TheDarkness.6947

I understand what they’re trying to do here, and conceptually, I’m on board. My main issue is that it feels a bit like a punch in the wallet. Some of us are a bit more casual and don’t have a full set of legendary gear to react easily to these kinds of changes. I spent a pretty good amount of time/gold gearing up a viper scourge with torment runes. Now it feels glassier than I like to play it. So those investments now feels like a waste, and I’ll have to spend more time/gold reworking the gear set to something that plays more like I like it. Bottom line: if these traits, skills, and runes needed such heavy nerfs, they shouldn’t have passed the first sniff test.

The downside to permanent summons like minions is that they can keep you in combat for longer than you want to stay there, and make you have to wait longer / move further away to mount up. And they can turn into “visual clutter” when you aren’t in combat - talking to an NPC, doing a puzzle, even just trying to navigate something. I’d almost prefer they stay on timers but move to an ammo system so you could summon 3 in short order. But either way, they could probably use some updating.

I voted hybrid, but I didn’t see the voting option I wanted to pick, which is: - I don’t want to wait 2 or more years, please fix what’s there now. Mainly staff, and, to a lesser degree scepter. Hammer is TBD, I guess. And then, the conjure weapons really need some love. Far as I can tell, those are intended to be ele’s version of a weapon swap, and a weapon swap is the way most professions adapt to be effective at different ranges. But the conjure weapons are so hard to justify taking in their current form. They’re clunky to use. Most just have 1 or maybe 2 skills worth using. And they are kind of locked to a specific element and it’s associated theme of damage, CC, heal, etc. With the possible exception of FGS, the conjures don’t really feel like a weapon swap that lets you dynamically adapt to different ranges today. They feel more like a single skill that’s really awkward to cast.

I have a hard time buying into the notion that the devs have decided that players running bot accounts in PvP are somehow good for the game. Seems to me like they’ve done a cost benefit analysis and decided that cleaning up the bots isn’t where they want to invest payroll dollars right now. There are other ways to address the low population problem that might lead to eventually restoring the population, but it would require some investment. For example, Anet could provide the AI and just disclose it. “If the MMS is unable to match a full team within the allotted time, each team will be provided with an AI player to guard their home node.” At least that way AI is distributed fairly across teams and the AI is of equal quality. They could also make the MMS first attempt to fill 5v5 conquest, and if there aren’t enough people in the queue to do it within a reasonable time, then try to fill a 3v3 game, then a 2v2.

I’ve seen first hand the kind of BS the OP is talking about, and you’re talking about completely different things. You’re talking about guys razzing each other. You might call out a mistake in an insulting way, but the intent can still fairly good-natured. You do it with your friends. You might try it with someone you don’t know, and if they don’t respond, I’m guessing you let it drop at that point. I think most people are thick-skinned enough to handle that, even if they don’t want to participate and trade insults or make fun of their own mistake. I’m pretty sure the OP is talking about those people that will completely stop playing 5 minutes and 150 points before the match is even decided, sit in spawn, and go on and on berating one person continuously in the team chat until the other team wins because it’s 3 or 4v5. It’s more than part of the game or spirited rivalry at that point, it’s just poison. There are people like that out there. I suspect they’re at least part of the reason the PvP population is so low.

What I find in the user agreement and code of conduct is that multiple accounts are expressly allowed. You may not use them for bots and must provide your real information when creating them. And I didn’t find anything that states that using an alt account in PvP automatically constitutes match manipulation. It’s possible I missed something, but if not then it looks like it comes down to your intent and the actions you take with the alt account. That creates a pretty murky area. Could be very difficult to prove an intent to manipulate matches by throwing or dc for a friend vs. “I just felt like playing this character on my alt account today and I wasn’t on my A-game.” If you’re asking for personal opinions, I struggle to see a legitimate motivation to play an alt account in sPvP. Possibly in WvW if you have friends on different servers.

Who knows, and who cares. It’s their problem, not yours. Not worth your time to try to analyze it, because you’ll never know what is driving the behavior. You have just as much right to play the game as they do. And if you’re in gold and in a match with them, chances are they’re gold too. In other words, they probably aren’t really any better at PvP than you are, regardless of how awesome they are in their own mind. So basically - just ignore them and don’t give them anything to feed on. It might feel like public humiliation if they do this in team chat. But really, any reasonable player that reads that stuff is thinking “what’s wrong with that toxic guy” rather than wondering what’s wrong with you. That or insult them back - but that doesn’t sound like your kind of thing based on your post.

It’s possible I underestimate the effort. I wouldn’t think a simple captcha system like suggested would take a lot of programming effort, and it would at least stop AFK botting by requiring someone to babysit their bots so they can’t run on autopilot 24/7. Requiring the purchase of an expansion to play ranked PvP would at least put some cost and risk into setting up alt accounts for bots since they could be banned. Those both seem like they’d be pretty straightforward, and they are just player suggestions I’ve seen here. The actual game developers might have even better ideas. To me, it looks like the competitive modes were the actual intended end game, at least initially. The excellent active combat system. Skills that don’t really have very much impact in PvE but feel essential in PvP/WvW. Separate skill definitions per mode. Granted, competitive modes don’t seem to be so much the end game focus today based on where we see development dollars being spent. But it does seem to me the game was very much designed for competitive modes.

I think it’s a decent idea. It could help. Here’s the thing though. It’s obvious Anet has many gifted people in their employ. I feel like they could tap just one of them on the shoulder and say “hey, stop what you’re working on for one week, and go figure out how to fix the bots and other problems caused by alt accounts in PvP.” And if they did that, most of these problems would be get significantly better if not be solved completely. Seems like the only thing worth brainstorming about here is how to get Anet to care about PvP.

Your rating is individual. Your rank is individual. Should you get a title, it’s awarded to you alone. So to me, DuoQ is a pollutant in a system that measures your individual merit to make a success of whatever team you’re placed on, regardless if there is any willful stuff going on to try to manipulate MMS in a way that violates the TOS.

Yep. I really wonder if the complaints about staff wouldn’t just melt away if the conjure weapons were improved. I get that it’s hard to take something with so many 1200 range skills and keep it from being overbearing. To me the probably the biggest issue is that you’re effectively stuck with it once your range situation inevitably changes.

Cool, if the consensus is that this is only an issue at the very top, then I won’t worry about it anymore. Being able to queue with a friend is a good feature, so long as it’s not a common source of abuse.

Every time I really think about this, particularly your issue c) about the range locking, I keep coming back to the notion that it seems like the intended answer to this was supposed to be the conjure weapon skills. In their current form though, it’s really hard to justify taking any of them. So maybe a potential solution to many of these issues lies in a rework of some of the conjure weapons, and making them more versatile and attractive…

Good luck. Necro is really fun at cap. I’ve just started leveling at guardian and I’m enjoying it too. I know what you mean. Part of me still wants to be an ele main because I like that theme and the animations are really cool. It’s just not worth it right now unless/until they give it a serious rework.

Thanks for trying to restore my confidence in the integrity of the system. You’re probably right - or at least I hope you are. Yes, I do see bots, and AFKs, and toxicity. I see other things that I wonder about too. Players that appear to be both operating as a coordinated duo and also seem far too skilled/experienced to be playing at the MMR I’m at. And also people that, while technically not AFK, are playing so poorly that I wonder if they are purposely throwing the game. These things are probably all explainable by forces other than win trading. Before I would probably have written them off to extremely low population and the MMS eventually throwing up its arms in the interest of queue times. So maybe recent events have caused me to overthink it. Really I just want quality matches. The game mode can be really fun if you get a good match up where players and teams are pretty evenly skilled and experienced. That just doesn’t seem to happen nearly as often as it should.

I’ve had similar experiences. It’s not you, it’s the profession. My advice is to bite the bullet and roll up something else and you’ll start feeling better almost immediately. I know what you mean about the wasted investment in trying to learn and gear it. But it won’t take you another half year on another profession. My experience is that other professions I’ve tried feel like you somehow turned on easy mode compared to playing ele. Meanwhile we can all hope they’ll improve ele somehow. But realistically they just keep nerfing it more - as recently as this week. Who knows why.

I said that I’m new to sPvP. I didn’t say that I’m stupid. Do you think those two things are somehow equivalent? Aside from you trying to discount my powers of observation, I do agree with you that either solo queue only or requiring full teams would both greatly reduce the ability to manipulate match making. There are compelling arguments posted on this forum that requiring full team queue in ranked would decimate the PvP population even further. Frankly, I don’t have data to speak to that either way. I would say that only Anet would know that.

Why not just get rid of duo queue in ranked? What purpose does it serve? In a perfect world, where we can actually have nice things because people respect the ToS and don’t exploit the privilege, then sure. On the surface it sounds like it lets you experience playing conquest with one friend. As far as I can tell though, duo queue is the mechanic that enables people do match manipulation and win trading. So why not just make it solo queue only and eliminate the ability to do that? There are already other modes where you can queue for sPvP with a friend (unranked, AT, etc). I’m pretty new to PvP. I don’t win trade and don’t intend to, so maybe I misunderstand how it works. Seems to me like this one simple change would take a dev 5 minutes and greatly reduce players’ ability to manipulate ranked PvP matches. Am I wrong? Have to be honest, as someone fairly new to PvP, my perception right now is that match manipulation is pretty much the ONLY reason people duo queue.

I’m actually really happy for players that like to play ele in close combat. They have a spec that fits their play style and theme, and from what I hear, it’s pretty strong. I’m glad they have a spec they enjoy. That said, seems like there’s a significant number of people (me included) who would like to play ele as a ranged caster - the way it’s depicted in the marketing - and have it not feel clunky and weak compared to just about everything else. I hope that Anet will accommodate us too at some point.

I say kudos to Anet for pulling out the ban hammer. Better late than never. And kudos to those in the community who brought the issue to light. My question is this though. PvP is free to play right? Even ranked and ATs? What keeps the accounts that got banned from having a fresh account ready to go at it again tomorrow, essentially risk free?

Or just eliminate duo queue in ranked. It seems like the simplest possible change that would eliminate the vast majority of these shenanigans that are negatively affecting the quality of matches from bronze all the way up. I see very little down side to making ranked conquest single queue only. You could still queue with a friend in unranked if you want to help them learn. I don’t even really understand why duo queue is there in ranked. In the best case, it gives one team an advantage that the other team may not have (2 people who have voice comms on discord and are better coordinated). In the worst case it enables straight up match manipulation that makes the game mode less fun for anyone who is not doing that.

I see. That makes more sense now. Thanks very much for taking the time to explain. That does seem like a pretty big hit to ele survivability then - at least for core and tempest. Another nail in ele’s coffin, I guess. Maybe if they can get all the nails driven in, some friendly necros will raise the eles as their minions.

Thanks! Are you sure this is how the math is done for stacking multiplicatively though? Taking your example of 4 sources of 10% DR I’d get: 1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 * 0.1 = 0.0001. I’m not even sure what that would mean. Take 99% of incoming damage with 4 sources of 10% DR? I’m certainly not trying to nitpick, just to understand. And agreed that any nerf to ele DR would be like pouring salt in a wound.

So it’s this Oct 5 release change then? I hadn’t quite wrapped my head around what that exactly meant yet. Is it confirmed this is a nerf to tempest/ele damage reduction? “Stack multiplicatively” is not a very mathematically precise phrasing.

What are you referring to?