Guild Wars 2

Rob.9078:

This solution did not work for me, even after picking up all my gold (no other items) and emptying my TP account, logging out and in, moving between zones, and a few other suggested tricks.
I have 5 lvl 80 characters. The only one that can play GoM is the one for which I have completed my personal story. The other 4 are all in some story step between lvl 70-80
But the release notes say I can play the Living Story Journal even if I have not finished my Personal Story. Can anyone confirm this, please?

You need to go to your story journal, select the tab for the Living World Season 2, and then select “Play Now” in order to switch to it on those other characters.

I definitely want in! Hit me up in-game if you have planned times you expect to do this so we can coordinate.

I think it ultimately depends on the context.

A world boss with Anthony’s CC window is excellent. I would very much enjoy calling across TS to “CC NOW!” and burn it down to break the boss out of a mega-smash-planet-killer attack. There are other unique mechanics that could be investigated as well.

Defiant is bad in open world because:

• Too many stacks due to scaling that CC is completely removed from the equation, reducing the complexity of gameplay
• Bosses are only susceptible in a limited way to CC because their skills go on a mere 4 second cooldown; dodging / blocking is far superior
• Bosses are very hard to see due to scale and particle effects, so players often don’t even know when to CC
• Coordinating a specific number of CC skills in a very very large group is unfeasible
• Every non-structure world boss having the same CC mechanics is boring

As for dungeons, a lot of people are correct that players are in full control of CC now because they can clear defiant stacks and so forth, but it’s just not practical. It’s easy to have a coordinated guild and manage your defiant stacks and so forth. There was a lot of it in the recent PvE dungeon tournament, for example. Still, this isn’t a mechanic that is conducive of coordination in random pug groups, and the one person who messes it up messes it all up.

Defiant is bad in dungeons because:

• All it takes is one player to mess up a boss CC, punishing players hard for mistakes
• Bosses are only susceptible in a limited way to CC because their skills go on a mere 4 second cooldown; dodging / blocking is far superior
• Every dungeon boss having the same CC mechanics is boring

Here’s an idea I’ve floated that I enjoy. Some, not all, dungeon bosses might use this. The boss has no defiant, but whenever it is CC’d, it gains Stability and some other buff, like Quickness, for 12 seconds. This sort of enrage mechanic means that you would only use CC when it mattered, and would otherwise not waste them or try to stunlock the boss (not that you could). You could change up the buff or what happens on CC per boss; some might not even get a buff if you think they’re easy enough.

Maybe the AC Spider boss spawns a new group of 12 spider hatchlings every time it is CC’d, for instance.

I would love nothing more than to be someone’s charr, but I’m NA. Hell, I’ll be someone’s anything, just let me know. I have every race and every class, so I’m pretty versatile here… and most importantly VERY FASHIONABLE!

Nerelith.7360:

No offense taken :-)… You feel that Gw2 is a special game, and that " The rules do not apply"

Gw2, is an MMO. Players in MMO’s care about loot.

Call me uninformed, I take no offence, because I am informed enough to know the type of players that play MMO’s. And affirming" Gw2 is different" while true…. gw2 is not so different that players do not care about loot.

If Players did not care about Loot, then the devs would remove Loot, xp, daily and monthly completion content, karma , prestige, armor drops…etc.

I Like Gw2. As do you, but I also acknowledge that Gw2 is an MMO, and some things are constant. A Lot of things can be changed and moved around, but one thing will always beconstant about MMO’s…

Loot matters.

Since loot matters you can say that most players spend their time " grinding" by your definition, since they are always trying to maximize gold for effort expended.

Loot matters.

The games where loot doesn’t matter are not MMO’s. if Gw2 is an MMO, loot matters. Therefore by your own definition, players are engaged in monetary economic activity.

I do not disagree that loot matters. It does. The question is how much it matters to the majority of players, and that is a question that you’re answering without presenting data, and by making wild assumptions and taking them as facts. I don’t refute your claims based on my opinion, I refute your claims based on a lack of evidence to support what you’re saying. It has nothing to do with what I ‘feel’ about the game.

EDIT: You’re also missing the point of my original postulated question. It doesn’t even have to be that dungeons or activities give no rewards, but what matters has to be that the players enjoy the experience of the action more than they enjoy the rewards. All of those people who are posting in the LS forums about how much they enjoy the fights and story and are replaying it for those reasons alone make up the group I’m talking about.

Yes, Psychol, that scenario is entirely plausible and likely the answer.

Nerelith.7360:

Now you are being a bit disingenuous. I am sure that you would do dungeons if there were zero compensation since for you the compensation is social.

The time you spend doing them with friends, and helping friends complete content is payment enough for you. Your compensation is not economic.

But In general, while I cannot assign a %… I can say that in MMO’s the vast majority of players care about compensation, otherwise we would not have the arguments on the forums about " Content A does not pay enough"

And affirming " GW2 is different" doesn’t prove that the vast majority of players do not fall within the averages of MMO players In general… in other words…

Loot matters.

Sure it does, but you’re attributing data that you haven’t presented to us to a game with a completely different pay model compared to every other MMO. Those two issues alone are enough that any statements regarding the veracity of your claim can be dismissed as uninformed, no offense intended. As the claimant of the hypothesis you’re presenting as fact, the onus is on you to back it up. That is, however, assuming we want this to be a serious discussion (which I have thus far assumed as the case). If it’s more a gut feeling or hunch, then ignore this post as there’s not much discussion can be had on hunches or gut feelings.

Those similar creatures that are a part of TA and around the Jungle Wurm count as Nightmare Court because that’s the context within which they exist. I can’t speak for ANet, but it’d be nice if the ones we’re fighting now counted as plants for functional reasons (not currently many sources of plants for plant slayer).

If there is a reason for them being the way they are, ANet will keep doing what they’re doing when they read this. If it is an oversight and they see this, they’ll fix it. Ultimately, I’m not here to discuss what is right or wrong or to postulate on what ANet intended, I’m only here to bring it up so they see it and can decide internally.

I think it is impossible for any of us to make even remotely accurate claims as to what “most people do”. Doing so is naive. I speak only for myself when I say that I would do dungeons if they didn’t make gold because I enjoy the company I do dungeons with, and I also enjoy meeting and playing with new players I’ve never interacted with before. Maybe for someone else they feel otherwise. As an MMO it does lure in a certain type of player, but as a B2P game it also brings in a crowd who doesn’t care for grinding and doesn’t care about that sort of thing. Ultimately, I think the division of opinion here is because everyone has their own subjective answer to my question (and unique qualifications thereof), and that’s something we’ve just got to deal with.

Stooperdale.3560:

With fortifying bond a ranger is having to use a trait to get boons applied to the pet. Perhaps it isn’t coincidental that the heavy armor classes, the favored dungeon classes, get the full benefit of all boons without using a trait to do so.

It’s a minor trait you get passively when using the meta build, so yeah, there’s really no special investment needed.

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

I used 25 might and 100% fury. Realistically it’s going to be about 15 might and 20-50% fury though depending on external sources, unless you’ve got a Phalanx warrior with a Warbanner. There’s simply a lack of long-duration fury applications for the pet since Fortifying Bond only gives you 3 seconds base , which isn’t even 4 seconds after boon duration buff. That means you need a fury application every 4 seconds on average.

Even when you assume full buffs on the pet by whatever means, it still scales extremely poorly due to their low base DPS (iirc the feline has a base DPS of about 700, which is really bad). Moreover, they don’t benefit well from buffs due to higher-than-normal base power (reduced marginal effect from might), high crit chance (reduced marginal effect from Fury), and lack of ferocity (reduced marginal effect from fury). A feline with 25 might/fury approximately doubles its damage, versus a player with 25 might/fury, banners, food, traits, etc. who will get something like 5-6x total multipliers.

That makes sense. I think ultimately you’re probably right, especially when you consider the pragmatic issues a Ranger faces like pet DPS being inconsistent due to AI, Frost Spirit downtime due to it being on CD after a specific encounter, Sword dodge challenges, and so on.

Still, I think the Ranger merits inclusion in specific speed runs if it is being used as an conjured weapon user with a small bit of practical reflection on the side. It isn’t being used for support, but is being used for pseudo-support with good conjured DPS. In this instance, the Ranger is better than a Guardian or Mesmer because of higher damage multipliers (and the pet, which is free DPS on top of the FGS/IB) and also because of the higher uptime Swiftness. Furthermore, it’s better than the Engi because of higher base DPS (in FGS scenarios maintaining 25 vuln isn’t that hard considering you’ve got an ele using FGS) and because the reason you’re even considering the Ranger is due to its reliable reflect, while the Engineer instead has only a 50% chance of getting one throwing Elixir-U.

Beyond that, I disagree with the specific mention in the OP that you should kick them from your groups regardless of what they use. I believe that for a speed clear (a true speed clear), you would tailor the team specifically based on the path you’re clearing. For pubs, which is the context the OP is worded to suggest, a skilled Ranger is still a boon to the group, and is still superior to the average pub, making it a good member to keep. In that vein, I don’t think this thread really tells us anything the pub players or speed clear groups didn’t already know. That said, some parts of it are interesting to discuss regardless, so rock on.

That’s my two cents.

Time technically does have a monetary value if all of your time can be used in a useful manner. Time I spend sleeping has no useful application, but it is still time that must be spent regardless. Time spent at my job is exhausting because of the intricacies of my job, and it’s also salary, so I can’t just work extra hours to make extra cash. I could take another job and get some side dollars that way, but that might not be fun, or something I want to spend my hobby time on. I consider, ultimately, the value of my time to be better spent enjoying GW2 and making gold on the side, which then converts to gems, as opposed to working a side job and then converting those dollars to gems. In this sense, no matter how you view it, gold spent on converting to gems is a compensation, or a gift. It lessens the monetary loss that I could be suffering assuming those dollars were going to GW2 anyway.

I think the problem with this discussion is that people are arguing different things. The exchange itself, converting gems to gold or vice versa, is free. That conversion doesn’t cost me dollars directly. It takes time to earn gold, yes, and time has some measure of value associated with it (note it isn’t necessarily monetary value, but it is value that can be treated as monetary value by an individual), but if you perform an activity for fun (ie. recreational activities) and get paid on the side for it in gold, that gold is essentially a gift. The distinction has to be made at the following level:

• Would you do this activity if it didn’t give you gold?

If you say no, then you are ‘grinding’ content for gold, and thus your gold earned isn’t ‘free’ because it was the point. If you say yes, then you are simply doing what you enjoy and the gold is ‘free’ because it wasn’t the point. There is a saying that “If you love your job, you never work a day in your life” essentially saying that you’d work for free but it also happens to pay the bills, but it is important to temper that with the opposing proverb that “there’s a reason my job pays me what they do” which is demonstrating that while you love your job, it is by no means a recreational activity.

phys.7689:

so what you are saying is that if you enjoy your job, it is no longer a job, and has no value? hmm, i know people see things this way, but the fact that people do is what allows business men to profit. but ehh thats life

The key difference is that my high-paying job isn’t a recreational activity. Sure, I do enjoy it a lot, and it hardly feels like work, but there are expectations, obligations, and responsibilities that go with it being a job and not a hobby. I play GW2 for fun, and it has value strictly for that reason. Even if I made no gold from it, I’d still do it, so that I do make gold (which lessens the dollar cost of gem store items) is essentially free compensation. Does that distinction make sense? I hope I’ve helped clarify.

Blix.8021:

The safest is having a thief spam blind on the npc

This doesn’t work anymore, or so I’ve heard from reports.

I think this is a simple suggestion, and I hope an ANet developer working on the project sees it and takes it to heart. Basically, I’d like the planty overgrowth creatures we’re fighting in these updates to count as plants for purposes of plant slayer (and eventually plant slaying potions if/when we get them).

Thanks!

Nerelith.7360:

Your opinion not fact. My opinion is that the only time anything in gw2 is free is if someone gives it to you as a gift. If you " farmed" or" did dungeons" or " did Champions" etc… and said time accrued Gold, which you then converted to gems, and with which you purchased something that can be puchased for real world cash, you have earned the real world cash it would have taken to purchase the virtual goods an services you purchased with in game gold.

Let’s say I play dungeons because I enjoy dungeons, I’m not grinding anything. Therefore I put time into dungeons as a recreational activity that I am enjoying, and happen to get gold out of it, which can then be converted into gems. This means that by enjoying the game at my own pace doing whatever it is that I want, I am being compensated real dollars that I now no longer have to spend to get fancy items off the gem store. That, to me, is free compensation for my time that enables me to better enjoy my time in-game, or in other words a gift like mtpelion stated.

One thing I’ve seen brought up here is that the Pet gets excluded from Might stacking and so forth, and while that is technically true from a base level, I haven’t seen anyone mention Fortifying Bond. Basically, if you Might and Fury stack and the Ranger gets boons, the pet gets stacks of those boons too. Furthermore, it uses the Ranger’s might/boon duration, which means that if you tech 3 or 4 into that line you get 15%-20% duration, which stacks with Rune of Strength for 65% in the case of Might duration.

I’m not sure if Guang’s unlisted calculations factor in 25 might and fury perpetually on the pet, but that may make a difference.

They likely looked at the item and figured:

• It was a hedge against prices rising in the future for dyes (this creates a constant dollar value for any red dye)
• Some people might find it convenient, so why not add it?
• This way they don’t have to create two different special release packs for NA/EU and CN

You guys are forgetting something very important here: the Chinese servers. Remember how unidentified dyes work there? You still loot them from mobs, but you have to buy a gemstore item to identify the dye (RNGs the dye), and THEN the dye is account bound after that. If you’re looking for a specific red dye, you have to RNG a ton of gems (or gold converted to gems) to get it. Being able to spend 250 gems and get exactly what you want is incredible when you consider that.

The only reason it’s available in the NA/EU servers is consistency I imagine.

If you only want one stat combination out of a couple dozen, of course the chances of looting that one type are low. Fortunately, however, for the ascended armor chests there are far fewer bad options, and therefore a much higher chance at getting something that turns into Berserker’s gear.

Ignore Svetli’s comment because you will be in berserker gear.

Phalanx Strength is great in pubs, depending on the type of pubs you get. It helps to be flexible because if you get good might stacking pubs with high dps, you may not see a big difference from Phalanx Strength. On the other hand, for just about any “this group looks awful” group, Phalanx Strength is a huge boon. As long as they are attacking at all, they will benefit from group-wide permanent 25 stacks of might.

Krisztian.8405:

I don’t understand why people want to “work” in a video game. Games are made for fun and relaxation.

Because throwing money at the gem store or gold at the TP creates no lasting memories. I don’t understand where went the attitude of playing games as a hobby and not as just some time-wasting activity. Hobbies generate memories, they create nostalgia, they invoke sentimental value. That’s what people want more of.

When you unlock the scarf or goggles, does it unlock all three weights or just the weight you soulbind?

Ohoni.6057:

No.

As much as I hate the current TP flipper economy, I hate hardcorz raiding even more. No masochist dungeons.

Really leave dungeons out of the discussion entirely, dungeons are the least interesting part of this game. Focus on Living World and other open world content.

No one said anything about raids, let alone “hardcorz” raids. Difficult dungeons does not necessarily equate to raids, and the specifics of how they are implemented are irrelevant to this discussion anyway. What matters is that the content be difficult enough that average Joe cannot pubsmash his way through it without skill and that the rewards be consistent towards a goal and tradeable. That’s how you make PvE rewarding compared to economy swashbuckling.

eithinan.9841:

That is what dungeon tokens are for. The various gift of (whatever) for 500 tokens are used to craft some of the coolest skins in the game including legendary weapon. I personally hate the grind game in every other mmo where to get gear you have to re run the same content over and over again, Gw2 has so far avoided that particular curse so far.

People will grind content if they want to regardless. It’s only a problem if they’re forced to grind to progress and improve. That’s where past MMOs got it wrong and where GW2 largely gets it right. Anyway, that’s beside the point.

Dungeon tokens do not address any of the points I raised. Dungeon tokens are account bound, which means we cannot sell them, and the output from those tokens is account bound, which again means we cannot sell them. Furthermore, regardless of demand, dungeon tokens are so easy to get that the only one which wouldn’t be merchant value is Arah, and even then not by much. There is too much supply of those tokens because the content is too easy. A much better example of what I am suggesting is the way GW1 handled the Domain of Anguish. The high demand coupled with difficult-enough content resulted in a great value for the gemstones you acquired. This rewarded people greatly for playing the game and being good at it, and also didn’t do anything to hurt the typical economy players. That is the ideal.

John Smith.4610:

Ok, hypothetical:
We increase rewards to dungeon running to let’s say triple what they currently are. This would make it VERY difficult for almost all players to earn better rewards anywhere but dungeon running.
Now, everyone’s earning money and items all over the place, but we haven’t changed their original preferences for trading. This means a week later, they make the same trade preferences they previous made, just with more money, the more money makes flipping equivalently more profitable and you’re back in the same place. Unless players decide that they want to play the game differently, and there’s no reason they should, or we force them to play differently, and we shouldn’t definitely not, or we fundamentally change the way the game works, then you will have a problem.

Let me consider an identical hypothetical scenario that actually works with the current economy, then: Make some dungeons really, really hard, so hard that most players can’t complete them. Create highly desired ITEMS, not NEW COIN, that players make progress towards by completing these very, very hard dungeons. (No RNG, they must make consistent progress by succeeding)

In this scenario, flipping keeps doing what flipping does and the economy works great, but highly skilled players can now make comparable gold to TP flippers because the items are hard enough to get (low supply), tradeable (make money), and highly sought after (high demand), and thus worth a lot without inflating the value of gold. In this case, we have successfully made it more profitable to run dungeons if you’re a good player. OP is happy, I’m happy, TP flippers are happy, John Smith is happy. It’s win across the board.

The hilarious part is that Strength runes are still better than Rage or Hoelbrak runes by a mile. People are really foolish if they’ve bought those runes like they are a replacement.

Jski.6180:

There is only one important value what you feel is best looking or best that you can do if you let others values be more important then your own or let other chose what is good or bad then your always going to come up short in the end. So kindly get over your self make your hero look the way you want and stop judging others for not having “hard to get” skins etc.. in a GAME for fun.

It’s cute that you feel like you speak for the entirety of all gamers everywhere when you say the things you do.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Count he number of ways that Anet can actually earn money from this game and it should be obvious WHY these items are in the Gem Store. You DO understand that if they don’t make some money, the game servers don’t continue to light up, right?

They can keep adding lots of things to the gem store, but it shouldn’t be that all new armor sets or what-not are in the gem store. A healthy game will have some sets in the gem store and some sets available to be earned elsewhere. No one is saying that ANet isn’t allowed to make money.

Jski.6180:

Why what wrong with gold? Its no different then getting tokens in fact it is a type of token but a universal token that can be used for nearly any thing. Why would you ask to lock you self into only being able to get one thing vs having nearly endless chose for what your working for? Would you mind if your job payed you in money that you can only spend at the stores that they say its ok for you to buy from but to buy from other stores you must get another job that say it ok to buy from there chose?

You’re missing the point. Gold acquisition can be done anywhere in-game. If it costs 100g, what does that tell someone who sees you using the skin? It tells them that you earned gold somehow and spent it, nothing more. What does seeing someone with a Fractal skin tell you? It tells you that they play Fractals and have at a minimum reached level 20 and have done it ‘enough’ to get lucky and get that skin. That distinction is critical.

What does having a Mini Polar Bear Cub tell someone? That person bought it with gems/gold. Cool. What does having a Mini Liadri the Concealing Dark tell someone? That person actually performed an in-game task and defeated Liadri, something not everyone can do. That is prestige, and the actions that create prestige also create sentimental value. You remember achieving that goal, and that nostalgia is healthy and valued. That is ultimately what people want when they say that they don’t want armor skins or whatever in the gem store; they want something that means something.

calyx.9086:

Exactly. I think the people who complain about this are unemployed and have no income and instead spend 40+ hours a week in-game. Which, btw, is fine, they have ample playtime to earn gold and exchange for gems to purchase that armor.

I make more money in a month than a significant portion of the American population makes in a year, and I still think it’s crap that every armor set is in the gem store. There’s no prestige or sentimental attachment to anything if I throw my credit card at it (or if I grind easy content for gold to get it). I want to work for some of the new stuff that comes out in ways that demonstrate mastery of the game or at least involve playing a video game with my friends with goals besides earning gold.

Excuse me for wanting to play a video game and do some cool stuff to acquire gear.

I still think Strength is worth the loss of DPS if you’re running strictly a might stacking build like Phalanx Strength Warrior (and maybe some more DPS-oriented Warrior builds too), but I don’t think it’s justified for any other class or build setup right now. Elementalists will really feel the damage loss from this nerf if they run Strength, and might duration is long enough with them blasting fire fields anyway, so I think they’re much better geared with Scholar runes.

The four piece now creates might stacks that are much worse than the might from blasting fire fields, though, so that’s actually pretty annoying.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Ahh another exploiter bites the dust. We all know what you were doing, you got caught, learn and move on.

Yeah, filthy exploiter trying to sell items to many different buy orders at once! How dare he?!

Ban away, I don’t even care, but the better solution is to charge the listing fee as if you were selling to the highest buyer and then fill the order as if you sold it to the highest buyer. Having it work the way it does now is really punishing, especially when you consider situations like the OP’s.

Cotser.7015:

yesyesyes extend! I just need one fashionable sexy charr now…

waves a hand around maniacally I have two, and I know which one would be best for this! Pick me!

Oh but I think you’re EU, which would make me sad.

I’m hopeful that with us delving into the Maguuma Wastes for LS Season 2 we will see more giants and plants and those achievements will be easier to get.

This weekend was brutal! My team placed 4th overall in the [DnT] PvE Invitational, which is great in the grand scheme of things, and we had a lot of fun. Stressful fun, but fun nonetheless.

Either way, [VZ] is still recruiting, and if there was ever any question as to whether I knew what I was doing in a dungeon or not, let that be settled now.

Does anyone need a team member for this still? I have characters of every race to contribute and I can RP if that helps.

tl;dr: Monsters are easy, make them harder and more varied.

I agree.

Tears.5627:

Then there needs to be a balance that does not limit 3 or 4 professions while making the rest of them godlike. There is still a problem with being barred from a group for wanting to play a class you enjoy.

If your class is bad at PvE, your class is bad at PvE. That’s a challenge for the ANet balance team to resolve, and doesn’t rest with dungeon design.

Quite frankly, dungeon balance is pretty good on the whole; 6 of the 8 classes are great for dungeons and even speed clears (Ele, Thief, Guardian, Warrior, Mesmer, Ranger), one is decent at best (Engineer), and one is downright bad (Necromancer). It could be far worse.

If you create a dungeon that kills the current meta, then the meta changes to adapt and optimize runs in the new dungeon, and that new meta develops the same optimization-bent that has always been there. Your suggestion changes nothing.

Divus.3175:

It’s understandable that you don’t like KINGs way to create rules. One thing you can be sure is that they didn’t come up without huge discussion. No one wants to give away 4k gold from his own money without thinking it through.

You’d think they’d want to give away 4k gold from their own money by including serious competition that they are currently passing up on, however.

Relativity.3264:

70AR is only an entrance fee if you don’t have it yet – if you don’t have it yet you’ve never done 50, and haven’t done enough 49s to get enough ascended chests – and in that case you probably won’t make it past the first round

I’ve done hundreds upon hundreds of higher tier fractals and the only ascended chests I’ve gotten were either for weapons that have awful stats or Healer’s ascended armor. If you’re going to have a fractal tournament based on a team’s ability to complete content speedily, then crappy stat combinations are unacceptable. RNG is horrible, and even if you’ve done more fractals than is socially reasonable you probably won’t have gotten nearly enough to be optimized for a tournament like this.

Spoj has the right of it. L49 is perfect for the competition, and is even a valid substitution for GW2SCR, which is the community-accepted and community-driven effort for speed clearing. Having or not having 70+ AR doesn’t mean anything about the skill of the people involved. Claiming there is a correlation there is insulting your own knowledge of Fractals.

Ascended armor or 10/10/10 AR infusions being a requirement for the tournament is pretty gross. One of the most important parts about tournaments is inclusivity, and 70+ AR is a huge exclusion. I would love to participate, but I have only shelled out that kind of cash for my Warrior, which limits my flexibility in the tournament. I can’t bring my 6 non-heavy classes as a result! Being serious about the tournament is irrelevant; asking someone to spend cash as an entrance fee essentially is bad form. The difference in difficulty between L50 and L40 is practically nonexistent as far as speed clearing the fractals would be concerned.

Anyway, I like fractals. Maybe I can pull together [FGS] for a go at this as well, but if they don’t all have the required AR I may be forced to pub again!

I like Spoj’s suggestions. I think waypointing is silly, but I think the idea of allowing hard ressing is great.

Changes to format:

• Full wipe means you lose
• Can hard res any dead, no one can waypoint when dead
• If a team wipes and the other team makes it further in the dungeon, the run ends there with the further progressing team winning and we move on to the next match

This enables comebacks, hard ressing is slow and will cost you time, and like Spoj said it may not be worth ressing in all cases. What if one person is doing a skip and dies mid-skip? You probably are better served four-manning the dungeon from there rather than killing all the trash to get to their body. I think this would combine to create a much more amusing finale for some matches than having just one team complete the path after the other has wiped.

But ultimately I agree with Nike. That was a stressful tournament, and it was draining. I have only turned GW2 on a couple times since then, and yeah. We can theorycraft a bit, but let’s not make any official calls or whatever until people have had a chance to recover.

The real reason I participated and felt I could participate as a pug group was because of the wipe rule. It is an equalizer, because everyone makes mistakes, and part of the excitement was seeing if you could recover from it. The risk also makes it really edge-of-your-seat, which is one of the most important things about esports… Those moments of intensity.

Even mistakes including, I think the rule does something else to team compositions. Every single comp on every single team had a Guardian, and there was a lot more team bulk than is necessary for a lot of speed clears. I think it was a good balancer, and it made it really exciting to see people recover.

I’m not sure if I’d want to see it done the same way again, but I did really like this way. I think maybe a full restart would run into the same excitement problems. You wipe on the last boss and then what, you watch two teams desynced by ten-twenty minutes? That’s not very exciting either. I think that some matches ending in a clean sweep is just the way sports in general (#pvesports) work. Sometimes people mess up and that’s that. I’ll keep thinking of ways to improve it, though, but at a minimum I want a break before the next one. My nerves need a break. ;-;

So I’ve just got to say. This tournament kicked royal kitten. I will absolutely play again in a future tournament like this. It was high stress, high risk, high payout with great commentary, great organization (You were absolute bosses Cookie and Muffin, thanks so much, and thanks so much for putting in so much time Nike, Brazil, and the rest of DnT!), great rewards, and great turnout. 1.3k viewers at our peak! So much positive support and community togetherness made this so excellent to be a part of.

It has been a wild ride coordinating a pub team for this, we put in a ton of hours (not as many as we wanted, though), and I’m really glad we put on the best show we could even in spite of little mistakes here and there that cost us a higher placement. I’m sort of sad that we won’t win armor sets from the gem store (curse you, Trickster!!!!), but hey, there’s always next time.

We couldn’t be your cinderella story, NA, but this tournament was awesome, and we’re glad to have been a part of it and are looking forward to more! Congratulations to all the winners, huge props to the participants, and grats to [Ren], [vS], and [SC] for all placing higher than us!

Lastly, kids, remember the BHB rules: No Stacking, No Skipping, and no [FGS]!

#pvesports

Iris Ng.9845:

Next time the organization party should charge the registrants 50g/person as a deposit to avoid ragequitting and drama. The deposit will be refunded at the end of the tourney.

A deposit is a great way to alienate fresh blood and keep them from entering. Not only would they be entering a tournament they’re scared enough of as-is, but they have to front hard-earned gold to people they don’t know just for the chance to compete.

If anything, the tournament should make every move towards being more open, not more restrictive.

Wisp.2634:

if u think on PvE you can just spam your skills in a corner, you didnt played it….

Fixed that for you.

guanlongwucaii.3162:

wait, were these “worldwide competitive tournaments” organised on smogon?

Yup, look me up sometime. Pretty sure I have like 12 alumni badges still. My support of the tourneys was primarily behind the scenes (I wasn’t actually a tournament director).

Tree.3916:

Frankly speaking, I don’t care for other peoples’ finger wagging morality lessons.

It has nothing to do with morality and everything to do with the future prospects of this sort of tournament. If this is what we are to expect from our hosts, how can we expect more from the participants or the viewers?

EDIT: I really need to say that anything I say about this is in the vein of the best interests of the tournament and future instances of this tournament. This whole [LuPi] ordeal would’ve been a non-issue if they had just been removed from the list with no reason given; there was no need to call them out in the way that it happened. That sort of behavior is the best way to tell the devs that “We really don’t know how to handle ourselves when setting up competitive ventures”. Making a big deal out of it exacerbates that ten-fold. We want more than anything to have this tournament be a positive experience for those involved and those viewing.

Ultimately, I post because I care.