Guild Wars 2

Valkyriez.6578:

I just can’t believe so may people think that improving game balance should be the number one priority?

Pretty sure “class balance” also includes “spec balance” within classes.

My interpretation of the results: Inter-class balance isn’t bad, intra-class balance is god-awful.

I think the survey really needed to have a question or 2 on downed state – should it exist in PVP, and something about build diversity.

staff and scepter are just plainly badly designed.

Staff is weak because 19 of the 20 skills are AOE and earth #1, the only single-target skill, is weak, which pidgeonholes staff into support or tower/zerg humping.

Scepter is weak because it’s really predictable and because Dragon’s Tooth is a spell that – bizarrely – has been designed to miss.

You have a spammable blast finisher on SB #2, and spammable area weakness…

I feel the same. Balance in this game is appalling. In 6 months they haven’t fixed kitten either.

Dragon’s Tooth is the perfect example of incompetence. It’s a skill that’s designed to miss. Ridiculous.

Downed state is the reason why I don’t sPVP in this game, and why I can’t really take s/tPVP seriously as a competitive format. DS is great in PVE but it shouldn’t exist in competitive PVP if you expect people to take GW2 PVP seriously.

The rally mechanic is one of the worst aspects of DS, so yes, it should be removed. The whole impact of DS on PVP build and outcomes should be greatly reduced as easy, consequence-free rezzing is one of the main reasons why bunkers exist.

Instead of DS, people should just have more HP across the board. That way, players could play the actual, full 10-skill combat game instead of some silly 4-skill mini-game.

IMO, Downed State is one of the key underlying reasons why sPVP has fallen flat.

I could summarise why sPVP has completely tanked: it’s boring.

Lack of choice in builds, unoriginal format, flow-destroying down-state, amongst other detractions.

spammable stealth is the problem. revealed debuff could stand to be 1 sec longer. i’d willingly trade some lolstealth for more shadowsteps and/or group support options.

digiowl.9620:

Draknar.5748:

digiowl.9620:

I just wish. The only way for an elementalist player to keep up with the DPS rat race is to constantly swap atunements.

And that’s a problem because….you have to try a bit harder? I think most can agree elementalist is a harder class to play than others (such as warrior and guardian)

So what you have to switch attunements on the fly to have decent DPS, I honestly feel that was the whole idea behind elementalists and being unable to switch weapons in combat but rather 4 elemental attunements.

Thing is that you more or less need to dump 20-30 points into arcane to keep up with the joneses, limiting the amount of build flexibility available. End result is that most elementalists are played like thieves in light armor, dual daggers and evasive arcana.

This. All the ranged weapons of Ele do not feel well put together, and/or are just plainly badly-designed, eg: dragon’s tooth, a spell that is designed to miss its target. 19/20 skills on staff are AOE, and the 1/20 skill that is single-target is weak, which makes the weapon really bad for general purpose use, and useless for 1v1.

This is the true reason why you see so many D/D Eles – its really the only good weapon we have.

Rukia.4802:

Stealth should have never made its way into GW, assassin was fine in GW1 with shadowsteps.

ANet just wants to be like every other typical MMO with a stealth class, personally combo attacks on my sin were 10x funner. I don’t even enjoy stealth as a mechanic myself, even though I main a thief.

I’d much prefer it just be removed from the game, avoiding all QQ and balance issues that comes with it… but we all know stealth wouldn’t just be removed, it should have never happened to begin with.

You might think culling will fix stealth but it won’t, you’ll still be dealing with thief being invisible 50% of the time or more. It’s bad design, but it isn’t going anywhere.

IMO, mesmers are even more screwed up with clones… I don’t even get bothered facing stealth. With the absolutely horrible targeting system in this game it’s sometimes impossible to target nearest player when spamming tab does nothing for me half the time, or clicking on a name targets the wrong target, or simply does nothing. Pvp shouldn’t be random confusion.

Agree completely. Stealth shouldn’t have been included in the first place, let alone spammable stealth, and I too play a thief. I think the whole Steal mechanic is pretty boring too, I’d rather have Stealth as the class mechanic, and make it last much longer (~10sec) but have a 10sec CD on reuse, then add shadowsteps/disables for damage mitigation. Stealth is totally skill-less.

Linkisdead.9647:

HOW THE kitten CAN MY EAGLE NOT FLY FIFTEEN FEET UP AND HIT HIM???

Lazy, bad developers. Of course bird pets should be able to fly, otherwise remove birds.

A true failure by Anet here, an unforgivable kittening failure. How you can even fathom nerfing ranger significantly and buffing ele/thief to be considered “balance” is beyond me.

Ele have been crying out for specs other than D/D to be brought up to par. The buffs to Ele you speak of are to focus, which noone uses and is only a little better than ranger O/H axe.

I agree though, they are a terrible balance team… what’s the point of still balancing solely around sPVP when that is by far the least-played aspect of the game?

looks like a good place to treb mendons IMO, brb.

leman.7682:

OP talked with the devs on Skype after Xeph wrote his wonderful (now deleted) topic.

The devs convinced OP to write this topic, hoping his position would calm the community.

The OP obliged.

Community is calm.

Mission accomplished.

The <1% of the game still playing stPVP might be content (for today) but virtually none of the changes materially affect WVW, where the real PVP happens.

This patch does nothing to address the real issues the game faces which is an extreme lack of intra-class balance amongst weapons/skills/traits. If anything, thee changes will push more Eles towards tankish D/D, because any other spec is just objectively worse.

ensoriki.5789:

Balance isn’t pvp exclusive.
Every area in this game professions are struggling to have more builds.
They need to get on this.

Well, they’ve been studiously ignoring player arguments since BWE1, I wouldn’t get your hopes up. I think the best we can hope for is the abysmal sPVP participations rates precipitate a change in the members of the design team.

I can’t bear playing Ele without 20+ in arcane just for the attunement CD reduction.

have you reported it? nothing will happen if it’ not properly reported as a bug. if it’s not in the release notes, it’s a bug.

Astralporing.1957:

mjharrison.3209:

Ansultares.1567:

Astralporing.1957:

Making everyone be equally miserable is definitely not fine.

Ah, the joys of socialism.

Scandinavian countries are socialist and consistently rank in the world’s top 10 most livable and most developed countries in the world with the happiest people. Stop watching Faux News.

Nope, they are capitalist countries with strong social mechanics. That is not the same – in fact, there is a world of difference between those two.

Um, I lived in denmark… it’s a socialist democracy. Compared to the US, all of scandanavia is considerably further left than even the leftist elements of the democrats. eg: high taxes, fully government paid healthcare, education and social welfare from birth to death. They are as socialist as socialist gets.

0/10/0/30/30 ele is the gold standard of how everyone else should be.

This exactly. The design of D/D Ele is the standout of all the specs/classes i’ve played yet. It would be a travesty to kill it. They simply need to bring up the level of traits across the board and allow for more build depth through trait/skill interactions.

Ansultares.1567:

Heijincks.9267:

Anyway, increased hours played over the past two months isn’t especially noteworthy; by December, hours played as tracked by Xfire had dropped something like 90% from the release. I know fanboys curse Xfire, but its proven reliable across multiple MMOs I’ve played.

XFire shows it’s been pretty consistent over the past month.
http://www.xfire.com/games/gw2?

google trends also shows the same trend as xfire – a steady loss since release with a gentle plateau in the past month or 2. Certainly not an increase as they claim.

http://www.google.com/trends/explore?hl=en#q=gw2&date=10%2F2012%206m&cmpt=q

Ansultares.1567:

Astralporing.1957:

Making everyone be equally miserable is definitely not fine.

Ah, the joys of socialism.

Scandinavian countries are socialist and consistently rank in the world’s top 10 most livable and most developed countries in the world with the happiest people. Stop watching Faux News.

Back on topic… I think it’s skills, not classes per se, that need the most balancing. Skills like 100b, kill shot, CnD-mug-BS, triple-shatter-BF-while-invulnerable that take 50%+ of full char HP in 1-2 button presses shouldn’t be in any PVP MMO worth a kitten

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

One of the major issues in GW1 was, after every skill rebalance and edit, there would be dozens of builds which would take advantage of the changes in order to pretty much trivialize things. There was often a blindness of how some subset of 200 skills would actually interact with each other when used in a certain combination. See “55 Monk”, the first case where interplay of skills off each other led to something entirely outside the power curve intended.
…
I think the idea was that they didn’t want to go down that road again of complexity, and having to keep up with all the options.

True but that’s what gave GW1 such depth and longevity. Instead of shaving a little of that depth off to make balancing easier they took a sledgehammer to it, to the point that within 2 months of release, the game feels really bland. All the classes and skills are virtually the same, and play virtually the same, only with minor variations. Where are the skills like soul barbs and fragility for example?

It doesn’t help that the game devs have been (rather arrogantly) asserting the whole game pop just needs to “learn to play” for 5 months, but the plethora of forums posts all saying the same thing, and the big drop in player numbers/participation (esp in sPVP) do not lie – the game/combat design is clearly sorely lacking depth & interest. Especially compared to GW1.

The game has lost a large number of players since launch but numbers appear to have stabilised in recent weeks. I wouldn’t expect a large influx of new players anytime soon, whether player numbers go back to declining or grow will be determined by whether Anet starts giving players what they’re asking for. They sure haven’t so far.

Distaste.4801:

Direct damage is currently better in probably 90% of situations. Perhaps if you’re fighting a high armor target with protection on and no condition removal, condition damage is better, but for everything else direct damage is better. The fact that people with condition damage almost have to stack precision to get another condition is just bad mechanics. There should be “on condition tick” sigils that have a chance on tick to proc another condition. Why ArenaNet is so focused on crit boggles my mind. Think outside the box! On hit sigils, On heal, On dodge, On stealth, on Block, On evade, etc. ArenaNet has had plenty of room to expand but they’ve kept most of the decent sigil effects in the on crit area.

This hits on one of the several fundamental reasons why this game is so poorly designed relative to GW1 – a lack of conditional effects/events.

GW1 had skills that procced on acquiring a condition, losing a condition, acquiring a hex, losing a hex, acquiring an enchantment, losing an enchantment, amongst others. The existence of skills like these allowed, for example, builds that were solely focused around the application and quick removal of (conditions/hexes/enchants) rather than the degen caused by the conditions themselves.

I don’t understand at all why the designers of GW2 decided to eliminate conditional effects in favour of straight damage skills. It goes to the heart of what made the GW1 skill system so great.

GW2 has more or less the same set of skills for each class that differ only in animation and CD. Traits are underwhelming and show a real lack of imagination. It’s boring.

So the new content requires grinding to unlock? I’m sensing a pattern here…

Fernling.1729:

Vasham.2408:

Fernling.1729:

Bellocchi.4593:

GW2 Dev team is struggling, and it’s sad to see.

They really are and it is.

They are but I disagree. It’s nice to see a company that produces below-par games to finally get what it deserves for screwing it’s customers. Is Bioware being shut down over the $300 million disaster that is SWTOR? Is Blizzard hurting over Diablo 3? No and no.

Arenanet thought they could screw their customers and get away with it. Who’s laughing now? Not Arenanet that’s for sure.

It scares me every time an mmo does bad. Other developers see this happen and are going to be hesitant when it comes to making a new mmo.

Maybe because MMO companies keep trying to re-make WOW… GW2 is just another WOW rehash, albeit a cleverly disguised one. Some of the classes/skills/traits are named after GW1 classes/skills, but that’s about where the legacy ends.

1) quality combat and skills design
2) choice
3) resource mechanics (energy)

Turbo Whale.1738:

D tooth is similar to hundred blades. they don’t balance hundred blades around the fact that it does 100k damage every 30 seconds if a warrior hits every single hit. They balance it on the fact that a 100b combo is difficult and rare to pull off and that a warrior will almost never get off a full 100b on an enemy.

Designing skills to miss a majority of the time is pretty much a textbook case of bad game design. At least 100b can do partial damage – DT sits there for seconds before doing full or zero damage – you can literally walk out of the blast radius, no need to dodge.

Arheundel.6451:

The only skill which I can live with atm is static field, I can find some partial use when blcoking gateways and forcing enemies into staying in the red circle, other than that gale need a buff asap, I can wait for a fix on US, but gale too UP

If I could change any 1 Ele skill it would be Dragon’s Tooth. Designing a skill that is intended to miss its target most of the time is just such bad gameplay design.

Well, the one thing I can say for sure is it’s the worst implementation of the (ranged) mage archetype of all the MMOs I’ve played. So many badly designed skills, useless traits, and limited options.

The problem with conjures is they lockout 20 skills and give you 5 new skills, which aren’t very compelling anyway.

Losing a utility slot so you can trade in 20 skills for 5 is a pretty bad deal.

I doubt I would use them even if they didn’t use up a utility slot.

It’s easy to maintain stealth indefinitely with a dagger offhand, a few traits, and a target to CnD on – I know because my thief does it.

As for Slic, he exploits to get into the keep but soloing the keep lord + 4 vet adds is pure CnD spam + sneak attack + caltrops.

leaving aside the sheer silliness of going invisible in plain sight of an opponent, the ability to chain stealth indefinitely via CnD is really bad design IMO. In WVW for instance you can just CnD a wall inside an enemy keep to stay hidden indefinitely, then go rez a downed mesmer and away you go.

When you can solo WVW keep lords thanks to infinite stealth, something is really broken:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6kc7RxKJ1lE

sPVP pop is very very low. they confirmed 3 mill box sales recently; and there are 100-400 sPVP players per server, so <10K sPVP across all servers, or < 0.3% of the game pop. If that isn’t “epic fail” status, I don’t know what is.

I tried it, it just isn’t fun. Things that make it unfun for me:

• downed state destroys the continuity of combat and is annoying on several levels.
• secondary mechanic like khylo treb, like DS, is annoying as it requires you to break combat to deal with
• repetitive
• severe intra-class imbalances, lack of build choice

WVW is more fun because of its sandbox nature, leading to unpredictability, and WVW supports a much much greater range of playstyles. I also find the quality of 1v1s/2v2s/5v5s to be way higher in WVW.

Sounds like a smaller version of Rift’s player-made rifts…

The main problem with the amulet system is that you only get 1 jewel, which severely limits your spec choices.

I still think it would be better to limit the choice of armours in WVW so one of the main causes of culling can be addressed at the same time as power creep.

style.6173:

Definitely increase the AOE limit. I want to see the end of stacking. It’s a simple change… if someone is in the red circle, they get hit.

This. This game has already dumbed-down situational awareness to a big red circle, there’s no real justification for limiting AOE to such an extent.

It’s also ridiculous that the best way to combat AOE damage in many cases is to stack with your zergling buddies in the red circle.

No AOE cap, no downed state in PVP zones.

Fella Feller.4936:

sPvP had an amulet + 5 jewels in BWE1, and this was reduced to an amulet and 1 jewel for good reason.

This is one of the many reasons why sPVP is failing hard.

Skill choice is already very limited, why put a low limit on gear/stat combinations as well?

One of the reasons WVW has such big problems with culling is all the different textures and models in use – better to create a range of new WVW-specific armours (with earned ranks) that is identical in stats and then allow ranked access to WVW-specific runes and sigils (with WVW-specific bonuses, eg: carry 5 more supply).

Infinite-use no-CD environment weapons that stun.

Just another item on a long list of terrible game design decisions.

We are definitely keen but concerned about the quality of WVW in general for when no groups are out roaming. In t1 there is already an active (albeit sparse) 5man scene.

People are only talking about Eles because Eles are forced into bunker specs in the current game due to terribly designed Ele utility skills and traits. I’m quite sure once you bunker the hell out of other classes, the base low armour and HP of Ele will drag it down a few notches as an orb runner.

working as intended IMO

GW2 art > animations >>>>> combat/skill design

JQ is the bandwagon server for low-skill zergling guilds, it’s to be expected. Enjoy the easy lootz.

L1 camps could be a little tougher but upgraded camps should be much tougher.

I’d like to see players be able to change the composition of supply camps (eg: more ranged defense, more melee, +siege, etc).

I think all levels of supply camp should include 1+ siege weapons.

warrior is the only class i’ve played where there’s been > 1 decent weapon option that didn’t have some braindead drawback.

the only thing i’d change is MH axe could use a gap closer/leap as #3.

I find guardians or tanky warriors the best. Being able to lead the battle charge and soak damage is a big advantage.

Also, Ele requires a lot of concentration to perform well, which conflicts with needing to read the battlefield to know whether to push, retreat, flank or portal, check the map, etc. The big pro of (staff) Ele as commander IMO is the CC & support at your disposal.

felivear.1536:

Boomstin.3460:

I’m always dissapointed when profession balance and bug fixing seem to be very low on priority. I’d vote for fixing the current game somewhat before focusing on new shiny stuff.

I hear this from a lot of players, but balance is actually not bad in this game at all. There are a few builds that can use work, but overall, each profession is in a good place. I think features that bring in more players and keep them there are currently paramount. But, that’s just me.

The classes are far from balanced when you consider different skill levels and effort:result – they admitted as much in the video, eg: thief and warrior are OP at early game levels but not at all at higher skill levels. This kind of class imbalance is still a problem.

Med.6150:

- Downed state being more important than anything else in terms of fighting. Why is this acceptable?

Or why it’s a good idea to suspend the flow of combat to play some 4-skill mini-game that follows a completely different set of rules than the main combat.

Not to mention how DS is the root cause of so many of the games problems and is definitely contributing to ppl not wanting to sPVP at all…

DS is such a big barrier to entry to PVP as no other games have it and I really think the impact of DS and whether it is a net positive for the game and PVP ought to be at least discussed.

Saweth You Him.9047:

WvW only abilities based on rank is garbage if they give a player any advantage over another. It has never worked in the past. It won’t work here.

Actually it worked great in DAOC, which is the game that GW2 WVW is based on.

Outstanding design mistakes in GW2:

• fixed weapon skills
• weak elites
• weak traits, imbalanced traits
• dropping the elite capture system
• removal of energy as a resource (and energy management & denial skills)
• lack of conditional effects, eg: skill effects based around onRemoveCondition, onAcquireCondition, onRemoveBoon, onAcquireBoon, onMove, number of skills on CD, etc — there’s just not enough depth
• the weakness of AOE combo fields
• strongly linking trait line to weapons & utility types (aura, cantrip, trick, etc)
• strongly linking stats to trait lines
• ascended gear in WVW
• downed state mini-game in PVP
• rallying in PVP
• combat rezzing under fire

WVW is the strong point of this game, the smart thing to do would be to work on strengthening that.

Pandeh.5248:

mjharrison.3209:

Pandeh.5248:

I just wanted to tell you, look back to the week you started playing. How awesome woudn’t it be to have these laurels and such then? By the time causual players level to 80 they can get a Ascended item for simply just having fun with the game.

But now alot of you people are whining that you HAVE to PLAY the GAME for 20 days to get a piece of Ascended gear. I just don’t get whats wrong with everyone. You seem to want everything handed to you on a pillow.

Leaving aside the whole operant conditioning aspect of the new dailies…

Casuals, by definition, only have <10 hours per week to play, and often this means < 1 hour per day. Dailies take > 1 hour per day to complete. See the problem?

As a casual player, the first thing I have noticed is I’d need to spend close to 100% of my game time grinding the daily in order to complete it in a day/gaming session, not to mention the last thing I want to do with my gaming time is spend it doing stuff I’m not interesting in.

Grinding the daily? Well if you do not have time to do a daily I think you should not expect to get the highest tier of gear in a flash.

I’m not even trying to get it. Like I said, the last thing I want to do with my minimal play time is grind some arbitrary PVE target, AKA collect10 bear arses.