Guild Wars 2

Jayne.9251:

People may have left to try out other games, but they always came back to GW2.

Not really, people may try other games and not like them, but from what I’ve seen, most do not come back to GW2/WvW, they simply go play a different genre of game until Camelot Unchained, Crowfall, etc are released.

Interpretor.3091:

I don’t know where the notion came from that soloQueue is needed for then game to be popular and an Esport. This game especially. GuildWars2 is an MMO (massively multiplayer online) platform. The main appeal for a large majority of players is playing with friends and guildies…

Actually the large majority of players do both, at times they play with “friends” at other times they play solo, and yes it is a MMO, but playing with “friends” doesn’t equate to being any more “massively multiplayer” than playing solo as it were, some people play with 2 friends and basically play it like a co-op with zero interaction with the rest of the population, whilst there are some “solo” players that everyone knows because they interaxct far more with the “massively multiplayer” playerbase.

Interpretor.3091:

You SHOULD be punished for not playing with a team.

Not really, no one should be “punished”, if matchmaking is good then however people queue up should not matter, they should end up in a well matched game, however the matchmaking and population of GW2 PvP isn’t good, if you think trying to ‘force’ people into teams is goign to work then I suggest you go look at every other MMO practically where PvP has died, often in part because most people simply go play something else when the matchmaking is bad.

And that goes for both sides, unless you are a grade 1 noob then it is boring as hell queuing as a team then having some lopsided blowout of a match because you are up against 5 solo players.

Interpretor.3091:

Games like CSGO and LoL thrive as very popular eSports games and have generally the same Matchmaking as Guildwars2.

Nonsense, the first difference is they have huge populations, LoL for example has 65 million active players, terrible matchups are what they should be a rarity.

They are also much more favourable to random groups because they have much better tools for communication, CS:GO has buyilt in voice comms, and both CS:GO & LoL have in much more extensive in game commands/pings than GW2. In addition to that composition is much less of an issue, obviously in CS:GO, but also in LoL where you have selection part for certain roles beforehand, but also in that by the nature of the game people play many heroes, where as in MMOs like GW2 it is common for people to be far more attached to a single class, so is much more common to get bad comps.

CS:GO also has a much higher skill-cap, is less dependent on the type of teamwork in GW2 and is much easier for a good player to carry, so solo vs pre-made means less if the matchmaking is okay, because a very good player can carry hard in that game, unlike GW2 which is a low skilled joke in comparison and where skill largely consists of rotations which is greatly helped by being in a team on TS, even if the players are mechanically kitten and can’t recognize the most basic of animations.

Catalin.5341:

1. Not really. You want to have a situation where a small team can use the terrain against a blob and annihilate it with choke points, portal bombs, stealth etc. Bland plain maps are boring.

Which is a different thing to ‘a map that forces combat more often’, it is supposed to be an RvR type mode with “massive battles” (or just battles fullstop), yet the whole system / maps in WvW are poorly designed in that “winning” involves PvDoor, avoiding fights and playing at times when the other server does not, which is a joke, and is partly why the game mode has been bleeding players most of the game.

The new map just takes that problem and makes it worse, it is even easier to avoid fights, and PvDoor on it, slower for people to intercept, etc.

Which is why several other RvR type game modes have maps that are either somewhat akin to lanes, at least for the main objectives, or restrict what objectives you can attack to what is immediately adjacent to the area your faction controls, this forces fights, unlike the joke that is WvW.

Frightlight.3796:

Perfectly weighted: The 10% hammer damage bonus is nice, but the stab on evade is not exactly the most useful when I would rather just dodge the cc altogether. This I feel could be changed to act more as a pure damage trait like allowing your dodge rolls to inflict and aoe cone of damage in front of you, or make it a chance on hit with hammer skills to boost you towards your target with a short range aoe damaging blast. Idk something too make it feel more of a brawler trait.

That is a terrible idea, engi already has enough damage, and more than enough AOE, whilst the class lacks stab (and as a “melee” using hammer it lacks gap closers (only one), which means it relies on things like stab, superspeed, etc), and what stab it does have is a bit clunky (toss elixir b), the stab is far more useful when using hammer, especially in team fights, WvW, etc, it is also on evade, so you get it when you evade an attack using hammer 3, not just on dodge.

The trait is fine as it is.

Bubi.5237:

zinkz.7045:

Depends how you do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances (and a megaserver) and has a stronger “community” with more depth than GW2 ever had.

Alliances are fine, but that’s just a renaming of servers.
You can’t make it “guild based”, as then the “pugs” can’t join it, so you’ll have a similar system to the servers we have now.
I tried to say this, maybe I failed.

Pugs could be alliance members without being in a guild, but beyond that it is like I said it depends on how you design the alliance system.

For example, you could still keep it server based and use an alliance system to balance things out, so you’d assign the servers to one of three alliances based on their strength, so the strongest server would be in the same group as the weakest, and so on.

Then you would either change the system to either have more maps that you share between all the servers, in essence one big matchup, or keep servers in their own normal matchups, but have a way so players can go help in other matchups for the server in their alliance, either way you get to keep your ‘server community’, but you’d end up with a game that had a bit more balance in terms of population / coverage.

Bubi.5237:

You can ofc make Alliances, but that’s just renaming the servers, and temporary groups are too pointless for me.

Depends how you do alliances, EVE Online uses alliances (and a megaserver) and has a stronger “community” with more depth than GW2 ever had.

Bubi.5237:

Anet said “somewhere on the forum” (still broken search FTW!) that they didn’t want WvW to be fair, and they did a good job with that… It’s not fair xD

Depends what you mean by “not fair”, uneven fights at times, getting ganked, etc, yeah that is fine, but when matchups are often so lopsided in terms of population / coverage it simply makes the game mode into a joke, and makes it boring for everyone (who isn’t a bit “special”), it is boring when you are ticking 500 with no one to fight, it is boring being on the other end of it, and it devalues the game mode to the point that “winning” is a meaningless joke to most.

Which is one of the reasons WvW has been in a state of near permanent decline, people may be making a fuss over the new low WvW has hit with the new map, but the reality is it has not been healthy for a long time.

Skynet.7201:

I think it’s safe to say most people are pretty much happy in the upper tiers or else we would have transferred down…

Transferring down solves nothing when the problem is WvW is fundamentally poorly designed as an RvR mode to the point “winning” involves PvDoor, avoiding fights and playing at 5am when no one else is on, in what is supposed to be a mass scale PvP mode, it is laughable, most WvW players I know consider it a joke as competitve mode, the only thing that has kept most of those who still play, playing, has been the combat is good in GW2.

The game mode requires a serious overhaul to actually make it functional.

Indure.5410:

zinkz.7045:

DH outside of invisible trap animation bugs is a pretty readable and predictable build to play against, for example ‘good players’ can pretty easily avoid/block/reflect true shot which has a reasonably obvious animation plus even for someone that can’t spot that, there is a pretty obvious tell in that the DH will stop moving and stand still meaning they will either be casting true shot or the number 5.

If your a female guardian you have no animation what so ever for true shot and with the same cast time as an auto attack it would be super easy to bait out a reflect by just standing still. DH has some problems in the pro scene, but having an “obvious animation” on true shot is definitely not one of them.

I’m on a female guard as I write this, true shot animation showing a glowing bright blue ball of light at the rear hand with sort of blue energy whisps around the guardian being sucked into the bright blue ball of light at the hand.

As for baiting by standing still, yes and no, my point wasn’t that you should rely on the fact they stand still by its self, it was that even not very good players who basically stuggle to spot animations when they play, at least have a chance with this skill in that standing still is a hint it is coming, yes some could try baiting with that, but really for a half decent player the combo of your opponent standing still and then what I think is a reasonably obvious animation means they should be able to react to it.

Dirame.8521:

NumenorLord.6539:

What works in pro league doesn’t always work for the average player. Hate against current DH is, IMHO, a L2P issue from new players (lots for them coming since F2P) and people who are not seasoned in PvP. Stop walking through the traps.

Good players force you to walk through traps. And good teammates play around the fact that they have a trapper.

Which "good "players are these, at the recent first round of pro-league most actual good players seemed to think DH was not worth bothering with, only thief and warrior were less used, meanwhile there were 15 Revs, 13 ele, 10 mes, 9 rangers, 9 necros and 8 engies, compared to just 5 DH (one of which if I remember correctly only played DH in one map).

DH outside of invisible trap animation bugs is a pretty readable and predictable build to play against, for example ‘good players’ can pretty easily avoid/block/reflect true shot which has a reasonably obvious animation plus even for someone that can’t spot that, there is a pretty obvious tell in that the DH will stop moving and stand still meaning they will either be casting true shot or the number 5.

Really between all the projectile hate introduced in HoT and the reality of how relatively easy they are to focus down, “good” players should not be having issues with DH.

But hey lets nerf DH because nabs who can’t play can’t cope with them, that way by the next pro-league DH will be down there with warrior and we can have 20 revs playing.

Some of the maps have imbalanced elements, for example on Foefire the blue home point (waterfall) is easier to hold / harder to decap than the red home point (Quarry).

Arcaedus.7290:

This is actually starting to get on my nerves; Engis got their rocket boots fixed almost immediately upon complaining, whereas this issue, which affects proportionally more guardians than rocket boots did engis is probably sitting at the bottom of a to do list.

The irony is strong, rocket boots a skill that was bugged to the point of being unusable for maybe 18 months, as the last leap would randomly throw the engy backwards or sideways instead of forward.

misterdevious.6482:

but if they are smart, they’ve realized the fastest route to returning the entire map to the correct color…

If they were smart they wouldn’t be concerned with returning the map to its “correct colour” in a game where “winning” is essentially meaningless and that is so poorly designed it encourages types of game play (and I use that word in loosest possible sense) that are directly contrary to what is supposed to be a type of RvR mass scale PvP mode with “epic battles”.

I’d prefer https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KAp9sFVdERQ

Engelsstaub.4356:

Only dedicated hardcore WvW-ers keep playing.

Most hardcore WvW players have left the game, and it had nothing to do with the very minor issue of lack of rewards.

Engelsstaub.4356:

WvW is dying and new borders, not loved by many, are hardly a sufficient explanation to that. People kept telling “wait a few days next week will be better” but literally nothing has changed since the first day of HoT. People want new skins, new legendaries and PvE is the only way to get anythign decent in this game.

WvW has been dying for a long time, in the months pre-hot EU T1/T2 servers had dwindled to the population / activity that silver league servers used to have 15 months ago, off-peak especially had died right down.

And yes the new map in itself is not the explanation (more the final nail in the coffin), but then neither are lack of rewards, it isn’t PvE, the explanation is really pretty simple, HoT did nothing to fix the fundamental issues with WvW, “winning” is still worthless, in that it is basically down to PvDooring / avoding fights / playing when others are not, which is laughable in a supposed RvR mass scale PvP mode.

Then when you add that many were delusional about guilds/WvW players coming back for HoT and that the new map is even more of an ineptly designed PvDoor effort, then you have the result, a game mode that has already been in decline for a long time simply hit a new low.

Ragnarox.9601:

There are 2 druid build that are god mode 1 on 1 and 1 vs many. Why are you not familiar with it?

1v1 is not 1v3, which is what you claimed, why are you not familiar with CC? If you can’t kill a druid 3v1, then the only problem is between your screen and your keyboard.

Ragnarox.9601:

3 players cannot down good druid player.

Are these 3 guys imbeciles by any chance and unaware of concepts like CC, because if not, 3 players > 1 druid.

Phantom.8130:

To be fair, EB has the best setup of the three. Not necessarily the spacing, which does tend to make the pace a lot faster, but how the layout made the areas in each third strategically relevant. If you want to take a keep, your best bet is to take out a few of the towers first, because the towers assisted in the keep’s defense. Both versions of the borderlands lacked a strategic layout. Being able to treb the garrison from the northern towers was a minor bit of strategy, but that’s the equivalent to a fingernail compared to an entire person. Now, with the new maps, there’s not even that fingernail.

I disagree, borderlands were much superior to EB, for a start EB is very imbalanced, there is a fair difference between how strong each keep is, there is a difference in towers such as green does not really have a weak tower, when you compare it to Durios (blue) or Anza (red), etc.

Then you have waypoints, on borderlands upgrading to / preventing / taking down / defending a WP was far more important than those on EB, it was probably the biggest strategic map based objective in WvW and biggest strategic driving force, things like preventing the opposition getting a WP in bay/hills have been removed from the game. (that this is gone with perma WP & autoupgrades is one of the reasons the new map is such a failure, the basic lack of understanding of WvW by whoever came up with the map and new upgrade system is well…).

The fact there were three keeps, and that it was reasonably common for the home side to get garri + 1 other upgraded at times meant that defense was generally much more interesting than EB, where all that really counted was your keep, then the 1 or two defensive towers like Veloka, jerri, etc, but they are right next to the keep, which is kind of dull, part of what made defending say garri + hills both getting attacked at once interesting is the distance between the two, not too far that it was impossible to get reinforcements in or react, but not so close that you can virtually defend two things at once, like you can in EB, and beyond that it was the importance and strategic value that made it interesting and worth defending, losing Veloka might not be good, but really pales into insignificance compared to losing hills or bay with a WP.

Furthermore you have the actual keep design, the keeps on the old borderland gave far more tactical options and produced far more interesting fights than the simplistic, rather one dimensional ones on EB (garri especially).

As for the “northern towers was a minor bit of strategy”, I look it like this, every tower except the SE one on the old BL had some strategic value for attacking a keep, on EB most of the towers are redundant (mendons for example) or very minor (those that can treb SM) and SM is the biggest red herring in the game.

Which is why, or at least what I found on multiple servers (on EU) that most veteran players whether they wanted fights as a guild, decent fights as an open raid or liked scouting / upgrading or whatever, preferred the borders, often leaving EB to newer players / casual players.

Deratrius.4035:

The fact is that stability could be countered with wells of corruption, null field and other boon stripping skills.

Not really, this game was designed and balanced around tPvP, much of that design and balance utterly fails to translate to WvW where things are just broken, including boon stripping vs boon generation.

Game was not designed for 2 or 3 guards sitting in a party rotating boons, it completely outpaced boon stripping, half the boon stripping skills that get used in tPvP are useless in large scale WvW (mes shatter strip, thief steal, thief sword 3, etc), which left well of corruption and null field for actually trying to strip stability from the melee train (commander focusing with corrupt boon is something else), and guess what, it was totally ineffective.

And why was it totally ineffective, because back then against any vaguely organised group that could manage the pretty basic task of rotating stab, generally avoiding / spending as little time in wells as possible, generating more boons if they got hit by wells, etc it was useless, because stability was last in the boon stripping order to be stripped on well of corruption, so when you had people running about with pretty much permanently 5-9 boons on them, could instantly apply more AOE boon spam with guards & warriors, and boons stripped at 1 per second, assuming people just stood there, then the idea of boon stripping stability was a joke.

Deratrius.4035:

To me the main consequence of the stability change was that play is far less aggressive anymore as you have to be extra careful not to push and getting locked into a massive bomb. People stare at each other for a while hoping for the other group to make a mistake, etc.

Now maybe it has gone too far the other way, but of course it is less aggressive, before hard CC was virtually useless against a melee train, so you could push with very little consequence or thought much of the time.

I watched an old GvG video the other day from the PoV of a warrior, I think it was Ve guild, but anyway he had stability up (covered by numerous boons) for about 1 min 40 secs out of 2 mins, and bearing in mind that other 20 secs was them regrouping etc, it was basically perma-stab, and this was against another “GvG” guild, so if they can’t strip stab, well… The level of stab we used to have was completely skilless.

P.S – People stare at each other even more when your server builds arrow carts so much of the time, even when you outnumber your opponents, what happened to the AG I fought against in season 1, has the SFR PvDoor infestation taken over?

snarfrificus.4230:

so called PvE event is one massive pvp event like Anet wanted to be.

More accurately it is one massive lag fest, and much like the rest of the map and new mechanisms a fine example of Anet’s almost non-existent testing.

The meta for roaming in WvW is the same it has been for quite some time, which is go find a game with actual open world PvP as opposed to the joke that is roaming in WvW.

briggah.7910:

zinkz.7045:

briggah.7910:

More people do pve then they claim. I’m sure anet has numbers and sometimes I wish they would just release the info to show you all that probably 0.000000000000000001% only wvw so you can all stop posting this video over and over again.

Most people don’t claim to “only” do WvW, plenty of “WvW players” however do claim that is what they play the game for, and what they spend most of their time doing, that video just has a very disingenuous answer from the Anet guy, she asked about participation rates, which is not the same thing as players exclusively playing one mode.

Guess you missed the first time this video got posted and all the “I only wvw” players chimed in.

Most WvW players do not post these forums, and people also made similar points to what I said when this video has come up before, that a few guys stated “they only play WvW” doesn’t equate to much or change what I said.

briggah.7910:

People wonder why devs don’t post here

Not really, I think the reasons are fairly obvious.

briggah.7910:

More people do pve then they claim. I’m sure anet has numbers and sometimes I wish they would just release the info to show you all that probably 0.000000000000000001% only wvw so you can all stop posting this video over and over again.

Most people don’t claim to “only” do WvW, plenty of “WvW players” however do claim that is what they play the game for, and what they spend most of their time doing, that video just has a very disingenuous answer from the Anet guy, she asked about participation rates, which is not the same thing as players exclusively playing one mode.

If a player plays 10% PvE, 20% PvP and 70% WvW it is fairly clear what is the main aspect of the game they play for, and what they are primarily concerned with, that they do a bit of PvE amongst that, doesn’t change anything.

Firelysm.4967:

A dead player in death match map as i’ve described has a crucial meaning for team.
A dead player in GW2 sPvP has no meaning at all, you respawn soon enough, and has minor effect on outcome.

Yeah normally in deathmatch in an MMO, where the skill cap is considerably lower than say an FPS, a dead player more often than not means round over, which is one of the reasons it is a kittenty mode in MMOs.

Firelysm.4967:

Speaking of map awareness is nothing special. Yet again if you speak about map awareness, say hi to GvG from GW1, yet another game mode that can say, GW2 sPvP is more casual then ever.

Irrelevant, we are talking about death match random arena, not GvG, arena deathmatch is simply the most simplistic lowest skill cap mode there is, now you may like the mode, but that changes nothing, all it is, essentially is a teamfight, which is why most PvP modes in MMOs, MOBAs, etc, try and add things like objectives, some compelxity into the map, etc, because it ups the skill cap, ups the need for communication, the need for map awareness, etc.

Firelysm.4967:

Personal opinion about what you prefer, but like it or not, Death Match has more team fight synergy required then GW2 sPvP.

Death match has simplistic synergy, whatever wins the teamfight, more complex modes require more aspects beyond what is good in a team fight, which is superior.

Firelysm.4967:

Eliminating the weakest to prevail…

Probably one of the most tedious aspects of deathmatch in MMOs is all it really consists of is focusing the easiest to kill class/build, which generally is decided by the game design/balance, as opposed to player skill, which tells you all you need to know about the low skill level, and why MMOs add things like objectives to try and bring up the skill level and increase decision making,

Firelysm.4967:

In death match is a pure skill of individual…

Deathmatch is the lowest skilled, most simplistic mode out there, the only time it works is when the inherent game mechanics take a lot of skill like certain FPS (well lots for a video game, lets be honest video games are low skilled in the grand scheme of things), MMOs are in comparison a joke.

Firelysm.4967:

No offence taken, you prefer MOBA style, I prefer DM, but deathmatch will always be true player vs player….

If I liked MOBAs I’d play MOBAs, PvP in MMOs is genreally nothing like MOBAs, having a capture point or killing the lord on Foefire, does not equate to a MOBA, in MMOs deathmatch is low skilled and is tediously one dimensional, if you prefer that fine, but stop deluding yourself over its “merits”.

Firelysm.4967:

This was a game mode of true skill…

Not really, death match is one of the lowest skilled PvP modes out there, there is nothing you have to do in death match, that you don’t have to do in pretty much every other PvP mode, other PvP modes then have aspects on top of teamfights, that raise the skill cap like map awareness, more decision making, , more communication, etc.

That aside the whole progression as you win is pretty good though, though 25 rounds seems a bit excessive.

Mallis.4295:

>I have a 53% winrate with 415 games played

Well it looks like matchmaking is working.

Except the win rate in itself doesn’t show matchmaking is working, you could have the “ideal” 50% winrate and still have absolutely terrible matchmaking.

What makes a fun match? For me and most players I’ve got to know in games a fun match means a closely fought match, I don’t want to be involved in one-sided matches (be it on the winning or losing side) as they are simply boring, people basically stop playing at some point in the match (or at least stop playing properly), etc.

So the matchmaking should ideally be providing players with close matches where one team is approximately the equal of the opposing team in skill, so the problem is a 50% win rate is no guarantee of that, you could in theory lose 50% of your games being hammered by 5 man ESL pre-mades, and then win the other 50% facestomping newbies/PvE players.

Now whilst that example is obviously not going to happen to that extreme, the problem seems to be in GW2 is that poorly matched teams happen far too often, thus people complain about the poor matchmaking, even though their win-rate may be okay.

Dagins.5163:

<1> Because everybody has access to instant interrupt without weapon swap.

So you think that everyone should have access to an interrupt at all times, interesting, back to reality not having on demand interrupts is not an argument, you can interupt the 3/4 of a sec cast, when you have an interrupt up.

Dagins.5163:

<2> Because he is going to cast it right at 450 distance, so you can simply step out.

If only there were things such as leaps, teleports, etc in this game that let you move far more than 450, or if there were skills that slowed your opponent down like cripple, chill, etc.

Dagins.5163:

<3> This one is obvious – thankfully, every class has stealth (of course, on demand, without cast time, on utility slot).

Again, it is irrelevant whether every class has stealth, 4 classes do (5 if we include trapper runes), so stealthing is an option for those classes that negates UA.

Dagins.5163:

<4> 3/4 second is a lot of time to move behind some pillar, especially easy to pull off on LoF mid..

You don’t need to move in 3/4 of a second, you simply move the fight near to the obstacle, the rev then has to deal with it, now can you do this everywhere no, of course not, but that doesn’t negate there are situations you can do that.

Dagins.5163:

<5> Again, every class has instant block access (that doesn’t break on first melee hit).

Again irrelevant, see stealth answer, not sure why you think an action that is useful agaisnt UA only negates it if it is 100% of the time for 100% of builds…

Dagins.5163:

<6> Like above.

Likewise.

Dagins.5163:

<7> Let’s burn 2 evades on a single skill, because we are all daredevils with 6 evade bars, and 12 seconds is enough to regenerate at least 3 bars.

If you don’t want to use an evade to avoid a supposedly high damaging skill that is your problem, and again with the silly over exaggeration, you don’t need to be an Daredevil to have evades, e.g – I played on Druid last night, 4 evades between gs/staff + lighting reflexes, on similar cooldowns to UA (except lighting reflexes).

Dagins.5163:

<8> … Should I really keep it up?

If you mean talking illogical nonsense in that you seem to think every skill or action should be up 100% of the time on every build, then no, you shouldn’t keep it up, you should actually think before writing.

There are a multitude of ways to negate or reduce the impact of UA, that all them aren’t available 100% of the time to every class in every situation is irrelevant, enough of them are available most of the time.

Exedore.6320:

For most builds, there’s nothing they can do other than double-dodge or eat the damage because the revenant is evading during the entire attack and can’t be CCed (hard or soft).

Let’s see you can:

- Interrupt the initial 3/4 sec cast.
- Get out of range during the initial cast, the range is only 450, and the typical Rev power build is very susceptible to condie based CC so they will have to burn through their resource using Phase Traversal to stay on builds that can actually kite.
- Stealth
- Move near a wall or something as the skill generally fails to execute near a large obstacle.
- Block
- Invurn
- Dodge or evade to avoid a decent chunk of the damage.
- Use protection to reduce damage.
- Use retal or get confusion on them beforehand to add counter damage through their evade frames.
- Use allies/AI/NPCs to split the damage.

Yes nothing you can do…

Cogbyrn.7283:

So you think the purpose of WvW is to have large groups of players fighting. It’s a nice thought. I’m sure it’s a purpose. But the purpose?

Not what I said, “the purpose” should be to win the match (yet we have a game mode so poorly designed most consider “winning” as worthless), however in a mode that is supposed to be mass PvP and have “epic battles”, then if the mode was well designed that would involve a significant amount of fighting as opposed to running around PvDoor avoiding fights or logging on at 4am when there are virtually no opponents to tick for 600, a mass scale PvP mode that does not force fights to a reasonable extent is fundamentally flawed.

Cogbyrn.7283:

And it’s ANet’s fault that everyone avoids fighting?

It’s Anet’s fault they can be avoided so easily, that is down to poor design.

And not everyone avoids fighting, it has simply got worse as many of those who hold the extraordinary notion that mass scale PvP should involve some combat have left the game or only play in a guild raid at primetime doing scrims, which leaves a bigger proportion of PvDoor zombies.

Cogbyrn.7283:

I don’t care what system you propose. You aren’t going to be able to force people to constantly fight unless you queue for sPvP or organize a fight with another guild.

I don’t expect people to constantly fight, I merely expect a PvP game mode to force fights to a reasonable extent, WvW fails miserably at that, the new maps are even worse than the old in this regard.

So to take one aspect, map design, there have been other RvR type modes in other games that force fights by being more linear in design, either directly like a more lane like design, so for major objectives you have to take X before Y, or where as your area grows you can only attack objectives adjacent to the area you control, this forces fights to an extent and reduces PvDoor.

Catalin.5341:

I believe most of the core issues have been addressed by the new map, but haven’t been solved completely…

Not really, the core issues that actually render the game mode worthless and not fit for purpose, have not been touched, running around PvDooring avoiding fights in a mass PvP mode of “epic battles” & ticking for 400+ off-peak for hours with virtually no opponents is still the way to “win”.

Things like ‘more defending’ are a total irrelevance if most players couldn’t care less about defending in the first place because the score is neither here nor there when the game mode is not fit for purpose due to those core issues.

Catalin.5341:

So saying that WvW is dead because there are a lot of complains here…

Who says that?

WvW is dead due to the level of activity, the reason being as a game mode it is not functional, the basic idea of “winning” a matchup by playing for points is considered so broken due to poor design that means PvDoor > than actual fights in supposed mass scale PvP with “epic battles” by many players that it basically is ignored.

Now the problem has existed for a long time, HoT has just made it worse with the new mechanisms like auto upgrades, to the point it has even tipped many of the few players who still played for PPT and enjoyed things like scouting / upgrading over the edge.

You also have the reality that some players were deluding themselves that WvW would come alive again with the release of HoT, that the all-time-low the population had reached in the months prior to HoT would go away once HoT came out and people / guilds came back, guess what, there isn’t a huge swathe of people coming back, games rarely get a second chance, especially when essentially none of the real problems with the mode have been addressed.

WvW is done, people will go try Warhammer 40k Eternal Crusade, Crowfall, CU, etc when they release.

Exos.3472:

People tend to say the only drawback to this class is its absence of stealth.

Not quite, it is pretty weak against condies, at least the shiro/glint sword/x & staff or hammer builds most play, and whilst in combat mobility is good as is the ability to chase a player down, the disengage is below par, in a small group rev is really good, solo not so much.

Wryscher.1432:

In any mmo I have ever played this is the case. As a disclaimer I haven’t played to many mmo focused on wvw/pvp so maybe it is different in them. But for the most part the average joe wants to win and get loot. Understandable. So they chase the winning side. Over stacking winning sides and transferring/rerolling to where ever they need to be to make things fast and easy.

Pretty standard mmo practices across the board.

Overstacking / rerolling on one faction yes, other than that not the same at all.

To take a couple of differences, in your average MMO, your average joe, will go on a PvE server (and will completely avoid PvP focused MMOs), as a generalisation people that opt to go on a PvP server (which is the ‘playerbase’ I am comparing to) in a typical MMO, actually want to PvP, where as many WvW players basically don’t, they want to zerg/blob it up, which barely constitutes PvP and outside of the security blanket and anonymity of the zerg/blob will avoid any actual PvP.

As for loot, I’ve never played a game where “PvP” players go on about loot as much as in WvW, I’ve played games with full player loot where people make less fuss, it speaks volumes about the playerbase, it is very “PvE”.

I’ve have never ever played an MMO where so many people just run / avoid even fights (both small scale and large scale), the WvW playerbase is by far the least “PvP” playerbase of any PvP MMO / PvP server, I have ever encountered.

Sich.7103:

killing dinosaur to get some power core is really not a pvp event…

Of course it is a PvP event, objectives are common things in PvP, the dinosaurs / carrying the gear back are just there to focus fights, for one group of players to stop the other from completing the event, then you have your PvP, the same sort of events are common in other PvP formats, even in this game, go look at tPvP, at Foefire and the lord, it is there to add an extra layer of strategy and to act as an objective to initate a fight between opposing teams.

Sich.7103:

And it’s just a way to help the strongest team to KT the map.

Like I said "You want to know the real problem with it, the playerbase, as far as PvP game modes go the WvW playerbase is absolutely the least “PvP” I have encountered, packed full of zerging PvE players ", these sort of “PvE” events work fine in PvP MMOs or MMOs with seperate PvP & PvE servers.

Sich.7103:

Are you serious ? The central event is not a kitten.i.n.g. pve event ?!?
And pve event who give advantage to the biggest team…

In a PvE zone that event would be a PvE event, in a PvP area like WvW it is a PvP event, it is in effect a sort of carry the flag event, is similar to PvP events in other games (PvP rifts, in Rift for example).

You want to know the real problem with it, the playerbase, as far as PvP game modes go the WvW playerbase is absolutely the least “PvP” I have encountered, packed full of zerging PvE players (be it zone blobs or the dellusional guild raids), in a game with actual real open world PvP, in either a PvP MMO or with PvP servers, where the playerbase are actually interested in PvP, a “PvE” event in that vein would be fine.

You can’t do much about a scrub playerbase. (also not helped by a game mode that is basically so poorly designed it isn’t really functional as a ‘competition’)

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Not using skills of cd is the same for all classes – so irrelevant.

Actually it isn’t, everything except auto attacks have energy requirements on a Rev, so when the stunbreak costs 30 energy, the idea that after you’ve broken stun, you can waste 10 spamming shield 4 just because it is off cooldown, when there may be much better use of your remaining energy, be it another skill or to hold off a little for shield 5 or something, is idiotic.

There are big differences between HPS in theory and in practice, when classes have different mechanics and different degrees of trade offs (zero trade off in some cases), Rev is pretty active with actual decisions to be made and trade offs to be decided with energy use and actually having to think about using the heal skills that require hits or to take damage, compared to the relatively brainless passiveness of most HPS in this game like, healing signet, TU, Oakheart Salve , etc.

briggah.7910:

The new pve content is actually challenging.

No it isn’t, it is just marginally less faceroll than the normal open world PvE content, getting to a high league in SC2 is challenging, not rolling your face across the keyboard against the AI in GW2.

briggah.7910:

You would know all this if you actually still played then you might actually realize why wvw is so empty ATM.

WvW is empty because of neglect of the actual issues with the mode so it has been in decline for a long time, it had already reached an all time low in the last few months prior to the expansion, the idea that it will be bustling once some players come back from PvE, is laughable, if I look at the contacts/blocked lists on my accounts which mainly consists of WvW focused players, guess what the majority remain offline, they aren’t coming back for HoT, because essentially for WvW nothing meaningful has changed, a new map doesn’t solve a thing.

WvW was “dead” before the new expansion even hit, that some are in PvE is just an excuse.

Ychiju.7960:

Good thing (for me) is that most people underestimate the mesmer’s capability and wrongly believe that those times of hiding are over.

Most people simply couldn’t care less if there is a mesmer hiding to take a keep back, perma waypoints, plus “winning” being worthless, really who cares if a keep gets taken back a few minutes later, when the game mode is moribund.

Tiffany.8576:

It’s amusing. The other month people were up in arms because Mike O’Brien insinuated that very few people played the WvW game mode exclusively. Now when you ask where all the WvW players are, you’ll be told “they’re in PvE.” Guess he was right afterall.

Actually people were “up in arms” because he avoided the question and gave a disingenuous “politicians” answer, in a rather patronising manner, he was asked about participation rates, he answered “people don’t play one thing”, which is not what the question asked or even implied.

A person who plays say 70% WvW, 20% PvP and 10% PvE, does not “play one thing”, but very clearly “one thing” is the main focus and reason why they play the game, if the girl asking the question was a little quicker / less nervous she would of put that point in response rather than engaging on the terms of his disingenuous reply.

FeelsAlright.5860:

Look at any hard hitting channeled skill. 100b, pistol whip, blurred frenzy. ALL of them root you and require sufficient set up.

You mean like rapid fire which hits harder than blurred frenzy, does so from “1500” range, whilst on the move…

As for required set up, you mean like the “highly skilled” setup of pistol whip with its inbuilt stun.

Taku.6352:

While it might be a decent change for pvp folks it just completely guts it in pve since it finally gave rangers an on demand smoke field.

It isn’t a decent change for PvP folks, you can’t use it out of combat to say set up a stealth bomb or cover yourselves as you cross over to far point, the using it “on demand” aspect of using it on pet swap is crappy, because again you have to be in combat and of course the pet runs to the target and then activates it there, rather than where you actually want it, so before for example if you suddenly come under focus fire and you need to leave you could begin to disengage and then if you got a little space between yourself and those pursuing you, you could use the smoke field staff 3 into it, and stealth on the run as it were, now you can’t do that.

Furthermore you now have to deal with the hassle of calling the pet back to interrupt the field if you don’t want it, which will be a needless pain in the kitten on the initial pet swap and if you have the pet out long enough for it to cast again, you will likely miss interrupting the field many times, which occasionally is going to result in you losing a cap in PvP as no doubt at some point the pet is going to cast smokefield, as someone is blasting and you’ll lose that last tick on the node with everyone in stealth.

They may as well scrap the pet, the whole point of it was the utility of smokefield, the clue is in the name, now you just have another burst pet, with the actual utility hamstrung by being moved off f2.

This sort of dumb decision is why Anet gets criticism, and example of why after 3 years and money thrown at it, their “e-sport” peaked at about 9k viewers last WTS, less than some kid gets streaming from their bedroom in many games.

zombyturtle.5980:

Actually ive been here since launch and mostly only do dungeons these days. Just because you dont like something doesnt mean its a grind.

Being forced to spend countless hours playing content you dislike in order to be able to fully play the content you do like is grind.

zombyturtle.5980:

Play your own way has always referred …

Not really, it encompasses things such as levelling, where players who enjoy different types of content can “play their own way”, so can level through PvP, WvW, EoTM, crafting, open world PvE, dungeons, etc, which is in direct contrast to the very limited options for unlocking a class specialisation.

zombyturtle.5980:

Can someone please explain to me why sooo many people have such a huge problem actually playing the content they paid for in order to progress their characters. I mean why even buy it if you are so against playing it. I just dont get it x.x

Seriously you are that unaware that you think everyone plays the game the same way? Guess what some people do not like the tedious open world content in this game, but until now that hasn’t restricted your actual gameplay in other areas, if you were levelling a character and weren’t keen on open world PvE you had plenty of other options – EoTM, WvW, crafting, PvP, tomes, dungeons, etc.

With this people who for example enjoy fractals, dungeons and raids, but can’t stand open world PvE, are forced to go grind these tedious PvE zones as that is where the hero points are.

Maybe you are new, but this game was sold on things like “lack of grind”, “play your own way”, the way getting these new specialisations is handled is contrary to those philosophies.

Amaya.1483:

C: 400 Hero Points for the Elite Specialisations are way too much! Iam forced to play through the Maps!!
A: Wrong. There is no Issue in “forcing” people to enjoy the Content, the new World, the Story to unlock your Elite Specialisation. I dont think that “forcing” is the right word for it and also it is justified just lorewise, that you, becoming a Master over your Profession, have seen and experienced the World. The Elite Specialisations are the top of your Charakters progress and i think it is really wrong to hand it to you without any progress in the first place.

That you think “lore” even matters shows how blinkered your view is, lots of players could not care less about lore, plenty of players have little to no interest in the tedious open world PvE in this game, but if for example they want to use the specialisations in content they enjoy like dungeons, fractals & raids, then they are forced to go grind the tedious new zones because that is where the hero points are, it is a direct contradiction of what this game is supposedly about “no grind”, “play your way”, etc.

jmoak.7821:

leftyboy.9358:

bLind.6278:

I wonder if Anet even realizes that a very large portion of their playerbase is not only unimpressed, but pretty kitten ed unhappy with the expansion.

Oh they do. Should check out the main topic under heart of thorns discussion .
Elite Specializations & Hero Point Feedback [Merged].

over 50k views and 2k posts and most are negative and critical solutions out of this mess.

At this point I think the moderator is just having a hard time keeping up with all the new topics that are really the same topic. Hero point system for elites is not fun.

its the vocal minority again while the majority are having fun in the game. dust will settle in 2 weeks

Erm, not really, every topic on this or any game forum is the “vocal minority”, it is only a minority that use the forums and then only a minority of those that will post on any given thread, some topics will be a minority view, other will represent a large number of players, the game could go down for three days and only the “vocal minority” would post, but according to your “logic” the majority would be happy with that situation and happily playing the game, oh wait…

And as for the laughable implication that everyone playing the game finds nothing wrong with it, well, maybe I should record some TS or upload some screenshots of in game chat, to show what nonsense that is.

Nocta.5274:

It’s not a novelty but I think something similar to the Cheat Death mechanic Rogues have in WoW would be great for Thieves.

For people that don’t know about it, it’s a passive that makes it when a Rogue would take fatal damage, they instead survive with very low health and get heavy damage reduction for a few seconds. Has a pretty heavy ICD of course.

I’m not saying this is necessary, I’m just very scared of playing Thief without the security of vamp runes. It makes the class even harder to play and even less able to engage in teamfights.

How often can thieves stealth in combat in WoW, how is their mobility compared to other classes? (I don’t play WoW)

But back to GW2, classes that have huge amounts of disengage like thief & mes, should not get passives like that, it would be as broken as vamp runes on classes with so much disengage, if thieves need help to fight in teamfights then it should come through other less obnoxious means than vamp runes or similar traits.

dancingmonkey.4902:

There is no information to support your claim. My experience suggest that in the 20 off hours, near double the players rotate in and out of what you see in the 4 or so peak hours. They simply spread it out over 20 hours and do not stock pile their servers all in one short duration.

In matchups it is common for one server to tick for around 400+ for hours off-peak (which can be checked at sites like moz millenium), say 2am to 6am, when there are far, far less players on and populations at that time are often highly imbalanced, compared to say 6pm-10pm where tick is generally more even, because populations are more balanced at that time, because far more people are active, so those minority of players contribute a disproportionate amount of points, that is not opinion, that is fact.

dancingmonkey.4902:

You do understand that when you make declarations, unless you have any evidence to support it, that it means absolutely nothing right? Not only is the reply relevant, you declare that it is untrue, with no actual fact to support that. Remind me of those who were once putting people to death for disputing their claim that the earth was flat, with no evidence of that either.

You do understand that the above is a combination of unintended irony and empty rhetoric?

Gav.1425:

The point of this thread is power creep. Just because something is new doesn’t mean it should be stronger than the old stuff.

True.

Gav.1425:

I play mesmer…

In which case you should be writing threads for chronomancer to be removed from the game / totally reworked, it is by far the most broken OP specialisation, and is a fine example of new stuff with power creep, I’ll keep my eyes peeled on the mesmer forum in anticipation of your thread.

Dopamine.7502:

As topic says. BETA testing has no place in WvW. Use the new BL tests to test WvW for beta characters. BETA characters are unbalanced and have no place in WvW matchups.

Because normal classes are balanced in WvW…

dkayl.6509:

remember that for thief.. going inv it’s the only defense we got..

Strange when I play thief, I have blinds, interrupts, insane mobility, evades, dodges, boon steal, a stun, some condi clear, etc that contribute toward defense.

lordkrall.7241:

zinkz.7045:

As opposed to now where the minority of off-peak players disproportionally contribute far more than the majority who play in and near primetime…

Every server have just as much ability to mount assaults during off-peak time.

Which has zero relevance to what I wrote, and to what I quoted from you. (and as an added bonus is also untrue in practical terms)