Guild Wars 2

@Revenge, you’re just comparing the 2 weapons not the 2 classes. The warrior is much better close in, and has much better defensive skills.

Yes the ranger is a much much better skirmisher, but it freakin’ should be.

Straylight.7529:

People are upset about changes. They leave. They give reasons why they leave. That will give Arenanet some feedback. End of discussion.

They tend to have vastly over-the-top senses of their own importance though. Anybody who’s been on any form of the internet for any more than a tiny amount of time should have learned contempt for ‘I quit’ flounce threads.

remember the forums are mostly for people who are OUTRAGED and don’t even remotely represent anything but their own experiences.

Dirame.8521:

moi.4398:

I don’t think we are playing the same game if you compare necro’s 1sec casting life blast ( or staff 1 lololol ) to a LB ranger .And all the others examples are … wrong

Give me one good reason why an LB Ranger isn’t basically the same gameplay as a Rifle Warrior.

worse defensive abilities, some access to stealth, better access to ranged CC (if you count pet abilities as ‘ranged’).

One of the legit problems I’m seeing with a machinegun ranger is you’re really weak actually on a point. Yes one can be really effective skirting around the edge of a skirmish, but they’re not going to hold a position or keep you from capping, and regardless of what people say, unless you’re pretty much glass yourself, RF isn’t going to down you in one volley.

Not sure the nerf is inevitable though, players always always overreact at first to any change (or lack of change). This is a less severe version of the various things on the other side of the game (Like SAB or people with multiple 80s complaining about onboarding), and they’ll probably deal with it the same way;

Ignore the forums, look at player activity, see if it puts any unexpected spikes in their graphs, and adjust appropriately (and remember they’re balancing for all game modes).

I’ve gotta be with the people who are thinking this won’t move the needle much. This doesn’t seem this is a very meaningful change at the tournament level (although time will tell), and on PVP side that’s likely the focus of their balancing. On PVE side, the change was desperately needed.

zaxon.6819:

i keep hearing this “mesmers have alot more access to stealth” than rangers comment.

rangers have 3 seconds of stealth on a 9 second cooldown.. and a shatter mesmer spec brings decoy.. 3 second stealth on 40 second cooldown and mass invis 5 seconds of stealth on a 90 second cooldown..

im not a math scientist but im sure someone can calculate those numbers up and figure out that rangers have an ok amount of stealth.

Thing you’re missing is that the ranger has to successfully hit with the shot for stealth to work. Even with winds, it’s still a projectile.

Block, evade,plain miss (still happens a lot at long range), get LOS’d, or just have no free target, and the stealth doesn’t activate.

It’s not about cooldowns, it’s about the functional limitations to activating it.

Volrath.1473:

refection only kills brain dead rangers… any semi-decent ranger will cancel the skill if it is being reflected, stop using this argument, it makes you look dumb.

Not if they’re hasted they won’t, at least not in time.

ukuni.8745:

as an engineer I can say, shield 4# 5# and toolkit gg and nice try.

Yes Seeing a ranger machinegun, or just autofire into engi shield 4 is too priceless to speak of.

~~

Pink, been playing all day, stealth jacks up these rangers really well. rapidfire loses target and just whiffs. Unless your reactions are just awful, or you’re fighting multiples it shouldn’t be a problem…

and at least at the lower levels, 9/10 of the rangers can’t get any kind of good thief off of them.

In my experience, you miss your PBS and you’re meat.

Lord Hammer Hand.4815:

i was told if you have nothing good to say in chat dont even bother saying anything. thats why i just ignore everyone who talk kitten. knowing that he’s raging and QQing when we lose is fun for me :P also i tend to purposely lose the match when someone i dont like is in my team since i dont care bout ladder or even rank points. <3

I… I must admit, one of the people I saw was a guy named ‘Y Kratos Y’ (which means he wasn’t the first, or 10th person to want to name himself kratos). It’s not entirely right for me to do, but I did take some time to make fun of his name.

MikaHR.1978:

Windsagio.1340:

False meta aside, the ugly dungeon environment pushed me to do PVP to get the skins I wanted. It’s a bizarre situation where group collaberative work is the most ugly possible social environment

Its been like that in every MMO for quite a while now.

Unless youre in a guild (and what exalted ones call “casual guild” where scrubs run dungeons without “required class/build/gear”) you need very thick skin.

Its because reward driven system. Run doesnt matter, people dont matter (they are just tools you use to get shiney), all that matters is getting to shiney as fast as you can and if someone is “below optimum” its leet insult time. And then its time to look up the definition of anti-social (no, it doesnt mean “soloer that never groups”)

The specific problem is that you can’t do Arah or COE (for instance) without either trying to start your own group or joining a ‘zerker only’ group. I can play that way, but “Zerker only” players tend to be kittenwads (in my experience).

NeXeD.3042:

As far as the balance thing goes, I’m sorry but you have to balance at the highest levels to avoid breaking the game.

Lets drop the balancce thing, it’s a complex issue to say the least, and it wasn’t my point except as a joke <>

ArrDee.2573:

Hello frands! Vee Wee here, #1 Engi NA and world first rank 80!

The devs should only balance the game based off the highest levels of play! If lower skilled players dictated the balance direction then Heartseeker would probably do no damage and cost 8 initiative, useless turret builds will be even more useless, and probably other horrible things that Vee Wee does not even want to think about!

Oh yeah! Welcome to PvP! Hope to see you in a tourney soon!

Wahoo! Bye frands!

Them talking about it is different than anet balancing primarily to their needs :p Also, seriously in games I’m actually competitive many of the real top players are notorious for up-playing and downplaying as appropriate.

Browrain.7346:

Are you dumb? I was referring to before he addressed there was any sort of joke in his OP at all.

I don’t want to get into a argument about this, it’s really an aside and I hate jokes gone awry. Still, the note about the joke was in the very original OP when I misposted it in general ><

False meta aside, the ugly dungeon environment pushed me to do PVP to get the skins I wanted. It’s a bizarre situation where group collaberative work is the most ugly possible social environment

On a more serious note, I gave up and just went with my ranger, its what I’m most comfortable with from pve too.

I feel bad, kind of, but the current longbow is just too interesting as a weapon (with the way skills 3 and 4 work) to not get some fun out of it.

Also, much better asset to a team >< I don’t wanna be hurting other players on my team to prove a stupid point of ego.

Browrain.7346:

NeXeD.3042:

I know he edited it so people would absolutely know the clone thing was a joke, but I seriously question the intelligence of some people when they can’t see obvious sarcasm even if it’s in text.

“You should be able to rally off mesmer clones” Wow such obvious sarcasm very ty

" (NOTE: One of the points below is a joke, don’t get too riled over it)"

That was in the OP and wasn’t even an edit, I wrote it from the start.

The clone thing was the joke I referred to in the OP guys, it wasn’t serious, that would make mesmers a massive active detriment to any team ><

Edit: About hotjoin, yeah I get that. It’s where you hang out until you get used to things, I’m not past that point yet tho

JarrodJames.6845:

Sadly we don’t buy games anymore…. we buy keys to open betas where the devs will change the game to fill their pockets…..

Most often what fills their pockets is things that will make the game more succesful… ie what players want.

The problem we have is that ‘what forum monsters who will never be happy and rely primarily on groupthink want’ and ‘players who are actually playing’ want are two entirely different things.

Zerothousand.3089:

Windsagio.1340:

8) You should be able to rally off of mesmer clones.

This made me LOL. Clones have a base health of 3200. You would constantly be rallying. especially when they shatter.

Would serve those invisible kittens irght, imo

Lopez.7369:

If you’re one week into PvP and admittedly bad, you should not feel comfortable discussing balance.

Did I discuss balance in my post? I sure don’t remember that.

That being said, and since you brought it up, you have a very basic misunderstanding of how balance actually works. There are legitimate discussions of balance at all skill levels, and balance changes drastically between skill levels. Your experience of the game is not the only one that matters.

~~~

In general, forum stuff aside, the base environment is SUPER friendly to new players, or at lest indifferent to them. This is nice.

A few other observatios I hadn’t thought o.

9) Most pickup games end with crazy uneven scores
10) If you stay on one server, the teams end up being the same. I have a pet theory that this is because people have consistent, but unique load times, so people tend to come in at autoselect at the same time if its the same people joining.
11) If you join a game late, you seem to fairly often come into a fight that’s 400-120, that’s a little disheartening ><

Flouncers always think everyone else should care about their very difficu,lt decisions™.

Behellagh.1468:

Cyrus.2987:

@Vayne.8563

Constructive answer/feedback usually require question. It is a sort of social agreement.

This is basicaly like a difference between a gentelman which ask you in the pub if you you would like to get involved with him erotically – and one which forcefully sodomize you in dark alley and ask “Do like it?”…

ArenaNet does not deserve constructive feedback (yes, this is something one need to actually deserve)
People payed them for something (some handsomly -.-) and not it is being taken from them. Not in 20 years, not in 10 or 5. In 2 years.

They are turning it into grindy pay-2-win it is in china, and are not duing it for our satisfaction. They are not doing it to improve it as well – they are doing it for money! They deserve sh?t they get ->TO THE FULEST<-

spit-take

Paid them handsomely? Ha! Most of the complainers here only paid for the game, some when it was on sale, has never bought a gem with cash in the game’s life yet demand that ArenaNet needs to EARN constructive feedback??? Try paying $144-225 a year into a subscription game, on top of the cost of the game. That’s paying handsomely.

It’s up to you the consumer, if you want a better product, to give constructive feedback. If you don’t give a crap about making the product better for you, then you don’t. It has nothing to do with the company needing to EARN anything. It’s entirely on your shoulders.

Now now, it’s a good shot at justifying the forum rage. “YOU DON”T DESERVE OUR FEEDBACK!! THAT’S WHY WE YELL ANGRILY AT THE LATEST THING WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE MAD AT!"

‘y’ triggers lfg? I was wondering!

It works well though, also lets you weed out the people you really don’t want to be running with anyways (usually people that have things like “HEAVIES ONLY” in their descriptions)

Protip: People often put dungeon runs in the ‘open world’ section. This is useful both to check if your category is empty, and also a thing to look out for yourself.

NOTE: Posted to the right forum this time, I blame brain bubbles.

Overcame the barrier of entry and sat down and started into real pvp (or at least quickjoin pvp) last Saturday, thought it would be fun to throw together my new-to-gameplay-mode player experience. (NOTE: One of the points below is a joke, don’t get too riled over it)

1) As a general rule, it’s intensely fun. I always suspected that sP and WvW were supposed to be the actual endgame, and now I’m convinced.
2) Even in pickup, the skill differential is nuts
3) Rangerpocalypse started a few days after I got into pvp, it seems fine to me with the main effect being the crazy number of rangers you see in random games right now. Teams of 4 with 3 rangers aren’t super-rare (and remember, pickup not themed teams). That aspect is bad enough that I feel too embarassed to play my own ranger.
4) The above is too bad because, the current form of the ranger is stupid fun to play. Even trying to escape when you get somebody in on you is pretty engaging.
5) Some ‘autojoin’ servers are set up with an organized team vs. pugs. It’s hard to tell, but these seem to be set up for farming rewards. Annoying, but there are plenty of other servers.
6) Even given the fact that most people don’t say anything at all in the quickjoin environment there has been an extremely small number of people being awful in the way you expect people to be in competitive gaming. I’ve seen (in probably 50 games over the week) 2 people be kittening babies, yelling at their teams and refusing to participate. This number is shockingly low.

7) I have a long long ways to go, even with relatively easy to use classes. It’s engaging enough to make it worth learning though.

8) You should be able to rally off of mesmer clones.

Even to my scrubby self, the ambush is really good. It seems though, it’s like the ele staff ambush but reflectable and guaranteed single target (not that you hit multiple people with staff often anyways, but its’ still a comparative limitation). It also has more utility dependencies to get full effect from

Advantage is you’re not great, you dont’ have to fiddle around with ground targeting.

The utter lack of defensive abilities and paucity of cleanses/etc doesn’t help either.

SPESHAL.9106:

They don’t need a nerf, but it’s shocking that THIS is what Anet decided to do to buff them.

I have a ranger that I play occasionally. It’s probably true that it’s burst spec was lacking compared to some other professions, but that was more an indictment of the other professions.

To make another cheesy, brainless spec with a low TTK seems like the opposite of what was required in the game.

For the record though, these new rangers are about the easiest thing in the game to kill if you know what you’re doing.

Love posts like this “Man this is totally unfair and should be fixed! I must inform you however that they’re not thread to people like me who know what they’re doing.”

The subtle self-stroking is pretty sweet.

I’m pretty new to sPvp, and the huge numbers were making me feel awkward and kind of want to stop playing my ranger there. That being said, I think the complaining is changing my mind.

The machinegun ranger is hilarious, silly, and destroys bad players, or from ambsuh.

It’s actually somewhat ineffective against people who know what they’re doing like at all.

Started actually playing sP a few days before the patch, 60% ele 40% ranger.

My success rate is about the same with both, the difference is that the ranger is way more ‘win or lose’ than the ele is. To do machinegun stuff, you give up a lot.

Also seeing someone quickened rapid fire into a reflect is just brilliant. Even if it happens to you, you’ve gotta laugh.

Edit: The place it’s mean is coming in late to a fight or with quiken when they have no idea you’re about to blast them. But hell, how many classes just wreck you if they’ve totally got the drop, and cooldowns up?

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Behellagh.1468:

Metrics are tools, nothing more. It allows them to see what everyone is doing and not doing, not just forum posters. It gives they information as to where to look for improvements. Now what they do with this information and how to interpret it can be problematic. Not metrics themselves.

The issue with metrics is that they don’t show why we’re doing things.

Are we going to our home instance for those daily nodes because we enjoy doing it?

Or is it because that’s the best viable way to get Watchwork Sprockets and Blade Shards for that last Spinal Blade backpack we want to forge, and heck since we’re there might as well farm the other ones.

Or is it because we’ve done everything else that the only thing to do is something repetative, and that’s the closest and fastest repetative stuff to help with our dailies, or our daily gated content that we have to do if we want access to high level Fractals.

Metrics say what’s done. But never does it say why it’s done. Do we do it because it’s fun, or do we do it because we need to (or it’s the most profitable means of getting what we need) in order to begin what we feel would be fun?

And I think this is what the OP means by “we are not metrics”. Metrics is what we do, not why we do it. And most companies, sadly ArenaNet seems to be amongst them now, are too stuck on the “what” rather than the “why”.

If you give players 10 things to do, but 8 of them are one-time-only stuff to be able to do, then obviously they’ll be doing the last 2 more often. But does this mean they like those last two things? Not necessarily.

And before you go say “don’t do what you don’t want to do” or “if you don’t like it don’t do it” or whatever way of saying that, please take note that sometimes, designers make the fun stuff blocked by the boring stuff, and sometimes we become conditioned to do simple repetitive things not realizing we don’t like it except in general concept – see: Skinner Box.

No, the OP just doesn’t understand math.

Flouncity flounce flounce

Anet doesn’t OWE anyone an explanation though. If you think they’re not doing what they think is best for the game, thats your weird issue.

Shivan.9438:

Bumping, Anet needs to see this.

You think they’ve never seen an idiot ‘hey nerds I agree with you, LOVE ME!’ youtube video before?

DarksunG.9537:

TexZero.7910:

Or it could be indicative of the pool of people they sampled

Let us all remember the fatal flaw of data and stats. Data can and will be miss-interpreted. Stats are only relevant to the pool they are derived from and cannot be used to measure the whole.

That’s a meaningless observation as it’s the only way to test anything in a game. This whole forum is a worse offender of sample pool data. The point is, weather i like it or not, this may get more people into the game. & Our dislike of it is not as accurate as testing.

Also the dislike of it has a lot more to do with some kind of bizarre mass-hysteria than any actual consideration of the feature changes.

If you’re following the general news, the pundits desperately need to build some goodwill and cred right now.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Kamui.4038:

Maybe this will get their attention.

I seriously doubt it since “they” are nothing more than a puppet on strings being controlled by another entity.

Lol.

The problem is that the most controversial changes aren’t controversial because of the changes themselves but because of various factors of player psychology.

Why do people think they’re experts on this? One of the absolute basic skills designers need to have is getting out of their own (and their peer groups) heads and trying to understand what more users want.

Unfortunately, the information you’re asking for is actually extremely valuable (in real $$$) business development information and most likely won’t be forthcoming. I’d love to see it too, it’s probably fascinating.

Bertrand.3057:

7) The opaque reasoning for these changes, which hurts my brain
8) Realization that we have fewer actual new features because the devs had to work on these changes
9) Recognition that a diminished experience for new players results in fewer players staying, which harms the game’s long term prospects

to specifics;
7) They’ve been pretty clear
8) By the description of the feature pack process, they have teams working on each feature in parallel, this probably didn’t directly cannibalize another feature too much.
9) Between being actual specialized designers and the vast amount of user data they have, how can you say that you know better than them whether this will help or harm the new user experience?

Straylight.7529:

Windsagio.1340:

Trying to figure out why all these ‘veteran players’ with ‘8 level 80s’ are so kittened off over the new onboarding process, but I can only come up with 2 real theories (not mutually exclusive);

1) kittened off key farmers raising a ruckus.

2) Gamer moral panic over the outrage du jour (last month it was SAB).

It really makes no sense to be so very very mad over something that effects you so very very little.

Maybe you have to dig a little bit deeper and apply a bit more thought to the subject.

Personally, I’m annoyed about these changes not for the silly reasons you listed, but because they go against the spirit of the game.

Let me quote you one of the developers: Colin Johanson: In most games, you go out, and you have really fun tasks, occasionally, that you get to do, and the rest of the game is this boring grind to get to the fun stuff. ‘I swung a sword. I swung a sword again. Hey! I swung it again.’ That’s great. (source:http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/ArenaNet's_MMO_Manifesto_trailer)

With this feature patch they turned the general feeling of the game exactly in that one direction they wanted to avoid. And the only reason they give us is because new players were confused?

I just can’t imagine the developers doing that. Going against their own principles and turning a game that was about “do what you want, how you want” into a boring chore where everything is timegated and restricted. This must be some marketing monkey from NCsoft meddling with us.

If you’re legitimately worked up over the way you think they didn’t match the manifesto (in ONBOARDING), let me leave you with this (Eliot).

Between the idea
And the reality
Between the motion
And the act
Falls the Shadow

3) Is a ludicrously bad lie, and you know it. It’s not even good sarcasm

4) Isn’t a reason for why it effects you, is this just existential outrage over ‘dumbing down’? Because that would fit under theory 2.

Trying to figure out why all these ‘veteran players’ with ‘8 level 80s’ are so kittened off over the new onboarding process, but I can only come up with 2 real theories (not mutually exclusive);

1) kittened off key farmers raising a ruckus.

2) Gamer moral panic over the outrage du jour (last month it was SAB).

It really makes no sense to be so very very mad over something that effects you so very very little.

I can’t believe people still trust the ‘gaming press’ to wipe their own snot, let alone have meaningful coverage or commentary.

This is all actually about key farming, isn’kitten I see no evidence that the ‘veteran players’ complaining about this give a kitten kitten kittenning kitten about onboarding or the new player experience.

By all appearances and the little we know not enough people do the normal dungeon conent to justify a whole new dungeon mode, especially one with baggage

To the rhetorical ‘what difficult endgame content’ questions, I have to go back to the old standard.

sPvP

roving WvW

Commanding WvW

Ashen.2907:

Astralporing.1957:

Yes, it’s called GW2 achievement points leaderboard.
Even after 2 years, still only 10% players have over 4k ap (a year ago 10% cutout was around 3600 ap, by the way) – that tells us a lot about how active the majority is.

That seems more an indication that the majority of GW2 players don’t like doing dailies/monthlies, and low difficulty grind related activities than that they don’t like difficult content.

Given that Anet’s behavior seems to correspond to people not liking/doing that ‘hard’ content, what reasoning do you ascribe to their actions?

zoe, that’s in fact the whole point. Well kind of.

“Best in Slot” is a nigh-meaningless term in GW2, the difference just isn’t that significant (With the exception of AR for fractals).

Legendary’s being buyable is certainly a weird variation, but it’s not so bizarre at the current price point. To buy one you’re easily taking as much work as to farm out the parts, it’s just some of it might be RL work. Either way the barrier is still there (imo)

An addendum: “The thing that will save the company/make lots of money/be good for everyone is the thing that I personally want!”

Nanashi.6297:

I’ve seen this in enough games by now. People don’t want challenge. People want bragging rights. How do you get bragging rights? By making “more challenging and rewarding content”. And please don’t all feel attacked by this now. I’m sure a few inhere actually want new challenging content because they already cleared to currently available challenging content I named before. Doesn’t change what I said above though. People who can ask for this legitimately are a minority(even though I’m talking high and mighty not even I can ask for more challenging content right now because I haven’t finished the currently available one – well at least fractals not).

I’d go stronger, and say they want ‘challenging content’ with unique prestige rewards that specifically matches their skillset, which generally means learnable content and gear checks (We’re all MMO players here after all, and that’s been the model).

If there’s prestige items rewarded by playstyles people don’t like we get into the ‘you said I could play the way I wanted!!!’ line.

I’m used to forums being all armchair designers, but now they’re all armchair buisness development specialists too?

I’m not sure this is the best I have, but its certainly the most striking;