ThomasC.1056

First and foremost : players play for fun. So, you're looking for some sort of excuse ? There's none. Even now with the servers, I think most players just go to spend some time bandwagoning or whatever they enjoy in the game mode. I don't think players care about anything more than "I want to win as long as I'm online" in WvW. Heck, even winning the matchup is irrelevant.

I really wish I could randomly run in perma stealth and hit 350k any foe I meet. * sigh * Maybe the next e-spec ?

It also has fun. .... Whoops, sarcasm again. Sorry ! ^^;

Hello and welcome, In WvW, you are assigned to a server, which belongs to a shard (that's the way ANet recently named them) which is your colour. During the matchup, your shard earns points in 2 ways : Each time the enemy is killed ; it's called PPK (points per kill) At each tick (when the countdown reaches zero), your shard gains points depending on the amount of objectives held, and the tier they've reached (like, a T3 keep provides more points than a T0). These are called PPT (points per tick). Then, you'll see PPT in lots of discussion here as a generic term for everything that is objective related : taking objectives, upgrading them, escorting dolyaks and, in a nutshell, all the gameplay that revolves around objectives management.

All in all, I think it's mostly a matter of vocabulary and definitions. Case #1, raised by @Xenesis.6389 : ANet needs to define what performance is (including the situation of them gathering the players' input). That definition will provide the way they measure it, which may be the basis of rewards, etc. It'll also help understand what the purpose of the gamemode is. Which leads to Case #2 : (kindly quoted from @Sviel.7493 answer, but from the dev) What is the goal ? The use of quotation marks seem to show that they themselves don't have a clear position on that point, but I think it's the most fundamental one. As endless arguings here have shown, even the players don't agree of what the goal is. My guess is there's a tremendous amount of naivety in the dev's statement, because they mistake the game mode goals with the players' goals. I can figure a player's goal could be, at a given instant, "I'll kill that red thing jumping here", or "I'll take that camp." But I have a more difficult time admitting people would turn on their computer, launch guild wars 2, wait in the queue, and access the game mode to do these things. People usually do such things because they want to play, they want to have fun, spend quality time, meet friends, forget a hard day, or whatever. Which is the most simple explanation to the question why some players won't fight : because fight implies losing, and losing is not fun ie : not what I came here for. Same things with mindless zerging : because it's the easiest way to win and get rewards (brain loves rewards) without needing to think too much. Same thing with cheesy meta which is nothing but picking the path of less effort. I'm not saying every player is a braindead zombie just spending time, but I think the hardcore WvW player seeing the game mode as a part time job is rare. And it may have something to do with the exhaustion that was mentionned by @schloumou.3982 and @Sviel.7493. So this is what I think is the fundamental question ANet has to answer : what purposes they define for the game, which mechanics they implement in that goal, how they reward players following the aformentionned paths, and which way they wrap all this in a competitive game mode, which implies some players will lose, which is not fun, while every player legitimately wants to have fun. And when they'll have done that, they'll have to be ready for a significant loss in their playerbase because :

AND BOOM ! Sh*tstorm from a lazy and ungrateful gamer community that flushed down the skritt-dump 90% of the awesome ideas they created with passion, dedication, money and dev time. So, no more candies, no more time for WvWers that only want to zeg in circles around alpine. Proof is : they're still rolling and rolling. That and the GvG thing too.

I can't see any reason the average zergling will care when... Wait... When have I become so pessimistic about the human nature ? Oh dear... Brace yourselves, core improvements incoming in 20+ years !

I've also been fairly disappointed with the traits. I feel like they are too generic, some are rough copies of other traits. I don't see synergies or really specific things that would be a meaningful tradeoff. To me, the thing is : virtuoso is a class designed on something narrow. Like pew pew damage all around as the only distinctive characteristic. Shatters are pew pew damage, dagger is pew pew damage, utilities are... Well... You got it. No hybrid DMG, no boons or significant locking condis, debuff, or whatever, to increase the playstyles. Therefore, traits can only deal with pew pew, so they're lacking flavour, as you have to create 9 traits around it, they can only feel lackluster. That unfortunately won't move me out of mirage, eventhough the poor espec has been torn to shreds.

Bill Wender.

You're right ! Please ANet delete the thief class because it's built on the loathsome stealth mechanic which allows for too much exploit and frustration.

Thanks for the nice input, and improvement. I think it'll fill a meaningful purpose as GvG is often asked for. I just hoped it won't be ruined by self-management issues like too many guilds wanting to use the arena at the same time, or grievers joining only to troll. I don't think there's much that can be done on ANet's side without huge restrictions that'd impair usability too much. GvG addicts : have fun !

I don't know what amazes me most. The fact that these figures exist, or the fact that some consider that a single skill can erase half the HP pool of a super tanky build, implying that it can do a one-shot kill on glassy builds, and still consider the situation normal and healthy in a game mode where human players have to lose.

Thanks for raising the topic. As far as I'm concerned, it's even worse than a balance issue. It's a game design issue. Let's consider the raid/WvW split. From what I understand, raids are a really demanding game mode, that ask DPS to be extremely effective, a 100% boon uptime, with specifically alacrity and quickness. That comes from the way they're designed, the encounters, the mobs. So the game provides tools that can allow for very high DPS, very high boon generation and uptime etc. The first issue comes here : there aren't enough of these tools. For example, it seems like firebrands are widely oveperforming in the "boon generation" role than, say, tempests. So, it shrinks down the possibilities of diversity, which is an issue. If you want to solve this specific issue, you can nerf the overperforming build, which can be troublesome because some raids won't be completed anymore because of too high difficulty. You can also boost the alternative builds, and get "meh, powercreep again ?!" complains. Or, you can change the way raids are made to be less demanding. Which will increase the attractivity of the overperforming class. So you have to think this as the whole. Now, let's consider as a fact that players have "raid-grade tools" at their disposal. What happens when players pick these tools for WvW ? In small scale, they overperform, because their opponents are far to be as powerful as raid bosses, dps-wise, and survivability wise. Usually, they can't be both. So what can ANet do ? Seemingly, they don't really know, because they tried to promote boon corruption, before removing it mostly, and such things. They probably are uninterested in the game mode though. My guess is also they can't lower the boon generation because it'd impair too much the raid effectiveness of, say, firebrands. I think they can't split skills that much. On the zerg side, things are a bit easier, because the group composition can get closer to raids, which means the zerg can get high sustain and high dps. To me, the issue here is the number of players in a zerg can be far higher than in a raid. The first consequence of it is the spamming issue : boon corruption or stuns tend to be useless, because of the insane boon generation on the other side. The second issue is damage is linear with numbers, which means it'll only grow. I think a non-linear asymptotic behaviour would be better : like 5 players hit 5 times harder then 1, but 10 only hit 7 times harder than one, and it takes more and more players to increase the DPS. Other solutions are changing the target cap, player collision, friendly fire, whatever... In all cases, a significant change goes more towards the game mechanics than the pure numbers in the tooltip. Now, specifically about WvW, there also is a core issue : players themselves. One has to keep in mind that players don't want to play. They want to win. They'll therefore go to the most effective build that fulfills the purpose. The issue is : WvW being a competitive mode, if one wins, the other loses. Also on the player behaviours : there're really different expectations. For example, quickness and alacrity for mirage/tempest are sometimes frowned upon because it doesn't "fit the class theme", while some other people couldn't care less about the theme and the lore, and only watch numbers and dials from their favorite tweaking tools. So I guess it has to be hard for ANet to please everyone, because if alacrity is demanded, it has to be available in more than one class, otherwise that one will become meta, so they'll give it to others, but it won't really fit the theme. On another hand, they are the ones that make alacrity mandatory, so... TL;DR : some random thoughts about how the whole balance thing has to be considered alongside the way the game is designed, what it demands, what options it brings, and what players want to do.

Never forget the video when devs introduced the scourge. They well insanely laughing while burning those golems to ashes using the big shade and condi bombs. They were so proud and happy. Who could have expected, at this time, that this could only lead to a disaster in WvW, and that the elite spec would eventually be mowed to uselessness...

I'm a bit bewildered by all those changes. There're ideas indeed, some things that might be worth trying, but... It's juste plainly obvious that raids and fractals were the only considerations in mind when designing them. Bosses, long fights, static foes etc. That's not what you get in sPvP or small scale WvW. The effect of torment change will be terrible in these game modes. The whole idea of a 30s boon cap is plainly ridiculous when most of a fights are a matter of seconds, and the boon output is insane. I'm not expecting much of changes designed to tweak the effectiveness against 2 million HP static opponents, when they'll be on air against 20k HP moving foes. Oh and : goodbye druids, scourges... You'll be missed. We'll see...