Guild Wars 2

heartless.6803:

timmyf.1490:

heartless.6803:

So yes, in every other game and literally everywhere else having a taunt usually means you are or have the capacity to tank.

Hearts are not quests. Rangers are not Hunters. Elementalists are not Mages. Guild Wars 2 is not “every other game.”

Taunt won’t make tanking a thing, though it will make less informed players think it’s a think.

Sigh, seriously get off the high horse.

In literally everything imaginable in existence in this genre having a taunt was given to things with the ability or potential to tank. So making that connection is extremely expected, and elementalists are mages with a different name. They portray the same thing with only minor differences depending on what game/novel.

The problem is that people bring preconceived notions of how these archetypes work and then wonder why things don’t go as planned. “Why would I bring a sword on my Hunter?”

Guild Wars 2 is my first MMO, so I guess I’m lucky to come in with a fresh perspective.

Sorry about the high horse. I’d fire back with some sort of witty metaphor, but to my knowledge, one doesn’t exist for “players who keep trying to turn Guild Wars 2 into some other game instead of playing it for what it is.”

Bran.7425:

timmyf.1490:

Does anybody think it’s realistic to balance 80 traits so that they are all useful but never game-breaking across three very different game modes? I think if you get 20 to be useful, you’re doing pretty well.

If that is the case then numerous traits should probably be trimmed merged with others or made baseline as they are a waste of space at best and an illusion of choice at worst.

But a lot of them are fun! I like having the choices, even if I don’t ever plan to run them in coordinated group content.

Does anybody think it’s realistic to balance 80 traits so that they are all useful but never game-breaking across three very different game modes? I think if you get 20 to be useful, you’re doing pretty well.

heartless.6803:

So yes, in every other game and literally everywhere else having a taunt usually means you are or have the capacity to tank.

Hearts are not quests. Rangers are not Hunters. Elementalists are not Mages. Guild Wars 2 is not “every other game.”

Taunt won’t make tanking a thing, though it will make less informed players think it’s a think.

heartless.6803:

In reality nobody really uses zerker gear all the time. Bosses like Teq can’t be crit at all and thus make zerker gear completely useless.

I use Zerker gear all the time in dungeons. I use Soldiers on Teq usually, but I’ve run it in Zerker a few times forgetting to change. No big deal. Slight DPS loss thanks to less of a buff from Sharpening Stones, but it’s marginal.

It’s hilarious how few people can dodge the wave, by the way.

Still, and this never seems to get through to people, GEAR IS ONLY PART OF BUILD. Gear has relatively little impact on play style: weapon choices and traits really affect quite a bit more. sigh.

Can somebody name a build that isn’t usable?

I’d be okay with silencing players who are repeatedly reported for verbal abuse. I’d prefer bans, but for reasons pdavis laid out, those could be counter-productive.

The trick is that stricter enforcement (along with a faster response time) would have to come side-by-side.

Note that this would also send a considerable portion of the PvP community into a blind fury, so good luck with that.

pdavis.8031:

Thats not to say that nothing is being done. But it’s silly to expect immediate action whenever a report is made.

You could have meant that as a generalized comment, but to clarify: I certainly don’t expect immediate action. But players who are reported repeatedly, day-by-day, over-and-over, those are the ones who should face bans.

pdavis.8031:

timmyf.1490:

pdavis.8031:

You could choose to be offended, and let them dictate how you feel, how you will react. Allow them to control your emotions and actions. Or you can choose to not take offense, and not them them control you.

When you allow them to control you, you give them more power. You are essentially saying, “I am giving you control over my feelings, and letting you choose how I react to your words.” If you don’t give them that control, then they have no power. Is that going to stop them? Probably not. But it will certainly make your life easier by refusing to let them control you.

A “control” metaphor is useful, but so is a “power” metaphor. I’d prefer to have the power to take action rather than be powerless against them with my only recourse being to hide.

It’s not hiding by not letting them bother you. It is in fact taking action. And in doing so you take the power from them.

Oh, I don’t let them “bother” me. I just report and move on. I just wish they got banned harder because of those reports.

pdavis.8031:

You could choose to be offended, and let them dictate how you feel, how you will react. Allow them to control your emotions and actions. Or you can choose to not take offense, and not them them control you.

When you allow them to control you, you give them more power. You are essentially saying, “I am giving you control over my feelings, and letting you choose how I react to your words.” If you don’t give them that control, then they have no power. Is that going to stop them? Probably not. But it will certainly make your life easier by refusing to let them control you.

A “control” metaphor is useful, but so is a “power” metaphor. I’d prefer to have the power to take action rather than be powerless against them with my only recourse being to hide.

pdavis.8031:

snip

So the problem with players who consistently verbally abuse other players is… that we get offended by it?

“Sorry, it’s the internet!” is a poor excuse. If they do it, ban them. If they come back and do it again, ban them for longer. Start with a 24-hour ban and make it 24 hours longer each time. Once they start getting week-long and two-week-long bans, maybe it’ll change their mind.

Until they buy the game on sale and get a fresh account, of course. But I guess there’s not much you can do about that.

Seen a few complaints all routing through the same node. Telia.net? In Atlanta, maybe?

I’m in the Atlanta area and had unbearable lag last night. Ended up quitting and watching TV instead.

Edit: nvm, Telia is a Euro carrier. I saw atl-telia, chi-telia, and dls-telia and thought Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas.

Can we talk for a moment about how awful the suggestion “turn off chat” is? If the solution is “ignore your team and everybody else,” how are we supposed to communicate?

I ALWAYS try to chat quick with my team when I join up. Figure out our opening splits, make sure I know what builds people are running, if possible. Most of the time I get zero response.

I assume this is either because 1) it’s unranked and people are too busy doing something on their other monitor 2) nobody cares or 3) they have chat turned off.

Anyway, it’s really disappointing to see players say “turn off chat” instead of “maybe ArenaNet should take verbal abuse more seriously.”

Torsailr.8456:

Hi Branden,
Will the UI for these changes be in the Demo at Pax East/Rezzed?

…it’ll be in the core game on March 10th?

NeXeD.3042:

timmyf.1490:

You guys know there’s a whole forum for this, right?

PvP threads get buried in that forum due to the constant pvx posts.

That’s true. The daily bumping gets a little old…

Tyger.1637:

Etienne.3049:

zaced.7948:

taking back what was rightfully theirs?

Destroying Ascalon, forcing Khilbron to destroy Orr and helping the Mursaat take over Kryta?

At least Charr die with dignity rather than cursing ENTIRE KINGDOMS to forbidden magics.

#notallascalonians

You guys know there’s a whole forum for this, right?

As somebody anticipating being able to play in certain parts of the world without nausea-inducing camera-snapping in a couple weeks, a very sincere thank you, Branden.

BarnabeJonez.6023:

I hear Queen Jennah is contemplating officially renaming “The Searing” to “The Warming” for PR reasons.

“The Searing” as fine as a term, she just needs to own it and talk about how it helped them develop a nice crust thanks to the Maillard reaction.

The Mallard Reaction, as a side note, would be my choice for a Tengu name if they’re ever playable.

Remember to upgrade your luck through artificing as well. It helps a ton. Oh, and the Windows feature you want is called Mouse Keys. I use it occasionally. Not sure I’d recommend the other program, but you’re probably okay if you’re just using wheel = double-click.

These come back routinely. I had the same problem with Kasmeer’s staff. Don’t worry, it’ll be back… and usually at a discount!

You know how I know GW2 is esports?

PvP now has its own in-game lobby where people hang out, chat, and wait for matches.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

I was referring to uber btw.

Oh yeah, I know. :-) I’m a PvP scrub all the same, but I’m here mostly to learn.

Random Weird Guy.3528:

dancingmonkey.4902:

timmyf.1490:

^ ugh coglin let’s not pretend the scoreboard represents player skill in any way.

What does the scoreboard have to do with it? When someone claims they “rarely” lose, yet have lost within 5% of 50% of their matches, it is a bit evident that they are being dishonest.

Especially when you look up said player’s post history and notice that most of their posts are just baseless ramblings.

coglin said “you present pics in which you are middle of the pack” which I took to mean he was commenting on uber’s placement in the scoreboard. 3rd/5th.

Apologies if this was wrong.

My point is the same as you guys are saying: uber clearly isn’t carrying teams. If anything, he’s dragging them down. His match score is irrelevant. His MMR and win% are relevant.

^ ugh coglin let’s not pretend the scoreboard represents player skill in any way.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

Anet has never really excelled at planning. They just do random things and hope one of them works. Most MMO’s have one team working on expansions, while one team works on normal content.

This is obviously ridiculous to say. During LS Season 1, there were FOUR teams working simultaneously on different patches. During LS Season 2, there seems to be one main team while there were several background teams working on feature patches and expansion content.

Just because they don’t come out and list the different teams and what they’re working on does not mean they don’t exist.

arctorius.3025:

I haven’t seen anything indicating they’re not going to release anything during that time frame.

They’ve said HoT takes place immediately after the events of LS2. So it’s unlikely there will be any additional story content between now and the release.

I anticipate the release in the August/September range.

While I do expect some festivals and other things, the “content” to tide us over will be HoT previews and maybe an open beta. Buckle up, it’s going to be a bumpy ride…

Yeah, sorry dude, not happening.

Play some WvW, though! You’ll get your map completion and maybe even find you like it.

Mirta.5029:

webtoehobbit.4201:

Here’s some food for thought:

Once upon a time, Bioware, with their game The Old Republic, had a press conference where the devs answered questions about future content and got suggestions from their community, how did they do this? They invited the guild leader of every guild in the game to this conference and then they live streamed the entire event to the community, where the community could submit questions live and have them answered by the devs.

This, is what I guess I was trying to have come across in my initial post. This is what I would rather see Anet do instead of doling it out to a special few people.

with people having their own 1 person guilds, every single guild leader would be hundreds of thousands of people. That’s not efficient marketing.

Nor is there a big difference. Most of the Youtubers invited to the event asked for questions through their channels, Twitter, Reddit, etc. If you had a burning question, you could have tried to get it asked.

Sadly, Dulfy was not invited.

I think it’s awesome that ArenaNet would not just include all these Youtubers, but I assume they’re also paying their way there? Knowing a lot of these guys are scraping by/in college, I can’t imagine they could all afford to fly out to Seattle for a few days.

This is going ABOVE AND BEYOND to include the community, not just the traditional gaming press, and it’s something we should all be cheering.

So no, OP, I do not agree with you. As much as I’d like to be there, I’m ecstatic that these guys and gals were given the opportunity.

With the drop in T6 prices, I really can’t see this as being profitable. Doesn’t anybody have a calculation for it somewhere? Or a tracker?

It’d be awesome if we can run the game with a command-line flag that shows us, at the start of a match, our MMR, the average MMRs of the two teams, and the predicted score. Or even at the end of the match if the worry is that players will QQ. Then you could show initial and final MMR or something.

This is my new favorite thread.

As far as the OPs point, there’s a lot of Weekend Warriors who just don’t play as much as most of us. I see drops in a lot of places, including PvE open world stuff like Tequatl that you think people would have learned by now.

So yes.

Bebunw.8137:

intensive chestfarm which gives ton of obsidian shards which are used for making t6 mat

Obsidian Shards are used for making T6 mats? Like… though the clover recipe? Are people actually doing this?

naiasonod.9265:

How exactly does one ‘go afk and leech’ anyway? If you don’t at least hit a few things or get hit by something, i.e – be present and participating to at least some minimal degree – you don’t get much by way of rewards.

Well, one way I can’t talk about because it’s an exploit. But the other way – alt-tab back for 5 seconds and start attacking somebody – is easy enough to do. You get credit, but you’re not actually helping.

Ayrilana.1396:

timmyf.1490:

sorudo.9054:

….AFK is kicked already after 15 minutes, lowering the time is only hurting ppl who just need to go to the toilet.
would you like it if you just got all your friend gathered up, you have to go to the toilet before moving out and getting back and being kicked because you get kicked earlier in the SW then anywhere else?

How about we lower the timer to 5 minutes and increase the amount of fiber in our diets?

The timer will do nothing as they’ll simply come back before it’s up and tap a key to move them forward to reset it Shortening the timer will also do more harm that good.

Sadly, you’re right. Leechers gon’ leech. Hopefully we’ll get a real Leeching reporting option in the future.

sorudo.9054:

….AFK is kicked already after 15 minutes, lowering the time is only hurting ppl who just need to go to the toilet.
would you like it if you just got all your friend gathered up, you have to go to the toilet before moving out and getting back and being kicked because you get kicked earlier in the SW then anywhere else?

How about we lower the timer to 5 minutes and increase the amount of fiber in our diets?

hehe, don’t deGrasse me bro!

Ayrilana.1396:

This is just how the system is designed unfortunately and no one group of players should be blamed for it.

This is your opinion and, unfortunately, it’s shared by plenty of other people who leech events all across this game.

The degree varies, of course. Silverwastes afking is pretty mild compared to, say, Battle of Lions Arch afking. It’s still the same in spirit and still indefensible.

Beyond the laughable “real world emergency” fake excuse.

Ayrilana.1396:

If in the maps there were no AFK players you’d still have the exact same issue. What if they weren’t AFK but doing something like the jumping puzzle or collecting the 30 badges/crests. Should these players be kicked as well? After all, the end result of both are exactly the same: they’re not contributing to the progression of the map toward breach/VW.

Since we’re pointing out logical fallacies, this is a strawman argument.

Those players are not AFK and should not be kicked and I’ve not seen a single person make that suggestion in a serious manner.

I believe you are wrong, though. Here, let’s try a timeline.

8:00 Map is hardcapped
8:04 AFK player is kicked
8:05 New player gets into map
8:07 AFK player is kicked
8:08 New player gets into map

See how kicking afk players opens up spots? Sure, if NOBODY goes afk, no new spots are created. That’s just a full map, though, not a map with dozens of afk players.

It stinks when friends can’t join because the map is full. It stinks a lot worse when the map is “full” because there’s 20 people doing nothing. Or waiting for the big events to start…

Ayrilana.1396:

timmyf.1490:

I don’t care about success, I care about playing with my friends.

Edit: eh, I should say I care more about playing with my friends than I care about success. Either way, afkers make it harder.

Fortunately we’re able to with the LFG system. What you can do is find a map that is not capped. The majority of sub-50% maps are like this. You can then ferry over as many friends as you like and complete the events together. If the maps are full, you can wait until VW and then have them hop over as people tend to leave right after to find the next map near breach.

Your claim was this doesn’t hurt anybody. My claim is that it hurts me by forcing me to jump through hoops to achieve my goals. Goals, by the way, which are consistent with the goals and designs of the game.

You listed here an example of the ways in which afkers hurt me. I have to leave my map, perhaps a map I’ve spent 20 or 30 minutes building up. Or I have to wait until the main event finishes to play with my friends.

So thanks for making my point for me?

I don’t care about success, I care about playing with my friends.

Edit: eh, I should say I care more about playing with my friends than I care about success. Either way, afkers make it harder.

Double edit: I don’t consider it ad hominem, by the way. It’s libel at most.

Ayrilana.1396:

timmyf.1490:

Ayrilana.1396:

Those who AFK are not hurting you.

You say this like you’ve never tried to join a friend’s instance only to find it’s full… and your friend reports back there’s 20-30 people idling away, waiting for Breach/Vinewrath.

Yes, AFKers are hurting me.

Not being able to get onto a friends map is much different than harming the progression of breach. Whether your your friend could get on or not is not relevant as they wouldn’t have been able to get on even if those players were not AFK.

May or may not be able to get in. If AFK players are kicked from a hard-capped map, it opens up new spots. Spots for active players. This seems really obvious to me.

My only assumption, therefore, must be that you afk in the map and are simply defending your own behavior.

Ayrilana.1396:

Those who AFK are not hurting you.

You say this like you’ve never tried to join a friend’s instance only to find it’s full… and your friend reports back there’s 20-30 people idling away, waiting for Breach/Vinewrath.

Yes, AFKers are hurting me.

Skyhammer is popular for players who haven’t bothered to figure out that secondary objectives are, in fact, secondary and fail badly on other maps because they forget to rotate through points.

People who hate the meta don’t understand the meta or why metas exist.

“Play How I Want” is a motto for stubborn people who think being different somehow makes them superior.

If you criticize something without trying it (whether that be meta builds, game modes, or anything else), you don’t deserve to come here and complain about it. You don’t deserve that audience.

This has been a problem in GW2 for years now. They occasionally make small changes, but people routinely find ways around it. Don’t expect it to be fixed.

TheDevice.2751:

1. No “big plays”

Do a search for “guild wars 2 pvp big (or best) plays” and see what comes up. Not a whole lot.

But Esports Rocket!!!

How does any existing class learn to use weapons and skills? There are no trainers or mentors in this story. You just pick up weapons and use them. You get skill points from tons of random crap to unlock new abilities.

There’s very little in the way of a lore explanation of how we learn to be Warriors or Mesmers or Engineers, so I don’t see why anybody would expect anything different for Revenant.

yanipheonu.5798:

It’s not an easy problem to fix.

It’s worse when you consider the number of people who have turned off /map and /say chat.