I don’t think people would mind if GW2 was an evolution of GW1 with some new mechanics/refinements, but as it is GW2 has literally nothing in common with GW1 besides setting and the new direction they took it in isn’t even remotely well done. It’s almost the complete antithesis of GW1 and its obvious that they just decided to ride the hype train by making a sequel instead of a new ip while dumbing down every facet to make it “accessible” as a shameless cash grab. They should have just made a new, shallow, cash shop game instead of raining kitten so kitten a deep and unique franchise that it’ll never see another iteration or actual sequel.
I would honestly just find a new game to pvp in. A year in and the devs are still inserting hard counter bullkitten like diamond skin while completely missing the things that need to actually be balanced. The condition system is an absolute mess and the game simply isn’t designed for people who like tactics, soft counters, mind games, baiting, or strategy. It’s designed and catered to morons who want skillless “boom headshot!” gameplay in a fantasy setting.
Probably just disengage and come back when they leave or just harass them on and off. The game’s pvp design is kitten, there’s not going to be a way to actually fight back in a LOT of situations.
I get not carrying over every single gameplay mechanic from the original into the sequel, but GW2 has literally nothing in common with GW1 besides the setting. The game design is almost the complete antithesis of the first one’s. They only even called it Guild Wars 2 to build hype and as a recognizable cash grab title for their new super dumbed down, grindy, shallow, cash shop storefront they call a game. And now we’ll never actually get a true Guild Wars sequel, because of how much GW2 is tanking. It’s pretty sad and pathetic.
the name is based on lore not gameplay, or your perception of that gameplay
Yes i know but its kittened…. either way this wasnt anything like gw1
They just used the series name as a way to build hype and didn’t carry any of the actual gameplay or spirit from the first one over, because they were too busy dumbing everything down to make it more “accessable” and a bigger cash grab. And it’s completely kittened, because now everyone who actually liked the first Guild Wars will never get a real sequel to it since GW2 is tanking so hard.
Why should they even try at this point. It’s obvious this game will never be an esport or even a respectable pvp experience. They made WAY too many kittenty design decisions early on that would require a massive overhaul, they ignored pvp for over a year and all the top competitive players left, and even their most recent “balance” patches have been remarkebly tone deaf and just flat out incompetent. It’d probably be better for them to just take all the idiotic gimmick crap they’ve thrown in to the extreme and just full out cater the game to simpletons now.
Yeah they made a fps with no aiming, no skill shots, no ammo, and no class balance. Maybe they should have just made an actual sequel to Guild Wars instead of this boom headshot moron zergfest that we now, which is pretty much the complete antithesis of the original game. It’s so far beyond idiotic that I’m just amazed.
I think the combat’s interesting when it’s something like a d/d ele bouncing around in combat and setting up burst that telegraphs and has actual counter play. However I think 90% of the time the devs at Anet seem to confuse kittenty gimmicks that are incredibly annoying to fight against as interesting gameplay. Invisibility, clones and ai spam, evade spam, spammy ranged attacks with no downside, certain classes having ridiculous disengage tools, hard counter immunitites everywhere, ridiculously low time to kill that doesn’t allow for skill based back and forth matches. It’s all crap.
Because it’s a shallow, grindy, generally incompetent cash grab that ruined an amazing franchise?
They need to separate conditions into categories that allow for better spot removal. Every condition/boon should be based on intensity as well as duration with passive and baked in boon/cond removal only removing a certain number of stacks instead of a full wipe. Full condition wipes should be long cooldown oh kitten utilitiess and aoe full cond/boon wipes should be reserved for elites. Lower bunker/burst efficiency by about 25% and then make people rely on support classes buffing them to reach the insane damage and defense outputs we have right now.
Conditions and boons need to be broken down into categories and allow for more spot removal, everything needs to scale in intensity like bleed and might, and passive cond. removal needs to remove a certain number of stacks instead of doing the entire job for you. Right now it’s just brain dead mass wipes/applications over and over again.
Guild Wars 1 was filled with cheap gimmicks, and it definitely had hard counters. I understand the anger many Guild Wars 1 players feel toward Guild Wars 2, but this seems like a really bizarre thread to lash out in.
Because in GW1 hard counters A. generally had a massive downside that made them require team play to be effective, B. were few and far between compared to the soft counter skills, and C. weren’t just passive get out of jail free cards or iwin buttons, they were actually interesting to use and required thought to use correctly. In GW2 it’s just flat out lazy design and really exemplifies how little thought is put into this game and how much it caters to the lowest common denominator who need their build to win for them as opposed to winning themselves.
Honestly I’d just give up on this game ever being a sequel to Guild Wars in anything, but name. I’d love for it to be that game, but the devs have already abandoned everything that made Guild Wars the game it was in favor of cheap gimmicks, dumbed down gameplay mechanics, gear grinding, and generally shallow gameplay. It’s going to be a lot less grief to accept this game for the shallow cash grab catered to idiots that it is than the sequel it should have been.
This game has probably the worst implementation of stealth and burst I’ve ever seen in an MMO. There’s literally no downside or counter play to stealth. It would be a lot more interesting and fun to play if the burden of skill wasn’t completely on the defending party, but hey some people just need a giant handicap to feel competitive I guess.
The attunement recharge changes are nice and sorely needed, but moving elemental attunement AND renewing stamina as well as aquamancer’s alacrity AND cleansing wave to master tier is a bit much. Basically all that’s left in the adept tiers for those trees are filler traits to get to the master tier, moving renewing stamina and cleansing wave to master only would probably be a better choice as it wouldn’t ruin builds that rely on both, but also not allow our most powerful defensive options to be gotten for only 10 points. Elemental attunement has simply too much utility for a majority of builds to go without, moving it to master will just make 20 points in arcana still a necessity for the majority of builds. Blasting staff at adept though, A+.
Yes, we’re also looking at the other classes in relation to the current iteration of the Warrior and how they vie for spaces in the meta.
If we bring down Warrior slightly, we’ll also need to adjust other things to make sure they’re also not too strong.
Also, we want to shave most things down, instead of just running around with a “buff” stick. That’s how you get a lot of power creep, and it’s something a lot of you, very astutely, have pointed out – we need to avoid that.
Keep your eyes peeled for another post later today where we expound on a lot of this type of stuff.
I think a lot of us are curious as to why you all are trying to “shave” things before fixing the major fundamental design issues of a lot of classes and mechanics. Seems kind of pointless and shortsighted to make all these tiny adjustments before correcting the base gameplay that affects everything else.
Stunbreakers should have just been their own skill slot like the healing skill and they both should have been able to be cast on party members at the expense of using your own defensive cooldowns. Would’ve solved so many issues with this game’s ridiculously low TTK, cc spam, and lack of group play while making downed state unnecessary.
Except even when they wait for the meta to settle they still end up overbuffing things to a ridiculous degree or throwing in a poorly thought out change like immob stacking and somehow making the gameplay even more shallow and unbalanced. I’d say the months between updates was just neglect since spvp isn’t as much of a cash shop cow for them, but the sheer awfulness of the continually worsening meta just makes me think it’s flat out incompetence on the devs part.
Well this confirms that you disagree with the majority of your competitive community. Most of whom quit. And people quit due to the meta. And that wasnt because “ele isnt viable nemore”. It was because every build was based on cheese, spam and brokenly powerful mechanics and synergies.
Your post confirms to anyone hoping the meta will improve that this is a completely false hope. You talk about shavings. This is ridiculous. Perma evasion/ai passive/condi spam type specs are not fun to play against. They need mega nerfs not small shavings
Ever fought a stun lock warrior or an evade thief? You literally might as well not be there as a good thief will teleport back and forth from a location that you cant see or interact with (on the up and down axis). It is so frustrating and lame.
These builds shackle the meta. But they also shaft all fun in the game. This is why people quit. They dont want to play a game filled with spam and just uncounterable skills and effects.
Really. If you dont wake up to this soon…..well…it is already dead this game. It wont improve.
I literally laughed out loud when I read that dev response to you. They pile 400 lbs of broken, ridiculously op, low risk/high reward gimmicks onto a few brain-dead easy to play builds and then act like “shaving” 1 lb of it every 4 months is a good job. The playerbase is screaming at them to fix these things and they think clarifying tooltips that anyone with google already knew the correct values for is going to somehow help the meta. The incompetence is simply staggering.
This game has too many fundimental design flaws to be able to fix at this point and the patches we’ve seen have done nothing to address them. It speaks volumes about how incompetent the balance team is and how much this game is forsaking depth, complexity, and balance in favor of targeting the idiot demographic that wants meaningless, spammy, boom headshot gameplay.
I wanted to like it. I gave it a year+. I uninstall. I give up. Guild Wars 1 was fantastic, but I’m never supporting another Arenanet product after what an enormous letdown GW2 has been.
Stealth is so integrated into mesmer and thief traits at this point that having a way to remove the invisibility is probably the best way to handle it. Either that or just implement stealth breaking on a block, evade, or invulned attack.
I don’t think the sic’ em change is going to really do anything about stealth at all since it’s such an awkward skill to put it on and it’s only on one friggin class, wow and it only took a year to get a “counter” to stealth on one skill on one class. Thanks Anet!
Anet really needs to move away from countering stupid imbalanced mechanics with build destroying hard counters. That’s not losing to being outplayed, that’s losing to somebody’s build and it’s becoming quite rampant in this game.
Energy really added a whole extra layer of depth that the game is really lacking right now. Also removing energy basically destroyed the mesmer class. It went from a super unique technical shutdown class that fought indirectly to an idiot proof minion bomber pure dps. It’s pretty depressing. :c
lol how is block a counter to stealth? even if you get blocked, evaded, or just flat out miss you won’t lose stealth and can instantly spam the attack again thanks to the wonderfully thought out stealth and inititative systems. The fact thieves exist at all is mind boggling, the only thing I can think of is that Anet was trying to boost sales by catering to the inept moron that needs training wheels to compete demographic.
It would help if classes had something to manage besides just cooldowns as well. Thieves have initiative and mesmers have clones, but the way they’re implemented right now and how fast both resources regenerate they might as well just not be there at all and only promote spamming. Even ranger pets are pointless to kill as they’ll just keep swapping through them. Classes need something to pace them and build up to the damage output we have right now, resources that require actual thought to use correctly and add a sense of risk to fights if they’re used incorrectly.
You’re just making a crusade out of settling for kittenty pvp and acting like that’s somehow better than crusading for actual game balance and depth that lives up to the game’s potential. They might as well just put a rock in heart of the mists that you slam your face into and get a “YOU WIN!” message. I’m sure when people complain that that’s one dimensional pointless gameplay you can just respond with “HEY MAN THATS LIKE YOUR SUBJECTIVE OPINION. I LIKE SLAMMING MY FACE INTO THE ROCK SO EVERYONE ELSE SHOULD LIKE IT TOO!” The fact that you’re simple enough to be entertained by this drivel, doesn’t mean that people who are actually GOOD at pvp will be. No wonder all the top teams jumped ship on this game’s pvp when idiots like you take it on yourselves to represent the community and get catered to by Anet. This is just like the gaming equivalent of EVERYONE GETS A GOLD STAR! Great, the morons have their pathetic egos protected, but the people who actually worked hard get nothing for actually excelling. You think anyone, but idiots want to settle for that?
This is what happens when “insert class here” dont dodge, use stunbreakers, stand still and do nothing against “insert class here too”.
I totaly agree with your title. It was not the extreme skill of the warrior but the extreme lack of skill of the other player, he let him reach 130 range with the mace and with vigor and 2 dodges to use he just stand there. What to expect?
Just that you know MAYBE the burden of skill shouldn’t be entirely on one person. I love the whole “yeah op you didn’t pull of that insane skillshot correctly, its your fault!” defense, when the person they were fighting against required basically 0 skill to pull off their win AT ALL. Sheer deluded idiocy.
It’s just basic, common logic that in game balance a skillshot should have a higher reward to balance out it’s risk while the easier to pull off things are more reliable, but less rewarding. This game has none of that. It’s basically like playing basketball and even if you pull off a 3 point shot it’s worth the same as a free throw or a fighting game where a super quick, safe low jab is more damage than a super risky choreographed power attack. It’s just idiotic, terrible balancing. And I’m not saying that simple builds have no place as they’re good for beginners and casual pvpers, but the fact is that high risk/reward builds even when played perfectly are still objectively worse than the brain dead simple builds that revolve around a few poorly thought out mechanics. The top tier teams left GW2 because there’s no high level play, it just caters to novices and beginners and then plateaus due to the rampant cheese. There’s just nothing here to keep a high level pvper entertained. They say they want this to be an esport, but at best it’s a diversion aimed at children who prefer gimmicks over depth.
I can’t fault players for taking the simplistic and yet utterly imbalanced pos system Anet has put out and finding the most efficient, least skill based way to play it. However I can definitely fault those players for being simple enough to find that brain-dead gameplay entertaining. This is the community Anet has built by catering this game to morons who just want BOOM HEADSHOT satisfaction and can’t be bothered to learn an in-depth combat system that rewards skilled play over faceroll idiocy.
If a build’s in-depth creative and practical strategy lets you win over the majority of your opponents and holds up vs. strong players, great!
Can’t even be majorty here, since if a build is very strong aka op, most of your opponents will be using the exact same build. Condition Bunkers and Stun warriors, you have them everywhere.
The thing is that the strong OP builds are the ones that require the smallest amount of skill to use effectively. You’d think there would be some sort of tradeoff in effectiveness between a simple and reliable build that basically takes no effort and something that’s nothing but skillshots and requires near perfect play, but there isn’t any reward for a high skill cap build, if anything they’re flat out worse than the simple ones. And then you get the idiots that think that somehow playing a moron proof build that only requires having one’s cooldowns up and winning against another moron proof build that has its cooldowns down is somehow skill or good pvp. The fact that anyone settles for that is idiotic at best.
I can’t fault players for taking the simplistic and yet utterly imbalanced pos system Anet has put out and finding the most efficient, least skill based way to play it. However I can definitely fault those players for being simple enough to find that brain-dead gameplay entertaining. This is the community Anet has built by catering this game to morons who just want BOOM HEADSHOT satisfaction and can’t be bothered to learn an in-depth combat system that rewards skilled play over faceroll idiocy.
A game isn’t built in a day? The game was in development for 5 years and has been released going on 13 months… In that time we’ve had 2 maps released (one generally considered to be broken and imbalanced), 1 major balance patch that only made the meta worse, and the introduction of solo queue, which was incredibly kitten. All while hundreds of threads of constructive criticism go ignored for months and months. Then suddenly the devs realize they should actually communicate with the spvp forum, but 90% of that is basically just “Hey guys! Don’t be mean! We’re trying REEEEAAALLLLY hard!” This game’s pvp is a friggin joke and the small effort that’s been made to improve it has been riddled with poorly thought out design decisions.
And you seriously wonder why people complain on the spvp forum?
Might as well just give up on meaningful pvp at this point. Even if they do add all the features and rewards in the world to spvp it still won’t change the fact that the game is based around boring, shallow, gimmicky, spammy combat mechanics that don’t promote skill, creativity, or teamwork. I love how they destroy the wonderful skill system for GW1 in favor of this theoretically easier to balance one and then end up filling half of it with incredibly broken, shallow gimmicks that they don’t even remotely try to balance. All you have to do is look at that level of incompetence and disregard and know that this game’s future is not heading in any direction besides the pve cash shop.
The slow and consistent tournament and reward changes are nice, but it’s not like it really matters when the actual gameplay still has so many gaping flaws in it. Sort of a lipstick on a pig situation atm.
Pretty much the only viable ways to spec your character in pvp right now is to either be a nuclear bomb or an unkillable wall, with nothing in between. I wish they’d just reduce the stats on all pvp amulets, but celestial by 15% so min/maxing wouldn’t be as dramatic as it is right now.
If one ability out of five hundred is completely overpowered, you reign it in instead of boosting four hundred ninety nine abilities to match it. This isn’t exactly rocket surgery.
Probably because I’m not talking to you >_>
Either way, all this thread consists of is ‘I don’t want to change anything! Those rangers are the ones who should be changed!’
He would be better off just trying to counter it before complaining. I face other spirit rangers and they are a tough cookie, but it’s very satisfying to kill them because I changed the way I played.
Good to know Anet decided to drop the active skill based play of GW1 for this demographic. Wouldn’t want to alienate all of the people that think using nothing but auto attack and their heal is sufficiently deep gameplay.
But then thieves might have to actually try or have some small modicum of skill. The horror.
Sounds like a great idea. Weapons seem very restrictive atm and just traits/heals/utilities isnt very deep customization at all. It would also be a great way to lower the constant condition spam we have at the moment in pvp, but also make skills solely devoted to condition specs (something that’s really lacking atm). I guess it could work similar to WoW’s current talents where you have designated tiers with 3 talents to choose from for defense, utility, movement, damage, etc. that all really change the way you play, but are segregated to prevent stacking nothing but defense skills or what have you.
To me it wouldn’t be nearly as frustrating if GW2 had just been its own game and not the original’s successor, because pretty much the entire game seems like a bait and switch at this point. Why even make a sequel to Guild Wars if you’re just going to abandon 90% of everything that made it a great game to begin with? It has literally NOTHING in common with the original besides the art style and the music. The fact that it was marketed as a sequel at all is more of a bait and switch than anything else and I’ve more or less given up on it ever being the game that was promised; the amount of core system changes necessary would be far too great.
The next time Arenanet wants to make a shallow, grindy, unbalanced MMO perhaps they shouldn’t market it as the successor to a game that’s was it’s complete antithesis.
I have to agree with the OP. I would PvE more, but it all seems more like an obligation than a game right now. Every day is a daily that’s boring, takes too long to do, and completely wipes for the next day even if you have 99% of it done. Every month is just a new living story event that’s essentially just a to do-list of pinatas or pumpkins to break that’s boring, takes too long to do, and completely wipes from existence if you don’t do it RIGHT NOW.
I don’t mind having some grindy fluff content every now and then as long as you can do it at your own pace, but good lord pve in this game is just a second job of nothing but endless busywork on a deadline right now.
Of course they got the new condition. We wouldn’t want the id iot demographic to leave the game or feel like they actually have to try in pvp. Thieves and mesmers are already such monumental failures of pvp class design it’s simply mind boggling. So why stop now?
obviously troll is obvious.
I suppose that’s what I get for responding to someone named Masternewbz. It must be nice to be a big enough simpleton to find trolling a fulfilling pasttime. EVERYTHING is entertaining when you’re not smart enough to realize how boring being a completely useless waste of space is.
If anything toning down burst will make this game more skill dependent. Burst still has a place, but it requires no thought or effort when you can frontload an entire health bar simply because your cooldowns are available. Having to actually bait out your opponents defenses, coordinate with another teammate, or whittle down your enemies health to a point where your burst can be used as a finisher takes a lot more skill then just insta-killing anyone who isn’t twitching their finger over a stun break constantly lest they die in less than a second.
Sorry, but the burden of skill should be on the burster as well as the burstee.
Now the ele will have enough time to react
So, you’re saying it was ok to kill a bunker faster than a human can physically react to the attack?
From this point forward, all of your opinions are invalid.
It seems you don’t understand.
“current balance level can’t afford a quickness nerf”.
it means that till bunker eles can facetank 2/3 people and leave, heal, come back at will ( and till bunkering is still so strong overall), this nerf will simply get balance WORSE.
Or rather, now 4 eles+ guardian comps will become viable.
I main an ele and I agree that bunker eles need a nerf, but leaving in one grossly OP mechanic just because there’s another OP mechanic is not solid logic. Hopefully by moving away from having ludicrous burst damage as the only way to take down a bunker the devs will start focusing on either toning bunkers themselves down or adjusting things that are more specific to bunker countering like boon stripping to be more practical.
Bunkers need a nerf and burst needs a nerf? So basically you want every build to slowly become the same? Everyone to eventually have the exact same stats?
No, I’d just like to have builds beyond bunker and burst be viable. You can still spec defensively or for damage without going off 1000% in either one direction and rendering all builds in between borderline useless. Also it’d be nice if fights were actually about skill and not about who can blow all their cooldowns and then avoid combat until they recharge.
Bunkers still need a nerf, but burst DEFINITELY needed a nerf as well. It ain’t perfect, but at least it’s progress. With quickness finally toned down, the classes that kept getting balanced around it being 100% can actually be balanced around their actual abilities instead of some stupid gimmick (which hurts every build not based around that gimmick). Hopefully bunkers are moved more towards the middle in future patches now that half of the problem has been dealt with.
Yes, but…….
Quickness should be removed full stop and the damage distributed into skills, traits etc. it’s a crappy mechanic along with confusion and retaliation.
I’m ecstatic that haste was nerfed (it almost renews my faith in Anet), but baking in one of the only conditional requirements for burst damage in the game into all abilities base damage is just silly. This game has a serious lack of combat depth as it is.
I play a D/D bunker ele and while I appreciate that it has a high skill floor and you have to master it to really wipe the floor with people (which most classes should require imo), it’s still definitely over the top. If played correctly and you know when to disengage/reengage, pretty much the only thing that can kill a d/d bunker is surprise burst or if you somehow get immobilized with no cond. removal cooldowns up (which is very rare).
As much as I love bouncing in and out of the battlefield Ride the Lightning probably needs somewhere around a 45 second cooldown in it’s current state. You should have to pick whether to use it as a gap closer or an escape tool, not just throw it out whenever you need to heal up or wait out cooldowns.
I’d say Ether Renewal is another big issue. Having a huge heal and a full condition wipe on an untraited (key issue here) 15 second cooldown is just silly, especially when you can just Ride the Lightning out, heal up unhindered, and then fly back in. Either halve it’s cond. removal, cut it’s heal by a third, or increase it’s cooldown to 25 seconds.
All of the CC skills are on a decently long cooldowns, but having 2 aoe CCs like that is kind of a bit much. Maybe make Earthquake single target, but either have a 1s longer stun or reduce the cast time on Churning Earth to make it a guaranteed hit after Earthquake without a stun break.
It alienates the portion of the player base that feels betrayed, and while I have no doubt that retaining people who were leaving/not playing GW1 was on their list of important things to do, I suspect claiming players from outside their own products was MORE important.
GW1 is still there and cheaper to provide to a customer than GW2 (at this point), logic dictates that the people pining for GW1 type products are not going to be as interesting to Anet as those who able to be captured from competing COMPANIES.
I’m not saying that you’re wrong to feel hurt, I’m saying it makes sense that it was going to happen – writing has been on the wall for a long time.
Yes, all of the writing that they continually perpetuated the exact opposite of. All over the wall. All over it.
I honestly don’t mind Ascended gear. If they just flat out said that ascended and legendary were the only additional gear tiers I would be fine with that. It’s just the bait and switch coupled with all of this double speak really only promotes the idea that they don’t care enough to stick to their stated design philosophies; that they can’t give definite answers because they don’t know if they’ll drop and change their philosophies at a whim if it means more money. I doubt anyone wants to play that game, and in the long run ruining their credibility for a short term gain is just flat out stupid. The fan base for GW1 and the design integrity they showed with it are the only reasons that this game had the hype train it did. Do you think that’s going to happen for GW3?
Hm I’d think the nerd rage would be much worse if they lead people on for months and months and then surprise them with a new step to the gear grind, but it’s okay because they “hope” that next tier after ascended is the last tier. At least until it happens again. They already burned a lot of good faith by advertising for 5 years of development that there would be no vertical progression and then adding it 3 months in. A lot of people don’t trust Anet after that bait and switch and just skirting the issue and giving non-answers really only exacerbates it. It’s idiotic, makes it look like they don’t know what they’re doing with their own game, and alienates their playerbase.