Guild Wars 2

In the new map – The Silverwastes – there is only one waypoint and the map is designed in such way that not having more waypoints isn’t even noticable, at least for me after a few hours of gameplay.

I must admit it feels much better than the generic GW2 maps, feels much better than Dry Top, and pretty much anything that we have had so far.

I will go as far as saying that I would enjoy every map to be designed in this way – smaller than the traditional GW2 map, without an abundance of Waypoints and an absolutely amazing event structure.

I can also imagine it’s much more difficult to produce a map like that, but the quality is unrivaled so far.

Great job, ArenaNet. Whoever designed the map and came up with the idea of not putting waypoints everywhere around deserves a bonus and a hug from Colin or… something! I really hope it’s not just a single instance of this design.

What do you guys think?

Sarrs.4831:

I’m guessing those four guys on your team played one game, they all won, and the MMR shot up to accomodate.

Would at least have been nice if the game split the players tho.

People have been suggesting this for years now. From simple fixes like not allowing players without certain rank to play Solo Arena (a bad solution) to more comprehensive ones of changing the hotjoin system into an unranked arena with matchmaking where people can improve and test things against closely-matched opponents (another invisible rating just for hotjoin arena) without affecting the leaderboards.

Not like I care that much about leaderboards, we know how abysmally bad their are at what they’re supposed to do, but I absolutely hate losing matches like the one above.

cheese.4739:

they leave because you whine like a child when you’re losing.

Them leaving is mostly caused by being matched unevenly, regardless of experienced players’ approach. Arguing doesn’t help, but I have a feeling that you are derailing from the main issue here, even after I ignore your offensive wording.

Haishao.6851:

No idea what’s an N Bomb

Norn.

Narkodx.1472:

It just is not really proof it is just one instance – even though it happens often and the more you play the more you see it

Here is the problem – new players are constantly rotating into pvp and most do NOT stick around

Of course it’s only one instance, and it proves nothing, but there were hundreds of topics on this saying people are getting uneven matches. I myself have experienced it multiple times, it is a common situation.

In my view, such matches as the one I posted about, should never be allowed to happen. It is bad for me, it is bad for the newbs, it is bad for the community.

phoenix.3465:

This is one of the reasons SoloQ is so frustrating, people raging and insulting their own team. This is not necessary and totally under your control, so stop it.

It works both ways – give me a fair match, so it doesn’t happen.

Hey, guys. I’m Leman. I’ve been around since always. I’m an active Solo Arena EU player and the current sweg-massktochen for one of the best PvP teams that have ever existed.

Today I had a horrible PvP match streak infested with people that clearly weren’t matched properly. After one match I decided to check out how well the matchmaking was working and here are the results;

I included tpvp experience as well to try to gauge the actual skill of all players better. Don’t mind the rank though – it doesn’t count towards solo queue matchmaking and it may have decayed (it certainly did in my case since I last played).

How am I supposed to enjoy this game when this happens to me? Not to mention I then just flame my team for their disability, but it’s not their fault…

I really hope there are fixes and changes coming, because in this state this game is bloody unenjoyable and outright infuriating.
Quoting Mike O’Brien, the CEO of ArenaNet:

Creating fun is an uncertain business: sometimes things work out and sometimes they don’t (…)

It’s pretty obvious that in this case things aren’t working out and it needs to change.

Special bonus for the Devs that are reading this topic – there were huge lag spikes and rubberbanding during today’s matches (everyone was complaining) and as you can see on the screenshot – I was respawned in the water under the map.

Steve.6529:

vincecontix.1264:

What was mim team comp?

Azani – Mesmer
Sam – Guard
Levin – Thief
Shaku – Ele
Tamyr – Ranger

Who is this knowledgable Steve guy?

You’re not showing the important part, Rasman!

This has become a phenomenon on my megaservers on EU. What’s not to love.

Never had any problems tagging without the staff. I’d go as far as saying Life Transfer, Tainted Shackles, Locust Swarm, both wells managed properly, dagger cleave and Reaper’s Touch are more than enough to tag better than 90% of other players. Since we’re talking about open-world PvE I am assuming an abysmally low skill level, suboptimal builds and gear, low awareness, slow reaction times and overall high level of casual approach.
Not to mention the only good skill for tagging is really the Putrid Mark. Just my opinion.

Necro sucks in PvE very hard and I discourage anyone from playing it, especially the beginners. Also requires crazy unrelaxed gameplay and knowledge of encounters to even stay sub-optimal.

In PvP, the necro is good. Still has the old issues, like being either dominator or dominated, but one can get used to it. Some things counter necro so hard it’s not funny (cele ele, some rangers, medi guard trololo), necro counters some other things equally (engies). A newbie will still get smashed by another newbie playing any other class, because necro has a very high knowledge requirement to play with success.

Hey, newbie friends! It’s Leman, the ‘Renownest Active Necro EU’.

1. Staff sucks in PvE. Completely. Literally no reason to use it other than trolling.
2. Dagger/focus – dagger/warhorn is the only set that could be considered viable if necro didn’t suck in PvE.
3. Listen to spoj.

That is all. Bye bye, newbie friends!

Chris Cleary.8017:

lets do some Bearbow math.

Best post 2014.

I find it difficult to be constructive writing an answer for this troll OP and all his posts that follow.

I really liked this Red Levon guy. Sozer is good too.

That doesn’t apply to you, you’re veterans…

Learning the old system was okay for the veterans.

But newer players will benefit from the updated system.

But it isn’t for the new players.

A is fine for Group V. A is too difficult for Group N.
Group N is dumber than Group V. Apparently.

That’s what I feel Anet is saying. The system was just too confusing.

When you read their explanation out loud, there is no intelligent way to justify it.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Concerns of this nature come in via tickets, when someone takes the wrong step, buys too many times, isn’t able to process the acquistion or exchange, etc. By the time someone’s on the forums, they’re usually comfortable with the systems.

What prevented you from adding more quantity tiers then? What’s the explanation to this question? Also confusing?

Well, technically it’s their game and they can do anything with it, even if it means introducing money-grab mechanics. Everyone’s job at this point should be to stop paying Anet’s bills with our hard-earned money. The customer always wins in the end and their in-house ‘economist’ should know that. Should.

A disgusting example of price discrimination. Shameful.

I have none, because I play necro and there is no reason for me to look at LFG.

I agree with you (Brandon).
I played a necro in top100 in GvG in GW1 and my job was so defined, so profound, so responsible I have not found anything that comes any close to it in GW2 even with Anet trying hard.
My job was to constantly draw conditions from allies (mostly deep wound from mid-/backline and weakness from frontline) and send them back to the opponets. I had to use Enfeeble/Oppresive Gaze all the time to hinder their offence, cripple their movements, spread condition pressure and kite them around. I had to sustain myself with Life Siphon as well and manage my energy, position and conditions. All this while usually holding a flag during teamfights.

Anet was lately trying to move necros to that role, which they had stated numerous times. It’s their philosophy for necros to have a support role. Unholy Sanctuary, Unholy Martyr, Plague Signet, Corrosive Poison Cloud, and so on.

The problem is what you describe – these things just don’t work and I believe that to make necro completely viable and good they would not only have to look at DS and survivability (probably changing the design to make them more universal) but also move a bit away from damage design to utility design. I have always believed that this game is too damage oriented, there is damage tied to a grand majority of skills and it causes problems.

Look at the Well of Suffering – remove the damage completely and make it stack vulnerability like crazy. Useful in PvE, WvW, PvP. Not universal, but designed to perform a certain task and fill a role. Do that with most skills in game, with the overall profession viability in mind and see how it goes from there.

I totally don’t have to be a glass cannon that is only supposed to do damage and from time to time feels like being the only reason for a lost match just because it is what it is, but give me tools to play differently and design a game to allow for these various gameplays.

Ovid.7135:

That’s a broad and unclear statement. Does it pertain to pvp? What does it refer to? Should I presume it is about pvp because the topic is on pvp? If so, Necromancers fare well against all classes in 1v1s, so it can’t be about necros faring in 1v1s. What’s out of their control? Oh this must be about pve or something.

I guess sometimes you have to outright point out every single thing to make a statement understandable… Let me rephrase, necros are extremelly reliant on both their team and the opponents. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don’t. I could go on into reasons why but honestly I don’t want to. 4.000 tournies experience speaking. Just that.

Nox Lucis.8341:

After reading this, I decided to go back to PvP after a month’s absence from the scene. Played 3 matches with my Necro, won each time and was the overall top scorer twice. My win/loss ratio (which is entirely on Necro; it is all I use in PvP) is still overwhelmingly positive as always. I look at this, and all I can think is “Wutchu talkin’ ’bout?”

You don’t even exist on the leaderboards, Mister. I’m calling a hotjoin troll. Also – what Bhawb said. Your statement bares no objective value and it still wouldn’t even if you were talking about solo queue, which you aren’t.

@topic: the amount of loaded BS in this thread is just depressing, proves most of the posters have no idea about pvp at decent levels whatsoever and so I am glad I quit playing.

Let me repeat myself once again so maybe another batch of pve heroes learns the truth – necro design is non-universal making necro either fare amazingly or fail miserably depending on number of factors that are by and large out of the necro’s control. This is why some people think necro sucks and others think it’s OP. No one’s right, most of you are painfully short-sighted.

Also Spoj’s still right – necro is comparatively horrible in PvE.

continued

These are just some of the reasons that cause players that put enough time in the game feel detached from their characters. There is never enough time to develop a good story because everything is delivered in batches (Personal Story, Living Story alike) that fail at developing interesting characters and villains and playable character story development is hindered by both the delivery and the restrictions some of which include being unable to voice it properly. I’d also argue that story flow in instances themselves is rather poor at least for my standards.

Of course there is a problem of continuity and Anet really are in a bad spot at the moment because their design decisions limit their options. The (not-so-)cleansed Orr and Personal Story in the destroyed Lion’s Arch arguments come to mind and with each Living Story installment it is only getting worse (Nightmare stuff, Mordrem lately). The obvious solution would be to just stop putting new stuff in old maps and focus the game development on adding new zones, which has its own set of problems of course.

As for the Gem Store invasiveness issue – I can see how it impacts the game development but I wouldn’t go as far as saying that is the only thing Anet cares about. The main problem is that the gargantuan majority of the cosmetic progression is moved from the actual game world to the Gem Store window. I can imagine every time someone from the art department comes up with an amazing armour concept it is bound to be introduced in the Gem Store instead of being a reward for an elite dungeon (not like such a thing is ever coming). This is the biggest culprit here, in my opinion. Being a professional economist, I could go on trying to analyze the impact the microtransactions system has on the game experience, the gold sinks and so on, but I don’t really think it is that important.

@Karla: let’s hook up in D3! Find me at Leman#2825. Playing the Season?

I don’t even play the game anymore nor do I post on the forums, because every time I try it ends badly and I stopped feeling my feedback has any impact on the actual development, but…
I decided to hop in and try to summarize some of the points brought up in this thread and maybe add some of my point of view.

I’ll start by saying that I same as the OP played GW1, yesterday, and also noticed some of the old nostalgia and attachment to the game. Instead of going why there was such a feeling in GW1 I’m going to try to describe why I feel it is not so much in GW2 anymore.

The problem stated by the OP – feeling detached from the GW2 characters, personality problem. This is very much how I’ve been feeling since the release. Being an RPG fan, I like reading good stories and being able to connect with characters. In GW2 it just doesn’t ever happen and the reasons are many, but in my view the one that most others are rooted in is fragmentation.

• Missed Personal Story – not so much in the story part, but in how it flows from one quest to another, it fails at creating interesting characters and organizations, probably because of budget constraints on this part of the game before the release as well as technical restrictions.
• Post-release mess – Anet trying to find the way to reinvent themselves to successfully service the game after launch over and over again – started with testing some mass events approach (Halloween, Karka) to more structured, temporary-type Season 1 Living Story content to another switch to an instanced type Season 2 LS content. Work is never optimal when things keep changing severely all the time.
• Undefined playable character role in the game world – who are we after almost two seasons of the Living Story? My character started as a Divinity’s Reach nobleman, then was a someone in the Order of Whispers, then it became the Commander of the Pact, then went on adventuring against Scarlet and now is pretty much everything + has a party of NPCs.
• Very limited character customization outside of cosmetics – we had a character development CDI where people gave some amazing ideas on how to improve it and the only thing that came out of it after some months is the dreaded trait acquisition system. Things like prestige classes, more tiered class-specific achievements/titles (I have 3000 tournament wins with my necro and I’m still the same Champion Phantom I was in the first two months after launch). There needs to be a robust, long-term, gameplay-connected progression system on top of levels and traits to make characters more customizable and give the veteran players a >real< reason to play the game. Item collections, cosmetics from the Gem Store and achievement points rewards don’t cut it. I never thought I’d say that but I think Anet needs to look at Blizzard and what they did with Diablo 3 – after a terrible, terrible launch they had it all reworked and the game is actually enjoyable right now and there is always some progression to be made. The art is in creating a long-term progression system that is not impactful too much but still worthwhile pursuing.

Vayne.8563:

I don’t know, maybe they were meant to be long term goals and the purpose of them isn’t just to buy everything off the trading post. That would be my guess.

If so, the long term goals in this game suck plain and simple (imo <4mods>)

Vayne.8563:

A manifesto isn’t a promise of delivery. It’s a statement of intent. Did they deliver? For the most part they did.

False, they didn’t.

ArenaNet, can you please add a short tutorial on how to click skills? Thanks!

You don’t sir. It is going to help you learn and understand the game.

I hope this game sinks.

I quit the game, but it’s really refreshing to see it still be as bad as it was when I left it.

AI wars. Cheers.

This thread again…

Everything’s relative, things are not set in stone in every situation…
Rabid should be naturally better vs spike enemies, while carrion should fare better vs condis.

Guhracie.3419:

I’d say it’s a little early to be disappointed, since there might be some sort of update to mark the anniversary.

I don’t think it’s too early anymore…

With that said, I’m really enjoying the celebrations Anet prepared for us this year – just yesterday have I spent 30 blasting minutes shooting cakes in the air. It, as you all imagine, was first-class fun and although I may be a little disappointed with the overall scope of celebrations (cake shooting in the air gets boring after a few hours and rewards for it are rather lackluster), I know Anet has been tirelessly working on the galore of new features for the September patch.

Enjoy your content, my friends!

So for funzies I’d go with:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fRAQNArdWjc00db1NO2wejichSqeYqmA6AYAe2I7gNA-TRBYgAg6DwVCyr+j5+DAK/AA-e

Rampager with epidemic. Spam all condis and AoE, then Epidemic. I would love something similar to be viable some day.
The fun comes from unloading yor conditions on targets and then spreading them even more with Epidemic. Lots of floating numbers, rotational gameplay (instead of spamming auto-attacks) and a very nice feeling of being the king of conditions.

Warning! this is just a build I’d go with if I were bored with the meta stuff and/or had too much gold. Also – don’t pay too much attention to the rune choice – Traveler’s are expensive, but I’d go with them for open PvE any day.

I’m sure some other guys will come and link you the meta/dungeon build you may consider a better choice in the beginning (considering the possible gold restraints).

Cheers!

You would have to specify what exactly you like doing in PvE – open-world exploring, zerg event/farm trains, dungeons?

I find the usual dungeon build for necro to be disgustingly boring and so to play something more fun we would probably have to move a way from the optimum.

o/

Could try if interested.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

Puddles.6385:

Follow up question: What use is it to make a blog post that only really affects people who don’t yet play the game?

Hi Puddles,

First of all, we at ArenaNet very much appreciate the support that all players that have played the game for so long have given us. Without you guys, your love of the game and how you spread the word around you, things would clearly not be the same.

Today’s blogpost about the New Player Experience will not have as many visible effects to you specifically as it would have for a brand new player, that knows very little about the game. The new direction system should help you get a clearer and more useful top-tight UI, but also give your new characters better rewards.

As you noted, it is mainly targeted at new players, those that need it the most. We want their learning experience to be better so that they, too, can become veteran players of Guild Wars 2 one day! Learning to play a brand new game, and MMOs tend to be more on the more complex side of videogames, can be a daunting and hard task.

We want more people to be able to walk this path you walked and this is why we implemented the New Player Experience system, to create a route that new players can walk and feel rewarded along the way.

Again, thanks for your support!

See you in 6 months!

djooceboxblast.9876:

nyqwist.2360:

Bumping.

If someone want the best necromancer in the game (not even kittening kidding), hit DJ Ooce up.

And the sexiest!

No such thing when I’m around!

Other than that, he is goood. My recommendations.

Same in the morning and in the early afternoon.
Top100 players getting matched with absolute beginners that make you wanna jump out of the window.
Soloq matchmaking is bad every hour of the day, but at these times it is a complete lottery – it is basically ‘who gets less terrible players’.

I concur. He is fun and nice and his gameplay and build make me feel sorry for myself in soloQ. Huge addition to any respectable team.

Even though he has his rage moments (who doesn’t in soloq) and has blocked me so I cannot bash him, he IS a good warrior.
In fact, one of the few I (as a necro) am legitimately afraid of because he knows his job and delivers on it.

GL

He is the best Swedish guard in the World. Also, quite entertaining on the TS.

GL with finding a team.

Still single & looking.

Grebcol.5984:

“Martin Kerstein and Kate Welch " Woooott they are gone?

As of today’s news.

Ty, Mister Groucharino Pepperino! Just to clarify – Necro/Guard in one week, right?

Thanks, Mike.

Stay in touch

It’s weird because when you keep silent for months it is infuriating. Feeling neglected kindles the worst emotions.
But as soon as you show even the smallest interest, nothing in particular really, people start feeling way better.

Hey, Mister Groucharino Pepperino.
Can we pretty please get some info on necro/guardian changes this week as well?

As other posters noticed, we need them to build our teams. Holding this info back has negative impact on a large group of competitive players.

We would appreciate getting an official response.

Thank you for kind words, Mister.

I just want everybody to be happy.

Hello, necro here. You may know me.

Pm if interested.