Guild Wars 2

Phadde.7362:

sonic.7592:

Guys, I agree that TDM is a really great game mode. But I think that anet shouldn’t build PvP around TDM now. I think TDM is just like RA/TA in GW1, which was lot of fun. But there should be a game mode with more depth.
Just build maps with additional objectives like guild lords and mobs for boosts. In the end, it is quite similar to TDM (since most of time you just fight XvsX) but it has a tactical component.

The thing that people seem to forget is that when you focus entirely on the actual
Player> vs <Player combat, the profession and combat mechanics gains a whole lot more weight. I don’t think that it’s all that baffling to argue that the interplay between ~17-29 skills (with additional important traits to consider) per player might actually be complex and with very much depth. And I think you have to consider all those things when playing in a game mode like this much more, and you play with perhaps 4 or 6 people total.

Okay you are right. TDM in GW2 has definetly a lit of depth and complexity. I just meant that there should be also objectives so that you can win even without winning fights. It just adds some tactical components but still fights are the main focus.

Guys, I agree that TDM is a really great game mode. But I think that anet shouldn’t build PvP around TDM now. I think TDM is just like RA/TA in GW1, which was lot of fun. But there should be a game mode with more depth.
Just build maps with additional objectives like guild lords and mobs for boosts. In the end, it is quite similar to TDM (since most of time you just fight XvsX) but it has a tactical component.

aocypher.9172:

Would you pay gems for an account wide unlock of a new zone?

Would you pay gems for an account wide unlock of a set of new dungeons?

I know I would (if the unlocks were reasonably priced), but what do you guys think about this?

I would pay for DLCs, but only if they’re reasonable. I can understand if Anet tries to avoid expansions, since it is a barrier for new players to join the game. I think this was one of the reason why GW2 was developed. Back in GW1 new players had to buy 3 full games and 1 add on to be competitive in PvP or PvE. It is not a good business model in long term.

So what is okay, if e.g. all new additional skills, traits, classes or races are free, but only new maps which include dungeons, are added via the gem store. So new players only need to buy the basic game to have all varieties of builds, which keeps the game attractive also in later years.

nGumball.1283:

Check EuroGamer and IGN interviews with Colin. I will link it if I find the articles :/

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

At the beginning I was against juwels but I see that it causes a lot of problems and build diversity.

So what about adding a bar diagram for the stats? I am pretty new to GW2 and when I see my stats of my character, e.g. 2000 power, I can’t relate anything to it. For me it is a naked number and I feel a bit lost when interpreting my stats. So a bar diagramm would give a rough idea of my stats distribution and it is easier to play around with sigills, runes, amulets etc.
I have added an example below. So basically if you add some stats, you see the effects like in the picture. It is pretty beginner friendly and advanced player can just ignore it.

Astralporing.1957:

sonic.7592:

But it is already stated that they change things about the world bosses with this feature patch.

They did state that? Where?

In a German inteview! They asked about plans to change the organizations of such world bosses and the community manager hinted at the last 3 blog posts!

But it is already stated that they change things about the world bosses with this feature patch.

Downfall.2671:

I agree, we need more encounters like Tequatl, but they need to be instanced. Tequatl, in its current state, is too much of a coordination hassle to be worth the rewards. Make it instanced with some kind of match making for solo players/small groups and about 40 players total

There was an interview that such problems with world events will be adressed in the last 3 blogposts Not necessarily instanced but I’m curious

I prefer to remove the jewels but I can understand problems mentioned here.
I don’t like to think in too many dimensions, that is, skills, traits, runes, sigills, amulets and juwels.

But to encounter some problems, what do you think about raising the trait points from 14 to 20 (70-100) and add a tier4 trait line? So anet can add more trait slots on the one hand (more build diversity) and people can better choose to allocate their trait points.
With this solution, it is simplified by removing one “dimension” but it opens a lot of new ways to play around with builds.

Cush.4063:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Just wanted to call some attention to this thread.

It is confusing for me to see this kind of mixed messaging. A ton of people agreed in that thread that there are too many moving parts in this game to balance it well enough. Now you guys are in here saying that removing jewels equates to dumbing the game down.

Can you guys do me a favor and try the game out after the features are in the game before assuming removing this is going to ruin everything?

Yes Allie, that is the thread I was talking about in my post as well. Please stick with it and don’t listen to the complainers. We want balance in this game or as close as you all can get to it and that is the way to do it. Everyone should read that thread and learn a thing or two. Seriously, it needs to happen if this game is ever going to get a glimpse of the competitive scene or for PvP to even have a bigger dedicated playerbase.

Tbh, I can’t believe people are complaining about such a small stat such as the jewel. It barely made a difference. Playerbase always screams at Anet for not listening and I now understand why sometimes now even though they did listen and took it right out of that thread. This is a great step towards achieving balance even if it’s a baby step.

I totally agree with you.
I think it is good that anet get rid of all those combinations and should focus on implementing more skills and traits. Maybe anet could even introduce more trait points, increasing them from 70 to 100 (after update 14 to 20), and add traits beyond grandmaster for more specialisation.

Wow so much rage here.
I’m a casual player and I really like this change. I admit I am pretty new to GW2 but these changes bringing me more and more to pvp.
I think people writing here are pvp cracks who enjoy to calculate and doing the maths behind.
I mean how do you actually create your builds? Do you f.e. just change the jewel and then started to fight and afterwards researched the battle log for changes?
I pretty like when changes are visible. And for me it is rather visible if you only have to focus on changes in a certain direction, f.e. skills and traits.

Teutos.8620:

First of all leagues are leaderboards, just dived up into different leagues, and similar to our leaderboard, you can take a look at them everytime you want: f.e. on http://www.lolking.net/leaderboards/#/euw/1

Ok, you’re right. But lolking leaderboards are not the official leaderboards, are they? But actually, my point of that was that people in LoL don’t care about their position in a leaderboard but rather only the league (so gold, plat, diamond etc.).

Teutos.8620:

Different leagues will also help with the reward structure and therefore a new incentive for players to climb up the ladder. (f.e. lol has new summoner icons, ward skins and a champion skin at the end of the season for you depending on your league position.)

I have already talked about the leaderboard in my first post in this thread. The unranked queue will also has a leaderboard, but not a visible one. You need the elo / mmr system to determine the players skill, and from them you get your placements (that’s how currently the gw2 leaderboard works). (Sidenote: You can take a look at the mmr graph from titanfall at http://www.titanfall.com/news/titanfall-matchmaking-update )
Players just don’t like to be able to see where there current position is, because they fear competition or comparison to other players.
Also to mention the wish to have the option to play without loosing their current leaderboard position.

But for a functioning TPvP-Scene you need a ranked SoloQ. Most teams will once get to the position, where they need new players (either to fill up their already existing team roster or to form a new team), but where do you get those players?

The strongest point for a ranked SoloQ is, that there are many many players out there, who have fun participating in this queuing system, and I think once the new reward system is established (and once TeamQ is not the better option for players to queue alone) we will for sure see a new flood of players participating in the SoloQ.

I totally agree with that.
My concern is that it shouldn’t be focus on many leaderboards. Better, it should only be focused on one leaderboard. And this should be, in my opinion, on a guild ladder.
Also in LoL, there are only two different main types: Unranked and ranked.

So switching over to GW2, I think besides the Guild Queue there should be also just an unranked Queue with a hidden elo for matchmaking. But in this unranked queue, you can join solo, duo, but also with 4 or 5 people. But the matchmaking should only match other teams with the same mix. So e.g. a team made up by 3 solos and one duo should be matched with another team of 3 solos and one duo (and similar elo of course).

Still, you are right that a ranking is needed for recruiting by guilds. My thoughts are that the current rank system is ok (not good, but for beginning it is okay). You still earn rank points for your unranked matches (unranked only in terms of no official leaderboard). Most people will say it doesn’t say anything about the skill. But if the current hotjoin is kicked out and a proper matchmaking system is introduced, those rank points are more worth then farmind rank points in hotjoin.

And as incentive for people who don’t want to take part in the guild leagues, you could introduce the emote system of GW1. So e.g. every 20 ranks you get an emote which you can spam around everywhere. And add some other good titles of course…

Oh and one last point. As I mentioned in another thread, a observer mode for the top ranked guild matches would be so great. When I remember back in GW1, many people spend hours to watch top guilds playing. And in my opinion, GW1 started to be really competitive when the observer mode was introduced, because many people could learn the strategies, tactics and builds of those guilds. This is also especially good for new people interested in sPvP. You can have a first look how to play the different maps efficiently and additionally copy some builds. But also for the top guilds it is kind of rewarding, if a bunch of people watching your games.

I’m wondering if really nobody likes the idea of a Guild Queue? I know at the beginning it is pretty hard since there are not many sPvP guilds at the moment. And that’s kind of sad. There are many PvE and WvW guilds out there, but due to the Solo and Team Arena only few people created a PvP guild.

I know other successful games like LoL don’t have that either. But it is not comparable to a MMO. In LoL probably even most diamond player don’t have a team (since ranking games are only Solo and Duo Queue). But in MMOs one of the first things people do is to find and join a guild, represent the guild with the guild tag etc.

I would love to see a Guild Queue with some nice rewards for guilds. Let’s say a season which lasts about 2 months, and at the end, the top 15 guilds get a bronze, silver and gold cape (only example, other rewards like that are fine as well). I think that many people would try to create a pvp guild and even some pve/wvw guilds would maybe recruit pvp people for such rewards.

On the other hand a leaderboard for solo player is not useful in my opinion. A look at LoL again: It focuses on Solo and Duo Queue. But it doesn’t have a leaderboard. It has these bronze, silver, …, diamond leagues. And this is the only incentive for people there to get into one of these higher leagues. This is a great idea for GW2 as well, but I think that the PvP population is too small to have such leagues at the moment.

Izaya.2906:

sonic.7592:

Token.5098:

To be honest, now they’re making legendaries account bound I don’t get why the skins should be in the wardrobe. It’ll only make everyone have legenadaries everywhere and when I see a legenadary I want to know it is in fact a legendary not a lvl 12 weapon transmuted to look like one. People are gonna be able to swap em around anyway now.

If legendary is account bound, you don’t need to transmute a lvl12 weapon with the legendary skin. Just take the legendary weapon instead…

Legendaries require you to be 80 to equip them…

Lol then you can look at the level of the player to see if it’s a real legendary or not (at least in groups).

Token.5098:

To be honest, now they’re making legendaries account bound I don’t get why the skins should be in the wardrobe. It’ll only make everyone have legenadaries everywhere and when I see a legenadary I want to know it is in fact a legendary not a lvl 12 weapon transmuted to look like one. People are gonna be able to swap em around anyway now.

If legendary is account bound, you don’t need to transmute a lvl12 weapon with the legendary skin. Just take the legendary weapon instead…

kito.1827:

style.6173:

Josh Davis.6015:

So, here’s a question (purely for discussion):

If you had to choose one, would you prefer RANKED Solo Arena, or UNRANKED Team Arena? I’d imagine unranked team arena would still allow you to queue up by yourself or with 1-4 friends much like the rated version does now.

Thoughts?

I don’t think it should be a choice; it should be both. This way the end state would be:

1. Ranked team queue (with improved matchmaking)
2. Ranked solo queue (with improved matchmaking)
3. Unranked team queue (matchmaking not needed since this is for practice)

i would even go further and do it like this:

1. Ranked team queue -> team of 5 ONLY (maybe split into “teamQ” and “guildQ”)
2. Ranked solo queue -> “as is” with exception of showing ranking instead of rank
3. Unranked team queue -> 2-team / 3-team / solo; but imo MMR is pretty much needed everywhere, because even getting rolled while practicing isn’t fun at all

This is actually also my favorite. But I think, Queue Times would be way too long if PvP population is not high enough.

Thats why I think that team and solo queue should be mixed up (choose 1-5ppl) and only unranked (ranked and unranked would split the base as well). Why unranked? In my opinion, ladderboards for single player is pretty useless.
And the second mode is Guild Queue with some good rewards as I mentioned above.

I prefer an Unranked Team Arena, since you have the choice to solo or team up with friends.

Additionally, I would really appreciate a (ranked) matchmaking for guild teams with a proper ladder (like in GW1) and Guild Rewards (e.g. bronze, silver, gold capes or bonus which you get by guild missions). Guilds should be much more pushed in GW2, since it is one of the most important thing in a MMO.

So:
1) Unranked Team Arena
2) Guilde Queue

Hey community and Devs,

I’m wondering if you couldn’t integrate the system of the RA in GW1 with the new map?

So basically you just team up randomly with other guys and do a short match (until everyone dies). The winner team continues with the same team to the next match. Lets say you get after every win some money and after 5 wins a bonus reward.

I think it is quite amusing and kind of motivating to try win 5 matches in a row for bonus etc.

Chicago Jack.5647:

Well done Sonic, those points pretty much sum up everyone’s opinions on what needs to happen to improve the infrastructure of the spvp scene. Kudos to you and thank you for your post, since you’re a new player, but we’ve all seen this before.

Good post, regardless.

I was just reading the latests threads here and 80% of them were aboud rewards/glory. May I just summed up all points, but at least Arenanet gets reminded that there is something outside of rewards. And I have tried to focus on things, which should be easily implemented and is kind of “first aid” to refresh sPvP a bit.

sminkiottone.6972:

I agree with you sonic, but imho the ship is already sailed.

Even if Anet give us more competitive mode, game mode and tourney mode will the people who have left come back ? and how ?

I still don’t understand how a sequel of Gw1 can lack this much lo.

Yeah, probably you’re right. But still, in many forums I see a lot of people saying that they are inactive, but would come back if there is anything new.

I think thy should at least change the solo and team arena. Somehow I don’t see the point of a team arena, when leaderboards are just showing the single player names.
Separate it in Solo/Team-Arena and Guild Arena (with possibility to take 1 or 2 guests). This would give people incentives to create sPvP guilds…

Locuz.2651:

bhagwad.4281:

I disagree about not focusing on rewards. Rewards are the incentive and more difficult rewards are statements of time invested, hard work, and skill.

So without rewards, 90% of people will stop playing. It doesn’t matter what the carrot is as long as it’s difficult to achieve, offers progression, and is publicly visible.

Agree with this. We have to keep in mind that this is an MMO and not a moba. MMO players are typically very loot driven.

I dont think there is anything negative about having a good reward structure.

And here I disagree. Loot driven are PvE player, but not PvP Player. A focus on rewards would only pull some PvE player who only play for dailys and then leave. But with these player, you won’t create a competitive PvP community. But I think, there are so many people out there (especially from GW1) who are waiting for more competition.

Maybe Anet should watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UjZYMI1zB9s

I think, they truly show what drives passion. And it’s not the rewards.

Of course, rewards are not bad. But in my opinion, they should only be a “nice to have” feature. But when I read this forum, I see too many people demanding for better rewards and Anet thus believes that only rewards would help to make sPvP more popular.

Hello everyone,

I’m pretty new to GW2 and tried sPvP only a few rounds. And actually, I have almost no incentive to continue playing it except having fun for a short time like playing Minesweeper, but not to invest time to really improbe skills and so on.
In the past I played games like CS, WC3, LoL, GW1. All of them are/were pretty successful in Esports. So I was thinking about it and I came to some thoughts and ideas which I want to share and get some feedback.

First of all, I read through some threads and the roadmap for the development of GW2 (especially PvP). In my opinion, the development goes in a wrong direction, because it is focusing too much on rewards and stuff. But to be honest? The games I mentioned above had barely rewards, but still they were incredebly successfull.

So what I think, which made the games successful in the Esports scene, is that they promoted top teams/players/guilds a lot through tournaments or leagues. I think, every Esport (and normal sport) need stars, where beginner or just casual player admire such high level plays and try to copy. And on the other hand, if there are such promotions, many player also try to be a top player, because a simple reason…. You can show that you are a “great” player. It is all about fame…
I have read that Anet is trying to implement the league system like in LoL or SC2, and I think this is a great step. But to continue this, Anet show build a really good observer mode like in GW1, where all people can watch the top league teams playing against each other. I remember times, where I watched in GW1 teams like War Machine or The Last Pride for hours. And so did a lot of other people. I think, for top player it is rewarding enough, if thousands other player watch you playing instead of getting just some gold and other loot….

Another point are the Queue Modes. So far, there are Hotjoins, SoloQ and TeamQ.
Hotjoins: Please kick it out. Better do unranked 5vs5 matches to practise for the ranked matches. ANd then give people the ability to create custom games. So all in all, same like in LoL

SoloQ/TeamQ: I would rather split it up in Solo/Team-Queue (one mode) and kind of Guild-Queue. The first mode should be done same as in LoL. So teams get mixed up by Solo-players and team-players, but the opponent should be matched in the same way. So if one team has 3 solo-players and 2 team players, the opponent should be mixed up the same. For Guild-Queues my idea is just that GW2 is a MMO, and people are much more related to their guilds. This would incent people to create more and better PvP-Guilds trying to going up the ladders for fame. And similar to GW1, the observer-mode should definetely show the games of top 50 or top 100 guilds.

These are just my thoughts about the competitive part of GW2. I know, GW2 needs also better PvP-Modes, but I can understand that this takes much more time. I think, my ideas are faster to implement and at least a step in a more competitive community. I think there are a huge amount of gamers waiting for a competitive PvP-mode in a MMO style. So this goes hand in hand with the revenues, which NCSoft seeks for. An idea to increase earnings in PvP is maybe to do PvP-only skins, which you can buy for real money (for a reasonable price like 5€ per weapon or 8€ per armor set). I think, many people would buy some skins, if the PvP community is big and professional enough. And last but not least, do more frequently but smaller balance fixes. Look at other games like Low, how they do this

What do you think about it? I really like the mechanics of GW2 because it is more focused on skill and I would love if GW2 gets more attention by the Esports scene.

I hope for some feedback.