I still think it should be removed from at least solo queue, but I think it could be improved by increasing the size of the control room substantially, putting walls around CM, and removing holes from CM.
OR-doing that for all the other nodes.
That would at least increase the build diversity for the map and put more emphasis on some of the interesting points of the map like the jump pads and verticality.
I like fighting that monster, its less cheesy than what’s happening on top of the map.
Yes, this is why skyhammer is so much fun. Thiefs/Engineers/Ranger all have funny abilities to be more important on skyhammer.
Love the map with my engi
What is the thieves skill that’s so important for sky hammer besides hoping you’re facing a necro and stealing their fear? Not being rude at all, I’m just curious if I’m missing something.
Stealth + Scorpion wire – you run across the “glass” as well so that by the time the pull occurs, your target is screwed without a teleporting stunbreaker and great timing.
Ahhhh, forgot about the holes. Was just thinking about knocking em off the side after watching that hilarious video. That definitely would work although its not nearly as efficient as other classes.
I played recently against a thief who was really good at it, they just killed everyone who came to the point with scorpion wire into a hole, I think an engi could have beaten him but we had no engi that game.
I tentatively tried solo queue again for the last couple of weeks, and was impressed that the matching/games generally seemed much better than pre-revamp.
I even played on the skyhammer map again a few times, even though I swore I would never do so again.
However, I really can’t stand it. Even after just a few times, its just such a terrible map for tourney (well I don’t play it in hotjoin either). Every time I hit the solo queue button and see that skyhammer has popped my heart sinks, and I wish I had pressed team queue or stayed in hotjoin.
Its back to either exiting the game when skyhammer pops or just staying team/hotjoin I’m afraid.
I think hating on Asura is not solving the root of this problem. They are~cute, you see.
What if, we can work on Asuran animations and make them more exaggerated/visually distinct than what they current are?
What about you give players the chance to see the enemies as the race they want?
To ban asura is one thing~I’ll stop defending them if you so desire.
But to make all races look human is entirely another thing.Nullifying the racial choice of all other players just for your own convenience. Or I should say, nullifying those choices because you as a player have not the skill of reading and recognizing key skill animations.
What is the difference between this and making cheesy builds for players that cannot play competitively?Is this what people would perceive as quality gameplay design?
At the moment Asura are the cheese that many players in spvp leverage to give them an edge- an advantage that has nothing to do with skill.
Quality game design would not include such an obvious option for players to get an “unfair” advantage in a game supposedly designed to be a competitive, level playing field.
Going further, even if all players became scaled down Asura, thus levelling the playing field, the issue is that the overall quality and skill level of the game suffers because that would be the equivalent of making all animations more difficult to read, all spell effects more extreme, and all players being able to hide behind AI etc more easily- effectively exacerbating many of the things spvpers feel are weak points in the game.
So yeah, Asura are a fundamental issue for spvp, and blatantly obvious one at that.
The main reason I play GW2 spvp over other mmos is that gear/levels etc are equal.
There are other mmos that have combat that I like better or more interesting game modes and such, but those factors mean next to nothing compared to the level playing field we have here.
Actually, I wish other games would drop gear progression in pvp, its such a daft concept.
However, I agree that spvp needs to be linked into the rest of the game better. I think some of the planned changes are headed in that direction (linking spvp with the rest of the game), but I hope it doesn’t end up in gear-based spvp; at least until a better game shows up.
(edited by Yasha.5963)
Its rare to read a thread where you agree with every post, but so far with this one I just find myself nodding in agreement with everything said.
Asura, braindead aoe spam, passive abilities/ai, skyhammer all issues that hold the game back- add an overload of effects that make it all too chaotic (although a lot of this stems from the excessive aoe and ai).
That said, I think you should come back and play OP because there are a lot of other things that make the game great and I haven’t found a “fantasy” style mmo with spvp (battlegrounds) that can match it, despite its faults.
No, but many would like to….
Great write up, thank you. I think there is room for WvW to be fun if you get a group of a few friends and roam around wreaking havoc (even on small zergs).
Everything you say is pretty much spot on though, and its the main reason spvp is really awesome (compared to what you find in other mmos), and the main reason I’m playing this and not say Tera or some other mmo.
Isn’t the pre-game attack/defence of those objectives part of the game?
well im currently banned on another certain mmo with smexy fox gurls in it so im killing time in gw2 till it wears off and i used to play gw2 a lot etc i used to spam paid tourneys when they just came out and got one of the first titles
anyway the pvp now is a complete joke, it wasn’t so pretty before but the patches that for some reason boosted condition damage and nerfed real damage just completely killed it
I agree about the condi-spam and the game being overly chaotic, but that game you are banned from (which I also really like) is way more imbalanced and there is no robust spvp/battleground system-although the castle raid is pretty cool.
Spirit Watch is fine, Skyhammer is a monster.
lol friendly fire, could you imagine a mesmer’s phantasms mindlessly whirling through your group to attack one enemy?
Yes I can, and that is exactly the point. Like you say “mindlessly”.
There are so many skills that are just “mindless” aoe, requiring no skill to land, with no real downside for using them.
Definitely on the right track. Never have to PvE to level again, ty Anet
What I am especially excited about, in relation to the reward changes, is that now spvpers should be able to almost seamlessly move into WvW at a competitive level. So for example teams/friends of spvpers could go to WvW as lvl 80s and geared up (I am hoping the pvp gear will work in WvW!!) to an extent, and enjoy that part of the game as well.
Like you say, up till now we have had to pve, or grind WvW to do that, which is something that I- and probably other spvpers- haven’t been able to do.
Fixing braindead aoe spam? PLEASE!
But your Idea seems looks awefull.
Assuming you meant to say “Your idea is awful”; I ask you why do you think so?
Sry fore the wird sentence.
You first should give us more details about your idea of “friendly fire”:
Are talking about:
Implementing friendly fire for every skill?
for every aoe, including cleave?
for every field?The next issue is:
As the title already says, the issue aren’t the aoes themselfes, it is the AoE SPAM.
For decreasing spam, methods could be: higher cooldowns, decreased durations or just a reduce in the acces to aoes for some professions.Implementing friendly fire would harm a lot of “skilled” play.
E.g. Engi smoke bomb + toolbelt bomb -stealth
It might also harm shatter Mesmers (just imagine if they would also hit their own team). In addition, what’s with necros death shroud #4 and #5? Those skills arent usually the top example for AoE spam. However they would get affected by your suggestion. But every necro uses those skills, so basicly you would harm all of them.In addition, what about those aoes which already affect allies and enemies? e.g. marks, symbols, chaos storm or null field?
Yes those are good solutions too.
I am not sure if there is skilled aoe spam- just aoe spam with different effects. Yes necros would also suffer. Some aoe could be non-friendly fire- like symbols.
Aoe is actually my friend because its easy to use with high ping, but atm it has too much impact for too little skill. Some (not all) ele skills are great examples of how aoe should work- obvious animation somewhat long cast time, best used with teamplay (stun/imob+ aoe etc).
Bad examples are bunkers/semi bunkers that can just lay aoe fields everywhere, while evading/blocking/invun/etc and do a lot of damage and cc without much skill or chance for counterplay.
But friendly fire would be amazing, just imagine the tears….
Hmm, my recent whine thread got a whole page of replies, this one got two, haha.
Yeah, I would like more, but remember that we came from basically nothing, now we get levels, gold, better gear, gear we get in pvp can be useable in pve? (down the track?), and the devs did a 180 on game modes- from 100% “we will only do conquest” to starting work on new modes; I could go on, but you know, its quite a cool place they are taking things.
I was a bit worried about the cost of the new skills, actually I am kind of confused where they are taking that- one extra mainly unimpressive new heal for each class that is expensive (for spvpers), it is just weird.
Anyway most of my initial fears about spvpers not having enough resources to buy stuff have proved largely unfounded atm, so that’s a plus.
So we have had a while to evaluate the new rewards system, or at least the start of a new system, what do you guys think about it?
Personally, I think its a huge improvement from what we had; great to have some coin for spvping, and also amazing to be able to use my resources to buy levels. I also seem to be getting much better/ more diverse gear in chests without having to “craft”. I am not sure what “magic find” will do, but glad that spvpers can be part of the system as well without having to pve for it.
Overall, I am just really impressed with the way the dev team has grabbed the reins and is trying to spice things up in spvp.
Think they could go a long way with increasing the size of capture nodes. I notice aoe spam is the most frustrating when contesting a point and the aoe is completely carpeting the whole space.
Sometimes when It’s 1v1 I can see it as not such a bad thing where I have to choose between contesting that point or taking the damage (most likely sacrificeing some CD to counter it) but when there is 2 or more cleave classes there it is just too much.
When on a big point like graveyard this is lessened to a degree.
I agree, and a similar point/feedback has been raised many times. In response we got skyhammer, which has smaller points with less room to move away from points unless you feel like instant death; and the most important point is the smallest of all with holes all around.
Fixing braindead aoe spam? PLEASE!
But your Idea seems looks awefull.
Assuming you meant to say “Your idea is awful”; I ask you why do you think so?
Lol @ leaderboards. They mean jack squat. What matters most is how many games a person has played and, secondarily, not having an abysmally low win/loss ratio.
I agree, but it was still nice to finally see my name “in the lights” after all this time.
The new rewards system seems better as well now, I get gold, better drops from chests, essence of luck (not sure what it does but its another number I get to see increase, haha)
The good thing is that for some reason since they revamped the leaderboard system you move up and down quickly. I went from 80% to around rank 340 after winning a few games. Before the revamp I would win a string of games and go from 80% to 82%.
It also seems to help if I play an OP (and easy) class like spirit ranger, stun-lock warrior with HS, or MM necro.
BTW: I didn’t realize people avoided spvp! I mean that’s all I do in this game….
Friendly-fire.
/15 characters
You probably get blinded because that is one of the best (only?) ways to really deal with a warrior.
Fear Me is instant cast so you are just unlucky, not watching your conditions, or your opponent outplayed you with timing their blind- I don’t believe you can counter play Fear Me (since there is no tell/cast time) you just have to anticipate it.
Btw normal (auto) attacks don’t take away blind, you have to use a skill (as far as I know). Maybe that’s the part you want the skill description to clarify?
(edited by Yasha.5963)
Someone on the WvW forums came up with a really great idea to breath new life into this game. If they could introduce a new sPvP map based off MOBA games like Smite did, you’d probably have a ton of people giving it a shot.
Guild/Player housing is also high on the list of wants for a game like this.
The idea of a moba style map was debated in depth some time ago in the community development thread on new game-modes:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Collaborative-Development-Topic-Game-Modes/page/9#post3188412
The general feeling from the devs’ responses seems that a strict moba-style map was unlikely, but a map with moba elements to try and capture the strategy and start/mid/end game feel of a moba could be possible.
There was actually a moba type mini-game released for Halloween 2012, which looked fun.
Asura are a smaller race with smaller weapons, so give them less range and smaller AoE in PvP.
Fixed.
I would love to see a game implement a system like this. The small race issue in pvp is common in every game I have played. Its even worse in games that really heavily on aiming to hit (no tab targeting) like Tera.
Of course it would be totally impractical and probably impossible to do it in GW2; but a dev or community mod mentioned on the forum that it was possible to normalize character size.
Agreed; its like destroying/defending those objectives pre-game is part of the actual game at the moment.
You’ve mistaken the benefit of playing Asura. Its not chosen because you are hard to target, its chosen because they cant see your attacks – not a defensive model choice but offensive.
Okay, but again, does that really matter for something like a ranger given that they mostly use a bow, which is fairly large, as opposed to hand gestures? I could be wrong as I haven’t played one before.
The weapon size gets scaled with the character. Greatswords and war hammers look like toothpicks and tiny spoons, and not only are the animations on asura hard to read because of size/shape, but some animations look similar to animations of skills of another class on a different race.
Another thing is asura appear to “move faster”. I think this is because their skill animations/ general animations move them the same distance as other races, but because of their size they move relatively further/faster. Its much harder to target or again pick out animations in this case. Ranger asura with sword is very interesting to watch in this regard.
Most of the time asura just look like little blobs to me, with their little legs and arms a blur; its hard to tell what they are doing or even to visually identify what class they are.
Playing asura gives you a distinct advantage on many levels, but I’m not sure if other factors, like say lag, have a bigger impact. A combination of high lag and playing against asura (especially scaled-down asura) is pretty annoying though.
The answer is to stop playing solo queue (aka skyhammer queue) and just queue team (even as a solo player). I did this and it has made my game experience 100% better.
No more skyhammer, usually fairly balanced games with teammates that know what they are doing, and no 4vs5s (or worse) yet.
Playing a scaled down asura in spvp is as close to “legally” cheating as you can get.
Just did a TeamQ as solo, worst game ever.
4vs5 and 5 ranks under 30.
My team had a rank 7 a kittening rank 7 , dude what are u doing here.
In my experience that is a rarity. I haven’t had any 4vs5s in team queue (but many in solo queue). And the people in team queue seem to have a better understanding of what’s going on/how to play.
Sometimes I come on as a 5th (random) member of a 4 man team, in which case I can just ask them which class/build they need to support best, and other times I have been in a group of complete randoms (all joined team queue solo) and we have beaten (weak) pre-mades.
The biggest difference in whether I win or lose seems to be whether I change class to suit the needs of the team or selfishly play the class I find most fun (usually ends in a loss).
The biggest plus of course is that I never have to play skyhammer!
I would play solo queue again if skyhammer were taken out (and if a better fix to the 4vs5 issue were implemented). Until then I will just keep queuing team, whether I have a team or not.
Just sayin.
No bad maps and better rewards= little reason to play solo q.
There are so many people queuing solo/duo that getting thumped by a pre-made seems rare.
I think its weird, and its not particularly good for the game/community; but I am glad that I don’t have to play skyhammer anymore!
I’d like to see more skills to be unlocked, but at a lower cost and perhaps account bound. I never got to play GW1, but everyone tells me it was awesome for pvp and that a similar system was used there.
At the current cost if more skills are released, which I guess is the plan, it seems like it will be too expensive. For any GW1 players, do you think the cost/time of getting a skill in GW1 was about the same as this new system?
This is the best thread I have read on any game forum, thanks Super!
Not sure anyone suggested this yet but
Use glory and buy 25 level ups?
Its hard for players who have mainly played spvp, we have heaps of glory but no gold (I have played since launch and only had 8 gold before we started getting gold for spvp games).
Simple solution: Don’t que in SoloQ.
Better solution: Join the bright side and stop pvping altogether.For all the frustration it causes I do actually like playing SoloQ.
It’s just Skyhammer, this cancer, this abomination of a map that is unbearable to me.
I cannot stand it. I cannot stand how my Shadowsteps stop working because the ground is suddenly gone. I hate how my dodges and even my heals will get me killed.
And worst of all I hate this undodgeable joke of the Skyhammer itself. It just makes stunning and CC even more powerful and the failed shadowsteps even worse.
This map is the pinnacle of ANets incompetence thus far in sPvP.
Btw. I just quit another Skyhammer game, thus causing another 4 vs. 5.
Let me opt out of this map or I will continue to do so.
Skyhammer magnifies many of the things players dislike about pvp/conquest, such as the importance of fighting on points (points are smaller/more vital), aoe spam, and instant kills. Its like the devs took all the feedback since launch and made the epitome of what the community dislikes about the pvp in gw2.
The map has an interesting design of course, but it is almost funny to think about how the map also ended up taking all the things players have said they hate about spvp and making them worse.
That’s a good idea, better than making people suffer 4vs5’s when I close the game because skyhammer popped in solo queue.
I just wanted to stop by and let you guys know that we are listening. We’re looking at a few different ways to address the time investment it currently takes to get new skills in PvP, but it’s not something we’re able to talk about quite yet.
You’ll see a drastically different system in place in our next major rewards release that should address many of your concerns.
Thank you for the feedback, I really like the direction these changes are going in-I think they will be great for the game overall, but the gold cost to acquire many of the new items/skills is really high for people who mainly spvp.
I have over half a million glory but can’t use it to buy much of the new stuff (including many tomes) because I have only 10 gold. Its been really worrying me because I feel like I’m going to be even locked out of spvp parts of the game.
It is OP because it gives out the most healing per standard healing CD time , because it offers no counterplay and cannot be interrupted . Furthermore , the only counter is poison but that is easily dealth with by using AOE bursts that clear 3 conditions . It is also 400 hp/sec + adrenal heal giving up to 600 hp/sec without any investment into healing power or support runes . That is why its OP
Well said, although I liked the short version even better.
http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/3352860 7:00
It’s maybe 10-20 seconds after that..
Hmmm, at about 9:30 they say that the new venders sell items for glory+gold because players are concerned that people will be able to just come in and buy everything up with gold.
That seems to contradict what they say earlier about getting rid of glory. Confusing.
Why do the new venders have items for gold+glory if glory is being phased out? I don’t see the logic; wouldn’t it make more sense if the items at the venders just used glory?
Yes, this is a burning question I have as well. Could we get some guidance on this please?
Agreed. I have over 2500 SoloQ games and I love this map. I don’t always play something built for Skyhammer and I still enjoy it. Why? I don’t get pulled off every second because I actually position myself well.
LEARN TO POSITION YOURSELF
Skyhammer <3
Ah yes that condescending argument. Most people know the cheese builds to take into skyhammer, (and I use them) and how to position. I get no satisfaction out of knocking people into holes for instant wins. Its just cheese and unbalanced, that’s why people can’t stand it.
You are barking up the wrong tree if you think most people hate the map because they get pulled off every second.
I’m trying to find more info on phasing out glory, can you tell me where you saw it?
I have loads of glory but only 9 gold, so if glory is being phased out I don’t know how I will use it (I can’t buy much at all from the new vendor because you need gold+glory).
Yes it is confirmed. Just not implemented yet. You will be able to wear your PvE skins in PvP and your PvP skins in PvE.
This is what confuses me- when you say “skins” I understand going from pve to pvp that you just take the skin (because pvp stats are normalized). But if I buy say the T3 in HoM when I go to pve will it have the stats of T3 armor or is it just a skin? If it is just a skin I don’t understand why it is so expensive in HoM.
Can anyone clarify this?
Yeah, not a classy thing to do. You’re not punishing anet, you’re punishing fellow players.
Keep in mind also, there’s lots of players that actually like skyhammer. I’ve seen polls here that have actually shown them in the majority.
The polls conducted on the spvp forum showed a vast majority of players hated the map and want it removed from solo queue.
Here is one, https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Poll-Should-Skyhammer-be-Removed/first there was another more recently as well.
I have never, in any game, quit a spvp type competitive match, except for skyhammer.
People don’t quit the map to “punish” anet, they just can’t stand it. I just close down the game and go do something else if this pops in solo queue.
Its also a huge disincentive for me, and as you can see from the polls, the overwhelming majority of players, to even play soloqueue. Like the OP, I assume most players really do not want to quit a game so what happens is you just end up playing less and less.
This topic has come up repeatedly, it doesn’t go away. The bottom line is that is bad for the game to have lolhammer in soloqueue, and players don’t understand why after months of feedback, polls, and repeated threads like this one it is still in the rotation.
So what is happening about this is the pvp rewards roadmap?
“Players will be able to earn gear in PvP that can be carried over to PvE and vice versa. This means that players who have carefully crafted their appearance in one area of the game will have a way to carry that look over to other areas of the game.” (https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/player-vs-player-rewards-roadmap/?utm_source=client)
Fantastic idea +1
I am confused on a few points regarding the new reward changes.
If I buy gear in HoM with gold and glory will I be able to wear that gear in pve? If I can wear it, is it just a skin or is it the actual gear? I don’t now much about pve, but I assume for example that T3 cultural armour is more powerful than T2 armour in pve. Is that correct?