Guild Wars 2

KarsaiB.9475:

Dunno if you played league of legends before but maybe implement a utility skills ban that would apply for a single match of the best of 3 or 5 ? Teams would alternatively ban 1 skill for a total of 3 each making it 6, would result in interresting changes I guess. Also no double classes allowed would be interresting.

Bans during champion select.
A ban would have to be pronounced in map chat for now though and someone, like a shoutcaster, has to count down with a manual timer for example.

I like this approach a lot.
Tournament organizers can change the rule-sets to reflect a more appealing ground for competition.
There are two things I would like to add though:

Let builds be changed (just not to any banned ones you mentioned) and have asuras maybe banned too.

@ Chaith
I agree with what you said about engineers and their weak spots.
Not much the case for warriors for example.

@NewTrain
I know and it is called Alpha if my memory serves right.
There have been posts on reddit about people involved in it as well.

@ azurzephyr
Yes, I consider the changes may come too late.
I still think though they should just revert changes on skills like berserker stance or diamond skin as well as traits like dhuumfire.

@ butch
Yup and this is why there are so many frustrated players which kept playing on that promise.

Make the last implemented healing skills also unlocked please.

Soilder.3607:

Sari.9836:

I agree and lower it to 320 which is around 18-19 %. Probably even more with a good active.

Lowering it to 320 is a 33% decrease. It’s 480 right now. I’m completely fine with the changes, but they just need to buff power specs some more.

Edit: Oh wait thought you were talking about Spirit of Nature.

Nope and I think the number they mentioned in the last Ready Up was around 320 too.
Spirit of Nature is just a part one of the gimmicky builds with AI though and those builds (not only AI) should never be high or top, imo. They should give new players some help though.

I agree with mobas, gesho, but there are other genres as well.
The point about anet’s position, no.
I think while it may be overwhelming at first, it brings in variety and allows a slightly difference experience. It opens up more playstyles.
The issue with balance as for now is however that the balance changes from last year’s summer were just incredibly horrible for the competitive aspect of the game. I feel it was due to a buff for condition builds in either WvW or PvE (no blame to the players here).
I really just wanto to see a sincere stance from Anet with the last remaining veterans and a clarification on the direction of further changes. So far, there has been a lot of neglect or flawed communication. So if things are clarified, players can either play or leave depending on the information.

First, the title seems heavily generalized (and unfair against some mannered players). :>
Secondly, don’t get hung up over it. If they lost, they lost. If it was a “bad” build, whatever, a won duel is a won duel. Duels are also dynamic encounters in which mistakes can be made and it could be that they searched blame on you.
The frustration which probably underlines these reactions (or actions) stems from a more complex issue I feel though a good reason can at least be bias towards warriors since their recent imbalance and over-dominance.

@ OP
I agree. And I think other players who enjoyed the game, got vocal but resigned and quit may most likely too.
I would like to add some points though:

• Living story is not bad. It is nothing new though as other games bring in changes through patches too. So I doubt it is really innovative and was just a marketing step.
  The speed is fast though, really fast.

• Split Balance is still not there. As a long-time, experienced sPvPer (3rd account here), I felt the urge for months to have a seperate balance and I think I am not the only one who would agree but also some players from WvW and PvE. This could include a trait revamp as a poster above me mentioned but I feel that a revision of the whole trait system and more freedom of stats and traits (while some could be prohibited or blank in PvE, WvW or sPvP for example) would be nice.
  In the end, the decisions of the developers with a homogenized balance just hurts us all.

• Gem Store and RNG. The dye packs are the last remaining rng in the gem store besides minis. I would have these be distributed seperately and without RNG to allow a direct purchase. Dyes would be soul-bound on pick-up by mail and minis could get some lower cost of gems.

The whole situation seen in the screenshot is just a mess.
While a league system may (hopefully) fix all the issues regarding player-distrubution, I hope they at least make it that if one leaves, they get the buff and a new spot is open for that SoloQ match which allows an other player joining. That player can have his rating be untouched while getting a reward for their participation as volunteers.
And better have a ready-up button which sends you back into queue if one denies and waits too much. Similar as in Dota 2.

I agree and lower it to 320 which is around 18-19 %. Probably even more with a good active.

It is not WvW killing or hurting sPvP per se, neither is it PvE.
The real issue lies in the decisions made by the developers.
They brought in so many changes many people over the whole game were not screaming for. Ascended Gear ? Seasons ?
I think these are really the flaws:

• Common balance: Skills and traits have various ranges, cool-downs, effects, etc. There are various different factors playing a role for taking one skill or trait over the other. Some stuff is more suited for PvE, some is more suited for WvW, some is more suited for sPvP. Trying to balance one will possibly bring imbalance to the other. There is no excuse for no split balance since there are cries of frustration from PvE- and WvW-players too.
  Also, balance goes from top to bottom. Can’t be emphasized enough for a competitive game type. (So balance is most crucial if there is a “broken” thing dominating all other options at highest level of play)

• Homogenization of PvE, WvW, sPvP: Keep them still seperate, no unlocks, this will just destroy sPvP even further. Saying that the game will be overwhelming for new players, well, excuse me, every new game for them can be. Instead bring in variety and let them learn more. Have them have to play differently and learn something new in sPvP. I mean, it basically screams of less variety.
  Give them a better tutorial. This is the real issue. They just jump in and do not know how to trait, what the npcs do in the mists and what the offer, what the locker is, how effects work, etc.. The initial tutorial (in each starting zone) is just as bad to be fair.

• Lowering of skill ceiling: A good, competitive game has a high amount of complexity and a high amount of skill involved at high levels. There is still a difference but what they did with each consecutive big change to sPvP was lowering the ceiling.
  They first locked weapon-sets and later on utility slots. It was not so bad per se, but the biggest issue came really last year with the changes to Necromancers and Warriors. These changes were not wanted. Dhuumfire ? Berserker Stance ? Healing Signet ?
  How can these things (among some others) be skillful ? How is it skillful to not be challenged by every decision in a much shorter time frame ? They just made it easier to make rewarding decisions and these decisions see even high-level play which makes it even more sad.
  It just slowed down too much.

• Lack of proper feedback: Still no open PTR. This is bad. Most of us cannot get in contact with the developers either (I understand it partially since the forums tend to be somewhat toxic from time to time) and have a transparent and reasonable discussion. Veteran players used to give really good recommendations but they were not listened to.

• eSports: It is never company-driven, it is player-driven. The developers just give the tools to allow a growth of playerbase and most importantly competition. Everything else is up to the players. Listen to them or there won’t be esports and it would be very beneficial for the good of the players to let them know that the plan about esports is ditched then.

I have come to the conclusion to wait and see if they will have a change of mind with their current work-ethic since the changes they implement are not really innovative nor are they very polished and more so half-baked. There are better solutions from player feedback in all honesty since they are the ones playing much more and more thoroughly while a developer has to spend their time on coding and designing.
If nothing crucial happens, I will also take my leave since I cannot support this company anymore then.

I agree, revert it back to its initial state of 1 stack in sPvP.
(I can’t tell for WvW, I haven’t played it enough for a long time)

August 2012 up to the 23rd July of 2013 was mostly a ton of fun (in terms of balance), from then on it just went wrong. (Quickness nerf and implementation of easy-to-use-and-high-reward skills and traits)
In terms of challenge, it goes definately back to when skills were not locked and after the svanir rune fix. I personally find that having had to face 2-3 elementalists on the enemy team and having to be on one’s own toes, it definately gave a good challenge as well.

I agree, though 2 weeks would be better instead of 1 week except for hotfixes which are most beneficial when done shortly after, e.g. 1-2 days.
However, it is still necessary to split balance, there is no way around it, and 2 weeks would give them more necessary time.
Also, players have asked for for a long time to have an open PTR.
Log in with one’s own account and directly give feedback, maybe have even matches recorded with a reason stated, done through a feedback-menu.

@brannigan
I consider the 4vs5s (even if falsely) as a part of MMR and this is what makes me rather worry. I have luckily not experienced it on an other account before but I can very well understand the frustration and the need to fix it. It should be high priority after balance, game modes and leagues.

Questions
How much of an issue is the convergance to a rating and can it be resolved in a way ?
Are 10-15 games enough to determine a rating and most of all an authentic one to display ?
Is this system a “carrot on a stick” as there need to be many games played to have a low Ratings derivation ? How does it make the leaderboards authentic and how does it not ?
How many factors play too impactful roles ? Balance ? Matchmaking ? Low decay ?
Does SoloQ need to have a leaderboard ? Can it be authentic ?

Evaluation: The systems has additional data to the ELO-System but falls off by the flaws the ELO-System also displays. Rating can be held high by a small decay.
There are also more factors which make it hard to pin down if a rating or ranking position difference between two decent players is authentic. Skill cannot easily be determined, especially by a numerical difference in rating.

Solutions:

*Make a Team-Queue in-game leaderboard only, keep Solo-Queue unrated, implement an unrated Team-Queue for casual players.
Make dailies and monthlies tied in to all queues (similar as it is now).

*Balance is still the most important issue and the reason things are so grim as the skill ceiling has been lowered with each patch by weapon and skill locking and band aid fixes which did not solve any crucial issues mentioned by decent players before.
Split it more, PvE, WvW and sPvP all suffer under mixed balance! Keep sPvP demanding of fast thinking and fast reactions. Make it difficult. Make it that there is a high skill ceiling and a high amount of complexity.

*A league system would do wonders. There is not competition about ranks anymore but there are rather groups of teams and players in a certain division. And rating would not be held by means of staying inactive. (Though a longer time of inactivity could mean a drop to a lower division)
With seasons, there can be rewards, e.g. a division-coloured star similar to the one for world-completion with maybe a number in the center of it displaying the season that the reward was given out.
And at the end of the season, highest division teams could be invited to a continental tournament to determine a few teams being able to go to an international tournament.

*No paradigms anymore about other groups of players being overwhelmed (what a bad excuse to keep more to learn out of the game). The more depth sPvP has and allows to learn something new, the more interesting it is to watch decent players dish out new builds, tricks, etc. and prolongs its life as a competitive game. It has to be said that the life of a competitive game is dependant on the competitive community.

Personal Evaluation: The leaderboards and its Glicko-2 system are nice on papers but fall off in practice compared to a league system two other games use.
Furthermore, other issues stated above give the leaderboards way less authenticity and kill off more competition.

Disclaimer: The first comment is for the players still struggling to understand the system, the second comment is directed towards the developers. (I forgot btw that Anet already plans to implement leagues and ladders)

The leaderboards have been an issue for most for a long time, I presume.
They came rather late to the party and were also not gently welcomed by the time frustration had built up to the release of them.
I want to propose some review of the pros and cons of the current system and possible solutions. For more information visit the glicko 1 or 2 entry on wiki and/or the professor’s own homepage.

1. Rating deviation
Rating deviation is very high at start (I assume 350 with a start value for the rating of 1500) and will go lower by the matches or time played.
This means that the more a players has played, the lower the rating deviation is and the smaller the range of rating is for opponents the player will face.
This means, the more one plays, the more they keep a constant rating.
The formula for it is r-2*RD for lower interval boundary and r+2*RD for higher interval boundary.
There is a % of confidence of how true this statement or therefore rating/value is.
Issue: This can be an issue for these on a losing streak and pin-downs them to a certain rating after a certain amount of matches or time.
Also, if not matches are unrated, the RD’ will change but the rating not.
Issue 2: With a high decay, there will be rating loss (I assume decay works externally as maybe a constant) and therefore one who has an unlucky streak in e.g. SoloQ will be punished no matter what his skill is.

2. Rating period
I have seen that the initial amount to get out of the unrated bracket is to play 10-15 games (a medium to large amount as was recommended).
The length for a rating period is determined by an administrator (obviously who it is here). For us, the rating period has started since the leaderboards were released.
Issue: 10-15 games are not really crucial to determine the true rating (and “skill” of a player).
Issue 2: If a decent player starts later, he is punished by having a different pool than decent players who started earlier.

3. Rating volatility
This is actually seems to have less effect in general. It describes the consistency. A low value of rating volatility describes a consistent level of performance while a high one displays a sudden peak and change in performance.
Issue: No transparency on any data for the players. While this is not much of an issue for players as they can see first-hand if they lose or win and can improve from mistakes done during the matches, it may still show interesting data.
It would involve meta changes more often for example so players can see that if they played a certain build, their performance was consistent and invovled mostly wins or losses. It would give players some more feedback.

4. System constant
The system constant restraints large volatility measure changes so the rating changes less.
Issue: I see not much of an issue here since this allows to have a similar rating change as with the Elo-System.

5. Quantity v
This describes the estimated variance of a team’s and/or player’s rating based only on outcomes of matches. It includes individual ratings and rating derivations.
It still gives me a bit confusion to what its purpose is.

6. Quantity “Delta”
This describes the estimated improvement in rating by the comparison of a pre-period rating to a performance rating based on the outcome of matches.
I assume this includes a rating before a period of no matches and a recent (and still active) period. This explains maybe why some players could take a break for a longer time and still not be punished by a much lower rating as there was a small decay.

Assuming now that each match is spent 10 minutes long, this gives us the following data:

Custom Arena Starter Kit

Hot-Join

Wins: 94 Hours and 45 minutes.
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 56 hours and 51 minutes.
Losses: 113 hours and 42 minutes.

TeamQ

Wins: 47 hours and 22.40 minutes
Losses: 94 hours and 42 minutes.

Custom Arena Time Tokens (150 Gems) (5-Day period)

Hotjoin

Wins: 8 hours and 54 minutes.
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 5 hours and 30 minutes.
Losses: 10 hours and 40.12 minutes

TeamQ

Wins: 4 hours and 30 minutes.
Losses: 8 hours and 54 minutes.

Custom Arena Time Tokens (480 Gems) (20-Day period)

Hotjoin

Wins: 28 hours and 25.8 minutes.
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 17 hours and 3.36 minutes.
Losses: 34 hours and 6.07 minutes

TeamQ:

Wins: 14 hours and 12.07 minutes.
Losses: 28 hours and 25.8 minutes.

Custom Arena Starter Kit (Glory)

Hotjoin

Wins:
Losses:

SoloQ:

Wins: 95 hours and 13 minutes.
Losses:

TeamQ

Wins: 33 hours and 19 minutes.
Losses:

Certain values are rounded up or down.
And I made some mistakes with the calculation of minutes played.

Evaluation: Custom Starter Kit is a good investment if purchased through glory. Time tokens are better purchased for 20 days each time since the total time investment is lower and allows more room for time spent on other activities and the cost should be divided by everyone making a lot of use of the Custom Arena. Custom Arenas rise in value with more features (e.g. more game modes).
TeamQ is the best method of attaining time tokens without any other financial gain than playing matches in sPvP. (Dyes are a variable)

Questions
Is the time spent to farm the necessary financial amount or glory spent in enjoyment ?
How much are casual players at a disadvantage if their time is limited ?
If a player has 70 hours of play-time/per week at hand, is there maybe a more beneficial ratio in terms of farm vs enjoyment ?
How does it differ for lesser amounts of play-time and is there a more beneficial ratio too ?
What would benefit players with few and much time at hand likewise ?
How much can unlocks hurt the enjoyment of players if they have to spend on Custom Arena Time Tokens and unlocking additional skills ?
Do Custom Arenas and its tokens need to be put on the Gem Store instead of other things being developed and released, e.g. Finishers ?

Personal Evaluation: I hope this has given a new perspective to the state of the game and shows how much emphasis has to be put on the enjoyment of the game, be it the drastic improvement of balance (a very big amount of depth and room for improvement has to be attained in comparison to now) or an improvement to infrastructure (e.g. league system with stars next to the name a la world completion (instead of gold capes from GW1 for example)). External tournaments with ingame advertisement are the next step after these.
Also, do not bring unlocks in this game, they are another time sink nobody reasonable really wants right now nor in the future. (Promise in sPvP to start a new character and be able to jump right in)

Now there are other issues being heavily discussed which are definately more important.
However, I want to use this rather mathematical review to display an additional view on the current state of the game. Evaluation of this topic can be found on the bottom of the text. I will probably evaluate other things in the next few days to come, e.g. Glicko system, rank system.

Custom Arena Prices

100 Gems for an Average Price of 5.33g (24.01. ~ Midnight)

Custom Starter Kit

Hotjoin

Wins: 568.5
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 341.12
Losses: 682.24

TeamQ

Wins: 284.27
Losses: 568.5

Custom Arena Time Token

150 for 5 Days

Hotjoin

Wins: 53.3
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 31.98
Losses: 63.96

TeamQ

Wins: 26.65
Losses: 53.3

480 for 20 Days

Hotjoin

Wins: 170.6
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 102.336
Losses: 204.672
TeamQ

Wins: 85.28
Losses: 170.6

In case the Custom Arena Starter Kit is purchased by Glory (200.000 Glory) with calculation of minimal values of Glory attained:

Hotjoin

Wins:
Losses:

SoloQ

Wins: 571.43 (350 Glory per win ?)
Losses:

TeamQ

Wins: 200 (1000 Glory per win)
Losses:

I sadly do not know the exact values of Glory distributed for wins and losses for Hotjoin and losses for SoloQ and TeamQ hence I left them out.

Because Balance is not split, so there is an influence in decisions from PvE and WvW which suffer under similar conditions, and the talk about new players is just a bad excuse.
I instead say that a different enviroment in PvP keeps players more interested and proposes new challenges for new players to overcome.
So, yes, better shave more often and seperately from PvE and WvW.

LOL

But on a serious note, the current direction is not too bad.
The issues are really Skyhammer being in the rotation for SoloQ and Asuras not being banned for at least bigger, external tournaments (rule-sets).
I would also instead lower the prices on Custom Arena and especially tokens.
All in all Announcers, Finishers, Skins, these should be fine for the Gem Store, I think.

Deified.7520:

1. Emotes. – It is an idea which I find interesting, but which has to be evaluated and it has to be seen which emotes have an appeal.

2. Medals. – No, it doesn’t give much of a value, I feel.

3. Announcer sounds. – Yes, see point 5.

4. UI changes. – I think no, rather allow more freedom with the UI as there was with Guild Wars 1.

5. “Press Pass”. – Dota 2 uses it and it works quite well, but right now, Guild Wars 2 is not in a good enough state to have passes to the matches.

6. VIP areas in the mist. – This is not really necessary.

7. Titles. – See point 2.

8. Guild rewards. – Give back Guild Halls ? Give players something to put in there, maybe let them purchase mini-games ?

I edited the text and gave reasonings.

I would personally welcome these changes, but I feel there is need to open up the build and role diversity more which will include making drastic changes.
With previous metas there used to be more distinguished roles, not builds who can sustain themselves, deal damage and support others while having some control over the fight too.

Here are my 2 cents.

1) No. This is just band aid.
There are issues with the Glicko system and how SoloQ plays out. I haven’t played for a longer time but balance issues make SoloQ still an unpleasant experience and I personally would prefer a league system over any point system like Elo, Glicko and what not. (I am not sure if the league system of a fellow game is patented and blocks any implementation therefore)
A league system would avoid any actions such as avoiding to play any games and keeping a high rating nor being too much affected by a small value of Ratings Devation. Of course, this will take work and time to implement but I feel this would benefit all players, casuals as well as the more dedicated ones.

2) Death Match, Assault and so on are fine to be implemented but be aware that we have a current system in this game which dictates the balance in a certain direction (not that I am fond of the current balance).
While additional game modes can surely be fun, be aware that for competition to be, there has to be a competitive mode allowing deep and skillful play (be it conquest or other game modes which can hold more depth and room for skillful play).
The developers are already working on additional game types and I hope they consider this.

3) For Conquest and a competitive game mode, no. Balance should be done from top to bottom (since the players at the top are there for a reason). I feel, additional game modes will allow you to experience a different change of pace.

Small edit: SoloQ has also more randomness to the composition and the involved skill of players, therefore being more of a gamble than TeamQ where you can choose your team members by your own choice. This is also a reason why SoloQ is not taken seriously, on a side note, knowing it is not as fair and organized as TeamQ.
It fulfills a partially different purpose.
I think it is also crucial in context of Custom Arenas to look at the Gem Store Prices and the one from the vendor too.