1. #1
    Scarab Lord Karizee's Avatar
    10+ Year Old Account
    Join Date
    Oct 2011
    Location
    The Eternal Alchemy
    Posts
    4,433

    State of the Game - March 14th

    Show notes:

    Spirit Watch
    Movement spells are intentionally really strong; Both specific spells and even the passive 25 movement increase.

    Slippery rope of what spells should drop the orb. Decision such as “... Should Engineer be able to Elixir R with 4 dodge rolls...” and what about other spells should drop the orb?

    Map was balanced for being able to win entirely by map-control; So if an enemy managed to get one or two Orbs you would still be able win.

    The map tried to move away from the defensive play, as seen on other maps, and take a more offensive play through small skirmishes.

    Winning first team battle on any map is strong, comebacks needs to be more likely. Might delay the orb spawn timer.

    Making specific spells to the orb; problem is people rather play their own profession and will avoid taking the orb. Then taking the Orb can be intimidating as it will give you a new bar where you have to read up on all the spells. Something they might try to play with.

    Matchmaking & Tournaments
    Paid tournament was used as a way to separate the casuals and experienced teams. With removal they joined 2 team tournaments, which resulted in more players and faster queues. Problem was then pick-ups facing premades, as rating was split and reset at the same time this became a bigger problem. In the future it will be split out as a solo only queue and a premade queue.

    Fix coming to half teams due to the disconnects; faster replacement of disconnected players.

    Leaderboards will provide visible comparison to motivate people to play. No visible ranking “number” only ranking based on server, realm, friends and those sort of things. Ranking based on the rating, but invisible rating until they are confident the system works.

    Custom Arena to largely take over hot-join’s current place. As people can create servers with 2v2, 5v5, 8v8 or w/e they want. Will act as hang out where people go to their favorite server and play.

    Profession Balance
    Elementalist
    Only have one specific build that works. A bit too limited, they are supposed to be a jack of all trades, but not the king of any particular play. Want to get elementals builds opened up, rearrange the traits and buff traits that aren’t being taken right now.

    Strong healing spells, healing scaling has been reduced by 50% since beta, no intend to change that further. Will continue to have a lot of burst healing.

    Elementalist tornado; self-ress is being fixed.

    Have a lot of self-protection. Good place in bunker play, immobilizing enemies, but if he stops he is in trouble. Want something to counter that playstyle, something that increases damage based on boons the target have to give bunkers a natural enemy.

    Might make heals more interruptible, more devastating for elementalists to get interrupted.

    Engineer (Thanks to Ayestes)
    Kit Refinement nerfs towards utility. “… more utility and less damage output.” 100 Nades and Super Elixir were too good compared to the rest. 100 Nades mentioned specifically, in that a 10 point trait isn’t meant to be that powerful. 24k damage mentioned, which while up in the top end of possible damage is still possible. “…we wanted to normalize how this works and make it useful for all kits.”

    Turret buffs such as Thumper gaining AoE Cripple (3s every 5s) and Rifle Turret getting more damage. “… and some other cool stuff that you’ll see.”

    Overall a lot of changes planned, mostly buff-centric. “…couple pages worth of notes…” It appeared it was data for the next patch, but isn’t necessarily the case. “…pretty heavy focus…” Globally some changes are planned in increasing the strength of the weaker utilities, so perhaps that may be addressed here as well.

    Described as mid-range skirmishers that can control battlefield in various ways such as with turrets, control skills, AoE, and other ways. “…they are going to be impactful in close range fights and have the ability to control space…” Intended on buffing the things that aren’t used as often so that they do get used as different playstyles.

    RNG toned down, but not necessarily removed. Example is Elixir U only has Frenzy and Haste variants and the Toss lacks Veil now so it always blocks projectiles in some fashion. Not much done in the March patch yet though. “… smaller subsets [of RNG].”

    Condition buffs, non-specific. Mentioned offhand during the Thief discussion, but it was in reference to Engineers and Thieves in particular.

    Guardian
    Guardian is a boon-centric heavy armor profession. Meant to be slower than most professions, but abilities for movement to join the fight and stay in the fight.

    Guardians are in a pretty good play; a wide variety of specs.

    Mesmer
    Piercing greatsword. Spatial surge will hit up to three targets, should always hit main target, but will hit two people in between. Going to promote positioning more and allow for skilled players to take advantage of the mechanics, stand behind target etc. Numbers will get tweaked.

    Mantras not strong enough, could be brought up in certain aspects. Right now they are kept as damage, which is cool, but would rather have them be an active part of the playstyle.

    Many classes have three key utility spells, break more and give more options. Going to increase damage and buff weak utilities that aren’t used much.

    Shatter and AoE damage was a bit high - beam damage increase might force reduction to shatter damage.

    Necromancer
    A bit slow, need to move to kill radius to lock down. Need to have heavy control on boons for removing or converting them.

    Deathshroud more of a transform skill, not an actual down-state. No weapon swapping deathshroud will come back.

    Build Diversity; necromancer in a place where other professions should be.

    Evading while immobilized, not just for necromancer, up for discussion. Immobilize shouldn’t become a “sort of” stun, where you are completely locked out and can’t dodge during it. Need to keep an eye on this.

    Ranger
    Long bow needs work, full damage build is very powerful, but no protection for itself. Utility skills aren’t effective enough to keep it safe.

    Agony resistance, translated to pets. PvE players doing fractals, agony should translate to pets. Ranger pets, necromancer minions, mesmer clones. etc.

    Greatsword – improvements brought down some recharges, improved damage for them all. Both condition damage and duration.

    Thief
    Reveal automatically activates on stealth ending, not just on attack; Might apply to Mesmer Stealth.
    High damage to compensate lack of boon removal. Might get more boon removal in cost of tuned down damage.

    Mug is too powerful; But Mug doesn’t synergize well with the whole ‘stealth game’.

    Looking to increase mobility for sets other than the shortbow. Elementalists competes too well with Thief’s mobility where thief should be top mobility profession.

    Warrior
    Banner improvement, increased attributes that the banners apply; instead of 90 you will have 107 attribute points. Condition duration and crit damage stays the same.

    Kick/Rampage – changes are coming, a lot more mobility.

    Warrior has insane specs in PvE, but don’t work in PvP, get shut down by condition damage. Changes to help them against condition damage.

    The Road Ahead
    PvP Leaderboards:
    Sortable; NA/EU, Friends, Servers/World, Rating(Won’t show though), Win/Loss record.
    Teams and solo queue will be on the same leaderboards, until they aren’t in the same ‘pool’. Leaderboards are nearly ready, might even be released before next patch.

    Might not do a big patch - might just throw things out as they are ready, instead of grouping it up.

    Spectator Mode:
    Not going to be the same as observer mode in guild wars 1.
    Can spectate from a preset/predefined points.
    Can click on player to spectate, see the player hot-bar and recharge times.
    Can spectate players to see builds/traits etc.
    Will only be available for hot-join and custom games.

    Shoutcasting:
    Would like to support shoutcasting - authorized shoutcasters will be on a list who will get pop-ups when a tournament start to spectate it. Not letting anyone else in as it could lead to cheating/ghosting.

    Gems:
    Unlikely to be brought back.

    Mixed Profession Talk:
    Building a meta that allows for things like a bunker to exist, each profession should have different specs and skills they can use.

    Want people to have individual responsibility by not having healers. If you die it usually means you made a mistake, instead of blaming it on a healer. Promote the whole group decision.

    Open Floor for Guests
    Having endless Finisher Tokens/Turning them on/off might be a possibility on future system.

    Will add more incentives to play, armor types are expensive to make, a lot of variables like light, heavy, race, genders etc.

    Also hard to tell if players are good, or are they just AFK in chat a lot. Discussion about adding specific top titles, or looks etc. A way to show that you are good and not just spent a lot of time grinding.

    Arenas have been tested but often ended with middle zeg -> pop utility and see who wins. More time will be spent testing new gametypes. Custom Arena will help a lot in terms of getting new formats as data will be available as how to people play, what settings they play with etc.

    Penalizing people that swap traits/builds after joining the game. Adding templates for builds, that way you can allow players to deviate a bit from the template but still keep the build the same.

    Resurrection signets are being looked at, too powerful when everyone have them in tanky groups.
    Last edited by Fencers; 2013-03-15 at 04:10 PM.
    Valar morghulis

  2. #2
    Listened to this last night. Some pretty interesting stuff overall.

    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    Warrior
    Banner improvement, increased attributes that the banners apply; instead of 90 you will have 107 attribute points. Condition duration and crit damage stays the same.

    Kick/Rampage – changes are coming, a lot more mobility.

    Warrior has insane specs in PvE, but don’t work in PvP, get shut down by condition damage. Changes to help them against condition damage.
    Really glad they're looking at banners. Cool mechanic, but like they mentioned in the interview, they really don't get utilized much because their bonuses don't really make up for the opportunity cost of having them as a utility. Buffing the banners to nearly double their values (didn't they say 170, not 107, btw?) will definitely help with point defense and bunkering. *rubs hands at buffed Banner of Defense and Banner of Tactics*

    The Kick/Rampage changes should be interesting; hopefully they'll make those skills more attractive. Mobility is definitely an issue for Rampage, and having to stand still to Kick usually results in your target moving out of range. Trying to preempt a Kick can be a very tricky thing to do.

    While the build I currently use doesn't have any trouble regarding condition damage, I can definitely see where they're coming from with the condition damage stuff. If you're not running some sort of condition removal, the damage can get nasty quick. Looking forward to what they do with this as well.
    Last edited by Arajal; 2013-03-15 at 02:39 PM.

  3. #3
    Quote Originally Posted by Karizee View Post
    Gems:
    Unlikely to be brought back.
    Sorry, I am at work and can't watch the video, but could you explain what that means? Also, thanks for the comprehensive write up/overview.
    "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." --Dr. Carl Sagan

  4. #4
    Quote Originally Posted by summourn View Post
    Sorry, I am at work and can't watch the video, but could you explain what that means? Also, thanks for the comprehensive write up/overview.
    They had gems as a reward for first and second place in the old Paid Tournaments.

  5. #5
    Quote Originally Posted by Arajal View Post
    They had gems as a reward for first and second place in the old Paid Tournaments.
    Oh, gotcha. Makes more sense than what I was originally thinking (ie gem store revamp or something, haha). Thanks!
    "Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere." --Dr. Carl Sagan

  6. #6
    If they buff engineers I may actually be tempted to make one finally. :P

  7. #7
    I'm getting sick of these podcasts, it's always just showing that a-net doesn't care/understand what's happening on top lvl play. How can they even consider making the game an E-sport like this?

    "we don't like giving the orb it's own skills since ppl want to play there class" and what about the frigin treb?

    "people need to learn the new skills and won't expect the bar to change" great, so you cater to people ignoring "mechanics" instead of people who take the time to get better...

    "yea so um we wiped MMR and that ruined matchmaking" No shit sherlock, what did you expect, of course ppl are now fighting vs premades as non-premades how did you not figure this out in advance?

    "just because you play against a 5man team doesn't make it a good team" Are you fcking kidding me? How do they not realise how much of an impact being able to speak to each other has on this game? With pugs 90% of the time not everyone speaks English (eu) or simply doesn't respond at all. If you can tell people 3at keep, need help and you get help that's game-changing...

    Regarding the "a-team tourneys" why don't you just bring over the system from GW1, it worked on all fields...

    Regarding hot join (they don't really make a statement), what is the reasoning behind making tPvP 5v5 and HJ 8v8? "So erm this here is the introduction for people so erm we're gonna like euhm make it as erm oh yea euhm hard as possible to ermh learn skill animations etc since there's 5people slashing at you all the time..." Make it 5v5, let your toon start naked (so you actually have to look at the options for gear...) give tPvP and HJ other ranks, it's rediculous that you can rank up faster in hot join than sPvP...

    "it was a design decision to make hardly any overlap between PvP vs PvE/WvW" then why don't you frigin separate skills already

    For class balance I won't bother since we know that won't be fixed anytime soon.

    Also I hope the people from the "what is the strongest 1v1 build" thread listen to these podcasts since every single time the "pros" talk about how nothing can kill elementalists.
    Last edited by Meledelion; 2013-03-15 at 04:06 PM.

  8. #8
    State of the Game is a podcast. Belongs in the video thread.

    http://www.mmo-champion.com/threads/...-Wars-2-Videos

    -- Fencers

Posting Permissions

  • You may not post new threads
  • You may not post replies
  • You may not post attachments
  • You may not edit your posts
  •