Guild Wars 2

Answering both questions: the original Guild Wars.
Too bad, back then “e-sports” weren’t as big as today.

Even more bad is that Anet is not what it was before…

After the match ends you will get the “item pop-up” in the right side of your screen. Also you can check the Scoreboard (default key: B ), again in the bottom right of the window.

I posted this shortly after the “Ready Up” PvP stream. It was then, when I realized we are screwed in every possible way.

BTW, Grouch and Karl are ingame at the moment, so I’, trying to reach them for a comment on the topic. No luck so far…

The bad thing is that Hugh Norfolk posted twice in the other thread. Both his posts were off topic, but at least he is reading, and he saw the picture. And that picture is worth more then any other post/thread.

Now, just don’t let this thread sink in to oblivion, after the patch hits and everyone start posting about all the balance/reward changes. Again, thank you for supporting this. I’ll try to get a dev response later today, be it via PM or ingame.

Really good idea!

250-300 glory per consumable sounds just about right, given that for a hour of a glory boost, you can get 500-600 bonus glory.

That’s some great support here guys, thanks!

Changed the thread’s topic once again, it’s more clear now.

Now let’s hope a dev can come in and answer the question…

You ain’t the only one with thousands of rated matches.
Edited my previous post:
I’m with PvP since the early GW1 days, so just take a look at the link I posted from gw1’s wiki. Absolutely same thing here.
Before it was hard to get rank points.
Now it’s easier.
Thus, they compensated for that difficulty.

No one is talking about rank farming…

The point of the thread is simple:
It’s not FAIR for anyone, who have played Solo/Team arena one year for at really low rate of rank gain, and then suddenly that rate is increased 5 times…

I’m with PvP since the early GW1 days, so just take a look at the link I posted from gw1’s wiki. Absolutely same thing here.
Before it was hard to get rank points.
Now it’s easier.
Thus, they compensated for that difficulty.

Archaon.6245:

Real problem is that farming already existed way before skyhammer, clik just to mention one did his rank just spamming grenades on hotjoin zergs without going tpvp (Also sh farmers “won” a great amount of hj games while farming)…so they would have to rollback those too i suppose…and this is not gonna happen…just forget it..pretty much every single r60 before sh did it farming hj, not jumping into a hole but the basics were the same..spam random aoes and profit…

We are not talking about rewarding the hotjoin/custom matches.
ONLY the team and solo arena games, that had their glory reward boosted. We want them to apply this boosted bonus to already won matches as well.

Edited the topic title for more clarity .

On the stream yesterday they said that retroactive rewarding GOLD will shock the game’s economy and they don’t want that. But in this thread we ain’t talking about gold.

We just want a fair treatment according our RANK points from our previous rated matches, considering the recent changes in rank gain…

But again, the devs are completely ignoring the thread… while in the mean time answering the same old questions with their “soon” posts…

Smiley.5376:

What they should do is:

-For SoloQ wins: add 300×3 = 900 – 300 = 600 RP for each win
-For TeamQ wins: add 500×5 = 2500 – 500 = 2000RP for each win

That is if they want to make the previous wins on par with the incoming wins.

You got it a bit wrong there. Or maybe I confused you, because I didn’t explain the math. So, here we go:

Before Solo Arena (SA) awarded 150 Rank Points (RP) for a win. Now it’s tripe – 150×3 = 450RP per SA win at the moment. To be fair with anyone, who have won SA before, they have to give out additional 300RP for each win before the change. Because: 450 – 150(the already earned amount) = 300.

To put it your way for Team Arena:
200(old reward)x5 = 1000 – 200 = 800RP per win.

To sum it up – we need 300RP bonus for each of our SoloArena wins before the change and 800RP bonus for each of our TeamArena wins. Because that’s whats fair to the loyal playerbase, that’s how they should be treated and as pointed out – it will separate the farmers from ranked players.

Phaeton.9582:

I have nothing to add here.

Seems like no one have… Look’s like another overlooked design flaw from Anet. Hooray for their #pvpsupport.

Don’t hold your breath.
It’s not being fixed after year and a half, don’t expect it anytime soon.
I’m not even sure if they acknowledge it as a problem, or just a technical limitation.

Save them for what?

I doubt I’m the only one who have TONS of the Arcane materials. 2 bank tabs full of arcane powders, orbs, crystals and slivers. And across all characters, I think I have between 3500 and 4000 Arcane Powders, ~2000 Arcane Orbs and few stacks of Crystals and Slivers. All of them are result of salvaging the contains of early win and rank chests, that were available during the 3-round free/paid tournaments.
When Glory is replaced by Gold as main currency, will there be a way to sell/convert all these useless materials to gold? Or are there even ANY plans for the Arcane stuff at all?

What Dagins said, plus two more:
Play hambow warrior and ALWAYS try to communicate in team chat. In most cases there is at least one more guy who is in the same boat, so if you two play good and according to your other newbie teammates, you should be able to carry them. If noone listens and just acts like aholes, then just run around the map and flame them. Then add them to your blocked list, so you can see when they are already in game and you can queue again without a chance of being matched together again.

Oh and a bonus one(my golden rule in soloqq): Bring a utility for safe-stomping an enemy. Always finish your opponents, even if someone else from your team is stomping too. Don’t count on anyone else to stomp him.
“If you want something done right, do it yourself.”

Title says it all. What? and Why?

We welcome all forms of feedback, both positive and negative, as long as it is respectful and constructive. You are welcome to re-post your feedback in a respectful, constructive manner.

Is all I got as a reason. But looks like negative feedback isn’t welcomed, when my message was deleted.
Won’t post it again in case it gets moderated again, but it was about a player hoping that good changes are coming and I said to him to not get his hope up, because so far anything good hasn’t come. And a quick point out that I would like to play 3way tournaments, then this SoloQ.

When the devs don’t take it seriously, why should you do?
Just go in, play few matches, get frustrated at the few fundamental problems, that ain’t being fixed for a year now and then go play something worthy of your time.
Come back from time to time to get disappointing every time and that’s pretty much it – stalled PvP in a nutshell.

“Hey, thank you for your feedback.
Templates are definitely on our list do be implemented and we really want to do them. Unfortunately, can’t talk about this just yet. Will come back soon when have more details.”

Pretty much this is the best answer you will get.

Oh, forgot the last one. Like I expected anything else then a complete failure. ^^

And the distribution is bad… why do I have to play with or against r6 guys?
I did not censored anything for two reasons. Getting blamed for “fakes”, and wanted to show there are few guys that are in every match-up.

Just to prove my point. My first and only matches for this week. Horay for the matchmaking!

With today’s MMR reset and Anet’s brilliant idea to have everyone at an equal starting MMR, you would want to skip SoloQing for the next few days.

It will save your the trouble of playing constant 3v4 or 4v5 matches with r5 newbies, afkers, leavers, etc. Let all the scum tank down their MMR below the starting value, where you will be as well. Then, when it settles down, I hope we will have a bit more enjoyable matches.

Thank me later.

Josh Davis.6015:

savov.3712:

Snip.

I’ve mentioned multiple times on these forums that we’ll be releasing information on just about everything we’re doing in early December.

It’s not December yet.

Firstly, no hard feeling there, mate. I have the highest of respect for you, and I do believe if anyone can save this PvP community, it is you.
But since PAX, all we’ve being hearing are “soons”, and “can’t talk about it now, wait for next month/patchnotes/blogpost, coming soon”. Ie, all the type of answers you were (and I hope you still are) against in SotG, so you should know better the anyone how it looks from player’s perspective.

Josh Davis.6015:

Also, as an aside, we really are taking the collaborative development stuff to heart. After we release our next PvP blog post we’re going to follow-up immediately with a preview of what we have going in before the end of the year. After that we’re going to run streams on a consistent basis to keep you guys informed of progress and preview stuff we have in development.

Think SotG, but much more official.

I gave similar suggestion back in the begging of October (like a week before the collaborative development stuff were announced):

Here is a suggestion:
If you want any kind of two-way communication, first you have to deliver something. To communicate with us (and we with you), firstly, there have to be something to communicate about. Look at the last few State of the Game episodes – every question is dodged with “can’t talk about this at the moment” or “it’s on the table” or “it’s coming soon”. That’s the worst type communication if I ever heard one.
You already have a regular stream before every patch, why don’t you use it to host few State of the Game episodes yourselves? Of course, invite some of the top players, ask them questions about your feature plans, some suggestions, etc. Make it the other way around.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Fill-Us-in-on-your-progress-ideas/3001511

So I hope there is still time for you to consider about the way you communicate with the community… I know about the policy for “not talking about things, that ain’t ready”, but for the past year and few months, all it does it hurting the game and the players. It’s about time you change that policy, even if are small adjustments…

Josh Davis.6015:

Hey Blackhawk,

We agree with your points on rewards, progression, and especially the bit about ‘standing out’ with titles/gear, etc. These are all things we’re working on addressing. Next week we’ll be giving out a ton of information on what we’re going to do in the short-term (think up to the end of the year) and what we’re going to be implementing next year.

To think that you are giving the very same “empty” answers, you were so much against back when hosting SotG, doesn’t it feel like you’ve fallen pretty low, my friend?

As I’ve said it almost every other thread:

More Manpower working on basic sPvP systems, like matchmaking and ladder (for kittten’s sake, after a whole year, the ladder still displays only 1000 players, everyone else is in some %s and there is no search)

*Working matchmaking and leaderboards
*Players being rewarded for their time spent in sPvP in general (some glory, basic skins, achievements)
*Players being more rewarded for their time spent in Rated matches (more achievements, better looking skins, titles)
*Players being even more rewarded for their position in the ladder (unique skins, titles, finishers, icons(like the star for 100% world completion)) (once the first bullet point is accomplished)

*Templates! and the ability to remove single points from trait lines
*Cross region play – EU and US playing together – like, you know, Guild Wars 1)
*GUILD KITTEN CAPES with different trims and stuff – like, you know, the ORIGINAL GUILD WARS!

Justin ODell.9517:

I’ve gotten a few PMs about this, so I’ll post what I was going to say to each of them here.

There are only three things being considered in the current matchmaking; 1) your MMR, 2) how long you’ve been waiting, and 3) who is available to play with.

1) MMR is not broken, it works exactly as it should and I’ve personally verified this. Yes, we want to place new players on the curve better, but simply lowering the default rating will only work if the curve has already been established. As a reminder, everyone’s MMR is being reset on the 29th, so that takes changing the default off of the table.

If you’re trying to gauge the correctness of the MMR based off the leaderboards, you will very likely fail because decay makes things much less predictable and consistent. Even more so now that we have increased the frequency of the decay calculation.

For details on the MMR system we use, please go here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glicko_rating_system

We’re open to suggestions regarding other ways of handling MMR.

We’re discussing ways to place new players more appropriately, and we’re open to suggestions in this area as well. The only thing that is off the table right now is splitting the user base, we can’t do this until it gets larger. We have several plans being implemented right now that are aimed at increasing the number of players.

2) When we scan through the queue to find matches, we use your ratings deviation. As time goes on we gradually increase your ratings deviation to increase the odds that we’ll find a match for you. This does lead to lower quality matches, but its very common to do this on the assumption that a lower quality match is better than no match at all.

If you’re on the outer edges of the ratings curve, this is very likely the culprit for why you’re being matched with players with a much different skill level than your own.

3) Related to #2. During low concurrency you will likely need to wait a longer amount of time because there are fewer people around your skill level, increasing the odds #2 will kick in and you’ll get a lower quality match.

That said, a few people that are on the high rating side are upset because they are now being grouped with lower skill players. Before the matchmaking change these higher rated players would be grouped together and they would just stomp the other team. Now they are being shuffled around on teams, which means no more lopsided matches in general. You can still get a lopsided by chance just because of who was available at the time, but even when this happens the match is still much more even than before the changes went in.

I guess that’s the long way of saying “Oh, sorry guys, but for the last year we screwed PvP so much, that now there ain’t enough players for you to get matched up with”.

With all the “decay” talks recently, and everyone going crazy about it, I was thinking – wouldn’t ladder seasons and often resets deal with the inactive players more efficiently, then the current decay system?
I mean, with a proper matchmaking and leaderboards, inactive players will be dropped out from one season/reset to the next, and if they want to “climb” back and stay there up, they will actually be required to play actively once again. While the already active players will have the chance to climb even higher then their standing in the previous ladder.
StarCraft 2 does it really well with often seasonal resets and everyone is required to play a single placement match before going back in the ladder with his MMR adjusted.

So, wouldn’t it be better if Anet just stop wasting their already little time they put into sPvP by fixing a broken and useless system. Just make sure the matchmaking and ladderboards are working correctly (and I mean correctly!) and apply some sort of seasons with often (partial) resets. There are plenty of games out there with seasons, that do not require so much effort put into decaying someone’s ladder position, while his MMR stays unchanged, thus rendering the decay useless after his next match.

Brew Pinch.5731:

I remember when people played PvP games for fun rather than “rewards”.

2k hours for half the price of a new Xbox game… That’s some serious value.

They’re working on a new sPvP reward system, so hopefully that solves the problem.

Good luck in whatever games you hit up until then!

My total in gw2 for now is 3.5k hours and counting… 2k were off the pvp alone. And if you read my last post, you will see it’s not about price per hour value, or for the rewards alone. It’s for the satisfaction, fun factor and initiative to play the pvp. And they aren’t gone, because they were absent in the first place to begin with.
Looks like it was my bad to begin the thread with a complain about the rewards, but that’s the minor thing, and was intended to get my stage up and going.

Hey Select! I know that mate, thanks!
Maybe, that’s even one of the reasons I haven’t seen in in the mists for some time now… the same reasons, you wont see me either.
But I’m always up for some WvWing… want to work towards the season key, and get disappointing with the rewards, first handed.

CntrlAltDefeat.1465:

I can understand that frustration. I enjoyed achieving my glad titles in gw1..when you needed ten straight wins to get 1/20 the point needed..you had a goal with markers. I have reached mid 30’s now, but I only ever play 3-4 games before i leave again because in PvE I have titles, a legeandary to work on, WvW top position on my server to maintain, living story to watch develop, dungeons to run, guild rush to enter..in Pvp all I have is grind for stuff I don’t care for that benefits me in no other way.

Exactly! In GW1 all you got for PvPing were few words under your name(ie titles) and if you were good enough – 3 different trims for you guild cape. Everything else was (and still is, because I play it regularly) pure enjoyment. But kitten , them titles really meant something. Now I’m rank50, and you are rank 60+, but noone kittening cares, because the majority of scrubs were just allowed to farm to r60 in a few weeks.
The rewards and skins are the least problem here. It’s the lack of enjoyment and satisfaction for playing 15mins long pvp match, and all you get is frustration because of the things I listed above(broken matchmaking, mmr, ladders, mistmatched match, afker, leavers, leechers, trolls and no way to deal with them, spectating, balance, build diversity, rewarding – be it glory/skins or just satisfaction, and mostly – the absolute lack of care from Anet towards the PvP, which angers me most, seeing how GW1 was a PvP game above everything else)
So no, I’m not burned out, I’m just got really kitten ed about being treated like a third-rate customer, because “up there” they don’t care at all (and if you want some kind of a prove of that, you can go in and check some of the more “harsh” threads in this section, where devs (Allie, Chap, Jon etc) have discussions with players (me included) and when a “uncomfortable” question(for example, one of my favorites, the “why we have loading screens in the middle of the match”) is asked in respectful and constructive way, they abandon the whole discussion and forget/ignore it at all costs).

Junkpile.7439:

I remember when i played counter strike beta and 1.6 and never got any skins or rewards.

I have never being a CS player, because I was too busy playing Unreal Tournament ’99. And there, when I was running flags on Face, while the whole enemy team was after me, I could score the flag or die, because I was skillful or lacking. Same thing in DeathMatch, when you are at the top of the score board, you know that you did good. And ,at least I, felt satisfied about it, and that was my reward for playing 10-15 mins of a UT match. If you really meant what you said, you will completely understand me as well.

… continued…

Also the so called dishonorable system (which worked perfectly in GW1, have no idea why they don’t want to reuse it and instead they are trying to reinvent the wheel) is so messed up, it’s not even funny. At the moment you need to afk for 3 minutes in a rated match to get ONE dishonorable stack for 72 hours. Leaving a match will give you one stack for 72 hours as well. So what? You need FIVE such stacks to get banned of rated play for the (wait for it…) remaining duration of your FIRST stack! Basically , if you want to be jerk, every 2 days you can ruin up to 4 matches and don’t even get remotely close to being punished about it. And there is no way of reporting players/teammates for being afk, leeching, trolling the match, leaving etc, it’s all up to this useless system. It’s beyond me, why they just don’t use the GW1 system(or something similar to it).

The other big, big issue for the past half an year is the complete lack of balance and the stupid condi meta, that noone asked about, noone wants it, yet it still in the game, almost untouched… Same goes for all the petting zoo, and passive >>> active playstyles, that may not get changed “soon”, if ever. For example, I love how an ele player have to be like playing on a piano only to stay alive, while a 5-signet warrior can just spam earthshakers every few seconds and will do much, much better for his team, then the ele. Or how a ranger have to get a bunch of spirits, dumping all his utilities, because they are all lacking… Or (maybe my favorite) – that it took almost a year after release for warriors to be even playable in sPvP, and now how they are all almighty powerful.
It’s just pathetic how they used to say things like “we don’t want to do knee-jerk balance overhauls every couple of patches, we prefer periodically applying small changes and touches” (u can find quotes like that in almost every state of the game video), and now – out of the sudden, they are all about pushing kitten changes every 2 months or so. Even doing a balance preview thread, just shortly after the last balance patch… like, seriously?!

I can continue on and on and on about all the problems surrounding this part of the game, like the loading stuck bug that comes from time to time, or like “why the hell, do we have a loading screen in the middle of our #esport game, while the guy spectating gloryfarmers doesn’t?!” and other ridiculous and really annoying things, but then I’ll be wasting my (and yours) time way too much now.

Signing off,
a deeply disappointed GW1 player…

Finally, I’m done with the sPvP in GW2 for the coming months (or years, depends how much time they take to fix it, if ever). After ~2k hours spent in the mists, 3011 tourny game played and I just reached R50, was in the top 100s solo and team ladders, before the reset and mmr rework, and I just cannot be more sure of the fact that Anet gives exactly Z-E-R-O kittens about the sPvP mode. It’s just insulting.

Spent thousands of hours playing it to this point, and when I finally reached it (legitimately, only through tournaments/rated games, with little to no hotjoin/custom games, don’t talk about farming them), I cannot get my kittening reward – the light champion’s(winged) armor set, because it’s a ridicules mystic toilet recipe (i.e. i have to spend a fraction of my tons of useless glory for chest, from which to get tons of repeatable and useless items, that I have to salvage in the hopes of receiving the needed material – bear token, as for the other arcane powders, orbs, slivers etc – I have kittening dedicated TWO of my bank TABS to them).

I knew about the state of the game since I reached r30, like a year ago, but I guess it took me way too long to go from r40 to r50, that and all the recent pve/wvw improvements just made me forget/blinded me about the kitten poor condition of the sPvP, which haven’t changed much from the very first CLOSED media sneakpeak preview of the game back in feb 2012…

I mean, seriously? Almost two years now, and we are still looking at the very same, ridicules glory/chest/reward system we have now. I can dig out some press preview videos from back then, if someone is doubting how pathetic this looks. Ok, to be fair, back then every vendor offered the exact armors for said rank, which in the second public beta test were replaced by these kittening chests, because players “love to open chests”, remember? Well, half my inventories in all my characters are full of stacks and stacks of chests, and atm they even “reward” us with TWO reward chests, and we all know of players with milions of glory, tons and tons of arcane stuff and reward chests. We need some chests, to store our award chests in.

Unfortunate, rewarding isn’t the only problem here. We are talking about essential things/systems, that have to be TOP PRIORITY, like matchmaking, spectating (a tournament/rated plays, who actually spectates a bunch of randoms farming hotjoin?), ladders, punishments just missing or not working properly/at all.

Matchmaking and ladders were released back in march, and half an year later, after all the “pointing out” from the community about the flawed systems, Anet just now realized and admitted that there is something wrong in MMRs/ladders and started to applying fixes/resets.

…to be continued…

It’s being some time now since the changes to how PvP “rewards” glory and rank points, so I guess it’s that time again for me to rant a little of why Anet should think a little before doing stupid (and even kittttten) moves, like this one.
We all know of the stupid skyhammer glory farm that was (and still going to some extend) going, and that there had to be done something about it. Well, looks like because they couldn’t figure about how to deal with the problem, after all it took them few months to do something about it, they decided to f up the whole system.
More rewarding they say. Suree… imagine one of the following scenarios:

You are patiantly waiting 3-5-10 mins for solo/team que pop and instead of afk in the mists, you want to play some custom games in the meantime. You do join a game and start owning ppl, getting all these cool yellow markers for glory/rank points. Unfortunately enough, your Q pops up in the middle of the game and even if you do wait the whole 1:30 timer, you still cannot finish your current game, so basecaly you just lost every “progress” made in the past, say, 10 minutes. Why should you bother in the first place, when there is a big chance to just waste your time that way?

Or the more ironic scenario: That change was made mostly to counter glory farmers, but as fate would have it, now you can just go, get 10-20 points by capping a control point and then just afk for the rest of the game, and you will still get rewarded ~150 glory/rank and additional 75 if your team wins. Cool, huh?

Summing the two results, that it’s twice more “rewarding” (as far as glory/rank can be a reward) to just cap a point and then afk 10 mins, instead of waiting 10mins in a Q and then play for another 10-15…
And while the farmers continue to farm, the regular players got their only , somehow relevant, progress meter nerfed by half, at least…

The only positive thing in that stupid decision is that now control point bunkers may get more average glory/rank points.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Actually, since the launch of the game, the PvP team has only grown in size. The problem is, that we’ve started doing 2 week releases of PvE content, which makes the PvP side look sorely lacking. One thing to think about is that PvP is a much different beast from PvE. We can’t just churn out content (events, bosses, dungeons, etc.) the way the PvE teams do. We are developing systems. They are using existing systems to spawn content. They are two very very different beasts.

I’ve seen comments that the PvP team is stubborn. Sorry, but in this case I am actually going to stubbornly (couldn’t resist) say that is not true. We are extremely receptive to feedback, but we also have realistic goals with the systems we are implementing. Systems take time to develop.

As always, we really appreciate the feedback and love you all have for the game.

Btw – Banning players is a simple solution, but not a preferable or sustainable one.

Sorry Allie, but support is not measured only with added content.
One of the main problem is, that you (not You in particular, but ArenaNet or the PvP team) just are not responding to critical issues on a timely manner, if you do so at all…
I can go way, way back to the old “loading screen stuck bug” which was a major problem for the whole game, but mostly for the PvP scene, because of the ridicules large number of times needed to load things in a PvP match (look at the P.S. about further looking into this issue as well). Yet, it took 2-3 weeks or so to get it fixed and it still speared few times later down the road!

Same thing with the tournament reward chests, or specifically – the lack of them in the days after the game’s release. Or the AFKers and leavers from rated matches, later tried to be fixed with the “dishonorable” system, which have its numbers so far off, it just ain’t working in a favor of noone.

Same story now, with the glory farming. It’s being reported long ago, yet you haven’t settled on a idea how to fix it, talk about actually fixing it…
At the moment (and it’s being like that for far too long), everything about the state of the PvP feels exactly like this.
Right now, we don’t need new content pumped into the PvP, but we sure do need developer/moderation control and support over such problems and issues.

P.S. One of my all time favorite question, which no one have (being able to) answer me is this:
On the Legacy of Foefire map(it’s on all the maps, this one is just a lot easier to explain!). Why can I instantly jump from the camera above the Blue Lord to the camera above the Red Lord (basically the two opposite ends of the map) while spectating without any loadings, but BUT! I am presented with a 2-5-10 seconds(!) loading screen _when I use the spawn base waypoint just outside of my base?!

Allie Murdock.8152:

Gandarel.5091:

But on the otherhand, you barely do anything to prevent it. Slow mitigation is nothing.

It’s not as simple as hitting a switch. This issue has been one that we have had several discussions over. The problem is that many of the solutions are either too complex, or they hurt a portion of our player base, etc.

Also, we can’t say when/if we have a solution to the issue, because when we do we see a huge increase in players abusing it (at the beginning of the month, I said that we had a fix to help mitigate it, and we saw the numbers skyrocket).

You will just have to trust that we will protect the integrity of the game as soon as possible.

This just doesn’t stop to amaze me… It’s been more then a year of mostly negative feedback from the PvP community, yet your support for the PvP is the only thing not “skyrocketing”…. It’s like you don’t care at all.
Forgive me, but that’s exactly how it looks from the side.

Because my post was too long, I will add this here:

For anyone confused/interested in what they are talking about,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/GW2-January-PvP-Promise-BROKEN/first#post3004095

As I want to be fair to everybody, I had no idea that such thread/discussion existed. And with that said – I DO NOT accuse anyone for “breaking their promise(s)”!
My both posts here are all based on my personal experience as an non-stop Guild Wars player since 2005 and as an silent(for the most part) reader of the Dev Traker.

ColinJohanson.2394:

If you go back and read the January state of the game, and July state of the game threads, you’ll find most of what you said above actually isn’t true. We have delivered on the things in those threads we said we would do. It’s totally reasonable to say you’d like us to do more, but I don’t think it’s fair to say we’re saying we’re going to do X and haven’t delivered on any of it. We’ve only recently made any promises about actively working on building game types, and everything we’ve said we were going to do back in January, we have already released.

…
As a reminder:

In January, we said we would be doing custom arenas, leader boards, and spectator mode. We did all of those things.

In July, we said we’re going to do a tournament at PAX, have separate solo and team queues for PvP, add ways to get you progressing towards legendaries in PvP, and updating the reward systems for PvP. We’ve accomplished half of those goals already, and hope to have made some real progress towards rewards/legendaries before the end of the year, which still has 2 months to go. In working on rewards, we decided we wanted to do something that’s very work intensive and much cooler for PvP players, so not all of it will be done this year.

Actually, to be fair, my post sounded a bit more dramatic then it was intended.
You guys delivered custom arenas, team and solo matchmaking and ladderboards. That is something I should have mentioned. So my apologies for that, it was not intended.

But that does not change my point one bit. To have a solid argument, I opened GuildWars2Guru’s twitch channel and re-watched the first 2 episodes from November 2012 and February 2013 and as anyone can see and hear, every single feature mentioned ~24 minutes into the first episode from November. Basically, at the 24:40 mark, Chap is taking a list and mentions every single feature. Yes, to this point, you have delivered more then half that list. Some of the features have been scraped, like the major daily and monthly tournaments. And some have been bring as new and exiting in forum posts just days ago.

The problem? Mostly it is the time taking to release these features. I really don’t want to count the months, because we all know that you “do not give out dates until it’s solid enough, so we don’t get disappointed”, but to prove my point I’ll do just that.

I’ll starting with that famous PvP blog(tip of the iceberg) that took a month or so of "soon"s to get posted. The blog post went up in early October and it mentioned almost everything we are talking about here. So, starting from October 2012, we are going through six months to get the first sights of matchmaking and ladders, released in late March 2013. Then a month later custom arenas and spectator mode are released in late April 2013. And after another 4 months the final touches to ladderboards and solo matchmaking are available.
That’s more then 10 months needed to release these features. And not to mention most players think that half of these feature should have been in the game from the start.
And now, since the august patch, that bring soloQ, there are exactly Z-E-R-O changes to PvP what-so-ever! (not counting the 3-5 skill changes to rangers and, I think, necros, because they were so badly needed, half the players would have quit if it was not temporary fixed)
Even the sooo awaited balance patch, have been delayed for months after PAX. And it better delivers A WHOLE LOT next week!

So, by the end of the year, we may or may not get something on reward/progression. And then in January’s blog post, we will be teased with exactly this “new” reward system and we will be told to expect it by the end of the first half of the year.

Your support about PvP is so slow, it borders with non-existent. In the whole months on end of production of these features, whatever we ask you about, all we get is “sorry guys, we can’t talk about it at the moment”. And then suddenly you ask for more communication? Like, what can we possible communicate about, when we already know the answer to all our questions?

It feels like all you do is tossing us small bones so we don’t starve to death, while promising us there is a big meaty steak in the making.

Also, I want to mention another big contradiction. All this time, the PvP team in every form of communication have said that they want to make small and little changes to the overall balance. And now, as I’ve said, we are waiting month after month for a big balance sweep. Doesn’t that feel wrong?

In the case that this post stays unanswered, I will be sure to start my own little crusade in these Collaborative Development threads.

Justin ODell.9517:

So what would you like to see?

A “ready” button that appears before the match is created, and if someone doesn’t hit it within some time-window the match is aborted and both teams are returned to the queue? Perhaps the non-responding players kick out of the team, or kicked out of the entire queue?

One way would be to check your heartbeat every so often with a “are you still here” button, but that would be kind of annoying. It also doesn’t address the players who leave because they don’t like the team they are paired with.

We could just ramp up the dishonor system.

I know the team has their own thoughts on this, but I’d really like to see if someone here can come up with something awesome.

I have no idea why you want to reinvent the wheel.
Click for awesomeness:
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Dishonorable

ColinJohanson.2394:

We’re just starting work on a number of bigger systems/features for PvP, and as is our policy until they are far enough along that we won’t throw them out or change them massively we won’t talk about them quite yet. We’re working down a list of big stuff though, and there are more folks working on PvP related projects right now than ever.

And as a reminder, things we’ve already said we’re working on currently that are far enough along for us to discuss are:

- Fixing rewards and progression in PvP to make the game type much more rewarding.
- Investigating new game types for PvP.
- Improving the game and experience for the core base in general to make it more fun for more casual or casual-competitive gamers to play PvP.
- Improving and continuing to support and grow the competitive scene.

In January, things should hopefully be nailed down enough we should be able to go into much greater detail on the other systems and features we’re working on right now on top of the stuff listed above.

Sorry Colin, but at this point, no matter how hard you guys try to delude us with such “empty” news, it’s just wont work anymore.
Basically, since one of the very first State of the Game episodes a whole year ago, we have heard Every. Single. One of your “coming soon” changes.

We know that you want to make PvP more rewarding and more fun. We know that you are looking into new game types (since beta!). We know you want to support both casual and competitive players. But wanting is nothing like doing so.

We know that you want to communicate with the community, but truth is that since at least half an year, every “red” post in the PvP sub-forum, every developer interview and Q&A about PvP is just the very same, hollow stuffs we have been hearing for the past year (and more!).

Nothing has changed. You are yet to make PvP more rewarding and fun. You are still looking into new game types. You are yet to support the competitive scene(or whatever has left of it). Though, one thing have changed – A lot less people are listening to your communication and a lot more just quit.

Here is a sugestion:
If you want any kind of two-way communication, first you have to deliver something. To communicate with us (and we with you), firstly, there have to be something to communicate about. Look at the last few State of the Game episodes – every question is dodged with “can’t talk about this at the moment” or “it’s on the table” or “it’s coming soon”. That’s the worst type communication if I ever heard one.
You already have a regular stream before every patch, why don’t you use it to host few State of the Game episodes yourselfs? Of course, invite some of the top players, ask them questions about your feature plans, some suggestions, etc. Make it the other way around.

Heh, that post turned kinda long… sadly no one will give it enough attention to make any difference at all.

BillFreist.1527:

Don’t expect double FPS overnight . Also, the changes I mentioned will mostly only be noticeable in combat or in large groups of creatures/players.

-Bill

As I said in my previous post, with a 8core cpu, there are still moments in large groups of players (especially in wvw), where my FPS is a single digit. So, gaining even just 5-7 more fps with a said update/patch will technically double our FPS.

Behellagh.1468:

How many of your precious 8 cores does WoW use or any other MMO you may have loaded? How many are Dx11 only? How many with both Dx9 and Dx11 run significantly better when you check the Dx11 box? Not just look better but also have a faster frame rate with the same settings? How many are 64-bit clients?

It is true, that I am yet to see ANY game (be it a mmo or anything else) utilize all 8 cores at 100%. But even if they do use only less then 25%, the frame rate is always in the 60s and the usage graph is no where near so “spiky” as you see for GW2. I’m sorry, the jpg compression blurred the fps number in my screenshot, it says 26.2 FPS! That’s the only game I’m seeing frame rates below 60. And I play a lot of games, it’s no problem for me to post similar screenshots from Battlefield 3, Witcher 2, A Realm Reborn, where even in the largest places full of players, my fps is skyrocketing in the 100s.
So yea, it’s not easy task to do, but given that GW2 is the only game I’m playing with single digit frame rate at times, speaks enough.

ColinJohanson.2394:

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

You defensively need more folks working to improve performance. Because since release, hence, since the betas, the performance even on high-end PCs is bad. And when talking about WvW it’s extremely terrible. Just check the CPU/GPU usage and the framerates in the pic below… Looks like an 8 (eight!) core flagship cpu clocked at 4.6GHz isn’t enough…

It’s not random bug. Looks like their rating algorithm is broken when it comes to “empty” matches, where you play alone or with only 1-2 more players.
I got something similar to starcraft – had joined a game, but midgame got an update. After the restart I was 2v3, so I lost and dropped from top~300(to wich I got with ELEMENTALIST in this kittening meta!) to the 80%s in a single game. After that it just snowballed to 60%s because I got 6-7 bad matchups in a row…
Hope for a fix, but doubt they will do anything about it, so I’ll have to reroll some meta build and carry the r20 teams i get…

I’ve encountered similar problem to starcraft’s. Yesterday got an update midgame and after the restart I replayed the match 2v3, lost it and dropped from top~300 to the 80%s in a single game.
Didn’t notice until today when I was always matched with some r20s, who can’t use their brains and I just snowballed to the 60%s in few loses in a row… Really annoying.

Evan Lesh.3295:

Allied player icons will be fixed in the next hotfix! Apologies for the break!

We’ll watch the feedback for the new minimap to determine what other changes to make and directions to take. Keep in mind not every map has had its art updated. We focused primarily on maps being played at PAX.

Minimap’s icons are still broken. Whenever someone dies after you respawn, you no more see his icon.
On top of that mesmer’s clones are just standing, doing nothing, so that broke too.

It’s beyond me why there are still loadings in between the spawns, when in spectator mode you can jump from any location without any hitchups…

If 500:87 with ranks 1, 5 and 22 on the losing team seems normal, then I wish you all have such games, but not having my luck and be placed with the beginners (which weren’t supposed to be Qed in high ranks, if I recall correctly from the patch few weeks ago).
Also, I could give you the names of the other 2 players to ask them how much fun they had.
Oh, and ranks measures the time spent PvPing, be it in tourneys or hotjoin. It’s not indicative of one’s skill, but at least shows that he is more experienced.

Huygens, follow your own advices.

Because I don’t know how to say it constructive, i’ll just show it, so see attachment… and that’s not even half of the games I played today…
My personal favorites are the first two “games”

Evan Lesh.3295:

Sort of like GW1 districts?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/District

That will be too cool to be true…
Or are you just teasing us only to get our hopes up and crush them?