I think that's a little mean spirited. But that seems to be the at the heart of the feedback they're getting right now. A lot of stuff is already done and worked on according to Colin, so let's put a bunch pressure on them to get fixes out as quickly as possible. Forget time for testing, these are "fixes" so what could possibly go wrong!?
I just hope ArenaNet's learned a thing or two about why using Reddit to communicate with their player base is a bad idea. Place is a total shit show right now, looks just like the official forums.
Are there any other places they respond? because..... it aint the official forums....
re: meanspirited - And you better steel yourself soldier..... the negativity means the most trolly of the trolls will come out to play. Most of the higher up-voted posts are not mean spirited tho. Most of it is pretty decent. it can only get worse
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
I was looking up some stuff about moles to see if I can come up with other puns based on mole terms, and came across the greatest thing about moles that makes the communist nature of the Dredge so awesome.
You know what a group, (or shall we say, party?) of moles is called? A Labour.
I think that's a little mean spirited. But that seems to be the at the heart of the feedback they're getting right now. A lot of stuff is already done and worked on according to Colin, so let's put a bunch pressure on them to get fixes out as quickly as possible. Forget time for testing, these are "fixes" so what could possibly go wrong!?
I just hope ArenaNet's learned a thing or two about why using Reddit to communicate with their player base is a bad idea. Place is a total shit show right now, looks just like the official forums.
Are there any other places they respond? because..... it aint the official forums....
re: meanspirited - And you better steel yourself soldier..... the negativity means the most trolly of the trolls will come out to play. Most of the higher up-voted posts are not mean spirited tho. Most of it is pretty decent. it can only get worse
The highest rated thread on the subreddit right now is an emotionally charged rant that does little more than demonstrate how little the person knows about how the development process works and shits on the work of several of their teams without any reasonable merit.
I don't think it matters how much worse it gets at this point. What sort of community is this that reinforces humiliating and ignorant discourse like that?
Oh, right. An MMO community. As ignorant, abusive, and spiteful as any other.
+1
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
I think that's a little mean spirited. But that seems to be the at the heart of the feedback they're getting right now. A lot of stuff is already done and worked on according to Colin, so let's put a bunch pressure on them to get fixes out as quickly as possible. Forget time for testing, these are "fixes" so what could possibly go wrong!?
I just hope ArenaNet's learned a thing or two about why using Reddit to communicate with their player base is a bad idea. Place is a total shit show right now, looks just like the official forums.
Are there any other places they respond? because..... it aint the official forums....
re: meanspirited - And you better steel yourself soldier..... the negativity means the most trolly of the trolls will come out to play. Most of the higher up-voted posts are not mean spirited tho. Most of it is pretty decent. it can only get worse
The highest rated thread on the subreddit right now is an emotionally charged rant that does little more than demonstrate how little the person knows about how the development process works and shits on the work of several of their teams without any reasonable merit.
I don't think it matters how much worse it gets at this point. What sort of community is this that reinforces humiliating and ignorant discourse like that?
Oh, right. An MMO community. As ignorant, abusive, and spiteful as any other.
Oh screw you and your views. game sucks, devs suck, you suck, my cat sucks, i suck, everything sucks and i am correct while you are wrong.
[spoiler) Did i concede the point properly? I feel like i conceded the point properly.... Maybe the ignorant abusive spite wasnt sarcastic enough to illustrate his point..... why am i typing my inner most thoughts..... why are there so few.... (/spoiler]
mojojoeo on
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
I was looking up some stuff about moles to see if I can come up with other puns based on mole terms, and came across the greatest thing about moles that makes the communist nature of the Dredge so awesome.
You know what a group, (or shall we say, party?) of moles is called? A Labour.
Their whole "iterative" approach seems taken from various agile programming styles. But many of those styles emphasize the coding, then recoding aspects in conjunction with feedback from the customers. And not just after delivery (ie during the development phase as well).
Admittedly, instead of having to deal with a relatively few representatives from whatever company is hiring you to code an application/website/etc, you have the amorphous blob of a large MMO population. That's not an easy problem, and as Anet liked to point out a lot in the early days of GW2 (maybe they still do), they couldn't rely on the loudest in the forums or surveys or whatnot. Anet claimed to have a better way of getting feedback, were vague on the details, but it basically sounded like they were trying some data mining techniques to figure out what the players really wanted.
Now, commercial software development isn't my field, I program for academic and research things, though I have lots of friends who do so have some understanding. Data mining I know more about, and how its full of pitfalls, so I was pretty skeptical Anet's vague descriptions of trying to monitor player behavior wouldn't yield a better game (because you can data mine to get nearly any answer you want).
But, I think it still remains a flaw in their "iterative process" that their feedback is basically internal, or based on a small beta test sample (which probably suffers from selection bias and from what I hear, tends to also be more about bug fixing than real design feedback).
Anet's strategy of not talking about anything is a key problem. I know why, they don't want to suffer the problems of "hey, you promised this feature!" when they merely said they were looking if something was feasibly. But given the cycles of rage that happen after updates are basically sprung from out of the blue, they're merely exchanging one kind of player outrage for another. But at least the former approach gives you some potential input on how much of the community is going to be pissed off.
I mean, there's no easy answer, its all tradeoffs. But I think part of the rage is Anet's current strategy comes off as way more paternalistic than most MMO dev teams (some level of paternalism has to exist, just because decisions have to be made).
People are keyed up on the forums and reddit because they care. They want to see issues with the game fixed. I know what's worse than people bitching on the forums: people not even bothering, because they don't play anymore.
WvW is the main reason I play GW2, and by Anet's own measures it's withering on the vine. Participation is down in tangible, measurable ways. If it can happen to WvW it can happen to other parts of the game for the same reasons.
I do think basically everyone should mayyybe take a step back from Reddit & the forums for a few days. Hell, if the game pisses you off that bad, maybe take a break from GW2 itself again, come back when Wintersday drops? Like, play another game for a bit, cool your jets. I hear Fallout 4 is a thing, that exists.
People are keyed up on the forums and reddit because they care. They want to see issues with the game fixed. I know what's worse than people bitching on the forums: people not even bothering, because they don't play anymore.
WvW is the main reason I play GW2, and by Anet's own measures it's withering on the vine. Participation is down in tangible, measurable ways. If it can happen to WvW it can happen to other parts of the game for the same reasons.
If they really cared, they'd take the time to present their feedback in a constructive and cordial manner, as has been asked for countless times by every developer, CM, and their own fanbase. Those are the posts that should be getting the most support and attention right now, not some QQ about how they should quit while they're ahead on the "eSport" stuff.
Idgaf if you give up and play another game for a while. There are other games that suit your wants better, so vote with your wallet and come back when ANet's learned from those other games if they're not gonna take your feedback seriously. This toxic attitude perpetuated by jaded players is continuing to scare off a lot of newbies, though, and if the game stagnates, then it's done. No new players, which means no profit from anything except the most malicious parts of their business strategy, which means no fixes ever.
+1
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
Their whole "iterative" approach seems taken from various agile programming styles. But many of those styles emphasize the coding, then recoding aspects in conjunction with feedback from the customers. And not just after delivery (ie during the development phase as well).
Admittedly, instead of having to deal with a relatively few representatives from whatever company is hiring you to code an application/website/etc, you have the amorphous blob of a large MMO population. That's not an easy problem, and as Anet liked to point out a lot in the early days of GW2 (maybe they still do), they couldn't rely on the loudest in the forums or surveys or whatnot. Anet claimed to have a better way of getting feedback, were vague on the details, but it basically sounded like they were trying some data mining techniques to figure out what the players really wanted.
Now, commercial software development isn't my field, I program for academic and research things, though I have lots of friends who do so have some understanding. Data mining I know more about, and how its full of pitfalls, so I was pretty skeptical Anet's vague descriptions of trying to monitor player behavior wouldn't yield a better game (because you can data mine to get nearly any answer you want).
But, I think it still remains a flaw in their "iterative process" that their feedback is basically internal, or based on a small beta test sample (which probably suffers from selection bias and from what I hear, tends to also be more about bug fixing than real design feedback).
Anet's strategy of not talking about anything is a key problem. I know why, they don't want to suffer the problems of "hey, you promised this feature!" when they merely said they were looking if something was feasibly. But given the cycles of rage that happen after updates are basically sprung from out of the blue, they're merely exchanging one kind of player outrage for another. But at least the former approach gives you some potential input on how much of the community is going to be pissed off.
I mean, there's no easy answer, its all tradeoffs. But I think part of the rage is Anet's current strategy comes off as way more paternalistic than most MMO dev teams (some level of paternalism has to exist, just because decisions have to be made).
This is a solid assessment.
I think part of the issue is that they have a painfully slow turnaround time on their iterations, slow even by MMO standards. Slow iterations are worth less, by the nature of iterative design. And there's no way that the design portion of the iteration process is solely to blame. I suspect that they're having one hell of a time trying to manage a game engine that's become wildly cantankerous (again, even moreso than usual MMO standards).
As a software engineer, and more specifically as someone who makes a hobby of dissecting game engines, it seems to me that they're being held back by their own tech. It shows in the implementation if you know what to look for. That's got to be a significant factor in the iteration speed. I have a lot of sympathy for them in this regard. To exacerbate this, the rapid changes in design direction over the game's lifespan has left them with precious little time to fix or improve this engine.
If they've finally found a design direction to stick with (as they've said before, they're "laying the groundwork" with HoT), then implementation quality and speed will start to improve, which makes iterations faster and, by corollary, better. It's only one element of the equation, but every bit helps.
The vast majority of the negativity is just uncalled for, and I don't aim to contribute here, so on a positive note: I think the next year will see the game really progress, design-wise and development-wise. I'd love to hear their devs talk about all the cool improvements they're making to the engine. That kind of stuff is fascinating to me.
Their whole "iterative" approach seems taken from various agile programming styles. But many of those styles emphasize the coding, then recoding aspects in conjunction with feedback from the customers. And not just after delivery (ie during the development phase as well).
Admittedly, instead of having to deal with a relatively few representatives from whatever company is hiring you to code an application/website/etc, you have the amorphous blob of a large MMO population. That's not an easy problem, and as Anet liked to point out a lot in the early days of GW2 (maybe they still do), they couldn't rely on the loudest in the forums or surveys or whatnot. Anet claimed to have a better way of getting feedback, were vague on the details, but it basically sounded like they were trying some data mining techniques to figure out what the players really wanted.
Now, commercial software development isn't my field, I program for academic and research things, though I have lots of friends who do so have some understanding. Data mining I know more about, and how its full of pitfalls, so I was pretty skeptical Anet's vague descriptions of trying to monitor player behavior wouldn't yield a better game (because you can data mine to get nearly any answer you want).
But, I think it still remains a flaw in their "iterative process" that their feedback is basically internal, or based on a small beta test sample (which probably suffers from selection bias and from what I hear, tends to also be more about bug fixing than real design feedback).
Anet's strategy of not talking about anything is a key problem. I know why, they don't want to suffer the problems of "hey, you promised this feature!" when they merely said they were looking if something was feasibly. But given the cycles of rage that happen after updates are basically sprung from out of the blue, they're merely exchanging one kind of player outrage for another. But at least the former approach gives you some potential input on how much of the community is going to be pissed off.
I mean, there's no easy answer, its all tradeoffs. But I think part of the rage is Anet's current strategy comes off as way more paternalistic than most MMO dev teams (some level of paternalism has to exist, just because decisions have to be made).
This is a solid assessment.
I think part of the issue is that they have a painfully slow turnaround time on their iterations, slow even by MMO standards. And there's no way that the design portion of the iteration process is solely to blame. I suspect that they're having one hell of a time trying to manage a game engine that's become wildly cantankerous (again, even moreso than usual MMO standards).
As a software engineer, and more specifically as someone who makes a hobby of dissecting game engines, it seems to me that they're being held back by their own tech. It shows in the implementation if you know what to look for. That's got to be a significant factor in the iteration speed. I have a lot of sympathy for them in this regard. To exacerbate this, the rapid changes in design direction over the game's lifespan has left them with precious little time to fix or improve this engine.
If they've finally found a design direction to stick with (as they've said before, they're "laying the groundwork" with HoT), then implementation quality and speed will start to improve, which makes iterations faster and, by corollary, better.
I think we'll finally get a feel for that in the next year, as well. Right now a lot has been thrown in flux because of the release and the need to get as much done before the holidays as possible - they've had to sacrifice a lot in the process, and will probably continue to up until the last week of December, sadly. Once the new year rolls around, I'll be excited to see how things progress again
Until then... Well, I hope enough gets fixed that everyone has a happy holiday with the game, devs and users alike.
I work in customer service, and let me tell you, Colin is GIFTED. He is the One.
Quote from Reddit:
Yeah I agree that really should have been more clear, I think we felt it was and clear that HoT was setting up the first season and obviously it was not.
In regards to balance - balance is NOT driven by our PvP Pro League, the pro league is a marketing effort that has almost zero impact on our dev team. Drawing parallels between the two is at best disingenuous.
As for viewers when it comes to the marketing side since you commented on it...pro league week one had over 400,000 unique viewers (non view bots) watch for a reasonable amount of time. That's beyond awesome and a huge return on the investment. Are we LoL? Hell no we're not. But PvP has been steadily growing for the last 2 years and it keeps growing faster and faster. Rather than knock it- let's all get behind it and root for it. PvP was DoA when Gw2 first shipped, it's amazing to watch what it has grown and turned into, how freaking cool is that?
And while we're at it, get behind rooting for WvW and PvE to grow as well; we're all in this together, it's silly to knock things that are working. We have plenty of other stuff that we can make better to focus our energy on trying to improve
First thing to remember is that, especially for PvP builds, what you find in Metabattle are guidelines, no matter how high their rating or how meta they claim it to be.
Best advice is to ignore the rating's for the most part, pick a build that looks fun, and then try it out for a couple unranked matches. If some bit of it doesn't feel right, change it (the better guides will give you suggestions for alts, otherwise it's up to you to figure it out) If it turns out you don't like it at all, whether it's because you keep getting your ass kicked by this one build you always see (which for this season, is probably a DH), or even if playing it is uncomfortable or unfun to you despite the success you have, Try a different one. Before HoT, I almost always ran 2-kit bomb condi on my Engineer, even though the "meta" was Celestial Rifle, because I didn't want to mess with trying to hit people on the move with grenades. That was not fun for me.
Recipes for Guild Insignia, 10 Crystalline Ore and 3 Guild Commendations to buy the recipe. We can unlock the guild armorsmith soon, just need a lot more cured hardened leather, and 6 celestial armor insignias(This will be the hard part)
Guild armorsmith being available "Soon" is only dependent on us not having a different unlock opening first.
CorriganX on
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Recipes for Guild Insignia, 10 Crystalline Ore and 3 Guild Commendations to buy the recipe. We can unlock the guild armorsmith soon, just need a lot more cured hardened leather, and 6 celestial armor insignias(This will be the hard part)
Guild armorsmith being available "Soon" is only dependent on us not having a different unlock opening first.
What does the Guild Insignia do? Pardon my ignorance. Does it allow you to "make" Guild Armor?
Metabattle is still a good start. While most top builds are designed around specialized roles in teams, they still give a good idea as to what's important in a pvp build (condition management is massively more important in sPvP, for one), and give you a good idea what your opponents will be using. From there, you can swap skills and traits based off of preference.
WvW is the main reason I play GW2, and by Anet's own measures it's withering on the vine. Participation is down in tangible, measurable ways. If it can happen to WvW it can happen to other parts of the game for the same reasons.
The thing is....
There is a core of WvWers who think that A.net is totally out of touch when they said things like "we see very few dedicated WvW players; most WvW players also do a lot of PvE." And this group - who is very vocal on reddit, Intigo in particular - really took the piss out of A.net for saying this. It's hilarious, because A.net is right. WvW population always saw a dip at Living Story releases. So it's no surprise it's been down after HoT launch, when there is a magnitude for content to consume, especially for more casual players who often make up pug groups in WvW.
The new map - and the refusal of a lot of WvWers to go into it with Beginner's Mind - has contributed to this in part, but at this point it's barely seen action. It took over a year for most of the siege spots in Alpine to become known, and for the meta to form around which towers and keeps you go for. Half the people complaining about not knowing where to go haven't bothered to learn the map. It's like a 30 minute run-through, and after that you will know 90% of the routes, and how to fit things like Shrines and their speed-buff into your or your zerg's movement, but apparently that 30 minutes of exploration is too much effort.
Really, I'm far more disappointed with WvWers than I am with A.net on the WvW front.
A huge amount of posts on reddit about people intentionally trashing their mmr once they hit a new threshold in pvp leagues and wont be able to lose pips anymore. Ugh. They really screwed the pooch on the mmr front. I dont even know how they could fix this season.
Get to new division where you can't lose pips/divisions anymore. Throw 20 games so your mmr is trash. Win 5 games in a row in trash mmr, get new division. repeat.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
A huge amount of posts on reddit about people intentionally trashing their mmr once they hit a new threshold in pvp leagues and wont be able to lose pips anymore. Ugh. They really screwed the pooch on the mmr front. I dont even know how they could fix this season.
Get to new division where you can't lose pips/divisions anymore. Throw 20 games so your mmr is trash. Win 5 games in a row in trash mmr, get new division. repeat.
Also the initial YouTube rant that brought this system to light yesterday was removed for a more civilized discussion to begin as well. So that should remove some of the venom in criticism.
It should be noted intentionally throwing a game is against the TOS. Spvp is a crazy place. plus im particularly bad at it.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
If you have a 50% Winrate (What the mmr is trying to do) You will make 0 progress in emerald division(the 2nd one).
If you have 55% win rate (really good win rate) You will take 100 games to make 1 division increase out of 5 in Emerald.
If you have 60% win rate (Crazy good win rate) you will take 100 games to make it 2 out of 5 division increases in emerald.
if you do not make it to 3rd and 4th divisions (Sapphire and ruby) you will not make it past the blue back piece reward for the legendary.
Unless you are an amazing god of solo pvp, and have 0 mmr because you've never played pvp, OR you have a premade of the best players in the game, you will have a very very very hard time making it to sapphire and ruby without tanking your mmr constantly.
It is batshit infuckingsane that they thought not resetting mmr and giving no way to earn extra pips (Winstreaks, placements, anything) would work out. Literally NO thought went into the league progress. It rewards people who have played a LOT and are VERY GOOD even LESS than those who are decent but have never done pvp.
When I heard about leagues I was SUPER hyped. It never even crossed my mind they wouldn't reset mmr. That is the fucking entire base of a good system. Successive leagues could seed higher mmr up there, but without a reset it is a clusterfuck. When someone said "they didnt reset mmr" on tuesday I laughed and figured they were just playing against super high ranked people because it was everyone at 0 mmr. Noooooooope. This is mindboggling to me.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
If you have a 50% Winrate (What the mmr is trying to do) You will make 0 progress in emerald division(the 2nd one).
If you have 55% win rate (really good win rate) You will take 100 games to make 1 division increase out of 5 in Emerald.
If you have 60% win rate (Crazy good win rate) you will take 100 games to make it 2 out of 5 division increases in emerald.
if you do not make it to 3rd and 4th divisions (Sapphire and ruby) you will not make it past the blue back piece reward for the legendary.
Unless you are an amazing god of solo pvp, and have 0 mmr because you've never played pvp, OR you have a premade of the best players in the game, you will have a very very very hard time making it to sapphire and ruby without tanking your mmr constantly.
It is batshit infuckingsane that they thought not resetting mmr and giving no way to earn extra pips (Winstreaks, placements, anything) would work out. Literally NO thought went into the league progress. It rewards people who have played a LOT and are VERY GOOD even LESS than those who are decent but have never done pvp.
When I heard about leagues I was SUPER hyped. It never even crossed my mind they wouldn't reset mmr. That is the fucking entire base of a good system. Successive leagues could seed higher mmr up there, but without a reset it is a clusterfuck. When someone said "they didnt reset mmr" on tuesday I laughed and figured they were just playing against super high ranked people because it was everyone at 0 mmr. Noooooooope. This is mindboggling to me.
Last I've heard from a dev, Ranked MMR is different from unranked MMR.
Dunno if it has been reset since last time ranked was available, during the test ladder, which still makes your points valid, but even if it hasn't, everyone should have the starting MMR volatility of someone who hasn't played in months.
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
Suspending Wednesday WvW dues to lack of intrest!
We can circle back after they patch it!
For now be sated with monday night missions wvw and sunday missions wvw.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
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mojojoeoA block off the park, living the dream.Registered Userregular
If you have a 50% Winrate (What the mmr is trying to do) You will make 0 progress in emerald division(the 2nd one).
If you have 55% win rate (really good win rate) You will take 100 games to make 1 division increase out of 5 in Emerald.
If you have 60% win rate (Crazy good win rate) you will take 100 games to make it 2 out of 5 division increases in emerald.
if you do not make it to 3rd and 4th divisions (Sapphire and ruby) you will not make it past the blue back piece reward for the legendary.
Unless you are an amazing god of solo pvp, and have 0 mmr because you've never played pvp, OR you have a premade of the best players in the game, you will have a very very very hard time making it to sapphire and ruby without tanking your mmr constantly.
It is batshit infuckingsane that they thought not resetting mmr and giving no way to earn extra pips (Winstreaks, placements, anything) would work out. Literally NO thought went into the league progress. It rewards people who have played a LOT and are VERY GOOD even LESS than those who are decent but have never done pvp.
When I heard about leagues I was SUPER hyped. It never even crossed my mind they wouldn't reset mmr. That is the fucking entire base of a good system. Successive leagues could seed higher mmr up there, but without a reset it is a clusterfuck. When someone said "they didnt reset mmr" on tuesday I laughed and figured they were just playing against super high ranked people because it was everyone at 0 mmr. Noooooooope. This is mindboggling to me.
that a bummer man.... I know many folks were jazzed about the back-piece.
Chief Wiggum: "Ladies, please. All our founding fathers, astronauts, and World Series heroes have been either drunk or on cocaine."
ANET PvP EMPLOYEE "Man, I'm having a hard time balancing the pip system in PvP."
ANET PvE EMPLOYEE "You know what works really well in PvE? Making it so players have to fail events in order make progress towards their goal."
ANET PvP EMPLOYEE "...Go on."
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
WvW is the main reason I play GW2, and by Anet's own measures it's withering on the vine. Participation is down in tangible, measurable ways. If it can happen to WvW it can happen to other parts of the game for the same reasons.
The thing is....
There is a core of WvWers who think that A.net is totally out of touch when they said things like "we see very few dedicated WvW players; most WvW players also do a lot of PvE." And this group - who is very vocal on reddit, Intigo in particular - really took the piss out of A.net for saying this. It's hilarious, because A.net is right. WvW population always saw a dip at Living Story releases. So it's no surprise it's been down after HoT launch, when there is a magnitude for content to consume, especially for more casual players who often make up pug groups in WvW.
The new map - and the refusal of a lot of WvWers to go into it with Beginner's Mind - has contributed to this in part, but at this point it's barely seen action. It took over a year for most of the siege spots in Alpine to become known, and for the meta to form around which towers and keeps you go for. Half the people complaining about not knowing where to go haven't bothered to learn the map. It's like a 30 minute run-through, and after that you will know 90% of the routes, and how to fit things like Shrines and their speed-buff into your or your zerg's movement, but apparently that 30 minutes of exploration is too much effort.
Really, I'm far more disappointed with WvWers than I am with A.net on the WvW front.
There is defenetly a lot of wvw only players.
Why is everyone doing pvp atm? Why is my HC wvw raid guild doing pve? Because it's the only way to get guild upgrades you can only use and that you need for WvW.
Just look at what you need to get for the +5 upgrade and tell me how to get it only playing pvp.
Anets "dedication" to wvw is a joke pritty much, just look at how many times the "fixed" the so called bug that lets wps open for a few sec when a keep is underattack.
With this patch they said they fixed it, but now it's open 24/7.
They let bugs like walls not working like walls last for a for ages befor fixing it. They will hotfix a broken event, they won't hotfix a major problem in WvW.
Else than that I agree with you on the new borders, alot of people just don't wanna learn it. And well not likeing changes isn't a new problem.
LilleDjevel on
Grass Grows,
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
Adding to the advice of playing a build you find fun/engaging, I tend to pick metabattle builds that use weapon sets I'm most familiar with from PvE/WvW. Often these are not the "top" builds, but imo executing a suboptimal build more competently rather than a stronger build less competently works out decently. I mean, I'm still frustrated at essentially fighting uphill, but the little victories help. Of course, I'm fighting even more uphill without the HoT elite specs.
One exception I found was mesmer. I tend to play Sword/Sword and Scepter/Focus pve - not because they're particularly powerful, I just like them aesthetically. But I got rocked the times I tried to play it in pvp. For my most recent few week stint in spvp during halloween, I needed a mesmer win for daily. I gave in and bought a cheap blue GS and staff. Man, mannnn. Even fumbling through unfamiliar weapon skills, I felt so much more powerful...
(total tangent) Sort of highlights one of my disappointments with the hard link between weapons and skills. I wish we had class weapon skill bundles for general classes of weapons. Like these are the 2 to 3 (condi, dd, etc) 1H melee mainhand bundles and choose whichever 1H melee weapon you like aesthetically to go with a bundle.
It should be noted intentionally throwing a game is against the TOS. Spvp is a crazy place. plus im particularly bad at it.
Yes, do not throw matches! It's rude and unfair to your teammates, and might even get you reported.
However, your MMR for unranked is the same as your MMR for ranked. So if you would like to learn how to play a new class (like say your brand new shiny revenant) you could take a break from Ranked and go play your new class in Unranked and then go back to Ranked on your normal class....you need to win matches on multiple classes anyway, so practice is a good idea regardless.
Wow, great. Now people are deliberately losing to tank their MMR, which, in turn, is jacking up other players MMR like crazy And placing ridiculously good players in low leagues where they destroy people, and not so great players in high leagues where they get tanked.
Reminds me of how I need to keep working on HOPE. 2 Deldrimor from finishing T1 of the precursor crafting, That will get me to the next tier, which will involve even more ore and lumber farming. A lot more...
Posts
Are there any other places they respond? because..... it aint the official forums....
re: meanspirited - And you better steel yourself soldier..... the negativity means the most trolly of the trolls will come out to play. Most of the higher up-voted posts are not mean spirited tho. Most of it is pretty decent. it can only get worse
Moleatov Cocktail
I was looking up some stuff about moles to see if I can come up with other puns based on mole terms, and came across the greatest thing about moles that makes the communist nature of the Dredge so awesome.
You know what a group, (or shall we say, party?) of moles is called? A Labour.
The highest rated thread on the subreddit right now is an emotionally charged rant that does little more than demonstrate how little the person knows about how the development process works and shits on the work of several of their teams without any reasonable merit.
I don't think it matters how much worse it gets at this point. What sort of community is this that reinforces humiliating and ignorant discourse like that?
Oh, right. An MMO community. As ignorant, abusive, and spiteful as any other.
Oh screw you and your views. game sucks, devs suck, you suck, my cat sucks, i suck, everything sucks and i am correct while you are wrong.
[spoiler) Did i concede the point properly? I feel like i conceded the point properly.... Maybe the ignorant abusive spite wasnt sarcastic enough to illustrate his point..... why am i typing my inner most thoughts..... why are there so few.... (/spoiler]
Something including Moletariat, maybe?
Labo(u)r Moletariat. Or Moletariat Labo(u)rer.
Their whole "iterative" approach seems taken from various agile programming styles. But many of those styles emphasize the coding, then recoding aspects in conjunction with feedback from the customers. And not just after delivery (ie during the development phase as well).
Admittedly, instead of having to deal with a relatively few representatives from whatever company is hiring you to code an application/website/etc, you have the amorphous blob of a large MMO population. That's not an easy problem, and as Anet liked to point out a lot in the early days of GW2 (maybe they still do), they couldn't rely on the loudest in the forums or surveys or whatnot. Anet claimed to have a better way of getting feedback, were vague on the details, but it basically sounded like they were trying some data mining techniques to figure out what the players really wanted.
Now, commercial software development isn't my field, I program for academic and research things, though I have lots of friends who do so have some understanding. Data mining I know more about, and how its full of pitfalls, so I was pretty skeptical Anet's vague descriptions of trying to monitor player behavior wouldn't yield a better game (because you can data mine to get nearly any answer you want).
But, I think it still remains a flaw in their "iterative process" that their feedback is basically internal, or based on a small beta test sample (which probably suffers from selection bias and from what I hear, tends to also be more about bug fixing than real design feedback).
Anet's strategy of not talking about anything is a key problem. I know why, they don't want to suffer the problems of "hey, you promised this feature!" when they merely said they were looking if something was feasibly. But given the cycles of rage that happen after updates are basically sprung from out of the blue, they're merely exchanging one kind of player outrage for another. But at least the former approach gives you some potential input on how much of the community is going to be pissed off.
I mean, there's no easy answer, its all tradeoffs. But I think part of the rage is Anet's current strategy comes off as way more paternalistic than most MMO dev teams (some level of paternalism has to exist, just because decisions have to be made).
Commissar Schwint?
WvW is the main reason I play GW2, and by Anet's own measures it's withering on the vine. Participation is down in tangible, measurable ways. If it can happen to WvW it can happen to other parts of the game for the same reasons.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
Please send help.
If they really cared, they'd take the time to present their feedback in a constructive and cordial manner, as has been asked for countless times by every developer, CM, and their own fanbase. Those are the posts that should be getting the most support and attention right now, not some QQ about how they should quit while they're ahead on the "eSport" stuff.
Idgaf if you give up and play another game for a while. There are other games that suit your wants better, so vote with your wallet and come back when ANet's learned from those other games if they're not gonna take your feedback seriously. This toxic attitude perpetuated by jaded players is continuing to scare off a lot of newbies, though, and if the game stagnates, then it's done. No new players, which means no profit from anything except the most malicious parts of their business strategy, which means no fixes ever.
I would..... but you are so far down the rabbithole i can barely hear you ou ou ou
This is a solid assessment.
I think part of the issue is that they have a painfully slow turnaround time on their iterations, slow even by MMO standards. Slow iterations are worth less, by the nature of iterative design. And there's no way that the design portion of the iteration process is solely to blame. I suspect that they're having one hell of a time trying to manage a game engine that's become wildly cantankerous (again, even moreso than usual MMO standards).
As a software engineer, and more specifically as someone who makes a hobby of dissecting game engines, it seems to me that they're being held back by their own tech. It shows in the implementation if you know what to look for. That's got to be a significant factor in the iteration speed. I have a lot of sympathy for them in this regard. To exacerbate this, the rapid changes in design direction over the game's lifespan has left them with precious little time to fix or improve this engine.
If they've finally found a design direction to stick with (as they've said before, they're "laying the groundwork" with HoT), then implementation quality and speed will start to improve, which makes iterations faster and, by corollary, better. It's only one element of the equation, but every bit helps.
The vast majority of the negativity is just uncalled for, and I don't aim to contribute here, so on a positive note: I think the next year will see the game really progress, design-wise and development-wise. I'd love to hear their devs talk about all the cool improvements they're making to the engine. That kind of stuff is fascinating to me.
I think we'll finally get a feel for that in the next year, as well. Right now a lot has been thrown in flux because of the release and the need to get as much done before the holidays as possible - they've had to sacrifice a lot in the process, and will probably continue to up until the last week of December, sadly. Once the new year rolls around, I'll be excited to see how things progress again
Until then... Well, I hope enough gets fixed that everyone has a happy holiday with the game, devs and users alike.
Quote from Reddit:
https://np.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/3v0x29/how_do_anet_expect_us_to_take_pvp_seriously_when/cxk3v95?context=1000
First thing to remember is that, especially for PvP builds, what you find in Metabattle are guidelines, no matter how high their rating or how meta they claim it to be.
Best advice is to ignore the rating's for the most part, pick a build that looks fun, and then try it out for a couple unranked matches. If some bit of it doesn't feel right, change it (the better guides will give you suggestions for alts, otherwise it's up to you to figure it out) If it turns out you don't like it at all, whether it's because you keep getting your ass kicked by this one build you always see (which for this season, is probably a DH), or even if playing it is uncomfortable or unfun to you despite the success you have, Try a different one. Before HoT, I almost always ran 2-kit bomb condi on my Engineer, even though the "meta" was Celestial Rifle, because I didn't want to mess with trying to hit people on the move with grenades. That was not fun for me.
Recipes for Guild Insignia, 10 Crystalline Ore and 3 Guild Commendations to buy the recipe. We can unlock the guild armorsmith soon, just need a lot more cured hardened leather, and 6 celestial armor insignias(This will be the hard part)
Guild armorsmith being available "Soon" is only dependent on us not having a different unlock opening first.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Not anymore. I also threw in some PVP Reward Potions, because it said we needed some for Waypoint costs.
Was thinking Elementalism Dear Watson, dunno if it'd fit though.
September after the Earth, Wind, and Fire song if that isn't too meta.
There is a core of WvWers who think that A.net is totally out of touch when they said things like "we see very few dedicated WvW players; most WvW players also do a lot of PvE." And this group - who is very vocal on reddit, Intigo in particular - really took the piss out of A.net for saying this. It's hilarious, because A.net is right. WvW population always saw a dip at Living Story releases. So it's no surprise it's been down after HoT launch, when there is a magnitude for content to consume, especially for more casual players who often make up pug groups in WvW.
The new map - and the refusal of a lot of WvWers to go into it with Beginner's Mind - has contributed to this in part, but at this point it's barely seen action. It took over a year for most of the siege spots in Alpine to become known, and for the meta to form around which towers and keeps you go for. Half the people complaining about not knowing where to go haven't bothered to learn the map. It's like a 30 minute run-through, and after that you will know 90% of the routes, and how to fit things like Shrines and their speed-buff into your or your zerg's movement, but apparently that 30 minutes of exploration is too much effort.
Really, I'm far more disappointed with WvWers than I am with A.net on the WvW front.
Get to new division where you can't lose pips/divisions anymore. Throw 20 games so your mmr is trash. Win 5 games in a row in trash mmr, get new division. repeat.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Also the initial YouTube rant that brought this system to light yesterday was removed for a more civilized discussion to begin as well. So that should remove some of the venom in criticism.
It should be noted intentionally throwing a game is against the TOS. Spvp is a crazy place. plus im particularly bad at it.
If you have 55% win rate (really good win rate) You will take 100 games to make 1 division increase out of 5 in Emerald.
If you have 60% win rate (Crazy good win rate) you will take 100 games to make it 2 out of 5 division increases in emerald.
if you do not make it to 3rd and 4th divisions (Sapphire and ruby) you will not make it past the blue back piece reward for the legendary.
Unless you are an amazing god of solo pvp, and have 0 mmr because you've never played pvp, OR you have a premade of the best players in the game, you will have a very very very hard time making it to sapphire and ruby without tanking your mmr constantly.
It is batshit infuckingsane that they thought not resetting mmr and giving no way to earn extra pips (Winstreaks, placements, anything) would work out. Literally NO thought went into the league progress. It rewards people who have played a LOT and are VERY GOOD even LESS than those who are decent but have never done pvp.
When I heard about leagues I was SUPER hyped. It never even crossed my mind they wouldn't reset mmr. That is the fucking entire base of a good system. Successive leagues could seed higher mmr up there, but without a reset it is a clusterfuck. When someone said "they didnt reset mmr" on tuesday I laughed and figured they were just playing against super high ranked people because it was everyone at 0 mmr. Noooooooope. This is mindboggling to me.
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
Last I've heard from a dev, Ranked MMR is different from unranked MMR.
Dunno if it has been reset since last time ranked was available, during the test ladder, which still makes your points valid, but even if it hasn't, everyone should have the starting MMR volatility of someone who hasn't played in months.
We can circle back after they patch it!
For now be sated with monday night missions wvw and sunday missions wvw.
that a bummer man.... I know many folks were jazzed about the back-piece.
ANET PvE EMPLOYEE "You know what works really well in PvE? Making it so players have to fail events in order make progress towards their goal."
ANET PvP EMPLOYEE "...Go on."
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
There is defenetly a lot of wvw only players.
Why is everyone doing pvp atm? Why is my HC wvw raid guild doing pve? Because it's the only way to get guild upgrades you can only use and that you need for WvW.
Just look at what you need to get for the +5 upgrade and tell me how to get it only playing pvp.
Anets "dedication" to wvw is a joke pritty much, just look at how many times the "fixed" the so called bug that lets wps open for a few sec when a keep is underattack.
With this patch they said they fixed it, but now it's open 24/7.
They let bugs like walls not working like walls last for a for ages befor fixing it. They will hotfix a broken event, they won't hotfix a major problem in WvW.
Else than that I agree with you on the new borders, alot of people just don't wanna learn it. And well not likeing changes isn't a new problem.
Birds Fly,
'til there's Fire in the Sky...
Adding to the advice of playing a build you find fun/engaging, I tend to pick metabattle builds that use weapon sets I'm most familiar with from PvE/WvW. Often these are not the "top" builds, but imo executing a suboptimal build more competently rather than a stronger build less competently works out decently. I mean, I'm still frustrated at essentially fighting uphill, but the little victories help. Of course, I'm fighting even more uphill without the HoT elite specs.
One exception I found was mesmer. I tend to play Sword/Sword and Scepter/Focus pve - not because they're particularly powerful, I just like them aesthetically. But I got rocked the times I tried to play it in pvp. For my most recent few week stint in spvp during halloween, I needed a mesmer win for daily. I gave in and bought a cheap blue GS and staff. Man, mannnn. Even fumbling through unfamiliar weapon skills, I felt so much more powerful...
(total tangent) Sort of highlights one of my disappointments with the hard link between weapons and skills. I wish we had class weapon skill bundles for general classes of weapons. Like these are the 2 to 3 (condi, dd, etc) 1H melee mainhand bundles and choose whichever 1H melee weapon you like aesthetically to go with a bundle.
Yes, do not throw matches! It's rude and unfair to your teammates, and might even get you reported.
However, your MMR for unranked is the same as your MMR for ranked. So if you would like to learn how to play a new class (like say your brand new shiny revenant) you could take a break from Ranked and go play your new class in Unranked and then go back to Ranked on your normal class....you need to win matches on multiple classes anyway, so practice is a good idea regardless.
https://podcast.tidalwavegames.com/
on ranger -
CorriganX on Steam and just about everywhere else.
so pretty
Great idea, but it's gonna be a weird name when a) people don't get the reference and/or b) (more likely) "It's not September!"
Anyone remember how long a name can be? Was it 14 characters long?
Reminds me of how I need to keep working on HOPE. 2 Deldrimor from finishing T1 of the precursor crafting, That will get me to the next tier, which will involve even more ore and lumber farming. A lot more...