Guild Wars 2

Terrorsquad.4802:

Honestly, Guild Wars 2 is by far one of the best balanced games, despite some issues.

The real problem is the time it takes for Anet to fix it.
When hoT hits, it will “only” take every 4 months for a balance patch, which is better than nothing but still too long, imo.

The OP burning is already here 2-3 months but feels like forever..

Really? Prior to D/D Ele nerf I saw two players who I know are about of equal skill go at one on one. (I was observing) we put a few current “meta” builds up against the Ele and it was insanely overpowered. When even one class has that sort of advantage it destroys the entire game in terms of it being taken seriously. PvP maps that are imbalanced (too much chance, not enough skill) are also a problem (e.g. Skyhammer). Although ANet cleaned up Mesmers and DD Fire Eles, condition Necros are still way over powered. If you want to win in a PUG the best thing you can do is to roll one, but regardless of PUG or Premade they are over powered.

Electronic Sports League is very critical when it comes to balance for games that it lets into it’s ESL One series. If you want examples of games balanced enough to be played at pro level, look at the ESL One series roster of games. GW2 has Go4GW2 ESL Cup series which is not remotely the same as ESL One.

Sadly, this seems to be the best preparation advise I can give if you want to “fit in”.

1. Learn what classes/builds are over powered and make one
2. If possible watch videos or streams of the overpowered build
3. Spend about 3 hours in the Heart of the Mist mastering the build rotation
4. Play a lot of unranked PvP, avoid other players running your overpowered build or other builds the community is chartering about being OP. Target more balanced class like: Rangers, Guardians, Thiefs and Warriors.
5. After you get a player kill on a balanced class player, be sure and gloat in map chat about how bad they are and how good you are.
6. As you lay in bed at night thinking about how awesome you are at pvp in GW2 and you’re wondering why GW2 hasn’t been taken seriously as an e-sport, consider points 1-5.

It’s entertaining watching people get angry over unranked PvP PUG losses. People seem to forget the match isn’ t ranked, they also forget that the current matchmaking algorithm is flawed and will be replaced. No one ever points the finger at themselves. They want to blame the Warrior, Guardian, etc… who landed on a team with two necros a mesmer and a ranger. Imagine that? Your heavy armor DPS goes down first when he gets mobbed and spiked on Coutyard. Your warrior didn’t even have time to pop a heal or to dodge the way the spike hit, but that’s just the way it works sometimes. Both teams are Pug but one finds a rhythm and manages to coordinate the other doesn’t. It’s easy to place blame when you observe something a player popping the wrong skill a few times, but maybe he or she was just having a warmup game after playing another class?

Bottom line is it’s PUG group, even if three of you are guildies in a party, it’s still a kitten pug group and you KNEW that when you entered queue. You also know people use unranked to test builds, warm up, etc… Yet you’re still going to range in the map chap, some of you will still rage quit…. It’s pathetic. Think about it? You’re in a unranked match and you’re playing with one or more unknowns, you’ve just played five games in a row and a winning streak with your guildies but now you’re going to loose a match and it’s going to be by more than a hundred points. and you’re furious. You want the blood of your team. How did THEY let this happen. Sound familiar?

This is the reality of trying to PvP in this game. At the entry level to mid-level (where leagues are suppose to target) people get cut throat over unranked play. They can’t even chill the kitten out and just have fun realizing what all could go wrong.

Running a full guild team premade on Ranked with everyone on TS? In that situation I understand getting upset when you take a loss. Get mad with your team! Stay appropriate on-line, but private beat each other up over it, review the mistake and move forward. Let it go. Cut members if you need to. The team can talk about it’s failure after and isolate the problems to work on it. But in a PUG you really don’t know the problem most of the time. You can have all the theories you want, but often you just don’t know.

If you’re getting all upset about unranked matches and taking that out on guildies and pug team members, it just shows how green you are and unprepared you are for the ranked combat. You may be great with your class, but you aren’t good enough to realize the dynamics at play in a PUG or partial PUG and admit you don’t know everything that went on.

Guild teams should use partial PUGs unranked just to stress test players and see how they hold up when things are out of their control. Who will they blame? Will they take responsibility for their faults or pretend they are having a perfect game?

Having done competitive PvP at pro level for a short time one thing I’ve come to realize is that many players have the skills to develop and take to that next level but few have the attitude and perspective needed to compete at the higher level. It’s really sad and it will be interesting to see what happens with Leagues.

If a player spends 6 months in PvP playing on one character and mastering the dynamics of that play style then one day they want to try a new class it appears the matchmaking algorithm pairs them with other players based on their rank/stats played on their main. How realistically can said player get better on another class? It makes no senses. I think this just encourages players to create multiple free accounts.

Kirigato.7183:

I just started playing pvp a week ago it’s really fun but I’m really bad at it are there any effective ways for me to improve other than playing pvp for a hundred hours per day

Google search “Guild Wars 2 pvp build meta”, you’ll find the most popular pvp builds. That’s good place to start. Spec that build on your character (you can do this at no cost and at any level thanks to how Pvp works in GW2. The only sin is not to go in and spec out at least a meta build). Take your build into Hearst of the Mist and duel each NPC profession. You should be able to clear all of them without giving yourself time to recoup between matches. Until you can beat all NPC classes in Hearst of the Mist a few times in a row don’t play with real people as you’ll likely just bring the team down. You can play the game how you want, it’s just being polite to know your build and to be reasonable skilled with it before you start playing with other people.

Play unranked matches. Stay with at least one other player who will complement your skills. Don’t worry if you loose in Skyhammer, Spirit Watch or Courtyard. While these maps add some fun to the game they aren’t well balance and a win on one of them doesn’t always parallel with the skill executed by the team. I assume this is why they aren’t allowed in in ranked games.

Also want to add that I like how in Stronghold beta we have a checkbox to opt in for Stronghold play. I believe you should have multiple checkboxes for when opting to queue up for unranked pvp. Something like: Stronghold, Deathmatch, Ranked Conquest Maps, All Conquest Maps. Players who are working to try and take it to the next competitive level are only going to be interested in playing maps that are used in rank/tournament play; everything else is stealing their time.

I thinks it’s nice to have another sPvP map type besides conquest and deathmatch and it can be fun, but there’s too much left to chance for it to be a serious contender for a tournament play or ranked map. If you’re goal is to take GW2 e-sport what’s going to be looked at is consistency in play mechanic and skill vs chance. As it stands today only four maps provide that.
Battle of Kyhlo, Forest of Nifhel, Legacy of Foefire and Temple of the Silent Storm. Those continues to be my favorite maps to play on and loose on because I know the skill of the team determined the outcome. The others including the new Stronghold have too many flaws. For example in Skyhammer a knock down or wrong step can lead to player death. Because the other maps lack that dynamic it breaks consistency and takes GW2 further away from getting respect of an e-sport. The new map has similar quirks. It’s fun in some aspects but also should not be used for rankings.

Starfall.6425:

It somehow feels like they had a completely different idea for druid, for some reason had to completely overhaul that and that is why druid is the last spec although they did all other specs in the right order.

On the other hand they had a (half) finished new concept for the guard tomes.

Because of the release date and community pressure they just took the tome-spec and made it the druid elite.

Thats the kind of vibe I get

Yes. It does seem this is what’s happened. Consider all other Elite Specs just enhance on how the base class/profession mechanic works. They just enhance the play style the Mesmer, Necro, Guardian, etc.. are already doing. Not Druid.

Druid forces the Ranger into an entirely new tactical team role. Considering none of the other Elite Specs impose this on the player and that Druid is coming last it is very interesting. My guess is as they developed Raid content they realized the only way to find the fun was to give us a dedicated healer. ArenaNet has said they feel Guardian is well balanced so obviously they didn’t want to mess with Guardian, their only option was to hijack one of the elite specs and turn it into the dedicated healer many of us have been asking for since 2010 when they announced “no dedicated healers”

If all that is true then it means the Druid is sort of a hack of an Elite Specialization, created because one of the classes were going to have to full this role and because time constraints and deadlines restrict them from retooling the other elite specs.

It’s almost as if ArenaNet is begrudgingly giving us a dedicated healer but and are forcing rangers to carry that weight. The primary player base who would want the role would be Guardians. Every player who rolled a Guardian picked it over Warrior because they wanted to be support.

Dradiin.8935:

Seriously, now we are relegated to healing in dungeons, fractals, HoT, and i am sure it will be a forced thing in WvW as well. So much for hoping my ranger might be viable in the game as something more than " Heal, Heal, Heal".

I agree with you. ArenaNet has made a decision to give Rangers and Elite Spec that in order to maximize it’s value for team play has to be dedicated healer, but most rangers have little interest in being dedicated support. Meanwhile Eles and Guardians (many of both care a great deal about support) are left with the two Elite Specs that are meh.

Because the Druid forces such a significant play style change on the player it is really the outlier among elite specs. It is as if ArenaNet decided they needed to take one the Elite specs and hijack it for the purpose of dedicated healing and Ranger got the short straw (Guardian and Ele who’s player base naturally want this the most were left out of the drawing altogether).

None of the other elite specs force the player into a completely different tactical team role. So on that front the Druid sure seems to be an example of design meant to satisfy the developer and not the player base.

It’s as if ArenaNet is reminding the community “it’s out game, not yours… we aren’t going to give you want you want. We don’t care that you created a ranger because you enjoy play style x or that you created a Guardian because you enjoy play style Y… If you want to maximize your elite spec’s value to teams we are going to make you change your play style. We can’t give the Guardian this role because that’s what everyone expects us to do so instead we’re just going to make you change how you play the game or you can continue to stay a ranger and pretend Elite specs don’t exist.”

Knighthonor.4061:

Dragon Hunter is meant to be a tank role for PvE. Druid is meant to be healer role in pve. Thats why they different.

Dragon Hunter will make great off tanks in the group. Traps work great for mob control for AoE trash tanking. The virtues are great for movement and defending the group and main tank. Focus and new shield is great for AoE tanking hits from multiple sources at once.

lets not forget longbow adds symbol for energy and CC knockback as well as a a way to defend group from projectiles.

best raid off tank is Dragon Hunter imo.

Ah, see now we get into what got us here design wise. A heavy armored dedicated healer is just out of the question for the tactical aspects to work and the game to be challenging. Guess they decided a medium armor profession could make it work, problem is still how many Rangers do you know who really want to graduate to the dedicated healer/support role on a team? Can you think of any other MMO class progression where the player is forced to completely change their team role in order to max their value in tactical play?

DragonHunter should not have been created. They should have provided the Guardian a Monk elite specialization (many of us who were Monks in GW1 wanted this and picked Guardian because with it’s buffs it seemed the Paladin of GW2). Instead they pretty much leave Guardian alone but give it a proper range weapon and make it so the Ranger evolves into what’s sure to be the meta dedicated healer.

My problem with their design decision is that logically it goes against the play style choices Rangers and Guardians have made from when they first started GW2 to creating their class and leveling it to 80. If the play mechanics of the elite spec just improve upon the style the core class already provided it makes sense (Reaper, Chronomancer… great examples) I’d like someone to explain how Ranger to Druid fits that criteria? With Druid we have an outlier that will punish Rangers who have little interest in healing and also in a way punish Guardians and Eles who very much want that role in tactical team play.

lilz shorty.1879:

I and so many other guardians, are sick and tired of ANET’s inscrutable logic when it comes to guardian.

This Druid Reveal was I feel almost the last straw for most guardians.

My main is a Guardian. I was upset when the Tomes went away, I didn’t pop them often but I did occasionally when the team was getting mobbed I liked being able to fall back and heal for a short burst. Was it perfect? Far from it. But it is clear now why that mechanic was removed, they had other plans.

This is really bad all around. How many Rangers do you know now that want to be re-speced as dedicated healers? They said today that the Druid can heal “like nothing you’ve seen before in GW2” and that “berserker armor isn’t going to cut” for some of the challenging content in HoT. That means they are envisioning the Druid as one of if not the strongest dedicated healers in the game…. Is that really what your Rangers signed up for ArenaNet? That is what your Guaridans have always secretly hoped to be. IMO the Elite spec for each class should make it into a more versatile version of what it was before not give it so much healing power that the community will demand the players spec the character to be a healer when they created the character and leveled it to 80 with other plans in mind. How is that logical design? It’s not even consistent either, you’ll note that the Reaper and Chronomancer do all fit into my concept of “better version of what I was before”. The Guardian and Tempest are both kind of weak transitions and the Ranger to Druid gets the most radical transformation, one that doesn’t make a lot of sense given that it angers Guardians and Eles who want to be able to claim the dedicated healer slot in Raids and bad for Rangers who never wanted that roll to begin with…. It leads me to wonder if the game is being made to make its developers happy or to make the player community happy?

ArenaNet where is the respect for he player in the Ranger to Druid conversion? How did you come to reason Rangers would want an elite spec so focused on healing when their core class does very little to focus there? How did you not see the backlash from Guardians and Eles coming? For a player who’s main is a Ranger who has no interest in healing, they don’t have anything to look forward to in their specialization do they? Please explain why you have created this scenario for rangers?

TLDR: Please make guild event dialog and objective statuses consistent with open world dynamic events and Heart objectives. The inconsistency can lead to confusion and guildies dropping from team.

Tried to participate in one for the first time this evening and ended up dropping out of party. I wasn’t feeling well or I probably would have stuck around and inquired more, but there is no indication of what’s going on for the player in the HUD. I would expect dialog like “guild event started” and event objectives listed to the upper right where all other event/heart/personal story objectives are listed.

Although you could argue more could have been done on the part of the guild to explain how the event works the question is why do these type of events deviate from ALL THE OTHERS. Please give me a thought process I can respect. Right now I just feel like this is yet another very annoying aspect of this game.

A few years ago an excellent book on user interface and user experience was published by author Steve Krug called “Don’t Make Me Think” it provides a set of patterns and principles of good user interface design. The paradigm is a perfect fit for games. We’re not about the strategic element. Some may go on about “you probably hate traits then, etc…”. Trait manipulation isn’t user interface that’s core game mechanic which is exactly what I do want to spend my time thinking about not struggling with the user interface. They are very different. I think the way guild events report to players is flawed because of it’s divination and I point to Krug’s work and common sense as validation for these claims. Bad design ArenaNet, please consider retooling. Thank You.

I am requesting the moderator remove this thread.

I am making this request because on further thought, it’s clear ArenaNet has no plans to make changes in the base game. Their general response to the quality of underwater play in terms of mechanics/fun will be revealed in HoT. I believe underwater play will be largely absent in this expansion based on this information available so far and the lack of attention to underwater zones and play since launch not to mention community outcry against it. This thread is old and belongs in the past.

As previously stated. When you remove the underwater aesthetic elements and just focus on the play mechanics you have a handicap experience that the player must endure every time they are in the water. Again, we have mobility mechanics in play that match a debuff on land. Which creates a degree of frustration. We have a very limited set of skills which force underwater playstyle. No one picked a class based on underwater play mechanics yet everyone is forced to adapt to their classes underwater mechanics. The underwater zones (especially the ones with Risen) create scenarios where a player is mobbed immediately and must result to an annoying evade, return, kill, evade tactic that in many zones gets you nowhere because everything re spawns. At best case when it works it creates a long grind session which goes against the principles of the GW2 manifesto.

When you strip away all the fun and you create a frustrating pattern of repetition, force play mechanics that in the primary game (land based combat) the play would only be subject to due to consequence of their actions (specifically talking about the reduced speed underwater). Good game design is not entirely subjective. There are many respected patterns published on good design. In every possible aspect I can measure by those standard I declare the underwater play in Gw2 is horrible design. I would challenge the brilliant minds at ArenaNet behind it’s mechanic to juxtapose the play mechanic shift from land to water, the incentives, tactical elements and options given to the player on land vs water and to justify why they believe it’s even acceptable design. I mean this with the most respect. I really, really love this game. I just don’t understand how this one aspect can be such a train wreck and it makes me very angry every time I play and end up having to do underwater content.

Again, I don’t expect a response and I don’t want to dig up old bones. Moderators if you feel compelled to forward my comments to dev please do, if you do not I understand but I’d like this removed as it is an old discussion and I don’t want my name at the top of it in the public forums.

As a student of game design I’d love to hear the rational behind underwater content but I know no one owes me that and I am free to stop playing (I’m not). I just want to provide consructive feedback but I don’t see a way to do that because of how angry I am about this.

It seems every other map annotation in this game is tagged at it’s map depth level (1, 2 or 3) with the exception of Hero Challenges. Why?

StinVec.3621:

I quite enjoy underwater exploration, design, movement controls and combat with each of the professions.

In fact, this is the only game where I enjoy underwater as much as land. I wish there was a lot more of it and that it would receive the development that I feel it deserves.

I was quite disappointed to see their decision to no longer release aquatic weaponry in the black lion weapon sets. Those were the main ones I would look to acquire from sets.

:\

Through their actions AreanNet has greatly devalued underwater play. I’m not certain if that is because they have put the play mechanics under a microscope and realized just how horrible things are or if they are responding to the communities dislike of underwater play as a whole (which of course is caused by the play mechanics, so it’s kind of sort of the same thing).

Regardless, it has been more or less abandoned and so the question is why do these zones still force players to give up their enjoyment.

mXz.4512:

Depending on what class I play as, it can get from annoying to “meh” to quite fun.

The classes that have more single-target attacks won’t be really appealing, sure. But then there’s the Ranger with some ‘ok’ underwater attacks, and there’s my favorite stun fishing bomb-kit engi Mesmer would fall about the same range as ranger and necro for me, while warrior, guardian, thief I try avoiding as much as possible.

Trying to maneuver and traverse in limited visibility though can get pretty tedious after awhile though, but same would go for certain maps/terrain. And I outright despise dredge areas and CoF.

If you remove all the asthetics of underwater play in GW2 and just think about the mechanics of it, it’s like being on a map where you are suffering with being crippled and you can not remove the debuff. What’s more your choice of weapon skills has been reduced to a single weapon set and all the strategy you generally invoke on land using the terrain for tactical purposes is completely lost. Combine that with enemies coming at you from all directions, skills you are forced to use that pull and agro those enemies and the factor in the visibility problems. It’s play mechanics take away much control of the player and leave a lot to random.

I have two level 80s, I’ve done all the dungeon paths at least once. I’m nearing Slayer title in sPvP. I’m nowhere near the most active in this game, but I have been around it and I understand the core play mechanics and I find the fun intended. It’s absent underwater. A player should not go from loving the game to hating it and feeling dread and hopelessness and the inability to invoke any strategy to improve the situation, yet that has been my underwater experience. I suppose some simply find the novelty of the underwater aesthetics enough to find the fun and they brush aside the very real tangible problems with the shift in play mechanics, but I am not one of those people. Having said that, I’m going back and trying again to find the fun with some of the suggestions here.

I agree with the contributor who mentioned removal of the sPvP map Raid on the Capricorn. ArenaNet has been for years trying to get consideration for the Electronic Sports League to give them e-sport status, so they are wise enough to strip away incredibly flawed mechanics or ban such maps from pvp play. I assume Raid on the Capricorn (the only pvp map to force underwater mechanics) was removed because the game play mechanics were put under a microscope and ArenaNet was called out on these play mechanic flaws. Player skill and tactics are corrupted by random chance and situations invoked outside the players control.

When I am forced to go into the water in GW2 all these things come to mind quickly, the fun factor drops to zero, the situation feels hopeless and I begin to very angry. It’s ok for games to make you mad sometimes. I get angry in PvP all the time, but in PvP I had a great deal of fun and when I calm down 90% of the time I reflect on my own contribution to the loss. I jump right back in because the fun is there. Again, the underwater play in this game to me is just a really horrible experience all around that is not balanced with the otherwise great experiences. ArenaNet should revamp it. Some ideas for the revamp the open world underwater play outside of the underwater instanced content.

1. Make it so underwater speed is increased not decreased. In fact just keep a constant speed boon up so we can get in and out ask quickly as possible and get back to the part of the game we love.

2. Add a few new underwater utility skills for protection that gets us near invincibility (yes it will make things easier, the players who love themselves some underwater play don’t have to use said skills. Players who hate underwater play will just accept it as your apology for implementing it so poorly in the first place)

Realistically I understand underwater play can not be removed from the game, but a few changes could be added so for those of us who realize what a train wreck it is can get in and get out without signing out in rage. This is of course just a suggestion. The apparent absence of underwater maps in HoT seems to further validate ANet’s acknowledgement that much could be done to improve underwater play, so why are we still being forced to go there for achievements?

BeckaPL.2670:

Honestly I have a rather different opinion of under water combat although I still don’t really like it. I think it could have been really interesting if they had done aqua breathers differently. I think that either 1: they should be skins which are applied to your normal helmet on entering the water or 2: (a rather unpopular opinion) that they should function. If you don’t wear it then you can’t breath. There should also be actual good aquabreathers assuming they’re going to stay the way they are rather than only being able to get rares. In terms of the 3d combat I don’t feel as though it’s done too badly and some underwater areas I really like. For example the really eerie water in cursed shore where you can only just see in front of you.

Thanks for an alternative opinion. I despise it so much, hearing someone actually likes it is intriguing. Would you be kind enough to share the class you’re playing, a little info about your underwater build/weapon skills and the approach/rotation you use when approaching a mob? If you ask me to give you these details for any land based scenario on the classes I play I could tell you. I can’t find a strategy with the underwater skills on ele. It’s just an awkward mess that seems to be unfinished. I would go so far as to call it bad design because that’s what I think it is. Bad design tucked away inside a game with a lot of great design going on around it.

Would love to hear specific strategies from underwater Eles since there seems to be a lot of love for this class underwater, yet it’s the one I hate playing underwater the most

On returning to GW2 for the past month I’ve had a lot of fun in PvP and PvE. One thing that hasn’t changed if my disgust of the waterway play in this game. My only reference point for MMO play where enemy characters are coming at you in 3D freespace would be AION (AION has flight). I really liked how NCSoft implemented flying in that game but the waterway combat in this game works is very frustrating. Playing as an Ele I find it difficult to prevent massive agro, which underwater is followed by a very short evade (thank you underwate speed debuff). Perhaps I’ve never mastered the mechanics of it because I just despise it so much.

We work hard to master our standard (land) builds and build strategy around that and then there is perhaps 15% of the game that’s underwater play that requires a very different play dynamic. There is zero fun in this aspect of the game for me and while I’m sure a few players who love underwater will chime in with a rebuttal, I find it hard to imagine I"m in the minority. Bad design is bad design.

So moving beyond my rant. I’d love to hear from other players who hate or once hated underwater play as much as I do now. Is there anything that I can do to make this a more enjoyable experience. The map completion and hero points are something I need so unfortunately underwater play is not optional to achieve my goals.

ColinJohanson.2394:

TorsoReaper.8530:

The current system is making the player base smaller by the minute.

While I’ll let the PvP team respond to the other points here, I do want to take a moment and address this:

PvP has steadily grown in population and play hours going on nearly a year now. It’s sky-rocketed since the game went free, and the two weeks before this have been our best weeks literally since the week the game launched. We anticipate this week will be the best week login/play wise PvP has ever had in the history of Gw2.

I don’t want to trivialize your points – and our competitive team has some great reasons why things operate the way they do they’ll lay out and explain in relation to leagues soon: I do want to call out you’re using false population data to support your point.

From an ArenaNet perspective, PvP is the fastest growing part of Gw2 and had more success for us as a business in the last year than it’s had by far in the history of the Guild Wars franchise. Next year is going to be even bigger because of that success.

I’m really proud of the work the team has done and the work our amazing player community who has helped grow competitive PvP just as much as our dev team has and would hate to see that lost in this discussion.
-CJ

It’s gotten a lot better sense launch and I’ve got my fingers crossed you guys are going to do Leagues right and give us Guild team leaderboards that rank the guilds not the individual players in those guilds…. If ArenaNet had shipped GW2 with balanced PvP and a lot of the mechanics in place today then it would have gotten a lot more popular sooner. Honestly Colin, because of the amazing potential for GW2 pvp I was very disappointed how things use to be. I have returned to the game and bought HoT in large part because PvP is fun. It’s not fun when the ranking system doesn’t work right (and one you’ve been playing a while you know when that happens) but it’s really an amazing experience when two matched teams are pitted against one another. Please give us more info on Leagues asap.

BLUna.7928:

Due to an ongoing bug with Vampirism Runes, we will not be allowing Elementalists to use this runeset in upcoming Go4 Cups, including the one taking place tomorrow. This is due to a bug that was brought to out attention that resets an elementalist’s downstate health while the rune is equipped. We will remove this restriction once the relevant bug has been fixed. Thank you for your cooperation.

Well this explains the anomalies going on in unranked pvp lately

official.7362:

Ok so i can stress how important these will be to a healthy pvp base

Id just like to know EXACTLY how you plan on handling this system..

if you make it a grind (it will fail to do what its trying to accomplish) ie pair like skilled players together.

so how exactly do you plan on separating these different skilled player bases together

what is the algorithm? and how will you handle soloq/team q

Imho you either have to go ALL IN on either Soloq or Teamq u cant have them separated because lets face it there arent enough players to have both in this game and its fair or fun to either player base to have to fight each other

u have to take a stand once and for all Either PROMOTE teams ONLY to play pvp or Dont at all imo

ill go ahead and guess ur ganna save all the juicy info until after you sell copies of the game so u dont kitten people off who wouldnt buy the game if they knew soloq was dead or not

I agree 100% with what you have said "Imho you either have to go ALL IN on either Soloq or Teamq u "

The question is do players belong to leagues or does the team itself belong to a league? If it is a team then how is that team qualified for the league they are placed in? That’s what I would like to now. ArenaNet has said they will be introducing sPvP Guild Leaderboards with Leagues. That makes me believe all team members representing a guild will be bound to the Guilds league, but wait… What if I’m in several guilds? Will I be in minor League with guild A and a major league with guild B? What we a guild has 15 members that PvP at varying skill levels and time commitments? Will the guild be placed in league based on the merits of the collective or the most active players in the guild? Will we have Leaderboards for each league (if they don’t do this then leagues are pointless)? Will we have an end of season tournament for each league? I think all leagues should have their own Leaderboards and their own end of season tournament.

ArenaNet please give us answers.

I’d like to understand how teams will be qualified for leagues. Here’s an example scenario: our guild has 10 guild members who play and we swap out members often but a few of them only play a few times a week the rest of us play daily. Our guild has created A, B and C players, with the A team players being the core and B team members filling in as needed and C team being trainees. If our guild team plays several weeks with mostly A team players but we have a weekend where we have to sub in two B team players and one C team player will the guild team still be in the same league or will the league assignment be based on a computation of the collective league assignment of each player on the team for each given match? I hope I’ve stated this clear enough. Thanks.

I agree with you. I think it’s place should be on custom arenas. It’s not the only map I really don’t care for. Many of us who play unranked pvp are trying to train/test builds for ranked pvp, there should be an option to only be queued for the proper maps (maps used in ranked games). Many of us see the other maps as a complete waste of time.

StrangerDanger.3496:

I really hope they think about how people will be unlocking specializations.

First of all, despite reality, these are suppose to be horizontal upgrades, as in a different way to play your class, not a linear upgrade, so I don’t see a reason to make anyone put in a ton of effort to access the specializations, really any effort to be frank.

Thinking about it more, I really agree with you. I see the play mechanics they offer as something core to the expansion. Something that I would like to have access to from the very first new story chapter or shortly after.

I think 175 is fair

Has it been made public yet how elite specializations will unlock? Considering how the trait systems was revamped, it seems logical skill points (fingers crossed ArenaNet will agree). I really hope the elite specs aren’t something we have to work until mid-game to acquire. The more I think about it, the more I feel being denied the elite spec very early on is going to really impact the experience. For my time in the beta weekends, I can say the Elite specs + beautiful new environments + gliding mechanic all come together to make the expansion feel like something exciting and new. I think the elite spec are the biggest part of that feel.

Do you think most players in the Leaderboard Top 200 have Dragon rank?

This problem is continuous. I can play 45-60 minutes but eventually the same thing happens. Major lag followed by “can not connect to/find logon server” followed by hard crash (black screen with GW2 mouse cursor) have to manually go to Windows task manager and close out the game. After doing this 4-5 times I eventually reset.

My system is a 2015 quad-core i7 with 16-GB of RAM, solid state drive. mid-range NVIDIA graphics which gives me about 30-40 fps when lag isn’t pulling me down.

I imagine there is an insane amount of work to do right now with HoT coming, but guys the current build HAS TO BE rock solid or all these F2P new comers you have are going to jump ship quickly. RIght now the game client is a messs. I don’t know why, but please make it priority over everything else to fix this. Push HoT back if you have to, just get the client stable again.

The feel the overall performance of the servers has degraded since the game went F2P. Over the course of an hour hanging out in the PvP lobby/Heart of the MIst I had connection drops three times. Also in conquest battles and especially on the Courtyard map I’ve had many problems with lag. I know how to monitor network performance and I am certain this problem is with ArenaNet servers.

As a software developers I understand problems can take time to work out, but with an on-line game the absence of lag is CRITICAL to the user experience. If lag occurs consistently as it has been over the past week then the game is completely ruined. We all work hard in game to achieve objectives ArenaNet has designed and when your servers lag and cheat us… well F2P or not, that’s going to drive people away because it shows that you don’t have a good grasp of your infrastructure.

Historically ArenaNet has had rock solid servers. You apparently have invested a lot in the technology behind your infrastructure, I’m not sure why lately this has been a problem but I hope you understand addressing this should be your highest priority.

My least favorite PvP map by far. The strategy is 1.) stay with your zerg 2.) try not to go down 3.) if team member goes down try to res 4.) if you die be caredul when you re-spawn to not walk into the enemy zerg. 5.) rejoin your zerg ASAP and repeat.

Of all the sPvP maps this one seems to have the most issues with lag. The overall design which funnels specific combat scenarios is very annoying. I appreciate the thinking when it was released. ArenaNet wanted to give us something new, but it really is a horrible map that, more often than not is impacted by the lag to the point that the outcome will impacted by close matches. For that reason I think it should be removed or fixed.

After completing a match, four chest appeared on screen. My ISP was having some issues and I dropped connection. When I returned to the game some time later the chest were not on my character. Can’t express how frustrating this is. The server should recognize when a character missed a reward due to connectivity and provide it on next log on. Imagine if one of those chest were an award for a major progression point. This is unacceptable design.

GW2 servers have historically been very good. However, I’ve noticed since the game went free to download the lag has gotten much worse. I played two sPvP matches today that were ruined by lag. Does the dev and infrastructure team understand that server lag destroys the user experience and thus destroy the product? After being on-line for several years I don’t understand why the teams responsible can’t manage this better and scale processing power and bandwidth needs appropriately. Yes, I have confirmed it’s not my ISP.

Love this twist to the narrative. I know many predicted it would occur, but nice to get confirmation and some details. My mind is racing with the potential this opens up for the game. Just imagine if the NPC minions treats Sylvari characters different than other races? Going a step further, imagine if Sylvari characters could choose a path of corruption and this lead to PvP zones in the open world. I know that would be an ambitious undertaking and the balance mechanics would be difficult I’m not suggesting that’s what we are getting, but wouldn’t it add a new level of depth to the game?

Thank you ArenaNet

The elite specs make professions that weren’t appealing to me before appealing. A few examples are: Mesmer, Revenant and Necromancer.

Guardian and Ele have been my main characters since GW2 launched and I’m not that impressed with their Elite specs. I see them as adding value but the Elite Dragonhunter and Tempest specializations don’t change how I play with these classes.

So the way I see it, it’s just a way to make old classes feel new again and also to fix a few very broken things (e.g. Necromancer is finally useful)

FYI: The concept of one profession being able to evolve into another is nothing new in MMORPGs. NCSoft’s AION was offering this five years ago.

Monday is Labor Day can we break the rules this once and keep the beta going until tomorrow evening? If you can’t I understand, but it would be much appreciated. Yes, I understand the beta’s aren’t here for our entertainment and that they serve a functional purpose, but you know we all enjoy them and one more day of collecting data couldn’t hurt, could it?

VaLee.5102:

Just go near the maguuma jungle somewhere, like SW, and you’ll see the new beta area in your map again, it’s just a glitch.

Doesn’t work. The map “fog” that appears over regions a character has not yet explored covers all of Maggum. Doesn’t matter if I’m in the SW or anywhere else in the non-beta maps. Waypoints under fog are not available. On another character I have the fog is there but the waypoints can be seen under it and if I double click on it I can travel to the beta maps. Not with my Revenant.

So if you want to take a character outside the beta maps, be warned you may not be able to get back.

Warning: when you sign out for beta weekend #2 sign-out on a beta map otherwise you may not be able to get back….

This will probably be a moot point since I’m sure a wipe is coming soon, but thought it was worth the heads up. I am playing on a Revenant I created during beta weekend #1. When beta weekend #1 ended my character was not on a one of the new maps. It was in Lions Arc.

When I signed in with that character I noticed the maggum maps are now unavailable. This is very frustrating. Obviously this won’t get any priority and you could say “just start another character, etc…” but some warning would have really been nice.

Just wanted to say thanks ANet for giving us this profession. While it’s not the only profession that can be configured as dedicated support, it’s certainly the most fun in that role.

ketorin.5923:

Bets on how far out next beta weekend is?

I’m guessing 2nd weekend of September…

With release in October

If they are following the same methodology used during GW2 betas, they will have one planned per month and will stick with that unless development delays it

Considering the inferred correlation of the play mechanic for unlocking Masteries in HoT and the recent Gem store changes regarding XP boosters I have a suggestion on Elite Specialization unlocking that I think would help ArenaNet stay consistent with their monetization goals. I’ll detail this idea in steps

1.) Allow a player to use existing skill points to unlock their Elite Specialization, but adjust the cost so that even spending all skill points earned in GW2 for the average plyaer only a small portion of the Elite Specialization “track” can be unlocked.

2.) At the beginning of the second instanced Story mission in HoT, have the player interact with Rytlock. Have Rytlock give some backstory on his transformation and then have him give the player a reusable item they can double click on to enter a solo instance of the Mist (same mechanic as the Hall of Monuments stone). Once in the Mist the player then must complete 10 Hero Point challenges, each challenge getting progressively harder leading up to the final challenge which is almost impossible to beat. If a player completes all 10 Hero Challenges they will have more than enough total skill points needed to completely unlock their Elite Specialization. However, if a player dies at any point during these challenges all skill points earned from all challenges while in the instance will be removed and they will be removed from the instance and return to the world map. Now for the big catch- While a player can reuse the magic item given by Rytlock to return to the Mist instance and try the challenge again they are limited to one free try per day. Provide a gem store “Key to mist” item that cost 300 gems that will allow a player to gain an addition try per day. Allow players to use as many keys as they want per day.

3.) So that you’re not critized too harshly for this (the gaming media can be ugly, can’t they?) I’d also suggest placing just enough Hero Challenges throughout in HoT so that a player has an alternative to this challenge. Completing the 10 Hero Challenges in the Mist would be just an alternative path for players to attempt to unlock their Elite Specialization very early in th game. For those who choose not to the normal Hero Challenge progression would require them to get to the final map in HoT before being able to obtain all skill points needed for complete unlock of the Elite Specialization. Another great thing bout this idea is since it’s coming from a player though the forums you can always space goat it. If criticized you can say “The idea actually rose up from our gaming community on the forums”

NOTE: Although this is a bit of tongue I would not mind if something like this were implemented. I know it cost money for ArenaNet to cover operational cost every month and the reality is nothing in this world is free. I don’t believe monetizing a game is a bad thing if it can be done in a way that gives players who pay some perk but also provides a path to the same content for those who can’t afford to and I think what I’m proposing here provides for both of those things.

The expectation is that If HoT were being bundled with GW2 in a boxed retail package, the player would get two serial #s. One would be for Hearst of Thorns and one would be for the GW2 base product. They could then pass long the unused GW2 serial # to a friend, etc… We know this because in the past with GW1 when Eye of the North was bundled with the Core game this is how it shipped.

In the digital download realm it enabled software vendors to be more specific with what their aiming to do with these sort of promotions. They can prevent players from taking the unused serial # and selling it or giving it away (something the license agreement probably prohibits anyway). All that being said, I do believe if ArenaNet is going to give new players to HoT the entire first game for free they should compensate existing players with the same number of empty character slots added that new players are getting,. I think there should be something given to existing players to compensate. Because character slots and boosters all have monetary value in the on-line store they are going to be more strict about just giving these things away.

If you’re thinking of NOT upgrading, another thing to consider is something I pointed out in another thread. By default the GW2 client data file is going to be patched with all the HoT assets even if you decided not to buy the expansion. So based on available specs even if you don’t buy HoT you’ll be giving up 12-15 GB of hard drive devoted to it. As others have pointed out this is the industry norm. Until people start becoming really vocal about this it won’t change.

Diovid.9506:

1. We don’t know if there are dungeons in HoT, only that there will be ‘challenging group content’.

2. They will release information on this challenging group content when they are ready to release it.

Thanks

When are we going to learn about the new Dungeons in Heart of Thorns?

Would be cool if in the final battle with Elder dragon Mordremoth a giant Glint came down from the sky and began battling him with our heros.

Just sayin’ ArenaNet. We haven’t seen Epic in this game yet and the lore writers have given you an ocean to fish in to give us incredible content. In considering how good the lore is I would say writing for personal story chapters on GW2 was the worst in any video game I’ve played. Taking into account the great source material they had to work with. So glad it looks like this problem has been rectified in GW2: HoT.

Chase.8415:

SamTheGuardian.2938:

It appears HoT content is being incrementally downloaded with each GW2 patch. It appears this is being done for those who have purchased and have not purchased HoT. I have children who have GW2 accounts and have the game loaded on their computers. They don’t have a lot of hard drive space left (5-6 GB), I have not purchased HoT on their accounts. Over the coming months should I anticipate 10+ GB download patched to their games with HoT content they will not be using and have not paid for? I’d just like some clarification on this because this appears to be the way the expansion is being applied.

If the above is the case I don’t agree with it , if you’re occupying storage space for a product they did not pay for and do not want is that really ethical?

EDIT
I think to boil it down. What I"m really wondering is how much of the total GW2 install how much HD space will the for-pay expansion assets (models, textures, audio, etc..) account for? The new WvW map would be an example of content for everyone not for pay so I don’t think that content counts as part of this question. If it’s not through the license agreement, at what point to MMORPG developers gain the right to patch gigabytes of data for content you can’t play until you pay for? Is there a limit on how much space they can take? To better protect themselves for some crazy down the road who may try to litigate this should MMORPG developers better protect themselves or do most players not care at all?

So your suggestion instead is, instead of downloading the data once and storing it in the hardrive you would rather have I stream to the PC every single time you play taking tons and tons of more space and cause lag in your household every single time you play a video game and have someone play Netflix at the same time?

Hard drive space is ridiculously cheap at the moment. If anything, the most expensive thing is bandwidth and saving the data on the hardrive saves a ton of future bandwidth.

No. It’s more download-as-you-go. Once the content is downloaded you would not stream it down again (unless there was an update to content). This available to all of us as a command line gw2.exe option now. So since this option exist it invalidates the question in context of ArenaNet and this game. If a player can’t get to the HoT maps they will never load and thus never take up hard drive space.

Artanis.4963:

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

And last: Hard disk space is cheap as hell.

This. This is the important bit, and it’s buried in a wall of text.

Physical storage is not expensive. The answer to “I’m running out of space” should be buy more space.

1000GB disks from well-known, quality brands are available on Amazon for under $50. Also, 1000GB solid-state drives are under $200 (many are closer to $100).

You don’t even have to reinstall everything! Samsung I know provides software to clone your old disk onto the new one (recently got a 500GB SSD from them). I’m sure the other manufacturers provide similar software, and if your hdd doesn’t come with something, there are several free applications to clone disks.

If that space is being taken up by software you can not use but because you bought another piece of software from the vendor you are required to devote that space anyway… Getting back to the truck and trailer scenario I detailed above. Would you answer be “you just need to build another driveway to get the trailer”.

Storage space is digital real estate. It’s where you keep your digital assets. It’s not free even if it is more cost effective that physical property. You should still not be require dot hand it over (we are talking about 15-GB of space in this case) or in the game of WoW who knows, perhaps 25-GB or more devoted to digital assets consuming space on your hard drive that you won’t get back.

Others have pointed out there is an option to stream down the content on-demand. So although the game my patch you up to 35-GB once HoT is released if you reinstall fresh and just stream down content as needed I’d guess you’ll get by with much less than that. Since this option is built into the game it’s really not applicable to GW2.

Khisanth.2948:

The minimum system requirements was 25GB. There is at least 3 GB to go before they hit that. The minimum has increased to 35GB for HoT. Also see attached image.

Any new weapon or armor added in HoT will need all their assets downloaded. All the assets for the new classes and specilization skills/traits/whatever also needs to be downloaded by everyone since those players can be anywhere.

The new armor skins, animations and textures related to Elite Specializations are not 10+ GB of data. Considering they use compression and accounting for HD textures you may be looking at 50-150 MB at most. The majority is going to be for the for-pay content those who purchase the expansion get to experience.

BrotherBelial.3094:

The HoT system specs say it will take up 35gig. So when HoT launches the GW2 file will be around that size.

So those who haven’t purchased HoT and have no interest still must sacrice about 12-GB of HD space for expanshion content, must of which they will have no pay to use without paying for the expansion.

Now that it’s been pointed out that many MMORPG companies are doing this what follows is not meant to focus on ANet (especially since I just learned WoW requires 50-GB commitment) instead I want to put into perspective for everyone how ridiculous this is. You hard drive space is digital real-estate.

Imagine you’re in need of a truck. You bought a truck from a truck dealer. A few years later the truck dealer begins offering a promotion where anyone who has bought a truck in thee last several years can come and buy a special trailer made to complement your model truck. What’s more, anyone who buys a new truck in 2015 gets said trailer for free. Although you can go back and buy it,you don’t get the trailer for free. However even if you decide not to buy the trailer the dealership has already reserved one for you and they’ve decided they are going to keep it parked in your driveway. You don’t own the trailer until you pay them, but it’s going to sit in your driveway regardless because when you bought the truck you agreed to grant them this right. Of course physical property and virtual property have differences, but both cost money and both are limited. Notebook computers are starting to come with soldiered in hard drives, etc… Although the analogy of physical of physical real estate being consumed is reaching a bit, in many ways it IS the same thing. This is collectively what MMORPG players are allowing without question…. That’s kind of unbelievable.

As a software engineer I can assure you the games could be made in such as way that they did not take up so much space. It would be a technical challenge for the developers. They would have to make some architecture changes but there is no reason it couldn’t be done for sounds, textures and models that are truly not used at all by those who don’t own the expansions. I understand there is some crossover and those assets (e.g. new WvW maps available to all players) should not be scrutinized.