Guild Wars 2

They had to make the checkpoints mandatory because people were cheating with teleports to friend trains.

I don’t know a single Dev who plays Engi. As for imbalance, the current Engi meta has it’s setbacks. Hammer Engis sacrifice ranged attacks for powerful melee. The counter to that is to create distance, since there’s no weapon swap. Druids are able to swap to longbow, and can pick off players with arrows and pets. Then swap to staff and bunker when on point.

I think there aren’t enough players in L3 to support that Elite level of matches.

If you don’t have a Mesmer toon or a Mes friend to do this JP, I would recommend crafting a LOT of Watchwork Portal Devices. It’s expensive, but so are the tears when you bump into the wrong ledge on blind jumps.

This happens in AB Octo meta sometimes. There’s a bug with scaling, so when the game thinks there are only 10 players, but in fact 30, you can do a ton of damage with high DPS builds. I remember one Octo meta when East melted in 1 burn. We were lucky because all the other Octos didn’t start, so the reset didn’t hurt.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Indeed, engi should be nerfed if they can sustain a 1v1 vs a druid for 10 minutes.

Other way around, my friend. If a Power Engi can only get a Druid down to 50% HP before he full heals himself, that’s not in the spirit of the game. Plus, if a Druid specs for pure bunker, his attacks aren’t that strong. But his pet still has full strength, so it’s unfair to have heavy defenses, heavy heals, and the ability to attack on two fronts (player + pet).

Druids were designed to be a healer, I understand that. But this is PvP. Keep Druids the same in PvE. In PvP, there should be some skill splits to keep this game mode competitive. I mean, if people are ok with this, then let’s un-nerf Diamond Skin Eles to how they were in Season 1.

There should be no reason why players can’t lose Divisions if they keep losing in Ranked PvP. I understand that Anet wants us to feel like we’re progressing. But with the safety of not losing Divisions, there’s no incentive to playing hard when you’re in the beginning tier.

• Hypothetical example 1: A player is in Diamond tier 1 with little to no pips. Honestly, you would think players would try hard to win. In a perfect world, no one wants to be at the bottom. But since you can’t fall back to Ruby, the player can lose without fear. It’s these players who can cost the other 4 players on the team to lose pips.

• Hypothetical example 2: Ruby player on 0 pips already lost twice. The next game, he could lose on purpose to make it 3 times in a row to guarantee the next win will get bonus pips.

Some players purposely lose to troll others, and unless they openly admit they’re doing it or AFK for the entire match, they can’t be punished for Match Manipulation. If a player runs around and gets a few points, they can simply say it was a bad game, or made some bad rotation decisions.

Solution

If Anet wants players to have a sense of progression, and keeps the current Division and Pips system, have the Tier and Division locks only up to Sapphire. For Ruby+, everyone should be able to fall backwards if they lose on 0 pips in Ruby/Diamond/Legend. The only thing the Devs have to worry about is making sure Division promotion rewards can’t be repeated. That’s easy enough.

With this, there will be more reason to actually try hard when playing Ranked. No one likes to lose in a competition. It hurts more when they lose because one player decided to not put in effort.

Dolyak runes are indeed strong because of the added Toughness and Vitality. If it helps a Druid sustain a 1 v 1 with an Engi for 10 minutes, then something seriously needs to be looked at.

I think if they made more rock edges than using invisible safe zones on near-vertical rock faces, then we could actually figure out where we need to leap next. I don’t want him to guide us through the whole puzzle, but at the same time, I don’t want blind leaps either.

This oversight is something WvW Devs should focus on fixing. When you check your priorities at the door like I have, you come to notice the imperfections in life. Female charr deserve to be honored and respected for being the beautiful humanoids they are.

We had this similar discussion last year with Eles. Even if a Druid hits like a wet noodle, their long lasting sustain will constantly contest points. Healing Power and Vitality from an Ammy, plus Toughness bunker runes = unstoppable.

Druids do go down, but that’s usually in the beginning mid fight, where you can have 4 guys focus him. But as the match goes on, if a Druid sneaks behind the fight and decaps your Home, good luck getting that back 1 v 1.

Some ideas on how to balance Druids:

• Remove Stealth. That’s a Mesmer and Thief skill
• Reduce outgoing healing by 25%

So are you saying that PvP thread posts are OP and need to be balanced?

Some spots on the sides of rocks are impossible to tell where the safe zones are. Yes he did put in a few tiny ledges that marked where to land, but those were on the obvious pointy rocks. It’s one thing to be hard, but it’s another thing when you can’t even tell where the next jump is going.

And for Tribulation Mode, at least we got good gear at the end that made the tears worth it. That’s why for this, a nice title would have been a perfect reward.

I think Druids have just a wee too much bunker in them. With a Toughness and Healing Power build, Druids can contest points for the whole match solo. When I’ve been fighting 1 v 1 using my Engi, I get him down to half HP, then poof, full heal. 5 minutes later, I need to call for backup because he just won’t go away. IMO, Druids are more OP than Dragon Hunters.

This JP is hands down the most evil JP in all of GW2. I think Josh took pity on us by putting in checkpoints, because without those, I’d be throwing my laptop out my window. And the worst part of this? You have a Vet Ooze at the end that magically spawns right in front of you and knocks you off.

For all that effort, there needs to be a special title for people who complete this. After I finished, I screamed like a little girl, and cried tears of joy.

The answer seems to always go back to forming a pre-made group. If Anet wants PvP to be a 100% pre-made team game, then they should just step up and block solo players from entering.

For now, since there are divisions and rules for how matchmaking is randomly done, just make a few adjustments and you can make the community happy. No low skilled players in Legendary, and no high skilled players in Amber.

Why would they try to fix this when there’s a ton of supply? The price is higher because of simple Supply and Demand. People are sitting on their supply of leather. Nothing wrong with this.

Xenesis.6389:

DB is not in the right spot.

Also what do you plan for the matchups?, tournament for each tier? do you plan on having all tiers in the same tournament brackets? Should I save you some trouble now and let you know who’s going to win?

You could have two tiers for a WvW Tourney – Top 6 and bottom 6. You wouldn’t want to limit each tier to just three servers, because there’s no chance for opponent diversity. Regarding winners, if you recall the previous tournament, being the top ranked server doesn’t automatically guarantee you a win.

The change up when Anet gifted Glicko ratings was a blessing. I think all servers are now shuffled in the place that they’re meant to be, at least in NA.

Female humans aren’t built with large ribcages. The current diversity for female human character customization were designed by a female Dev. They represent a small section of what real women look like. However, if we’re talking about changes, I would love to have a chubby option (for both male and female).

If you have condi clears, then you must be complaining more about in-combat movement. Once anything hits you, you slow down (but not to a crawl). You should consider playing a Thief of Engi for the stealth. If the enemy can’t see you, they can’t hit or CC you.

Right now, it seems that WvW servers are in a good place. The matchups + server linkings have created the most balanced tiers in a long time. Would it be possible to lock the tiers as they are now, and prepare for a WvW Tourney at the beginning of 2017? I don’t think you’ll find a better time to hold a competitive tourney than this point in time.

The recent change to PvP matches was to allow Solo Queue players the option of forming a party with your last group. But this isn’t a real answer to the problem of not being allowed a separate Solo Queue system. I shouldn’t be forced to find 4 other players each time I want to play Ranked just to avoid lower skilled players. I do Solo because I like to flip between PvE, WvW, and PvP whenever I want to. Leaving a team after a game or two is bad etiquette. I have more freedom to go in and out of PvP as a solo player.

I would highly recommend equipping some condi removal skills. Every class has access to these.

Ithilwen.1529:

If those “lower tier” players were not allowed in “your” queue, you’d have 3 hour queue times.

The same would be true of requiring full teams. Yes, teams on ts are “a” way to play gw2 PvP. They are not by any means the only proper way or even the best way.

Beside that, with 2 seasons of stacked matchmaking, no one can really claim that they “deserve” the higher tier they were carried to on win streaks, in matches that they were pre set with advantage and intended to win.

Elitism won’t work. We really need solo queue back.

That’s not how the current matchmaking works. If you’re in Ruby, you’ll never be randomly matched with an Amber. It’s only when Sapphire or Ruby parties with the Amber do you get the chance to be placed with them.

On the topic of elitism, that’s not what this suggestion is about either. It’s about skill. Tonite I was placed with a guild group who brought an Amber. Sure enough, we failed because of poor play. I blocked that player to hope I don’t get him on my team, and sure enough, next match it was the same guild on my team. It was over before the match started. I can’t carry 4 people or type out directions while I’m bunkering against a Mes and DH, so I stop “tryharding”.

I’m pretty sure Anet will never allow Solo Queues, since they need us to fill spots for pre-mades, or the queue times would be ultra high for them. But if they could make this one adjustment, it would make our lives a tiny bit better.

As a compromise to this thread, maybe Anet could pay content providers a monthly stipend of 5k Gems and ban the use of information for personal TP gains. That would end the anger about insider information, and allow content providers to still benefit for helping Anet market this game.

I understand that Anet changed the matchmaking policy to force partied low ranks into the highest rank in the party, but that needs to be modified. I feel that a player shouldn’t be allowed to play in a division that’s two tiers above their current tier. So an Amber player should only be allowed into Sapphire games and below. If they want to play with a friend in Legendary division, they simply can’t until the Amber gets to Ruby.

Highest division playable:

• Amber -> Sapphire
• Emerald -> Ruby
• Sapphire -> Diamond
• Ruby -> Legendary

I think this would allow for much better solo queue matchmaking.

After 4 years, Maguuma has become the juggernaut that people always knew it would be. The Commanders spent nearly 100,000 Gold to transfer strong guilds to support the core teams, and now T1 is an awesome place! My TC Commanders can’t keep up with the great action on all BLs.

How do you guys feel about the tiers being turned upside down?

It’s not easy to do the temporary achievements. Not all players pick Capricorn, and when you do get to play it, you can’t win all the time. Plus, not all players have 8 hours a day to queue for Capricorn. And since this is Unranked, there’s really no reason to pick a non-Capricorn map. Players just wanting to play can do one of the many Hotjoin maps, or do Ranked for more serious competition.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Thanks for the feedback, everyone.

This thread has responses pointing out issues in the current iteration of leagues and using those flaws as reasons why a rating and point (pip) system cannot both be used in tandem as I suggested in my original response. The issues mentioned include restrictive matchmaking based on pips, small tier sizes creating a large sense of loss when dropping pips, and a lack of prestige because of win streaks and rating-based matchmaking.

With that said, I’d like to clarify my original comment regarding using both pips and MMR. Our goals for leagues are still the same: create opportunities for skill-based prestige, give rewards for effort, and keep a low barrier to entry. We’ve tried to hit these goals with different iterations of a catch-all pip system; each emphasizing a different goal at the expense of the others. Pips are an easy to understand system for delivering rewards, but we understand that rating is a more accurate display of skill. We are now looking at how we can leverage the strengths of these systems individually to better succeed at reaching all of our goals. Both pips and rating can be used within the system if they are focused on solving specific problems – not all of them.

If you intend on presenting a modified system to us, you need to do a complete MMR reset as well. With the damage that S1 to S4 has done to players, not doing a reset would be like fixing half the problem. You’ll have those who did pip farming with win trading, so their ratings wouldn’t match the division they’re in. You also have players in the mid-range whose rating are lower than they should be due to poor matchmaking for guaranteed losses.

Honestly, I’m pretty sure Anet is against insider information getting abused. My argument is simply this: Why get mad when it benefits those who do favors for Anet? If there are some who feel that this isn’t “competitive” since they’re shut out from getting information, why don’t they become content providers too? If they get popular, Anet could grant them interviews, invites to Anet HQ in Seattle, and even access to test servers.

There are times when players pick a non-Capricorn map. When that happens, it takes players longer to complete the meta. IF we all picked the correct map, everyone benefits. Then when you’ve completed the meta, those players should team with others who still need it, and help them out. Doing this would make the PvP community closer and more family-like.

Anet said a couple years back that they were thinking about ways to sell LWS1 in the Gem Store, but they’re busy with making new content. Something about a problem with how S1 was programmed that doesn’t work like S2 and on.

The daily cap is to help all players have the same feeling of progression. It’s balanced so that new players can have a chance to reach veteran players’ AP totals. Without the cap, veteran players would have an unfair advantage from starting earlier than new players.

To help other PvP players get their achievements, everyone should agree to pick only Revenge of the Capricorn in Unranked. If anyone wants to play other maps, they should pick Ranked or Hotjoin. Let’s all think of other people and help each other get these limited time achievements.

Kageseigi.2150:

Let’s substitute the “kama” there with another weapon.

“There’s no right or wrong way to use rifles in the real world.”

Just some background for you. The rifle wasn’t originally a tool used to harvest rice. Nor was it thanks to the Okinawans for first incorporating it into martial arts.

Holding kamas with an upside grip with the way a Thief uses it, and you’d be attacking with the blunt side of the blade. So again, it only make sense to hold it with a reverse grip..

Ameepa.6793:

Except in that case it would be a free for all fair competition where the fastest ones are the winners instead of what we have now where the chose few are the winners and others are not even allowed to participate. I’m sure you can see the difference here too.

The point is, it’s not a fair competition no matter how you cut it. People with slower computers. People who work when the client gets updated. People sleeping on the other side of the world.

I would rather have Anet benefit people who dedicate their own time to blog or create user content. Wooden Potatoes makes his living through the ad revenue his videos and subscribers bring. I’m not a huge fan, but I respect the sacrifices he makes to bring us fun and informative videos. So if it’s a choice between some random kid, or a respected content provider getting rich, I’ll go with WP.

The best times this story had was when we fought Scarlet. I think it’s pretty much a consensus that the Twisted Marionette was one of the top boss fights in game. We may have stomped her, but her armies are still around. And in the world of fantasy, anything is possible. So for the sake of this game, we need to bring back Scarlet.

Lobo Dela Noche.5127:

Arenanet could make this a smaller issue by getting that information out to players earlier. There are tons of ways. They could do pre-patch notes, a Public Beta Environment, Include into their pre-patch dev chats to name a few. Letting the same clique have a huge advantage every patch is BS. The only reason I can see someone defend this is because they are one of the few that get the info every patch and so of course they don’t want it to change.

The issue doesn’t change if you release the info one day or one month early. As soon as the information comes out, the first person who logs in gets to take advantage of the information. Whoever has the strongest PC, best SSD, and fastest fingers wins.

There’s no right or wrong way to use kamas in the real world. In game, kamas are dagger skins, and all daggers are held with a reverse grip. Flipping the kamas would make no sense due to how daggers are used by characters.

Ensign.2189:

snip

You make a lot of good points. The direction I was headed with my lowballing was based on the fact that Anet already has a lot of senior talent on their roster. You bring in more talent to support the star Devs already there, and you’re able to get more done. Yes hiring the best and brightest is what all companies want. But if you’re looking to keep labor costs low, you can pull off some shortcuts. Options include temporary contract Devs, or long term part-timers. Large corporations used to take advantage of labor laws where you keep employees under 19 hours a week, and you don’t have to provide benefits. I personally hate that this happens, but again, this is just ideas.

HeadCrowned.6834:

The mistake that you make is that the Pro League live events are largely sponsored by other companies, who will stop sponsoring if there is a lack of live events. PvP is probably the most anticipated part among streamers and viewers, and as a company I would enhance PvP leagues and events to make a better name for yourself in a gaming world full of rivals.

Yes, I would want Anet to enhance GW2 Pro Leagues to the levels of LoL. But before they can, they need to fix PvP. Right now, there are too many complaints coming from the PvP community. Balance. Matchmaking. Pip progression. No option for separate Solo Queue / Team Queue play. In my personal opinion, GW1 had a much better PvP setup. God I miss those Necro spikes, or the clutch Monk infuse.

When we had the Great Rollback of 2016, all of us online had insider information that certain Lodestones and Cores would be valuable, so we all camped and waited for the TP to reopen. I blinked when the TP came up, and all the low priced goods were gone. Regardless of when information is released, not everyone will be able to benefit. That’s why I don’t get mad, just a little jelly that it couldn’t have been me.

I fully understand how business work. My degree is in Marketing. In the internal war that is corporate business, units fight for a piece of the budget that’s allocated to them. When I was with iHeartMedia (huge radio corporation in the US) years ago, we brought in hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue per quarter. Did we employees see any of that? No. I make triple my old salary working for the government.

Having a marketing background, there are times when you need to think outside of the box. GW2 brings in a good amount of revenue for NCSoft over the years, but that doesn’t translate to unlimited budgets. In the last quarterly report, GW2 sales beat only Wildstar. Company wide, labor costs were reduced by 8%, and the marketing budget was slashed 42% (due to no major events).

For the sake of discussion, say Dev budget was allocated an extra $200,000 a year. With the way I’ve heard the industry works, that’s enough to cover around 7 or 8 part-time Devs to assist core programming teams, or 4 to 5 full timers to create a whole new unit. I’m lowballing the salaries because top end salaries are for senior employees.

I love all game types of GW2. I want to see Anet succeed for another 20, 30, 40+ years. It would be a dream to see Anet fill stadiums with 50k fans and 10 million viewers for E-Sports finals. The reallocation of resources is just one idea that I wanted to toss around.

Malediktus.3740:

Technically everyone has the same chances to read the patchnotes / log into the game. But its not Anets fault if you are at work or have a slow internet or computer.
I looked at the partner list and most of them do not produce content I would consider consuming. Similar applies to raid content testers. That content could fully be tested on a public test server.

Yeah, I have my own dislikes about Raid testers getting advanced access. But that’s mainly because they went out and proclaimed how fast and good they were at clearing, then linked their website to shove it in our faces.

John’s in a lose/lose situation here. The market is open to everyone, with Supply and Demand driving prices. Not sure how they would release new craftable content without mat prices being affected. I assume something like " new Kralkatorrik weapons" needing Charged Lodestones, and then within seconds, all of them are 100 Gold each on the TP.

Saiyan, do you feel that luring new players into this game would outweigh keeping existing players happy? And do you think the benefits of new content would market itself?

On a side note about luring new crowds that don’t know about the game – If a tree falls in the middle of Malchor’s Leap, and everyone is watching something else, does it make a sound?

Malediktus.3740:

I dont care about content providers and would loose nothing if they would close down. So I am not ok with them getting market benefits.

I only really know about a handful of them myself, so I understand that their closing wouldn’t impact me much either. Still, that doesn’t change the fact that even if no one took advantage of insider information, it’s still a race to log in and take advantage of game release notes. Anet considers that to be fair, since the notes are publicly released on the forums. It’s also inherently unfair to a lot, because not everyone is able to log in as soon as updates goes through (I’m always at work and my game is now firewalled by the government).

I’m torn. For Content Providers, they do a services for the game, and aren’t paid anything. I think they should get perks so they can benefit in-game. I’ve heard Dulfy get all the latest Gem Store goodies for free, so if that’s true, it’s ok because she shares news of these releases on her website.

If content Providers got early access to market changes, I would be ok with that too. When it comes to the TP, it’s really just a race to see who can buy up stuff the fastest. When the game was rolled back, there was a massive race for Lodestones. Allowing Content Providers to use advanced knowledge of item demand doesn’t change the fact that 99% of the players wouldn’t be able to profit anyway. The nature of the market is in order for one person to profit, another has to pay. If it’s going to be a first come, first serve buying spree when game notes are released, might as well let official GW2 partners get the profit. It would be a completely different story if you could exchange Gold to Gems, then Gems to Cash.

I’d like to start an honest discussion regarding the state of GW2 and Pro League Tournaments. To be up front and open about my thoughts, I was once what people call a White Knight for Anet. I defended their decisions and game direction with passion, but recently, I’ve felt more and more disconnected to this game company that I love.

E-Sport tournaments for any game company are multi-purpose marketing effort. Fans are provided entertainment, and companies get to try and recruit non-players into the game world. Sponsors team up to expand the draw of the eyes and wallets of players across different revenue mediums: Website hits, stream views, game purchases, microtransactions, etc. E-Sports also offers a way to reward loyal and skilled players who are considered among the top PvPers of that game. It’s a billion dollar industry worldwide.

GW2 E-Sports are really no different than other games (in terms of why we have it). There’s a bit of prestige to having a competitive game that has big worldwide tournaments. But here’s where I think we should have a discussion. Anet is putting up $200,000 in prizes for the upcoming Pro League Tournament. Add in costs to organize and coordinate players from across the globe, and you have a significant investment into a huge marketing event. While all companies must market their products to stay relevant, I personally believe that the marketing budget for tournaments could be better spent on game quality. I honestly don’t watch the streams, so I don’t know what viewership is like. I’ve only heard from others that it’s fairly low. So I feel we should end Pro Leagues, and put a hyper focus on keeping existing customers happy and engaged.

MO came out when Colin left, and he shifted the game more into the realm of quality. Anet reorganized programming teams (i.e. Legendary Weapon developers) with more story content development. If Anet would also shift budget resources from Pro League overhead and prize pools, you could hire a whole new team of Devs for a massive content explosion. By expanding in-game content, the side effect of free publicity comes into play. Gaming industry blogs and news sites would be reporting a healthy expanding game. Content Providers would continue to swoon over all the things we players can do in game. All this then leads to an increase in positive reviews that will naturally draw new players to this game.

Right now, we’re on the back end of a huge content drought. Heart of Thorns didn’t live up to the hype, so that left some players with a “ho-hum” feeling. PvP still has kinks that constantly need ironing. WvW players debate over matchup server sizes, scoring, timezones, etc. GvG is practically non-existent as compared to GW1. And a recent game breaking bug that forced a half day shutdown and rollback was the tipping point for some. All this, yet there seems to be light shining through the storm clouds (new zone hype!).

New content is coming, but do you think more could be released on a constant schedule? What do you think about the idea of sacrificing Pro Leagues for more game polish?

God Bless you and all transgender players Ashencourt!

There are those who don’t understand how a small gesture like this makes such a huge difference for some. Virtual hugs for all!

Just a flesh wound.3589:

Evolution is NOT about wants. It’s about change in response to the surrounding environment, but there has to be a “path” possible towards this change.

So you’re saying that a charr mating with an asura is due to a change in the environment? Well wouldn’t you know it, Primodus is awakening. When his rein of terror blankets the land in death, nature will call forth a new type of hero. One born of the fires of war (charr) with the intellect to succeed (asura). And there you have it: Charrsura.

Basic Fantasy 101: When a foe is too powerful, you power up. Think of it like Goku’s fusion technique.