GW2: Update Notes Thread

[Kuya]

Yea, it's almost like WoW has more players or something.

[Shiyo]

Yea, it's almost like WoW has more players or something.

Even if they did, have you actually DONE spvp? It has many things against it. It's hard to find a team, you're required to find a team but it's set up in a way that it's literally impossible to find other players to actually form a team with you to play in tournaments. There's only one game type, that one game type encourages like 3 viable builds(bunker/condition/glass cannon), every class is forced to spec/gear a certain way and if they don't like that playstyle they're shit out of luck and need to reroll another class and learn how to play/gear/spec it.

There's no ladder(or wasn't, did they add one?) so you could be matched up against tryhards or players better than you at anytime, making it very unfun and not very competitive.

Basically, you can't really start out and "learn" how to play because you never get matched against people of equal skill, you can't find people to play with, and if you're good you don't ever get matched up against other good players.

[Kuya]

A very strange thing. I had to look at every corner of my previous post to find any mention of me saying sPvP is good. In the future i'll make sure to try stabbing myself in the head repeatedly to see if i can start seeing whatever it is you saw.

[Akiyama]

Hell, this moron who is garbage and plays shitty action RPG games like Diablo3 and path of exile(this game looks good though) has 4000x the views
Kripparian
http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp
31,886,953 viewers total
4,477 viewers right now
1-3k views per video.

Lol.

Dude has his ways, but a moron he is not.

[Rhyis.]

Kripp used to play on Mag which makes him cool by default.

[Rhyis.]

Also, sPvP consists of bunker builds going 1v1 or 2v2 while never killing each other. Shits terrible.

[Ghost_Wheel22]

Hell, this moron who is garbage and plays shitty action RPG games like Diablo3 and path of exile(this game looks good though) has 4000x the views
Kripparian
http://www.twitch.tv/nl_kripp
31,886,953 viewers total
4,477 viewers right now
1-3k views per video.

Careful Shiyo, you're trying to shit on someone that is the posterboy for HC. He does some srs work son.

[Akiyama]

Yeah, and like I said.. dude's got issues here and there, but when it comes to hunkering down and hardcore playing a game like no tomorrow/no lifer.. he knows his shit lol

[Celeras]

Did you seriously just try to make an argument against sPvP by using the amount of views a random twitch user has? Wow.

[Celeras]

Also, sPvP consists of bunker builds going 1v1 or 2v2 while never killing each other. Shits terrible.

sPvP hasn't been about bunkers since like the first month of the game, when people finally learned how to do something besides glass cannon. If anything, it's become about the exact opposite (sub-objectives aside).. whose roamer can dominate their rotations.

Nobody is even trying to say its great. If people don't like it or are just plain terrible, then that's fine. But ya'll nigs pretending to understand/critique it with obviously no experience is a fucking joke.

[Rhyis.]

Well that's good the meta changed.

[Celeras]

I actually prefer the current meta and find it fun to play. Once or twice. My problem is I dont feel like the sub objectives change the gameplay enough, and get bored quickly. Which is why I'm all for the new maps. Temple buffs are awesome and hopefully the capture the flag mechanic is as well.

It was the same in WoW for me. I was that jerk who bulldozed straight to 2300 then could barely be bothered to get in the weekly games for points. I enjoyed battlegrounds much more because of the variety.

[Rhyis.]

Variety is why I like WvW. Even if you're fighting the same server over and over, things change every time you play. Hell, they change the second you swap to another borderland.

sPvP is certainly lacking in the variety category. It needs a lot more game modes like murderball, ctf, and the like. Spirit Watch is something I suppose, but man it needs so much more.

[niwaar]

386 viewers atm, 394,403 total, and most of the saved vids have less than 70 views...[bold]yada yada yada[/bold]

As someone said before ... 9.6million subscribers = a much much larger playerbase to watch streams.

I would also point out that stream numbers (especially old vids) are as much to do with personality/skill as it about the games people play. Hell look at how many people watched DayZ or Binding of Isaac at the peak of their phenomenon. It was NOT initially because of the games' popularity it was because of the streamers who streamed them. (A little Chicken or the Egg argument.)

Even if they did, have you actually DONE spvp? It has many things against it. It's hard to find a team, you're required to find a team but it's set up in a way that it's literally impossible to find other players to actually form a team with you to play in tournaments. There's only one game type, that one game type encourages like 3 viable builds(bunker/condition/glass cannon), every class is forced to spec/gear a certain way and if they don't like that playstyle they're shit out of luck and need to reroll another class and learn how to play/gear/spec it.

There's no ladder(or wasn't, did they add one?) so you could be matched up against tryhards or players better than you at anytime, making it very unfun and not very competitive.

Basically, you can't really start out and "learn" how to play because you never get matched against people of equal skill, you can't find people to play with, and if you're good you don't ever get matched up against other good players.

First off, I have some huge problems with how sPvP is set up in the game. That being said, once you get in a match its a lot of fun.

There only being one game type is kind of deceiving since each map is at its heart a "conquest" game, but each map has some different mechanics. Did we complain when we got Eye of the Storm that it was merely a conquest map just like Arathi Basin? Well some people might have, but the game play was different enough and points were scored differently enough that it felt different enough to enjoy. Speaking of EotS, the newly announced sPvP map sounds like its basically a 3 node EotS style conquest/ctf map. Should be interesting.

Every MMO with a spec/trait setup's PvP system encourages certain specs from certain classes/professions. If you don't think so, go play WoW or Rift. Hell even XI encouraged specific subjobs on certain classes if you wanted to go and play Ballista. Whenever there is choice, there will always a specific choice that is better for certain aspects. The difference is that in the case of GW2 the game was created so there are a few different choices that are "ok" as long as you combine them with other people who have made complimentary ones.

Yes, there are no in game ladders at this time. Its sad that the game did not launch with at least an online dynamically accessible Ladder like WoW did. (As a matter of fact, I am incredibly disappointed that there isn't any real online accessibility to the game at all. Hell even FFXIV had the lodestone where you could see some semblance of stats online.) I had hoped that Anet would co-opt NCsoft's Aion Armory setup and we'd have a ladder and more. Hell even GW2 had an online ladder after some time. Right now all we are left with is a forum post every few weeks that gives us the ladder for the last few weeks and a third party WvW score sight that is kept "sorta" up to date.

According to the February update preview it sure does sound like they are not only adding an "Arena" type ladder to the game, but they are doing it as a full 5man team ladder. This is not exactly what you are looking for, but it is a huge step in the right direction. The game needs to improve the usability and functionality of its structured PvP and this is just one addition they needed to do.

Hopefully we will see a method to find teammates in the Mists soon. The game desperately needs a better way to hook people up both for tournaments in sPvP and for dungeons and fractals in PvE. We can't relegate ourselves to third party websites/forums forever and have the game flourish.

sPvP is certainly lacking in the variety category. It needs a lot more game modes like murderball, ctf, and the like. Spirit Watch is something I suppose, but man it needs so much more.

I completely agree with you here. But I like the way Anet has set about doing things thus far in terms of game types. Instead of dropping the game with a bunch of differing gametype maps they have tried to focus on a specific type and excel at it. While I do not really appreciate the forced underwater combat of a single map, the rest of the maps are pretty tight and enjoyable to play within the confines of the differing aspects each map brings to the conquest model.

Can you actually say that the majority of other recent MMO PvP maps have been nearly as successful when their game released multiple game types at once? Rift had a single good map, Black Garden. A version of murderball. While its other maps were conquest, CTF and NPC Assault (do not know what to call it otherwise). Warhammer had a bevy of maps all of which ran the gambit of all of the above. With arguably only two of them being any real fun (the murderball maps). SWTOR had its own murderball version, as well as conquest. All of these games launched with multiple PvP game styles. With the exception of WoW's original three BGs, can you really argue that any of those games even came close to nailing it with more than a single style?

I really hope that with the addition of this new map at the end of the month that Anet will then set its sights on a new map type. Hopefully a CTF style game. After all they are adding CTF in this new map and they did have a CTF holiday map as well. The problem is, with the current setup, they will need to release not one, but at least 3 maps of a new game type at once.

[Celeras]

There already is a ladder currently live. Or matchmaking rating/ELO, whatever you want to call it. It just isn't visible in the UI yet. Todays state of the game with GW2guru talked about the alternative methods they plan to use to integrate that rating into the game rather than just stamping you with a number (they weren't specific).

[Kuishen]

That ladder only applies to Paid Tournaments and is one of the most terrible ladder systems I have ever seen in any game ever. As far as I know you don't lose the Qualifier Points or whatever they're called when you lose a game, so all those show us is who has won the most Paid Tournament matches which is completely irrelevant without other stats like losses, average points per game, etc.

Right now there is currently zero way to compare yourself to other players in both skill and hard data and that is a huge problem if they want this game to be competitive at all.

[Arcana]

They said that QP isn't for MMR, they said its specifically for the daily/monthly tourney entry.

[Kuishen]

Well it was awful stupid of them to add that before an MMR system, as well as many other basic pvp functions.

[Celeras]

QP was just a stopgap for people to measure their tournament wins, and yeah it was pretty meaningless. The MMR/ELO was introduced in the patch that brought the one round team vs team tournaments on Temple. It works as you'd expect, and I'm interested in seeing how they turn it into the carrot for competition.

[Shiyo]

Black garden was negative fun, it was just a gigantic 10vs10 zerg in the middle of the map, so fucking horrible. Rift literally had 0 good PVP maps at release. SWTOR had by far the best PVP maps I've ever played, they were all so fun, unique, and balanced.