Curse

Gigashadow · Aug 29, 2009, 03:49 AM // 03:49

If they're adding sealed deck to GW1, I think it's almost certainly in GW2.

Btw: Making it a rated arena at the beginning might be a self-fulfilling prophecy and get more people interested in it.

Thamior Shamus · Aug 29, 2009, 03:53 AM // 03:53

i lol'd when she said MB eles werent a problem. Two can drop a Lord very fast. *note* rangers/paras cant block, heal, and dish out tons of damage at the same time.

Sealed Deck sounds fun. But I will miss farming balth faction on HB quest day.

Owik Gall · Aug 29, 2009, 03:53 AM // 03:53

Quote:

Originally Posted by Inde

[*]PvP Skins - Reduce the TRP cost of PvP skin upgrades, make them purchasable with Zcoins, and (fingers crossed) fix the graphical glitch that prevents us from releasing the Eye of the North skins.

I thought the EotN weapon skins was deleted from PvP skin tourny rewards because of the Greater Stoneblade...

Anyways, I'm looking forward to all of this coming to play after September. This should be really big indeed.

No One Famous · Aug 29, 2009, 04:02 AM // 04:02

With the removal of TA, surely a removal of the Gladiator title would be in order?

It would help to discourage the rampant syncing, and besides, RA shouldn't really have a title track attached to it in the first place.

zelgadissan · Aug 29, 2009, 04:11 AM // 04:11

Don't think I saw this mentioned - with removal of HB and TA and addition of Sealed Deck, that would be seven different PvP formats for Zaishen Quests. I wonder if there will just be set days for these things - for example, Monday will be JQ day, Tuesday will be GvG, Wednesday will be AB, etc.

Also, will HA just automatically become unlocked for people who haven't met the requirements since TA is part of the process? Or will they have to win, for example, 10 Sealed Deck battles?

Iotan · Aug 29, 2009, 04:22 AM // 04:22

I know this is buried and will never be seen, but:

Random Arena will stop promoting to Team Arena after 10 wins.

This could be a huge problem. Good teams already roll most RA teams, and now they will stick around in RA forever. TA usually break them up, but not anymore.

reaper with no name · Aug 29, 2009, 04:30 AM // 04:30

Quote:

Originally Posted by inde

maintenance and content updates – new process, new schedule
we’re going to slow things down by switching to a longer development cycle for each skill balance. We'll be shooting for a skill balance every other month instead of every month.

Skill balance updates take a surprising amount of development time, but because much of this is necessary to the process, simply cutting back on how much time we devote to them isn't a good option. It takes a lot of research to properly craft a skill balance update. A lot. We read the forums, read the wiki, review the meta, watch in observer mode, discuss skill balance with players, and most importantly, play the game ourselves. It could easily be someone's entire full-time job or the work of a whole team of dedicated balancers. Trying to do a skill balance every month, along with everything else, rushes the process more than we'd like, and it doesn’t give us enough time to truly polish each update before it goes live.

The switch to a bimonthly schedule allows us to maintain the quality of our work, and—this is important—it allows us to gather community feedback about the skill balance updates before they go live.

To do this, we’ll try to post the update notes/dev update for each skill balance about a month before the update actually goes live and ask you for your feedback. The test krewe will be able to try out some of the changes discussed by the community in the testing environment and report their findings. This process will give the community the opportunity to give us feedback and identify problems before the final changes are made. We'll take your feedback, make adjustments where necessary, and release a revised set of update notes/dev update when the build goes live. Our hope is that by taking some extra time to polish and get feedback from the community, our skill balances will be better tuned to smooth out any issues without creating new ones.

Quote:

Originally Posted by inde

[*]bug fixes for fort aspenwood and jade quarry - we’ve identified a number of ai bugs in both formats—it's just a matter of getting the time for joe to dig into them and see what can be done to fix them.

Quote:

Originally Posted by inde

a new approach
i know this is a lot of information to take in, and it comes in a package that is sort of unusual in the game industry. At the beginning of the year, we spoke about wanting to be more open about what we’re working on and set this as a high priority in the months that followed. We had a lot of plans for how to accomplish this, but as they say, "the best laid plans of mice and men often go astray.”

we’ve decided to try a slightly different approach, starting with this post. As you can see, we are relaxing our stance on talking about projects that are in progress and projects that are just getting going. We’ve launched facebook and twitter pages to give you quick updates on what we are up to. Taking a less formal approach like this will work easier with our fast-paced schedule and will hopefully increase the flow of information to you.

This degree of transparency is unusual for large game companies, being more common to smaller studios and indie projects. We’ll be sharing information and offering insights into the development process that the public normally doesn’t have access to for aaa games. This kind of stuff goes on behind the scenes anyway; we’re just pulling the curtain back to show you the process. To make this new approach successful, our community needs to meet us halfway. We all have to be on the same side here.

So, in return for this openness, we expect you, our community, to be understanding when projects that we have discussed may be canceled or changed, or a project or build is delayed. We want you to have ambitious expectations for us, but to understand that there are always limitations. Everyone has to deal with finite resources, competing priorities, and unexpected complications, and we’re no different. By embracing this reality, we can work together to bridge the gap between development and community for the betterment of the game.

I’m looking forward to chatting about my work openly, but as always please keep in mind that there will be lulls in activity from time to time.

looking forward
my hope for the rest of the year is that live team will field many of the key outstanding issues that have piled up by the end of 2009, and start 2010 fresh with new challenges and goals. I’m looking forward to the future of tyria and developing content that helps it continue to grow. That's the fun stuff!
We expect people to have a lot of questions about everything i’ve talked about, so we'll keep our lines of communication open and do our best to answer them. Live team will be at pax this year and will have q&a sessions at the arenanet booth on saturday @1pm and sunday @noon. I'm sure most of us will also be hanging out at the booth periodically throughout the course of the convention as well. We’ll see you there!

<3 linsey

...

Holy Mother Of Donkey F***ers!!!!!

...They actually read the forums?

Kidding, kidding. I'll be incredibly pleased if all (or even any) of this comes true. The first quoted part in particular I think is a superb idea, because it could help prevent overpowered or useless changes from going through. Plus it would give people who abuse overpowered skills some time to change their builds (though I imagine they'll still QQ about it).

I sincerely hope that this doesn't unleash a firestorm of QQ when you start doing it. However, I for one will make sure I don't. If I disagree with a change, I'll try to do so politely, just because I will appreciate the new format of skill balance updates.

IronSheik · Aug 29, 2009, 04:46 AM // 04:46

Okay..you can buy pvp items with zcoins, does this mean you get them in PvE or zcoins is just an alternative to Tourney points?

DarkNecrid · Aug 29, 2009, 04:52 AM // 04:52

Quote:

Originally Posted by IronSheik

Okay..you can buy pvp items with zcoins, does this mean you get them in PvE or zcoins is just an alternative to Tourney points?

No, PvP "items" aren't actually items, they require an existing PvP weapon/armor (gotten only on PvP chars) and changes the model. They're just alternatives to ZCoins.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Selket

So, uh, how are PvE characters going to work with Sealed Deck?

This was something I wondered too, and then I remembered the Costume Brawl. They could easily just create a "Sealed Deck" version of every skill in the game that you temporarily add to your skill bar for the match.

I'm very optimistic, these are all good changes.

Cale Roughstar · Aug 29, 2009, 05:07 AM // 05:07

A+ for telling us all of this, definitely a step in the right direction on the CR front. As for the proposed updates, good for PvP love, might have to give the new format a try.

Assyrian · Aug 29, 2009, 05:20 AM // 05:20

OH MA GAWD FINALLY HB IS GONNA BE GONE D: HOORAY

ok so Good Job Anet on keeping me glued to Guild Wars, even tho D: it gets boring, and I hate it, you still do good enough of a job to keep me playing so GG.

uhm, Fuhk Yeah about sealed Deck? YAY :O

uhm yeah pretty much D: I Love You, please dont F up GW2 <3

DreamWind · Aug 29, 2009, 05:31 AM // 05:31

One of the better statements from Anet in the history of the game (and this is coming from somebody who criticizes them regularly). It is good to see they are finally acknowledging many of the problems with their game and telling us how they are going to try and fix them.

I'm not yet convinced the fixes will be implemented properly (as past Anet history has shown), and they certainly won't fix the balance issues that have plagued the game for years, but all that won't stop me from trying out the sealed format the game has been sorely needing to possibly bring PvP back to some form of life.

trialist · Aug 29, 2009, 05:37 AM // 05:37

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cale Roughstar

A+ for telling us all of this, definitely a step in the right direction on the CR front.

Sorry but CR still fails. This is Linsey feeding us news, not the CR team. When a programmer, supposedly as busy as Linsey is, can take the time to type up a wall of text with more info and explainations than the CR team have ever given, you wonder what the hell anet has a CR team for anyways. Good info though from Linsey. Hope the changes are good.

Pleikki · Aug 29, 2009, 06:07 AM // 06:07

wow. Thanks Huge. Great job ya guys doing

Vilaptca · Aug 29, 2009, 06:48 AM // 06:48

With the removal of the Commander title, can I have the Cobra Commander rank free?

Master Ketsu · Aug 29, 2009, 07:04 AM // 07:04

Quote:

GvG Tiebreaker - We've been watching and discussing the Mind Blast ele build for some time now. We could just nerf Mind Blast to get rid of it, but the Ranger or Paragon alternatives would then step into its place and nothing will actually be fixed.

This right here, deeply worries me. It tells us that anet still does not understand a very key point to game balance: player skill and the Pro/n00b skill gap.

It would be a huge victory if Rangers and Paragons stepped in to replace MB ele's in GvG, because R/ and P/ builds for soloing actually take some skill to use. Especially ranger. They reward skillful play and punish bad play, while MB ele does not. To say that nerfing MB would be pointless because of the replacements is to display a very bad understanding of not just guild wars, but competitive gaming in general.

IMO TA and HB don't need to be deleted for a new arena.

FoxBat · Aug 29, 2009, 07:15 AM // 07:15

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Ketsu

It would be a huge victory

The tiebreaker was trash before mind blasters, and they are unlikely to see play anymore if it is significantly changed.

Master Ketsu · Aug 29, 2009, 07:20 AM // 07:20

Quote:

Originally Posted by FoxBat

The tiebreaker was trash before mind blasters, and they are unlikely to see play anymore if it is significantly changed.

The point of my post has nothing to do with tiebreaker.

FoxBat · Aug 29, 2009, 07:32 AM // 07:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Ketsu

The point of my post has nothing to do with tiebreaker.

And the dev team's reasoning does. They can nerf MBs to the point that everyone runs dual ranger, and you'd still have dumb matches where nothing dies. Yeah the rangers require more micro to play well, but their movement strategy is similar, and the matches are similarly boring. So they can expend their efforts chasing down lord damage gimmicks until everyone runs dual ranger and still be left with a marginally less boring game, or they can kill the problem at the source and not even need to go there.

The paragons aren't going to be "soloing" stuff that much, they are referring to the para healing that can keep a team up against NPC pressure near the end of match, like rawr did last monthly. Skillful and exciting?

Nighthawk2dr · Aug 29, 2009, 07:36 AM // 07:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by Master Ketsu

The point of my post has nothing to do with tiebreaker.

The whole point of Linsey's paragraph has something to do with it though. If the tiebreaker is fixed, then the MB won't be as much of a problem anymore.

*Edit* I got beat.