Swagg.9236

The playerbase would probably be less "toxic" overall if the game had any value. As it stands, the reason why everybody gets so wound up over winning and losing is likely more to do with the fact that everybody gets a "skill rating" despite an algorithm's attempt to force a fixed win-loss ratio upon every player. Ditch the ranks, fold unranked/ranked into one pool, and give blanket rewards for all matches played; then you'd probably see less people get upset about GW2 PvP being downright, objective trash and then all the people who want to delude themselves into thinking that mastering a babby-tier metagame can start up their own discord in-houses and private competitions. You'd really get a much better picture into how truly big (tiny, anemic, etc.) the GW2 "competitive scene" is by removing the rank system. You wouldn't retain the people farming baubles to sell and you probably wouldn't retain the people who only cared about the numbers which never meant anything in the first place. You'd probably only have the people who legitimately want to try to have some fun, but there likely aren't that many considering how GW2 gameplay is so brutally binary and shallow.

There really shouldn't be a prerequisite at all. GW2 PvP isn't difficult; only esoteric. I bet less than 5 in 10 people actually stomach this game's PvP for more than 30 hours straight and come out the other end thinking that adding an arbitrary rank number is going to validate any more playtime. Odds are most people will just drop it.

Welcome to G U I L D W A R S 2: your one-stop shop for patch-driven, creativity-stifling "gameplay" since 2012. Here at nu-anet, we strive to deliver a product with the illusion of free movement papier-mâched over the dynamism of Classic Runescape. If you really ever thought that this game had more than two and a half builds despite all of its possible skillbar combinations, then boy do we have some decade-old news for you!

That's how GW2 plays at its fundamental core. You're not going to have anything but arbitrarily strong or weak faceroll builds because the game has no sense of universal combat tempo, consistently sabotages action legibility with excessive particle effects, uses tab targeting to automatically aim everything, throws around AoEs that equal or exceed the size of objective areas, and then has the hysterical idea to balance none of this across any sort of significant, universal resource. Nerf or buff all you want; you're just going to get the same keyboard-stompy game that has existed since 2012, my dude. I guess you could at least say you got more sparkles to look at now lmao

Anet did the dummy move of not letting players use game assets and an editor to make their own maps.

Before I stopped grinding hard, I at least got to be with a team that had a good time at a LAN, and a bunch of my friends are apparently playing in invite now. TF2 6s is extraordinarily welcoming if you aren't an outright jerk; I've met very few people that managed to drain the fun from TF2. HL is a little bit more on the spectrum, though.

Team Fortress 2.

Just because damage totals got adjusted doesn't mean that this isn't exactly as simple as how the game plays now (or has always played lmao). At least OP is sort of suggesting direct attacks on the biggest reasons why GW2 combat is so illegible, uninteractive and generic.

It's bad because GW2 is too simple to give purpose to its comparatively huge volume of options. The game is drowning in bloat, so you're ultimately forced to play the most overperforming builds rather than finding success with experimentation and creativity.

Competitive modes should be left in players' hands. If you remove ranked, flatten out the in-game participation rewards across all PvP options, and you don't see a sub-culture of player-driven in-houses or a third-party site/forum organizing pick-up matches, then the game wasn't worth playing competitively in the first place. First issue is that anet would never give the GW2 playerbase the tools to make anything from scratch (or even just from a stripped-down editor toolkit), but even if that were the case, something tells me that nobody would bother to put in the effort because this game's PvP scene is so fractured, insular and elitist.

Real talk: the fact that I could buy the new fashion options with gold without having to spend actual money on this dumpster fire lol.

Unfortunately, GW2 PvP is basically trash on all fronts. The game has no real presence or prestige, so winning inherently lacks value. The metagame has too much bloat, which devalues the effort taken to win when utilizing it (this is to say that most of the effort in winning is generally frontloaded into choosing the easiest build). Consistency isn't achieved so much through practice as it is running a really strong build. Patch notes do most of the work. Because GW2 is too easy, the weird solution developed was to artificially decrease win consistency by using a borked matchmaking algorithm and restricting full team set-ups. It's pretty laughable. It won't change because anet is bizarrely prideful and obstinate for their lack of accomplishments.

Newcomer response / assessment / advice: "I hope you didn't pay money to play this game."

"Just dodge" doesn't even remotely apply to GW2 anymore. How is the only universal damage-negation mechanic (the one which is supposed to define an individual's grasp of combat tempo and planning) not only insufficient to serve as the primary means of mitigating protracted attack focus but also LESS EFFECTIVE than just facerolling rotations which have damage-mitigation BAKED INTO attacks and instant movement? Frankly, two dodges on a 20s cooldown wasn't even enough to keep combat interesting back at launch. That's why the PvP scene was ruled by thief and ele: the former had freebie teleports/blinds/dodges on demand while the latter had so much passive healing that it made up for the fact that two dodges is trash for keeping anyone alive in a game where it's impossible to miss. In fact, necro was a complete PvP dumpster fire for the longest time precisely because it had ZERO defensive options outside of two dodges; it had HP, but it was super easy to control and burn down. This isn't Dark Souls where players are generally affording the option to break off attacks in order to avoid hits or reposition. Even DS3 with its meme of "14 consecutive rolls" is infinitely closer to the mark of "player skill scaling with a developed game sense" than GW2's "hurr durr two dodges and then 37 other, random, asymmetrical dodge-like options which also probably deal damage and change randomly based on class choice." There's a reason why the full set of Armor of Thorns still only dealt, like, 5 damage per dodge. Defensive maneuvers aren't fair if they insulate the user from risk while also pressuring offensively. There's no interaction to be had there; there's no actual PvP. It's just dudes taking turns slapping keyboard rotations.

Getting people mega-tilted by rolling meme builds and still wrecking face because this game is easy and full of people who have misplaced priorities.

PvP, if anything, is simpler due to increased homogenization across all class options. The combat tempo will constantly change due to violent and arbitrary metagame swings brought on by patches, and that can throw anyone off regardless of age or experience. The fact that so much of what drives GW2 PvP interactions derives from passive triggers (traits, gear) or vague, text-based explanations only exacerbates these shifts. Ultimately, GW2 is too esoteric to be competitive. You aren't necessarily worse; GW2 is aggressively inconsistent.

Why single out an individual post when this entire forum (to include dev notes) is just hot air lmao

Yes, on core zerk guard running sanctuary with no utility stunbreaks. Probably not a good idea to equate player ingenuity with arbitrary numbers from a busted matchmaking system in a low-effort and low-complexity system with limited, player-driven interactivity. Tempo speed isn't the final arbiter of the skill curve.

In this case, two negatives DO NOT make a positive. That even said, FFXIV does an infinitely better job of drawing a baseline for the skill floor than GW2. Just because GW2's design is brown feces as opposed to green doesn't magically make it something other than feces lol. The "it can always be worse" rationalization only works so far with a closed system like a game with rigidly fixed rules. Just accept reality.

"How about you play the class that requires TRUE SKILL??!" My brother in Christ, you're playing GW2. The skill ceiling is so low that it triggers claustrophobia.

3 bunker supports? That's not skill or innovation. That's a disease lmao

How about GW2 stops being a clunky Diablo 2 with less depth than Runescape? The things that keep players alive in GW2 PvP are super low effort and automatic.

I explicitly said "change" with reference to the current aura effects for a reason. That aside, "achieving balance" isn't worth anything if the game is fundamentally broken and shallow. Making auras bound to areas instead of having them follow people around opens up different counterplay and forces users to commit and think to certain positions and timeframes if they're going to use an aura. Just because the current auras effectively overlap with multiple other skills in the game despite being passive, instant, automatic gameplay elements isn't so much an issue of balance as it is one of bloat. Honestly, how are you going to say that making these effects bound to locations is MORE powerful than having a player (to possibly include all nearby allies) passively coated in this AoE effect? There's also the idea of making auras power up combo finisher attacks rather than just passively modifying a given exchange within the bubble. Plenty of things to discuss. Use your mind. Holy smokes.

Auras as ground-targeted, 180-radius bubbles which grant/inflict effects on targets within them? Change/taper some of the most oppressive effects to prevent the "no fun allowed" from being too powerful at AoE? At least then there's another angle to play against somebody (or a team).

Giving solutions is the most optimal form of feedback. Without direction, talking about how something should be different is just complaining or hot air. People just lack spines to hear that their work needs fixing. That dude's profile already looks like it's going to give terrible advice. The best way to teach is through asking questions rather than preaching for 20 blocks of text.