PvP Discussion: Thanks Everyone!

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

Hi folks,

 

I just wanted to write a post to thank everyone for participating in the discussions this week. We won’t be locking the discussion threads, but obviously we won’t be able to respond or post in them with the same frequency as we did this week.

 

Our next steps are to take all the feedback and suggestions to a meeting and talk about each of them. Things we think that are both possible and good for the game will go on the backlog and we’ll see where they fit in priority with the things we already have planned. We won’t be able to get to all of this stuff overnight or even over the next few months. But we’ll do our best to keep you guys informed of our current priorities and I think a lot of the stuff we’ve talked about over the past few days will make it.

 

Thanks again and keep posting your feedback and starting discussions. We’re always reading and watching!

 

Ben

 

[Milan.9035]

this was good and glad you did it. but i just want to understand something. is spvp not part of the expansion? i know you said it not linked to expansion releases, does that mean like dont expect anything at expansion releases for spvp?

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

> @"Milan.9035" said:

> this was good and glad you did it. but i just want to understand something. is spvp not part of the expansion? i know you said it not linked to expansion releases, does that mean like dont expect anything at expansion releases for spvp?

 

We generally don't tie our releases to expansions. Because we generally don't gate much of the content around expansions, we prefer to avoid the confusion and ship new features/content on our own schedule.

[Milan.9035]

> @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > @"Milan.9035" said:

> > this was good and glad you did it. but i just want to understand something. is spvp not part of the expansion? i know you said it not linked to expansion releases, does that mean like dont expect anything at expansion releases for spvp?

>

> We generally don't tie our releases to expansions. Because we generally don't gate much of the content around expansions, we prefer to avoid the confusion and ship new features/content on our own schedule.

 

thats actually a good idea........ wish the POF specs were not in pvp.

[Xarimath.4518]

Thank you Ben. We appreciate more communication and we like to see, as players, that PvP game mode hasn't been left apart from your support. We do hope, with the new year, that you, as the company, will be more dedicated and focused on PvP. If we're still here, if we shout loud, means only that we care, a lot.

[Skye.9862]

Ben thank you for reaching out to the community and being available and open to feedback, I said this in the matchmaking pvp thread but it seems to be getting worse everyday. People are seriously exploiting the fact that you can change your class before the match starts, only because stacking 2 scourge OR 2 p/p dead-eye thieves is seriously overpowered and gives an unfair advantage to whichever team chooses these cheap comps. I and many others feel that the fact you can stack two classes before a game starts to give you an advantage is almost ruining every other class to play. I strongly feel if you balanced teams to only allow 1 of each specialization or class and lock the ability to change classes before a match starts (it is fair to lock the ability to change classes because it is your decision already to play one of your characters/classes so why would you switch as soon as you see an enemy composition [if you really have to switch why not only switch your ABILITIES before the match starts to counter the enemy comp instead which requires more knowledge and skill]) would fix this problem. As a player chilling in the middle of gold, since the release of scourge almost every single game now I see people switch to scourge or p/p if there is already another one specifically to exploit the weaknesses of running 2 scourge or p/p thieves. 2 scourge can seriously cover and entire objective with conditions and keyboard spam and entire team down which is super unfair to other classes that require more thought or are melee. (I am a scourge btw so I understand how unfair this advantage is.) But for the past week I have been queuing in PVP (I kept track) I have ONLY played against teams running 2 scourge and unless you play a scourge against them you almost have no chance. PLEASE FIX THIS WE ARE BEGGING YOU.

[Bossun.2046]

Will you be posting the items on your backlog after the meeting?

[Exekyel.9783]

> @"Skye.9862" said:

> Ben thank you for reaching out to the community and being available and open to feedback, I said this in the matchmaking pvp thread but it seems to be getting worse everyday. People are seriously exploiting the fact that you can change your class before the match starts, only because stacking 2 scourge OR 2 p/p dead-eye thieves is seriously overpowered and gives an unfair advantage to whichever team chooses these cheap comps. I and many others feel that the fact you can stack two classes before a game starts to give you an advantage is almost ruining every other class to play. I strongly feel if you balanced teams to only allow 1 of each specialization or class and lock the ability to change classes before a match starts (it is fair to lock the ability to change classes because it is your decision already to play one of your characters/classes so why would you switch as soon as you see an enemy composition [if you really have to switch why not only switch your ABILITIES before the match starts to counter the enemy comp instead which requires more knowledge and skill]) would fix this problem. As a player chilling in the middle of gold, since the release of scourge almost every single game now I see people switch to scourge or p/p if there is already another one specifically to exploit the weaknesses of running 2 scourge or p/p thieves. 2 scourge can seriously cover and entire objective with conditions and keyboard spam and entire team down which is super unfair to other classes that require more thought or are melee. (I am a scourge btw so I understand how unfair this advantage is.) But for the past week I have been queuing in PVP (I kept track) I have ONLY played against teams running 2 scourge and unless you play a scourge against them you almost have no chance. PLEASE FIX THIS WE ARE BEGGING YOU.

 

I strongly agree again with what you have to say Skye haha, but Anet if you decide to start doing 2v2 arenas or things like that the fact that you can stack 2 classes would probably mean you would only ever see 2 scourge or 2 p/p thieves. I love 2 v 2 arenas in most MMO's but if stacking 2 specs are all I will ever run into, then 2v2 sounds horrible. I'm really sad as a druid ranger which used to be relatively good is no longer as useful as it used to be considering I dont have enough condi-cleanse to avoid 2 scourge. I'm pretty devastated that elementalist is no longer playable against most of these POF spec's in PVP and meta-battle builds are the only thing you see, Elementalist which was my favorite class and I personally felt was the most useful in a team and required a lot of skill and knowledge to be good at just doesn't seem to cut it anymore. Is there anything in the foreseeable future that will balance this?

[Vagrant.7206]

Please let us know what comes out of your discussion! Thanks for this Ben.

[LUST.7241]

Thanks for all the responses to everything you managed to get around to! While there are likely quite a few questions outstanding (which maybe we can stay hopeful they get answered eventually), I hope this line of communication isn't severed by our toxic-fueled, passionate, and intimate relationship toward PvP. :]

 

Thanks @"Cal Cohen.3527"

Thanks @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065"

 

 

 

[Lunateric.3708]

I hope other teams follow your lead on the feedback threads you hosted this week, it was great to see you guys engaging with the community and I think many positive things will come out of them.

 

Thank you!

[Morwath.9817]

Ooo, thank you for our little talk Ben, Quaggan is much hoooppier now as his fears has faded away!

[Cynz.9437]

Thanks for the threads and answers :)

[bluri.2653]

Thank you Ben, do you by any chance have the possibility to post what's on your current road map and how "soon" new stuff will be implemented? Even stuff that is confirmed, it could be nice to have a post with everything in it

[Ghos.1326]

I would love to be a part of the next discussion, but yes thank you Ben for giving us feedback through all of this. We, as the community who cares for the game and its health, are sure that you guys have a LOT on your plate, and that the work for these kinds of things are hard, arduous, and can be a little annoying. But, just tackle a few things at a time, don't stress yourself out. Those of us that are voicing honest, constructive feedback are not trying to overload you guys with copious amounts of work, but just providing ideas, food for thought, possible fixes to things that might seem a little broken at the moment. We don't mean to use these voiced opinions as ways of trying to overburden you, but as means of information that you can look back to, and possibly give it some more thought into implementation, if it makes sense in all aspects of the game, that is.

Keep up the good work, thank you for listening to the community, and we are looking forward to the exciting future of a game we really like deep down: Guild Wars 2!

[Faux Play.6104]

Thanks! Good discussions and great to hear from you guys.

[Xillllix.3485]

Hope you will seriously consider a form of GvG. 10v10 could be the best amount of players.

[Kalibri.5861]

@"Ben Phongluangtham.1065", sadly I'm not playing these days, just checking up on some things, but I've got to say, man - what you're doing here is exactly what I've wanted to see from devs in several areas for a long, long time - more direct conversation and engagement. Can't tell you how impressed and heartened I am to see this. I hope so strongly that the effort will be useful and significant to the improvement of the game. Thank you, thank you, thank you. ????????

 

Now, please encourage your WvW colleagues to do the same. ? I understand my fellow WvWers can sometimes be a frustrating group, but I believe the mode could shine so much brighter and be a much stronger and more retentive form of end-game play if we had some honest conversation, transparent data collection (polls, gameplay statistics, et cetera), and reasonable expectations set for upcoming changes and features.

 

Question - would it ever be possible to do live testing for particular game types? For instance, could the sPvP team create custom matches with beta changes applied (accessible via the PvP browser)? For WvW, could they select a tier or a match and grant testing status to those servers for a week, then rotate so it doesn't affect anyone for too long? Seems like this would be a valuable way to let your communities test new stuff in large scale while giving you guys an opportunity to gather feedback and tweak things that don't feel right before they go to production.

 

Also - dev roadmaps on the website ever possible (with a 'subject to oblivion' disclaimer)? Your soothsaying in these PvP discussion posts has been super interesting.

[FOX.3582]

It’s really simple. As long as the team who write balance changes and the team who actually execute the skill changes are separate, the PvP in this game is doomed to die. It more then puzzles me how Arenanet holds the motivation to keep hitting this dead horse... And like always, when they do start doing things right, it’s always too little too late...

[Slate.5829]

Ben, Cal, and the PvP team -- this was excellent, and I'm really grateful that you all took the time to have this discussion with the playerbase. Seeing this discussion and the possibilities it generated for the future of the gamemode I love most... that hyped me more than any expac reveal. I understand that you guys are working under a lot of constraints -- changes can't be brought live immediately, there's a backlog, and some features need to be held back because they could extend well beyond PvP (e.g. build templates) -- but I'd really love if the conversation continued forward with this kind of transparency and engagement. Give us a sense of which features you're building actively, what the rationale for pushing things back might be, and how we as players can help (if at all). Give us opportunities to support PvP, whether it's through the gemstore or some other space, and allow us to share the hype for the game by investing in making spectating possible.

 

Thank you for what you do, and I'm hyped for the future!

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

> @"bluri.2653" said:

> Thank you Ben, do you by any chance have the possibility to post what's on your current road map and how "soon" new stuff will be implemented? Even stuff that is confirmed, it could be nice to have a post with everything in it

 

Maybe? I'll talk to some leads type people and see what they think, since I'm not sure if it's something any team as done in the past. But maybe just for the things we've talked about in the discussion posts.

[kKagari.6804]

Thanks Ben for answering the call!

[Devilman.1532]

I'll thank you when you address the "Two Issues That Shall Not Be Named" by integrating with or working with that "other" team and actually making a real tangible difference to make PVP better. Until you do that anything else is pretty much fluff.

[vesica tempestas.1563]

> @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > @"bluri.2653" said:

> > Thank you Ben, do you by any chance have the possibility to post what's on your current road map and how "soon" new stuff will be implemented? Even stuff that is confirmed, it could be nice to have a post with everything in it

>

> Maybe? I'll talk to some leads type people and see what they think, since I'm not sure if it's something any team as done in the past. But maybe just for the things we've talked about in the discussion posts.

 

You wouldn't even have to commit to timescales, regularly publishing the top end of your backlog would be a good thing. I'm not sure why the gaming industry doesn't do a lot more of this? I'm guessing there are good reasons.

[Ben Phongluangtham.1065]

> @"vesica tempestas.1563" said:

> > @"Ben Phongluangtham.1065" said:

> > > @"bluri.2653" said:

> > > Thank you Ben, do you by any chance have the possibility to post what's on your current road map and how "soon" new stuff will be implemented? Even stuff that is confirmed, it could be nice to have a post with everything in it

> >

> > Maybe? I'll talk to some leads type people and see what they think, since I'm not sure if it's something any team as done in the past. But maybe just for the things we've talked about in the discussion posts.

>

> You wouldn't even have to commit to timescales, regularly publishing the top end of your backlog would be a good thing. I'm not sure why the gaming industry doesn't do a lot more of this? I'm guessing there are good reasons.

 

It's mainly because plans change and people get upset when they do. Even when there are good reasons for the plans to change. However, I've got approval to post something, which I hope to get up soonish.