PvP Systems Conversation
Ben Phongluangtham.1065
ArenaNet › ArenaNet
Hi folks!
On Wednesday, 12/6, the Guild Wars 2 PvP team will be having a community event. We’ll be posting a series of discussion topics that players can join to ask questions or share their comments. We plan to be active in the threads until the end of the week. Our responses won’t be instantaneous, but we will try to get to as many questions and comments as possible.
Our posts will cover the following topics:
- Matchmaking/Leagues
- Automated Tournaments
- Rewards
- Maps
- Game Modes
- Miscellaneous (Note: We may not respond to everything in this thread. There are some things we can’t discuss at this time.)
You’ll notice that skills and balance and player behavior are not included in the list of topics. As most of you are aware, the PvP team does not handle balance changes and we are not responsible for reviewing or responding to player conduct issues. As such, we cannot answer questions on these topics. You should continue to post your questions about skills and balance in the appropriate profession subforum, and you can direct any concerns you have about player conduct to our Customer Support Team.
We look forward to having a good and productive conversation with you starting Wednesday!
Ben Phongluangtham
Game Designer
Reddit: ANET_BenP
Twitch: AnetBenP
Comments
So the most important issue, balance, will not be addressed...
balance is important, but I would argue that matchmaking, rewards, competitive/marketing aspects etc are also very (more?) important to continue to find ways to grow player base and attract new players
They can have the best reward and best matchmaking and it wont mean anything if there is no balance. I dont think thw pvp team needs to talk to the community at all, i think they need to talk to balance team. You guys have a lot to talk about....
Nice I guess, but it would also be nice to get some more interaction and replies of the issues and concerns being posted in the PvP forum for many months. We're full of suggestions and concerns here but I do not really get the impression we're getting heard here.
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I hear what you are saying, and looking at breakdown of players in ranked, clearly there are favorites (likely because they are unbalanced and strong). But I like a challenge and playing builds that are hard to play and I suspect I'm not the only one that doesn't just gravitate to the FotM. So I guess I'm saying I think the 'balance is the only problem' is overstated and it is nice to hear from devs that they want player input. Good luck finding the elusive perfect balance! Every build has a counter and there are so many possibilities that I would think it impossible that there aren't easier to play builds and harder to play builds. But it seems I'm in the minority
The PvP team does not handle balance changes... wow. Just... wow.
Yes, since the game's launch in 2012, apparently this is a big revelation?
Edit: That would be the skills and balance team
twitch.tv/chaithh
Forum Lord Chaith
You'd think they would be a part of it since skill splitting is a thing. Guess I'm a dreamer. :P
Edit: And considering what we've seen from the "Skills and Balance Team" maybe they should be.
HelloOo, nice to see you active!
Quaggan is happy you gonna talk with Quaggan and his fishy friends in PvP forums! Quaggan has noticed Game Modes on your list, so he wonders, if we will talk about other modes than Conquest, which would mean, we can hope for tweaks for Stronghold and maybe see some Deathmatch (reworked Coutyard)? Quaggan understands you don't work on balance, but does that mean, profession designers don't read PvP forums and nobody is sharing our concerns with them?
"death by lag - it is your fate
just relax, and meditate"
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Quaggy sPvP Necro Feedback
Well, it's encouraging that ANET is feeling enough pressure to do this. On the other hand, Skill and Balance is central to the problems in pvp. So, the discussion can't be as "productive" as we'd like it to be.
Mesmerizing Girl
The balance team does look at the PvP forums, though they watch the class specific forums more often.
Ben Phongluangtham
Game Designer
Reddit: ANET_BenP
Twitch: AnetBenP
In regards to maps: I felt like within the current meta where AoE dominates, it maybe necessary to talk about increasing cap size to reduce effectiveness of certain builds in conquest (while increase others). It may not have as much impact on higher tiers since players tend to kite more efficiently, but it'll help with lower tiers.
Also add courtyard to stronghold queue in unranked. In the future maybe add another gamemode (capture the quaggan whatnot) so there are alternative gamemodes.
[RED] Crimson Sunspears...your small family guild since 2015.
I'm quite happy that things will be discussed with us finally!
. We all want a good game. As for me I say we need new game modes or more updated maps of Stronghold/TDM. Conquest has made the game beyond stale Bring back the 5 man system and add a leaderboard for groups (2,3,5) and a leaderboard for solo que.
Balance isnt as bad as it has been but stale game play and over played modes / maps make it less enjoyable in PvP.
Also PvP server lag is beyond ridiculous right now. Having pings go from 30-40 to 90-120 is cray cray.
Come on, don't bother being bitter. They're here now and reaching out, don't kitten ruin it.
That's productive...they go to the forums where each profession always feels under balanced. That explains it all.
Ooo, then Quaggan has an idea.
Wouldn't it be good to have sPvP balancing sticky thread for each profession*? It would be easy to track for each designer associated with profession hes working on and players to share feedback there. Currently it's rather hard to share feedback and discuss on so many subforums at once (Quaggan doesn't even step there for a reason), especially when you would have to debate with people who don't sPvP or don't care about sPvP at all, and will defend broken things just because they are afraid of PvE nerfs.
Fishy Edit:
*In PvP subforum.
"death by lag - it is your fate
just relax, and meditate"
Voice Command System and Announcers Packs - Would you pay with gems for those?
Quaggy sPvP Necro Feedback
Im assuming player conduct would cover the reporting function in game?
We really need one for the amount of afk/rage quitters that plague the game right now.
Not to brag, but I put together a puzzle in 4 days and the box said 2-4 years.
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I miss team queue...
Lol, yep, EVERY profession forum it's:
"ArenaNet hates us and leaves our profession in shambles with sooo many broken mechanics.
"
They're peddling hope but when the patch comes it's just nerfs. We're the 'X' class and we are entitled to be the strongest at
'X'
twitch.tv/chaithh
Forum Lord Chaith
It is precisely the pvp team's inability to directly handle class balance in pvp that vexes me.
Thanks for doing this Ben!
Thank you for answering, but i believe mostly paying attention to the class profession subforums is part of the reason why pvp balance is so bad.
People in profession subforums aren't concerned about how their classes are balanced vs other classes. They tend to be pve players and they tend to want more toys to play with.
Meanwhile, people who post in the pvp forums are more concerned about interprofessional balance within the pvp game mode. Reading mostly rhe profession sub forums provides a warped view of what is happening in pvp as far as discontent goes.
You need look no further than what necros tend to discuss in their sub forum (how bad necro is at everything) vs what is discussed here (how overpowering necro boon corruption and point control is). It's like looking into two different realities.
That's not the problem, It's just that the balance team needs 3x the budget and manpower to achieve about 3x as many positive changes per patch.
twitch.tv/chaithh
Forum Lord Chaith
Sadly, I'm inclined to agree with this. I've given up on having meaningful discussions in the class forums these days.
Just want to say you're wasting an opportunity by continuing to talk about class balance.
He specifically went out of his way to say that they're not there to discuss class balance. That doesn't mean that the balance team won't reach out in future, I even read somewhere that they're looking to step up balance patches and a secondary smaller balance patch is due this December. They're clearly trying. Please be open and receptive with them because then real changes can happen.
honestly, you're going to have to make a whole new gamemode if you're not going to balance scourge
but, I'm sure the PvP team having no balance control will cause any new modes to be ruined too. double mesmer in 2v2 would be vomit inducing I swear
so excuse my lack of excitement. yes this is well intentioned, but it's a band aid on a wound that needs stitches
until balance is actually addressed, it's all pointless fiddling
Mastered in Classics, don't think I can land this
Think we're gonna crash blissfully out of the sky
Atleast the balance after pof release was no where near as atrocious as hot release xd
Just an example: where on the profession sub forums is one to discuss the synergistic interaction between support firebrand and condi scourge in pvp? The guardian forum? Why would they want a discussion that could possibly lead to their favorite profession getting nerfed? The necro forum? You'd sooner have an easier time raising your dead relatives from their graves in real life.
Like really ben, what you just said, that the balance team tends to look at profession sub forums more, freaked me out.
Increasing cap size is a bad bad idea. It will only result in giving bunkers an advantage on holding points and make games more stale. Aoe is going to be as effective on a big point as it is going to be outside the point (learn to play issue)... all this would do is promoting bunker meta. Catering for the casuals is not going to help make the game healthier and in the long run that's not a good thing for either the lower tiers or higher tiers.
They have already tried Courtyard and it sucked. The game is balanced around conquest and that's how it should be because it's the most fun mode to play honestly. Deathmatch gets real old real fast. It's more interesting to play around objectives on a map and engage in varied matchups (2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 1v2) instead of getting into a map and fighting 5v5 every single time. Conquest promotes more build diversity because of this and you don't come across into as many repeated scenarios so it's less boring. I really can't see how anyone would think that deathmatch wouldn't make pvp more stale.
"Bring back the 5 man system"? Hello? What's the point of this? This already existed before when the game was more popular and it was basically dead. On top of that, we have ATs now....
Maybe more game modes would be fun, but this can't be done until the main mode (conquest) is healthier. The population is already shrinking and you want to shrink it even further by introducing new game modes? I don't think I need to explain more why this is a bad idea.
I would like to know why the anet servers shifted from the old ones to the new east coast ones. Idk how anyone thinks its a good idea for their entire west coast playerbase to go from 40-60 ping to 90-120 ping. Several posts have been made on the pvp forums about this and they get ignored then deleted. But I guess the majority of the gw2 playerbase are pve casuals and it doesn't matter to them.
Well, I for one would really like to ask about better PvP infrastructure; better minimap, better minimap ping, and better tutorial systems for new players <_<
To be honest, balance is one of those areas that's already heavily discussed and would just overshadow the structural issues with PvP, so it's probably better to leave that for a different conversation.
The reason why I (and perhaps a few other players) don't play PvP at all has nothing to do with poor balance. It's because the game mode itself is boring and creates a focus on builds that aren't interesting to play or play against.
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Blah blah queue times too long, short, duo or not, ranked premade or not etc.
Don't care.
I'd like more ascended shards... and please drop pveers faster to bronze league.
Don't care.
Don't care.
I'm super hyped for miscellaneous!
Never said I'm the best, but I believe I'm better than you.
While we can really appreciate any kind of communication with us at this point, this is still unacceptable.
And yeah it's probably not even the fault of the "PvP team" but of whoever had the clever idea of separating the teams.....................
I'm also pretty sure that we are all on the same side because we want the game to succeed. That is why we "complain" this hard about things like balance, things that are essential for the game to have a healthy life span. (at least the ones that do care)
No system ever will help on having an enjoyable PvP.
There is no replay value when the skill gap is almost no existent.
But anyway, again
thanks for the communication
I am bummed about not being able to have a discussion on balance but not surprised as we have already been informed that PvP team =/= balance team. However, could we get an estimated time of shipment on that bonus patch that MO alluded to in the Daybreak AMA?
I just want to know if anet is having any discussion about giving the pvp team more control over class balance in pvp.
I know previously you came to the compromise of being able to make pvp only changes as long as they are merely number adjustments, but while that was progress, pvp balance needs a lot more frequent and careful consideration. Your pvp team really shouldn't have to wait on the balance team from pve and wvw, and everything the pvp team changes should be pvp only. I really wish you guys would scuttle the idea that there needs to be some similarity between game modes. It's not practical.
Anyway, i'm gonna drop the balance complaint now. I do appreciate that you will talk to us about other things relating to pvp.
If I may inquire, what is the chance for new game modes making a stronger appearance? Many of our balance woes are derived from the mode of conquest itself -- it favors melee brawls, which is the land where scourges, spellbreakers, and FBs excel. More open and diverse game modes would open up new alternative styles of play that wouldn't overwhelmingly favor the currently unbalanced meta. There's obviously deathmatch and stronghold, but what about classics like capture the flag, king of the hill (with moving points), and assault (IE one side attacks, other defends)?
For example, I've noticed in my casual playtime that stronghold favors classes with more mobility and range than raw close-range firepower, thus holo and thieves tend to gain an advantage on those maps, evening the playing field.
I'd also like to discuss the idea of dynamic points -- points that change in size (or even location!) in response to player activity. This would add significantly more diversity to fights.
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Ranked pvp should have access to mats and complete legendarys from HOT and POF, linked behind a combination of rating and reward tracks or something like that.
If not something that extreme, at least make available some of all these new skins being released in the Pve portion of the game in Pvp also.
Really? Is there a reason we never hear from them? Like hell, would it be too much for them to make a single post about the mirage bug fix that went out saying that either A) The new DPS was intended to be this low. or
it wasn't intended to be this low. Because mesmers don't even know that right now, and it would take 30seconds for them to write that comment.
Eyyyy I unlocked signatures
yessss more pveers ruining matches, just what everyone wants
Never said I'm the best, but I believe I'm better than you.