options for what we can do.

And just to be clear, though I’ve already said it 2 or 3 times, this is a vast improvement over 600-post threads with no red in them, so thank you again.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Unfortunately, one straw poll of 300ish people is a very, very small amount of our active player base. It may not seem like we have many people playing because we are all spread over different servers, but our active numbers are much, much bigger than that.

Based on my personal experiences — talking to people about PvP, seeing the same people in consecutive matches — and the way the numbers/percentiles work on the leaderboard, I really wonder how many people actually are active in sPvP.

My guess is it’s in the single thousands or low tens of thousands at most across the entire game. National political polls gauging the sentiment of millions of people are conducted generally with sample sizes of around 1,000, with very high accuracy.

A straw poll is not as rigorous, but that doesn’t mean its figures should be summarily discarded especially given a lack of contradictory evidence.

I’m glad to see someone from Arenanet now at least discussing this issue, but I think you are not looking at this in a neutral way if you really don’t see a very strong current of opposition to having this map in solo queue.

Ferik.3127:

The hammer can be calibrated. If you hate Armageddon raining on you, make it rain on them.

And that’s what the entire match becomes about — fighting over the hammer. And what’s involved in fighting over the hammer? Mostly, knocking/fearing/yanking people to their deaths.

Everything else becomes secondary or completely unimportant.

That’s the entire complaint about this map, but you act like it’s not a big deal. So either you don’t even understand what people dislike, or you’re just being argumentative for the sake of it.

Ferik.3127:

No one complains about a Skyhammer on their side.

“No one”? How arrogant.

I guess I’m “no one” because I don’t like it on my side either. On the rare occasion where I actually have a decent fight going on a point, suddenly my opponent either leaves or gets hit for 10k damage from the sky.

That’s fun?

Some people don’t play only to rack up wins, believe it or not.

Locuz.2651:

You know what, ill help you out on this one.

What i can do is play a couple of 100 soloq games coming week and screenshot every single matchup. I can ask the players on those screenshots what they think about the map and if they think it should be out of the rotation.

I can make a nice spreadsheet for you so can see the results with your own eyes. I will start this research coming monday.

Funny, I was thinking about doing something similar myself, just sending whispers to random players in say, the top 500 of the solo queue. Good luck (and thanks) if you do it, though I’m skeptical if they will even really care.

I’m not at nearly the level of the luminaries being discussed here. But my position in the leaderboards has gone up more in the 15 or so games I’ve played in PvP on my engineer than in the previous 100 matches I played on my mesmer.

The difference in what I bring to a team is just night-and-day. I may still play mesmer for solo queue or hotjoin, but I can’t really justify it on a team.

And that despite me having a lot more experience playing mesmer than engineer.

It’s really disappointing.

Allie Murdock.8152:

As for skyhammer in solo arena, we’re kicking around some ideas (definitely not ignoring you guys, just fyi). As of right now, we have no plans to remove it. We’re not quite convinced yet that the majority of our pvp population want it gone, so we’re trying to get metrics on that before we make any changes.

First, appreciate the direct response on the issue after all this time.

But the answer itself is puzzling. The feedback on this map is overwhelmingly negative both here and in-game. Nobody wants it removed altogether, just taken out of the solo queue rotation. What exactly would it take to convince you that the majority wants that change made?

Honestly, it sounds like you guys are just kicking the can down the road because you don’t want to make a change.

Leadfoot.9071:

Look at some of the responses to dev posts – can you really blame them?

Honestly? Yes.

It would be one thing if they just ignored this room entirely. Bad, but at least they couldn’t be accused of ignoring this issue.

But there was a long, LONG thread about Skyhammer up for weeks. The one Cynz mentioned. It had, literally, dozens of perfectly polite and reasonable comments/complaints/suggestions about this map. And zero responses.

Meanwhile there were Arenanet employees responding to other threads, in some cases within just an hour or two of them being posted.

Doesn’t that kind of suggest that they are avoiding this issue for whatever reason?

If they like it the way it is and want it in solo queue, fine, at least tell us so we can stop wasting our breath and decide if we want to keep doing solo PvP or not. It’s pretty simple stuff.

EDIT: Seems Allie has actually responded on this now, finally! So I’m grateful for that (even if I think leaving it in solo queue due to a “lack of evidence” is a bit weak).

Well, it doesn’t have to be discarded. It just needs to be adjusted so there’s more playing against other players and less against the map.

Even something simple like doubling the CD on the hammer would help. That’s a very easy change. It needs more than that, but it would be a start.

Meanwhile I’ve been here 4 months and have never seen an Arenanet employee even discuss this issue.

Well that one event was anecdotal, but I consistently see fewer players on Skyhammer maps than others.

As just one more indicator, go look at the hotjoin servers. Most of the ones rotated to Skyhammer have fewer players than other maps. I’ve watched half the people leave a full hotjoin server when Skyhammer comes into the rotation.

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

So why you´re playing it with all those disadvantages?

Obviously because I find it worthwhile in my current build. A better question is why you are thoughtlessly calling for it to be removed when you acknowledge that it has disadvantages, and apparently don’t even understand what it is used for?

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

People should win by good playing, not by putting 30 points into a traitline.

It’s a trait that grants a particular limited immunity under a limited set of circumstances. Not anything that guarantees a win.

I’d trade it in a second for a trait that gave strong, direct-action condition removal not at 25% health.

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

And besides that, its the basis of all decap engis, without it they wouldnt be viable in their current purely defensive form.

Sorry, but this is utter nonsense. Decapping a point happens quickly, so an ability that kicks in when down 75% health is irrelevant.

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

Is it really bad if a player has to play well to win his fights instead of letting a passive trait do all the work against certain specs? I dont think so…

Is it “really bad” if you give engineers some other reasonable way to deal with CC and condition spam if you’re going to take away one of their most powerful traits? Sheesh.

It’s not like they’re strong in those areas even now. And AR is a grandmaster trait, so taking it precludes a lot of other build options.

Furthermore, AR only prevents new conditions being applied, it doesn’t clear existing ones. It’s not the panacea some are portraying it to be. And it really has little to do with decapping.

Wow a kittening contest between two PvP teams. Who ever would have thought that would happen?

Seriously, I doubt anyone cares either way. Really.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Qaelyn.7612, I’m still catching up on what I missed, but I will be looking into that feedback when I get a chance.

That’s a start.. and you won’t find any trouble finding it, that’s for sure. Thanks.

I think you may have left before I started playing, but welcome back anyway.

I have one question and it’s a simple one. Regardless of whether or not it plans to address the issue, will Arenanet acknowledge the huge volume of negative feedback about having Skyhammer in the solo queue, and the reasons for it?

Mister Fluffkin.7358:

Just remove AR and the problem is gone, thats the build-defining trait his survivability relies on.

I run AR and don’t use a decap build. A lot of engis run AR and don’t use decap builds.

What you blithely suggest removing would screw over a lot of players for no good reason.

You want to get rid of AR? Give us better stability, stun-breakers and/or condition removal, and you’ve got a deal. Until then? Find some other way to deal with this particular issue if it’s really that big of a problem (and I don’t think it is.)

So I ran Blackwater again for a couple of hours yesterday (thanks for the link Xavi!)

Had a pretty good time. And I only died once… when (literally) 15 guys chased me down after we tried to take their keep.

I do miss the offense from my GS but I’m going to keep trying this. Thanks again for the build, Natsu.

Oh, and you know all the people who complain about Blackwater/PU builds being “boring”? See if this sounds familiar!

That’s a great link, Chaba. Immediately reminded me of all the whining I always hear about how some (effective) builds make the game “not fun” and so forth.

dulfy.1493:

It does have hearts

Oh, thanks Dulfy. I just realized maybe they are suppressed because I have my graphics settings turned down!

The Gates Assassin.9827:

A lot of people say that trying to throw someone off a cliff is “Cheesy” or “requires no skill”. These are false.

Stealthing and then yanking/knocking someone requires MASSIVE skill!

The Gates Assassin.9827:

I will only say stability once. That was right now. It isn’t needed to be successful on a map with falling to your death mechanics. A player using none of it can beat an engineer going full CC if you know what you are doing.

Of course, a class with proper stability can use all of the gameplay tips you listed and also have stability to make up for the fact that they’re human and aren’t going to be perfect at it. Other classes? Well, too bad for them.

The length of your list actually proves the point that this new area is oriented far too much around nonsense like knocking and yanking people. Personally, I’ve found this approach to be simpler and much more effective:

0. Play in actual WvW, where I can work for my server directly, and fight against players rather than the map. Or in sPvP, where at least I’m only forced to deal with this annoying foolishness on occasion in solo queue.

And that’s disappointing to me, because I like the idea behind EotM and find it a shame that it’s been ruined by Arenanet apparently choosing to ignore all of the negative feedback they get daily about Skyhammer.

The filter is terrible in part because it ignores spaces. (Remove the one after “go” and before “okay” and you’ll figure out what it objected to.)

I just played my first Skyhammer match on my engi. The other team had four necros. I got feared off once, and CCed other guys off maybe twice? Could have done a lot more, I didn’t spec deliberately for it.

Much as I described, it was a lot more about cheesy kills and avoiding cheesy deaths than it was about PvP.

This map is a joke, and the dev team’s stalwart refusal to address the complaints about it currently ranks as my single greatest disappointment when it comes to GW2 (which in most other respects I think is very well run.) Even if they aren’t going to remove it from solo queue, it would be nice if they would at least acknowledge the many people who don’t like it and explain what they are or are not going to do, and why.

It’s the most silly, ridiculous, and therefore awesome finisher ever. So campy as to be the perfect taunt at the end of a kill.

The only cosmetic anything of any sort I have ever spent gems on and worth it because I laugh every time I see it.

Nicely done. (Though I thought I saw a preview GIF that showed the quaggan with little hearts, maybe I imagined that?)

Don’t worry, I’m sure he/she has some snappy oh-so-clever “l2p” retort for that too. (Or maybe “that never happens to me!”)

Xyonon.3987:

Engi is really about all those blast finishers. It’s allways a shame if there is another field than water or fire :/
Sad that in pugs most of the engis don’t even know when wich field will proc >_> So do you guys here know it?

I’ll admit it.. I’m pretty new to engi and still trying to get the hang of these fields/finishers. I’d be grateful for more “newbie-friendly” explanations of how to take advantage of them.

I’m particularly confused by some people talking of laying down water and fire fields over each other as I thought a finisher only worked on the oldest field.

Uh, polling IS the scientific means by which popular opinion is assessed. Internet polls have flaws, but what alternative is there? Mass mind reading?

The disdain for Skyhammer is so widespread as to be obvious at this point. You’re standing soaking wet in a puddle with thunder and lightning crashing overhead, demanding scientific proof that it’s raining.

Thanks Xavi.

I have been really having a hard time motivating myself to even play mesmer in WvW lately. Maybe a build adjustment will help me feel more into it again.