Guild Wars 2

The whole thing is weird and does restrict build diversity. I felt I couldn’t play PP engi before deadshot amulet, for instance; feel I can’t play power ranger without marauders and DH’s crippling health pool does very little to stop them (growing in popularity) thanks to their plethora of blocks and heals and access to easy dps.

It’s a way to balance without balancing. In a perfect world, professions would have similar if not equal health pools (maybe 2k difference between armor sets) and if one of them is underperforming/overperforming they’d get boosted/nerfed.

I agree there would be issue and I believe most mmos shy away from 1v1 for this very reason. They know it’s not balanced and it’ll bring up a wall of qq and potentially more work to be done. I see it’s potential, however: nothing needs to be done to address those issues but should they chose to they can do so with pinpoint accuracy, and if they don’t (or while they don’t) people might find a reason to reroll and spend more time in-game, becoming even more invested in it.

By making it a scheduled event I believe it’s something people would be excited about and look forward to, without permanently increasing queue times or anything of the sort. In short: I see no downside to it, glad somebody agrees

So this patch introduced a mechanic by which, if the match is close and you’ve scored higher than 80% of the enemy team, you can gain rating even if your team lost. Now that’s something, it’s a step in the right direction but…

I feel more could be done, if you’re consistently scoring higher or lower than your teammates, that says something, regardless of win or loss. I feel that should be reflected on your rank gain/loss somehow even if it doesn’t invert it (negative to positive or viceversa). That’s besides the point of this thread but inextricably tied. Since there is little to no personal performance impact on your rating the next point is admittedly mute, but worth mentioning nonetheless.

I was amazed that the one stat that was wiped with the second to last patch was deaths. It’s the single most important stat. When you die, you leave your team in a bad state and that’s the best opportunity the enemy team has to take control of the map. 5v5 and one goes down? It’s a domino from there unless someone else on the enemy team was awfully close to being dead himself. If some dies consistently and quickly, there’s little that team can do to catch up.

Granted, deaths alone shouldn’t be a counter since you can afk and get zero death, but in combination with time spent in combat, time spent defending, etc., it’s the single more valuable statistic and the single most valuable contribution you can make to your team.

This is an idea I’d like to see, perhaps scheduled for a certain time during the weekend, say Saturday 6 pm. The idea being a deathmatch format, 16 players face off against each other in 1v1 duels, the winner advancing to the next round and the final winner getting a reward of some kind.

Seems like it’d be fun and bright to light class imbalances if proper data analysis is used.
Personally, I have an issue with hard counters in mmos. I’ve always felt that, for whatever reason, they follow a rock, paper, scissor format. So say a certain class/build losses 90% of the matches vs another class/build, that’s something that needs to be addressed. It’s no fun being on the receiving end of that equation and takes away your motivation to play: you’re having fun until you run into x, there’s nothing you can do vs x.

It doesn’t have to be 50-50 but I feel there’s an acceptable range and an unacceptable threshold. In any case, that’s besides the point: a 1v1 deathmatch tournament, scheduled at a certain time, would be hella fun.

So there is a poll going on right now on whether to lock profession once the game started in order to allow arenanet to provide better matchmaking. My question is, how is this not going through? How can anyone think this isn’t a good idea?

Link to poll: https://feedback.guildwars2.com/en

Team composition plays such a huge roll in how the game plays out and currently there is no system in place to ensure balanced matches. Matchmaking, as it is, comes down to your tank. 3 thiefs vs 3 dragonhunters? Why not? You’ll have so much fun being paired on the wrong side of that…

No one really switches anyway so I can’t for the life of me understand why anyone would vote against this, plus it’d make the 60s countdown much lower in turn. Do people not look at the teams before a match to determine their chance of success? I do, and I’m positive 80% of the time I’ve said “this isn’t in our favor” we’ve lost, the other 20% you can attribute to individual skill.

In any case, if this doesn’t go through I hope arenanet still makes the effort to balance who gets assigned to what team. I swear I’ve been in matches that could have been perfectly symmetrical but classes were stacked instead; something like two warriors, two necros and an ele vs and ele, two mesmers and two guards.

It may seem silly considering we can switch but I’d be beyond amazed if the actual % switch pregame is higher than 5%. Knowing that, why are people voting no? I don’t get it…

Agreed. So much qq goes on in forums in general it’s refreshing to see something positive and devs should be thanked for quality of life improvements. +1

Except on anything that’s moving. Range on this ought to be 450 and the skill need to be instant cast. I don’t even bother using it in pvp unless someone is trying to ress, that’s how useful it is. And the fact you stand still while casting is just ludicrous, coupled with its minor range… add stability into the mix and you get just what you’d expect: nothing, absolutely nothing, might as well not even exist.

Looks low on sustain to me, but maybe I’m just used to playing my ranger the way I’m used to playing her. I would recommend you swap markmanship for skirmishing though, you really won’t notice the dps decrease on bow (only reason to have it is piercing) and having fury on weapon swap pretty much guarantees a crit whilst quick swap ensures you can get two mauls, two rapid fires, etc. Probably the most op trait in the entire ranger tree, I cannot make a spec without it. As it is, I’d say it’s more viable in pve than pvp. So if you intended it for pve, no comments.

For pvp, I use this:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjEqQLL2wCmsAVLWYEMmw13KA0Mu2AhA4m6VtrWizTD-TpBFABFt/g4lBI4CAgwRAohDBAAPAAA

Really gotta learn to swoop outta there, heal and get back in the fray, good against all except thief (kiting wise) and a major inconvenience on the battlefield. Not meta by any stretch but great fun to play.

No, no, no, no, no…
Personally I thought the next specialization, in keeping with the ranger’s nature theme, ought to be either shaman or barbarian. I lean towards barbarian, obviously. We just got a “magic” specialization but the ranger is still lacking a proper, survivable melee build. We got heals and everyone qqs (don’t target the ranger, duh) but need to be out of range in order to make use of it or we get insta bursted. So we have support, ranged, condi, power, etc., but no viable melee build and no melee sustain to speak of. Needless to say, melee sustain is an absolute must have in the hold-the-point spvp format. For those reasons, I say barbarian should come next, possibly with dual maces or two handed mace.

The buff is welcome and I’ve often debated whether to take this skill or not. It’s the only swappable slot in my build, between spike trap, lightning reflexes and muddy terrain. Last patch it was buffed from 1s to 2s and now to 3s. The problem remains, however, that in that it’s too unreliable: it needs to be instant cast and/or have a bigger radius. Many may qq but with stability being as prevalent as it is, kite ranger is all but dead.

Not my idea, simply creating a new thread to bring more attention to it…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/This-is-so-wrong/first#post6442237

From TheMountain,

_I firmly believe luck has a LOT to do with where you are initially placed and it’s pretty hard to move very far from that point.

The best 15% will do well, the bottom 15% will do badly. The middle 70% can end up in random spots and never move far from it.

In short, I totally agree this system is not working.

I think it would work better if everyone started at the same rank and it took awhile to for them to separate, not 10 matches (or actually 3-4 since those first 3-4 swing you the most)._

In my opinion, this would make the whole experience more fun and rewarding. Getting stuck for prolonged periods of time in a certain division is no fun. Even if you’re too good to be there, you win rate won’t be that high considering there are nine other players on the map, matchmaking (team comp) and mmr will play such a big role. The end result is that you’ll have to grind, grind, grind.

Honestly, I think this would be more fair in terms of placement, which would go on indefinitely, and far more rewarding in term of rank-ups. Perhaps there is the issue of more experienced players getting teamed up with less experienced players and having a bad time overall, but this is already the case with so much emphasis on 10 placement matches and as it is it still takes a long time for people to either rise or fall to where they belong.

At least this way you have fun along the way.

That’s actually the best solution I’ve heard thus far. I’d make placement more accurate and gaining rank more significant. It’s too easy for people to get stuck wherever they ended up, mmr and matchmaking and all that. Against a group of somewhat less skilled players, considering mmr and matchmaking, your win rate won’t be that high and you’ll still have to grind, grind, grind, in order to progress. That takes a great deal of fun out of the experience, especially if you progress then lose two or three in a row and are right back where you started. Maybe that’s where you belong, but maybe you just need to grind more for a measly 30 points.

If we all got dumped on the same pile, the initial distribution would be messier indeed but the experience of going through the season and up the ranks far more enjoyable and rewarding.

Can we make it so one gains ascended shards of glory by doing well in matches rather than by just playing them?

I’m encouraged not to even go into unranked anymore, even on a newbie character. I had 3 dcs during placement, got my rank higher but started to notice it wasn’t as fast as I would have liked and at some point I stopped caring. I started bringing half-tested builds into ranked because ascended.

I’m certain there are many people who feel that way too, especially in the lower divisions, which will make them an absolute joke.

Maybe you actually need to win? Maybe you get more for winning in higher divisions?
It’s a grind, it’s meant to be a grind, people will appreciate having to work for what they want far more than they’ll enjoy having it handed to them.

Perhaps not entire a bug but I’m not sure where to post it. Top right on your screen you get a “choice” of what to do in open world, except you don’t. Sometimes I’m leveling and only care about the hearts, perhaps I’m in maguma and only care about hero point. Perhaps I don’t want to do my personal story or I’m doing map completion and don’t care for events. The game shows you whatever is nearest, however, even if that something is entirely useless to you.

This may seem minor but it gets so aggravating I don’t even want to do what I logged in to do. It’d be such a simple fix, add some options, and I’m sure I’m not the first to bring this up either. I’m befuddled, to be honest, I feel this is an issue which must have been apparent since day 3.

Games should be fun, to be fun they need to be comfortable first.

LB/GS because it’s the most fun. Druid to LoS, heal up and get back in the fight. Skirmishing for quick draw, which you can use to swoop twice, block twice, stealth twice, knockback twice… you get the picture.

It’s high on survivability and annoyance (of thine enemy) build, great mobility, exactly what I enjoy playing. You’re slippery and don’t have to be in the thick of things, you can help pick off low health targets and waste the time of those who’d attack you. Thiefs and mesmers are probably toughest but not impossible, warriors with perma stability also so remember to use your knockbacks/roots early. When in doubt, go invis.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRjEqQLL2wCmsAVLWYEsmx1GIEA3UvqdVmw13KAUi0PD-TZBFABNcIAI4CAswRAQ8yAA8AAAA

That’s a bit too much for my taste but I definitely agree pets feel sluggish. +30% movement speed as a trait is silly at best, as our damage is split and it’s not your pet’s fault enemies move about! No reason ranger should be penalized for this.

Cast time on pet’s skills needs to be gone, instant cast all around. If it has to interrupt some auto cast skills then interrupt it.

This is probably like 173th on their to-do list though.

Not trying to bump, don’t see an edit button and keep coming up with more thoughts.

So here’s the cherry on top: you can keep the win-loss based system but add a differential. If you outperform your peers, you get more points from a win and less from a loss. If you underperform your peers, you get a full loss’ worth and less points from a win. Your relative skill in any given tier, compared to other who have reached that tier, will be the determining factor in whether you progress or don’t. It’s as simple as that.

It rewards battlefield awareness and point contribution as well as individual skill level. Now, was that so hard to come up with?

And just to make it perfectly clear: it isn’t about ranking nor the badge nor the prestige, it’s about the quality of the experience. It’s awful to play those one sided matches. GW2 pvp can be insanely good or amazing at how bad it is. Sometimes it’s a blast, sometimes it feels like a blast of sand to your eyelids.

Maybe it’s player skill, team composition, knowledge of the maps and rotations in general, or whatever it may be, all of the above. The bottomline remains, however: matchmaking is non-existent and individual contribution a joke.

It could be so much better with so little effort, why not make it so?

So I made this thread and realized what the answer was…
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Balance-and-Matchmating/first#post6433426

Grade on a curve specific to each team. I won’t repeat my earlier points but just putting them on paper was exhausting, but truthfully the answer is very simple: if you want skilled players to progress and not be reliant on rng (my god people are so bad at rotating), you need to devise a system that measures player performance relative to his teammates and progresses those who constantly outperform.

It being relative to your own team is very important, considering the massive point differentials by which some games are won and lost. Chances are that if the different is 100 points or more, someone is getting outnumbered somewhere. If you’re on a team that losses by 350 points, there isn’t much you can do, and if fact if you win by 350 it happens to fast there isn’t much you can do either.

You need a better matchmaking system and you need a better grading system. This is it: grade on a curve, relative to your own team (or both, weighted, depending on the final score difference). Maybe that way experienced players won’t quit

Thank you for that reply Reaper. That is what I’ve come to expect from MMOs in general, I’m new to GWs and since they aim to be a competitive eSport I was hoping that would be different. Chances are many of the issues I brought up were brought up before. Simply seeing the number of threads created in one day does lead me to believe any and all constructive criticism will go unnoticed.

Truthfully, to balance a game properly and iron out all the kinks, you’d need true gamers as developers who become aware of the issues in the same way players do. Such a shame, it’d be so easy to improve it.

Blaque, don’t buy into PR lines. Class stacking prolonging queue times? I’m not even going there, simply asking for them to be distributed among the teams. If it’s an odd number OK, but I know no effort whatsoever was done to make this a reality. What’s more, it’s not even about “class stacking” itself although that is the most obvious example. You can get a very squishy team vs. a high sustain team, and since most everyone’s damage numbers are roughly equivalent by design, the high sustain team will win 80%+ of the time. Now that’s something which is measurable and the fact that nothing is done about that is solely based on neglect.

What I proposed was a system for quantifying a profession’s strength and weakness, because truthfully if you wanted perfect balance you could have everyone play the same profession and build but you can allow for more appealing diversity provided you don’t let one profession excel at everything and others wane. You can have different playstyles, different strengths and weaknesses, counters even (not hard counters, that’s frustrating and takes the fun out of the game), and still achieve something that roughly resembles balance. That is not the case.

This is intended to be mostly for developers, but feel free to comment nonetheless.

I’m finding it hard to envision what criteria goes into balance patches, not to mention matchmaking. I’ve been in matches and even taken screenshots, which I’m now too lazy to upload, where a much more balanced game could have been achieved if the same profession had been split, say a game with two warriors and two guards on red and two thiefs and two necros on blue. Seriously? That leads me to believe there is absolutely zero consideration for personal statistics (say something as simple as number of games played on that profession) when it comes to matchmaking either.

Let’s not kid ourselves: this is an MMO and, as such, balance will forever be elusive. There will always be classes that perform well against some and badly against others, and paper will whine that scissors needs a nerf while scissors will scream then how will I deal with rock? That’s not my point, my point is that there needs to be a fundamental criteria by which we judge professions, and this should apply to matchmaking as well as to balance patches.

In my mind, this is very simple: damage, burst, sustain, evasion. Those are the criteria. Right now, there are professions which rank very high on all four and others that are lucky to do OK in two. I won’t go into specifics because I don’t want to derail the topic, but the fact remains this isn’t considered at all in matchmaking and doesn’t seem to factor into balance patches either.

When it comes to matchmaking, by my rough calculations the “law of large numbers” doesn’t actually apply. With 9 slots on any given match and 9 possible professions to fill them, considering they are split in two… the possible variations are so large, I’d estimate the number of matches you’d have to play for luck to stop being a factor to be in the thousands.

I think we can all agree that one-sided games aren’t really fun for anyone and something could be done to improve that. Balance wise, enough said.

I’m wondering if anyone has figured this out yet: what determines your ranking, exactly? Is it only your win-loss ratio or is there some personal statistic tracking involved as well?

It’s a good idea. I say “idea” because it feels like an unfinished product. Even simple options like showing damage floaters, character specific KBs (or mousewheel, for that matter) and UI customization are lacking. That would have been fine at beta or a few months prior to release but not years afterwards. This is basic functionality that gamers have come to expect and the fact that GW2 thrives despite lacking such features is a testament to its appeal. That said, this is a warning sign to me, a red flag.

I’ve played MMOs for some time as I find the genre suits me. I am of the opinion that MMOs fade away -eventually, as they all do- because they fall behind. Improvements that could have been made are postponed or neglected in favor of other projects whose upside is clearly measurable. Instead of improving existing content or functions, companies release new chargeable ones. As time goes by, the inconveniences or annoyances experienced by players (which were know and could have been addressed) reach intolerable levels and something new comes along which doesn’t show as many cracks on its surface. That’s how MMOs fade away.

Upgrades. That’s my point: improving its foundations as opposed to adding new gadgets. For MMO gamers, who are in it for the long haul, this is often preferable. New and shiny may feel appealing and can be advertised, but those who know better will see right through that and eventually even grow tired of it. At which point, new announcements aren’t met with excitement but incredulity.

In Spok’s words, I hope GW2 lives long and prospers.
This red flag tells me that won’t be the case.

+1

Actually, a whole redesign to the UI is in order. It’s often hard to see even what’s in front of you thanks to the unnecessary damage numbers popping up left and right, not to mention that if you want to see enemies easily you’ll have their names always appear but in a mob it’s messy. Add that to the fact that you can’t move or resize any element of the UI (apart from a simple large/small option, which isn’t nearly enough), and what do you get? The functionality and customization of an early 90s game.

That’s bad. Game should be getting better, not worse. Even a simple reticle would help, I’m sure someone would have modded it by now if given the chance.

Pets are great, I love that their hp drops by 30% in pvp so they can be insta killed and activated abilities’ have such cast times that they almost never hit. They make up at least 30% of our mediocre dps and we have so little control over how badly they perform, I feel it brings more flavor to the class, adding a handicap to make everything more challenging.

Getting back to the point at hand, I disagree. I think every other class that can range should range better than the ranger. That makes sense. When people make a ranger, they’re thinking “I want to kite so that I may heal up and stay alive”.