As a hardcore noob, I have to say that your initial take on automatic matchmaking is 100% correct. The other guys, no offence, seemed quite detached from an actual noob's experience and train of thought.
Bloom really ought to be brought on more often because his perspective of someone who isn't painted by having access to entire discord communities speaks more true to the experience of the new/returning player.
We constantly say the same things as Bloom and we have been doing so for years. To be clear I love having different gamers on but I think it's super important to recognise that our messaging is extremely similar despite being from different areas of the game.
@@MightyTeapot don't get me wrong, I mostly made that comment not as a dig against you, Sneb or Nike as you guys go out of your way time and time again to see that perspective or at least meet a lot of us halfway. I mostly brought it up because from what I understand he has the most experience playing other MMOs and isn't as entrenched as some of you guys. That comment about a minimum stat requirement is something that is present in quite literally every other MMO out there but it still caught a lot of you guys off-guard when it was presented - and it's something that only someone who isn't in the milieu of playing GW2 as much as you guys. Either way I do hope that my comment came across as praise for Bloom and not as a dig against the rest of the cast especially when I'm a big fan of you guys. o/
@@Leuk0s It caught us off guard because it's something that we've had EXTREME pushback when we suggest it so we view it as a very spicy topic. Me, sneb (and especially nike) have ALL argued in favour of this in the past and in STRONGER terms! The difference is that we all experienced EXTREME pushback against that idea and got called toxic and elitist. This is why comments like yours are somewhat troublesome to me, me and sneb get judged entirely because of our position in the game and not because of what we actually say. We say the exact same things but get completed destroyed for it.
@@MightyTeapot I think a lot of the players that complain about gear checking aren't really interested in raids or end game content. They might be interested in the rewards but not the content itself. Ive played plenty of MMOs with gear check in it, and it only mattered in end game content if I was in a group that cared. Whenever someone just wanted to clear content we would rough it out and make it work. Took a little longer but we were still able to do it. I think your comment about how GW2 has taught players to be kind of lazy is true. However, I think a gear check system would help those that want to seriously try some of the harder content. Not only will it help them, but it could help vet players in helping out those newer raiders/end game players. That's just my opinion though.
As an FFXIV vet who's been playing GW2 for about a month now, everything Bloom said really speaks to me. I did all the hardest content in FFXIV and want to do the same in GW2, but it feels wayyyyyyyyy harder to just get shit done in GW2 due to the LFG system. I don't want to have to sign up to organized events every time I want to do something. I also don't want to make the groups myself because I am still so new and have very little knowledge about how shit works. I'd say GW2's LFG system is hands down its biggest flaw. Many of my FFXIV friends who tried GW2 told me they 1. didn't even know it exists and 2. gave up playing because they didn't know there was instanced group content. Considering GW2 is an MMO, that is just insane. It doesn't help that the "gap" between noobs and experienced players is more like a massive canyon where you can't even see the other side, which is a huge issue because how are noobs supposed to know where to go when they can't see where they're going? I've never used a wiki more in my life lol. It's a bit disruptive having to look up the most basic information every 10 seconds. Trust me, I know MMORPGs are always overwhelming when you're first starting out. This isn't my first rodeo. But GW2 makes the second M in MMO feel way more convoluted than it really should be. But those are just my thoughts as a very new player who's only done T1 fractals and some metas. On a completely unrelated note, I freaking love the mounts in this game. The LFG may be severely outdated and flawed but at least the griffon is *hella* fun to fly.
Those vet commander tag was forged with blood and tears. I really can't blame you on that, as i myself was the one staging mutiny on dragon fall map at one time. I still remember the commander tears and dissapointment as i and some other player solo some key boss XD. I dont do something like that anymore She later became a good commie after some hardship and do regular key run that i regularly join.
I completely agree with your statement my fellow WoL! I feel that GW2 really struggles to communicate what is required to enter hard content without being a burdern for other players. The idea of a "role" in GW2 is something that only pops up by players if you're gonna do strike missions or raids. Players who join into a strike mission for the first time will most likely have no idea what players means by alac. There should be some sort of diagram from the very start of the game where you can see what role your build and stats lean into. That way the player can more clearly choose from the very start what role they wanna aim for, start thinking about the skills needed for it and also which gear is needed as well.
I just started playing FFXIV as a GW2 veteran and holy shit it's absolutely night and day. Imagine being told how to play the game you're playing and tutorials for your role and a gentle gradient of difficulty into the content. Had no idea what I was missing
drop it right now if you are into raids/dungeons. I have pugged every raid here including dhuum cm, the biggest challenge is finding a competent squad. I literally spent a month actively looking everywhere for dhuum cm. The raiding scene is the TINIEST in this mmo. I was a gw2 zealot until I tried ffxiv. Even arr encounters are far superior than anything gw2 can offer.
Bloom was a breath of fresh air this teatime, he masterfully brings the real point of view of semi casual players instead of the usual guesses and projections from the recurring guests.
I agree. Gw2 veterans think that clearing is the most important thing. But it's not. U can fail and learn. Do it again and again and fail and still have fun.
@@MightyTeapot he didn't agree on every point and he made valid points about what the average player is looking for. You guys just said "nah bro" Bloom is right, people arent afraid of challenge. when aetherpath first dropped I did it with a pug and we hit our head against a wall for like 3 hours until we got it.
As someone who has a catmander that im generally afraid to turn on I love hearing these talks, and this general conversation about whats reasonable from a commander. Side note i seem to find two types of groups for IBS 3. "1/10 need HAM and QHB" or "Just bring whatever dudes" The second group almost always goes better lol. Granted its very easy content, but i just find it a red flag when people insist very specific builds that arent even OP anymore for easy content.
Aww, I always appreciate a commander/catmander. It's got to be a lot of pressure, and I respect anyone who: 1. Paid the gold for the tag 2. Took on the pressure of turning on the tag If you know the meta, then you know you know it. Don't let anyone make you second guess that.
Bloom I would used to solo the crota raid in destiny 1. Two man the witches. With a couple friends watching on the side. Eventually they caught on to what I was doing and learned. I think it would be nice and relatively realistic to be able to spectate another player while dead in a raid etc in gw2. Some of the best learning is watching someone else do it live. Edit: maybe added jade bot functionality for spectating
this was a fantastic video, I only came back a few weeks ago after 5 years away and feel the same, the LFG needs alot of work, the few times I dealt with the LFG it was pretty toxic and made me just move on and not bother with that attitude, in the end I went and did Living season 3/4, got my Beetle and skyscale and half way through IBS , honestly had no idea of the discord communities for LFG due to being away for so long, sometimes GW2 feels like it has the best and worst of mmo culture, thankfully 90% of the players I meet are amazing.
The thing is if you are expecting 10 ppl to know what to do to from a group, you better off putting hope in 1 person that know and organize it. It is sad but there are many people that don't talk, don't read, don't response at all, they just want to press button and kill stuff.
1:14:50 "The game *appears* dead" Agreed 100%. As a new player, when I saw the lgf screen the very first time, I ASSUMED it was an old system no one actually used any more. (Much like dungeon lol) It wasn't until watching a video that I realized I had to scroll, and pick specifically what I wanted to look for. Then, I only saw 2 groups. It wasnt untill using it multiple days that I realized they just fill quickly lol
I just rely on mapchat and minimap mostly these days. If I see a mentor or commander tag, or someone saying stuff in mapchat, then I get a better feel for what's going on. Sometimes I might call out an important event, or sometimes I'll ask where X is. I don't let non-response discourage me; I just keep looking forward. Also, sometimes the map's just not active, so I just switch to another "todo" thing and try again later. The game's got hundreds of thousands of daily active users. It's not a dying game. It's just that "intuiting the map" is a skill that new players have to develop. The game needs that as a tooltip.
To that, you have to add that at least another 30% of the groups for end game content are done and filled exclusively via discord. From open world meta events ( in a smaller proportion) and strikes/raids, all the way to encounter specific groups like KO CM and HT CM. I know of a various ht cm servers that lfg exclusively using discord for all endgroup pve cobtent and rarerly on the ingame lfg. Some of them have 1000+ players.
1:55:30 - So true. The 'utility spam' boon generation design for Specter, Herald, etc. just ruin those specs. It's like driving your car and having to constantly spam the windshield wipers on/off, radio on/off, and shift gears every 7 seconds just to keep the headlights on.
i LOVE TeaTime, great discussion btw. one thing i would like to highlight that Bloom went over which i thought was a really good idea about the elite specs having different weapon skills. i feel like that will help flesh out the elite specs even more and play a lot more into there fantasy. it has the potential to give you a lot more freedom with that elite spec i would imagine.
Even if we never try any party queue system, the devs should still cull a lot of the build bloat. There are so many stat types, sigils, and runes that are just traps for new players. Trait choices as well suffer from some really bad choices. Bloom's idea for a view count for the LFG is fantastic. It would do a lot to combat the perception that the LFG is dead. Anet probably won't do it though, since they don't prefer transparency on things like content activity.
I think that the basic squad commander funtion should be moved to the mentor tag and used for dungeons, fractals and strikes. The party group system rolled in to that. Give the mentor basic squad functions and the ability subdivide into 2 sub groups [ max 10-15 players]. The mentor can set their group open, private, or invite only. Someone tagged up as a mentor or tagged commander would be able to join merge up but would have to give up their tag to do so. This would prevent a commandeer from hijacking a smaller group. The commander tag is then used for everything adding raids, WvW and open world meta/world bosses and gives you every thing that we have now . Keep the 300g cost as well.
Teapot, I've been binging your content since I rejoined GW2 last month and firstly, I love these teatimes. Secondly, I think you overvalue win rate in terms of the wider community. Especially newer players. I think a lot of people really want to find that wall to climb. Just looking at how many people were intrigued by Harvest CM first clear I think speaks to that. I really enjoyed this teatime for this conversation. Difficult games get accolades the same as easy games. The issue is, in my opinion we want the barrier to be the game play and not finding a group and resources among the obtuse systems.
I think this might be a bit of an oversight on our part. When Teapot says people want a 90% win rate, I think he means the traditional Guild Wars 2 player isn't as up for a challenge as maybe players in select other MMORPGs, which I would argue is probably true, to an extent. However, I think people coming from those other MMORPGs (new players) DO want a challenge similar to what they've seen in their other games. For that reason, maybe the challenge would be fine.
People were intrigued to watch HT CM, not so much play it. As it stands squad content is absolutely tiny in GW2 definitely one of the smallest game modes that exists. Difficult games do get acolades but they are exclusively marketed entirely around them being challenging, GW2 is kinda the opposite lol.
Have an achievement for getting full exotic armor. Make that achievement a requirement for instanced content. Get rid of these useless trash stats that don’t matter. Make a power set, a condition set, a tanking set, and a healing set. Make everything else happen behind the scenes with skills and trees. Make it so people can just queue remotely, don’t have it so that people have to run somewhere. Let’s get rid of all this fluff, and get us in the content.
I'm pretty early in the vod maybe you touch on that later, but i think the main thing that "scare" ppls from tagging is failure, with some exp it's easy to ask for the roles makes the sub and rush in, issues come when/if things go wrong, some ppls expect the comm to kick or changes things around, putting pressure on the tag, and if they struggle finding why the group fail they will more likely all leave blaming eachothers, giving a bad experience for everyone
My thought, add to the LFG, the ability to l ist yourself into a pool of roles you can perform for content you are trying to do. Ie. IBS strikes, you flag yourself as dps, heals, alacrity and dps, looking for these strikes. Then when someone creates a group in that setting, they get a button that lets them for example click the alacrity pool, and pull someone who has been waiting in that pool. It lets people fill the actual and strange roles that this game has, while not making us constantly check or sit with our lfg open just waiting. Btw if nike can read this from his high horse. Discord is functional for voice chat, but tabbing out constantly is a stretch. And no most boomers are the 2-3 22 inch monitors camp. Most people moved past this in the last decade to a big ultrawide. Even if you feel like taking up the desk space, theres not much point having a monitor off to the side of a 34+ inch ultrawide.
Rolling comments for first hour: -Put commander tag behind LI or blue/green crystals + gold -Merging parties and squads is a great idea -Commanding a 50 man squad with subs (DE meta) is a ginormous pain for one person. I only do it with one or two friends as lieutenants to organize. -I joined a W1-4W4 FC group from LFG. Commander had something come up after VG and leaves. Entire squad instantly bolts. -The community needs to normalize bringing a third heal or heal scourge into raids. The facts that people view it as "cheating" is preposterous. -I have serious doubts that ANet will ever do matchmaking. I feel like it is major copium to even think they will. -They should have a lobby for each raid wing. Aerodrome has too much going on. If you could hang out in a W1 lobby, then people could use map chat to fill groups. -People aren't afraid of failing or a challenge, they are afraid of the backlash from other players. Elden Ring and Dark Souls are solo encounters.
More Bloom, more Emi in teatime. They are both refreshing and actually constructive. Not to be impolite to the classic faces but so often they seem to be constantly on edge and have a chip on the shoulder when making arguments that it is getting tiring.
@@Snebzor often when you talk about pug groups there is a very negative look painted onto inexperienced or oblivious players. I don't blame you at all and it sounds like you have dealt with a ton of pain in the ass players, enough to justify your outlook and probably significantly more negativity than you exhibit. But that's just the first thing that came to mind. Besides that there is often an exasperation shown towards the established social "norms" of the semi-hardcore instanced player base (does strikes everyday and puts up their post as 1/10 lf HAM HB HS ibs5 type of people) in this video for example you guys were talking about how they should stop having such sticks up their asses for content that is so easily clearable. I think that your points are completely justified and most everything said in this teatime and other similar ones is true, but I think that the tone has become more negative as these problems persist. I'm of the opinion that guest stars always make teatime more interesting just because I get to hear different people explain their views even if they don't differ very much, and I think that other people find the less jaded discussion that some of them bring to be refreshing.
@@insertwordthere I try not to be too harsh about pugs, but man, they do tend to screw up Dragonfall meta hard. Like, there's a special order in which things are supposed to be done, and if pugs go in and kill half the champs, it damages the meta train and its "gold per hour". Not everyone has full legendary everything and 10 billion gold stored up in the bank, so gold per hour does matter to them.
@@Snebzor Others gave some examples that i can kinda agree with. Although i have to say i did not have you in mind when saying that. You can be a bit jaded at times but not as much as others from the classic people. It is just that Bloom and Emi come out as more prepared and down to earth without making sweeping arguments and it is pretty nice to engage with that. As others said it is more an issue of tone than what you are actually saying. I actually tend to agree with you, Teapot and Nike more often than with Emi or Bloom and it still feels better engaging with them just on the tone of the discussion.
A group leader would be a nice functionality. Ready check for groups would be great, prestacking in fractals can often be anoying when playing in pick up groups
As a person who played mostly open world until about a year ago I can tell you that I had no idea why sub groups were needed, it's not that I didn't care about sub groups. Ever since dragon's end meta, I was introduced to the idea of sub groups, since suddenly in an open world meta, the commanders would always divide into sub groups, and they'd also make sure there is quickness and alac in each. I didn't know why that was important until I looked it up and realized it is because most skills affect 5 players, and its a way to make sure everyone get these boons. And only a while later did I also read that those in your sub group have a preference over others in the squad when it comes to boon distribution. I had no idea. The game doesn't explain any of those things, and it was hard to come by this information from just playing regular open world content, with or without a commander.
Yesterday i seen the most disgusting thing player ever done on LFG i seen training group without commander being taken over by raid seller with commander tag and LFG description being changed from training group asking for help to raid selling ad. These poor people without tag couldn't do anything about it. ArenaNet must do something about commander tag as fast as possible.
90% of people should get an A. It's not only a question of "welcome to modern gaming" sadly. I don't know why failure is so badly seen nowadays. Have the new kids never heard of "learn from your failure" or "you learn best by failing" ? It creates so many problems to not fail people that deserves to fail
I mean, I laugh at it sometimes. I can be really smart in WvW for like 30 minutes in a row, and then do something insanely dumb and die. And I just laugh, because it's so obvious what I needed to do or not do.
TLDR: Matchmaking could work for simple encounters only, anything that needs a specific mechanic covered by a specific build, would be a pain to auto queue. (Ex: Q2 pylons) Talking about the idea of a matchmaking system in GW2 for LFG, it would have to work something like this I think: You'd have to pick options before you queue up. I recall something like this existing in WoW where they need in a party of 4, 2 DPS, 1 Tank, 1 Healer. Squad Requires: 6 DPS, 2 Quickness, 2 Alacrity & 2 Healers (Between Alacrity and Quickness) DPS Quickness Alacrity Healing Specific mechanics (Tanking, Pylons, Kiting, etc.) You could pick up to only 2 options from the top 4 from this list and get queued, but then you'd need specific mechanics for fights that require it as well. This could work for easy bosses, but would be a nightmare for anything that requires specific mechanics to be coded by the devs. Like for example, only certain classes are good at taking pylons on Qadim the Peerless. Ultimately, with the way the encounters are designed, we would have a real struggle with implementing something like this that covers every permeation, but it could be done, but given the fact that they already neglect raids as it is, I don't think they ever would do this.
You can tell that Sneb and Teapot both not only don't play other games, but also have very sad expectations of the levels of intelligence of the players in their game. To put it bluntly they don't know much about modern gaming and think that people who play gw2 are incredibly stupid. Maybe the second part is coming from experience. But people who play games like these are definitely not stupid. You absolutely don't need matchmaking to have a 90% success rate. That's absurd. People queue for extremes with complete randoms in ff14 and their rate of clearing is way lower. And that's okay, they learn and try again until they succeed. That's how gamers are. And sorry, but content in gw2 just isn't that hard to begin with, even at the peak difficulty. It's just not. To clear Ultimates in ff14 you need to have half a year of practice, a PhD and autism.
The 300g is the biggest barrier for getting the tag for me. The commander role sounds pretty interesting to learn and I'd like to try to lead groups in meta events occasionally :o
I've just started doing strikes. The turtle pushed me passed my social anxieties and I've been having a blast. Still don't know what I'm doing but I've done more strikes in a month than I've done in 9 years. Even had a noob group attempt Whisper and we got it to 1% on first try with only 1 dead due to DC. That amazed me with what little instructions we were able to type out. That said no groups are in the lfg doing whisper. They stop at easy three which is a shame. The fear of failure or of leading is so great people don't push just a little further. Don't be afraid to make groups or ask for help. Most people learn better from trying. Failure happens but it isn't the end. I do hope they improve their lfg to make grouping faster and easier.
Sneb is the kind of guy that will argue against anything to the point where nothing ever changes. He's either really attached to the status quo, afraid of change or the type of person who is _so cautious_ that never even makes the first step. Is he employed by Arena net by any chance? Would explain why the system is so rigid, outdated and nothing has changed for the better in years.
I freaken LOVE my tag, I remember I got it JUST before needing to go get the Turtle mount, and when I had to do the strike step, I tagged up, and put up a training LFG, I had never done the encounter ever, but watched a video on it, so I got 9 others, and explained the Strike to them, promoted another person who was more experianced to spread out the players, and boom we did it one go! Ever since then I tag up for EVERYTHING lol (except for WvW) I'm gonna try Raids next with randos :D
The idea that if you are forming a raid group you need to understand the content is absolutely true in wow. You are expected to either lead the group yourself or find someone in the group who is willing to assist and do it. Now, do people just make groups anyway? Sure. But when those groups then fail people leave. I would imagine wow LFG for raid probably has an ultimate success rate of 60-70%, but that is really really squed towards the early bosses. Most late boss pugs probably disband at a +80% rate.
It's peak hilarity when Teapot talks about other MMOs and immediately exposes himself as someone who never played any other ones. "No MMOs have better in game social systems than 3rd party services like discord" I'm paraphrasing of course. Man is huffing copium like he's about to experience addiction withdrawal. GW2 is one of the few that even has this problem, broski. Stop projecting. It's literally like the metaphor of people living in a cave and watching the shadows on the wall, thinking that it's their entire world.
It's kinda crazy how essential the commander tag is important to starting your own groups. Can be hard to even scrounge together a group for ez strikes without a tag.
Sneb hit the nail on the head with the point about overcapping on heals/cc/ boons. I’ll be honest, I’m more of a long time casual player that jumps on for some strikes/world boss when I have time now but ever since I stopped playing peepo dps and changed to play HAM or support firebrand or tempest my win rate in the more difficult content has been much easier.
Well there's a reason for that and it sort of goes both ways. As long as you aren't doing any encounter specific roles (i.e tanking specific bosses or extra mechanics), being a healer is much easier than being a consistent DPS pumper. There's no real rotation most of the time, and you can get away with usually by just pressing things off cooldown. Without offending anyone, there's a reason why all the players I know that aren't too good at the game generally, main HealFireBrand. On the same side of that coin, a very good support/healer is also the highest carry. Low DPS can be managed as long as the boss has no enrage/wipe timer, while people dying is a moment of no return. So a good support that keeps people alive more than otherwise, can make even less experienced groups clear more consistently(albeit slower). This is also why Heal Scourge as Teapost says "breaks" the game. As long as you aren't doing CMs and some harder boss encounters, most content has no real time limit or overly punishing global wipe mechanics so as long as you stacks heals and perma revive people from bad spots, you can't really lose.
Thank you for awesome talk. To me, GW2 is a great game and it has own things to learn. I don't think it should change to "holy trinity" or do some drastic changes in difficulty or in party management for new players. The one thing that it should do --- is to teach players about these concepts. This is the true challenge ---- to explain players coming from different games about aspects of GW2.
1:43:23 I remembered in GW1 a friend invited me to tag along while he was selling runs of Catacombs of Kathandrax. In the end I got the Emerald Blade. Unfortunately it's just Req. 13 but I still sold it for 100 Plats and 35 Ectos. Because of that I was able to craft my Obsidian Armor by running the FoW with heroes and henchmen.
Lost Ark in my region has an official discord server with voice channels and there are lots of people all the time. Whenever you do a difficult raid or a learning run, everyone just goes there. There are also channels for guild advertising, looking for static, looking for a group, giveaways, all kinds of discussions. There's even a channel for voiceover feedback. I had a few times when I just forgot to get out of a voice channel and some newbie joined and asked questions about the game. The fact nothing like this officially exists for GW2 is sad.
I liked the criticism of GW 2 specific language. Brings back EVE Online flashbacks:) most of the games have their own language that makes communication faster for those in the know.
They should definitely work on fixing party/squad issues and tag issues first, because this seems like a low lift - at least to give full tag squad functionality to the 10 man squad you can already have with private tag appearance. If there is some legacy party code that would for example prevent a squad from entering dungeons, fine shelf that until later. They can keep the gold sink to go from 10 to 50 size squads. If they want to rework the mentor system, great, the mentor tag is pretty much pointless. None of those changes fix the LFG, however they are incremental changes that begin with some pretty low effort stuff.
21:24 woah woah woah. You ABSOLUTELY CAN run strike groups without a tag! I did it for 2 months. IT's A LOT MORE WORK (read: Talking)! But it CAN be done! So watch your use of the word "can't" Sneb. That said Teapot is 100% right (aka parroting what EVERYONE is saying), Readycheck, Subgrouping and markers should all be baseline abilities of the person who starts a group.
For really time-sensitive stuff, I find that Discord's better. I have a special WvW group that I join in on. It turns what used to be a grindy chore into a funner, team-spirited game of "Mad King Says". It takes less effort to stay with the group and I get to learn how the commander thinks. Instead of it just being "follow the blob and don't become tail", it feels like being part of something grander.
You want to know why I don't organize my own raid lfgs? I lack the commander tag. I can't move people into subgroups, I can't place markers, I can't put icons above other players. This is all stuff I'm used to from raiding in FF14, and their equivalents in that game are super useful for pugging prog/clear/farm for harder fights. Why do I need a commander tag for this? Why is there a 300 gold barrier in front of this? That's just bullshit. Give me the same abilities as squad leader of 10.
nike has the most elitest takes on everything. its interesting seeing the contrast in opinions between him and bloom. bloom brings up something he thinks is a big problem, and nike thinks the problem is a good thing.
I know it was covered very quickly, but build craft for end game content is concrete to a lot of new players. It seems they go to snow crows or metabattle, they make that build and they think that's the only feasible way to play it, even though lower in the page it usually gives utility swap suggestions for some fights. People are very scared for going against the grain. Once I got my first set of leggy armor I fell in love with buildcraft, I got light first and played heal/alac chrono in w2 for "feedback" and we got the clear. It was a hilariously scuffed build, but a fun way to play the game. I was terrified of raids before I tried them, now it's the main reason I log into the game. I wish more people were prepared to have fun with their build.
FF14 matchmaking and Party Finder (Their version of an LFG) are a perfect example of a game that manages to work both in AND have them both work successfully. Not to mention Dailies and incentives to redo old content through random duty finders ( duty roulettes) and COMPLETE them, therefor teach anyone who is doing it on how to win and succeed with them. The only obstacle with GW2 is the fact that its a classless game, no set in stone trinity.
Besides legendary armor, what else do raids give you besides loot and the experience? I just play casually and for fun so I can't really think of any reason I'd want to do raids.
Teapot missed the mark so hard on this it’s kind of a shame. Win rates/clears on raids is never a good factor to be focusing on, when raid bosses gets cleared so much it becomes trivial, it turns off a lot players. Guild Wars 2 by far, i mean by far, have the highest clear rates in raids compared to every mmos out there, but the raid scene and the % of players partake in raiding is one of the lowest if not lowest pre EoD. All of the games that have a really successful raid scene like WoW, FF14, Lost Ark, ect, they all have abysmal clear rates, like we’re talking 10-20% here in easier fights, and their scene is really populated AND gaining players while also REGAINING those same players. Teapot has touched on the reason why this happens before with GW2, the class/role jobs and player personal mechanical skills has a pretty high requirement to reach and a really high ceiling should you ever want to get there, the ACTUAL fights design and progression is INSANELY linear and very simple for the most part. This has changes with the EoD strikes which is a good thing, but the progression period is still not diverse enough and mechanics aren’t really special, I was never a fan of insanely tight DPS checks, but with how strong current classes are, it made the checks non existent. I also hope they add more puzzle solving mechanics to the fights also, it’ll make the encounters have different feels and is unique, Dhuum CM and Qadim 1 CM is a good example of thid and they could’ve added more and crank up the difficulty more, how hard is a fight when you can clear them with less than 5 experienced people, i’ve done it a lot in sell runs and it’s trivial. Some of Bloom Ideas are pretty great, having a stats requirement to hit before entering certain higher difficulty encounters is good and it will filters out people with bad/insufficient builds, there’s almost no downside to that as it’ll make people who do that content get a better experience, it’ll also help the scene becomes a little less toxic where the game will filters out and gate kept the content itself instead of having players do it and can sometimes lead to some not very desirable situations and interaction between players, eliminating that process is good.
Gw1 had a great farming method. There was no limit to how many times you could run a UWSC. The drops were rare. You could trade them. You could customize them to a character and then it was off the market. It made pve fun. It made your end game pve content extremely repeatable. I remember running the voltaic spear farm for months and man thousands of ecto selling them. It was good fun and very good for the health of the game.
Last 3-4 weeks I've been tagging up a lot to do content : calling people to do raids in discord servers and ingame, "commanding" bounty trains and achievement events etc. I realized that tagging up is the opposite of scary (what I thought and many people think): most of the time people are just super kind to the commander because he was the one who took the initiative and usually helps him to command. As I'm returning to do raids after some years, I've tagged up not remembering the full fights and mechanics, and most people really help you organize and remember/teach the mechanics to the group. The thing is tagging up is just making an ingame mark that you are interested in doing x, and there are plenty of people just refreshing their lfg and checking the discord channel hoping someone call for x content. (i'm not saying you should tag up for a quick raid clear group without knowing what you are doint, but you don't need to know everything to start a group for 90% of contents ingame)
That depends on when you play and from where you get the ppl that join you. I've commanded alot and i would say the experience was so and so. Fun and easy when using certain communities for lfg or playing with friends and statics. Kinda meh or terrible whene doing ingame lfg. One example would be for openworld on tangled depths( chack) meta, where, after having 4 comms on map, almost my entire squad left for a new map lead by a popular comm/streamer and the meta failed 🤣
As a new player LFG IS WHOLLY LACKING! If arenanet is looking to rebuild it they need to add rewards to LFG that you don't get from solo/squad play doing the same event. Quick fix is increase the drops for LFG runs for gold and magic find +5-10%, remove the vet/trainer group sections, add LFG dailies.
As a player from launch with several Legos and an absolute ton of time on my thief; I have only run 3 dungeons, 2 on story 1 on explore, 4 fractals, no raids, no strikes, all because this game's lfg is just crap and I have no desire to use it. It's great for hero point trains and meta events, and hilariously the best use of it is for TP taxis in lws3's puzzle... The perception it gives off and has always given is that in guild wars 2 you're alone, together.
I think automatic matchmaking could make A LOT of difference in GW2 but it needs to be both quite intelligent and intelligently implemented. 1. It will work only for less complex content like dungeons and fractals 2. It should take into account the current build of each player and try to not make 5 DPS or 5 healers comps (not that it matters much in dungeons and lower tier fractals). 3. It should provide some feedback on the overall quality of team comp (I see it as a chart/dashboard showing something like "DPS 6/10 healing 4/10 boons 1/10 boon diversity 3/10 adding more concentration recommended" 4. It would be helpful to be able to temporarily augment your build e.g. pay like 25 silver and "rent" a build for the current run (a gold sink btw) so you're say a core Mesmer and you see "boon diversity 1/10" on the dasboard and click "rent alac Mirage: 25 silver" and voila you're alac Mirage. In other words automatic matchmaking should be making easier tiers of instanced content more accessible for casuals rather than trying to populate raid and strike PUGs.
Hey TP, do you think there should be some kind of reward track for commanding up so that people feel incentivized to lead and start squads and invest in the Commander tag? I don't think it should offer too much in rewards, but I wonder if it would be enough to drive more leadership from the playerbase.
Are there some community discords for mediocre casual players to find raid or fractal groups on EU, or a place where i can search for them, i mostly only find some for the veterans that know the game already in an out and expect the same from you.
I mean I assume someone’s already said the same or similar but re; Commander tag, as someone who’s been playing less than a year, I can buy commander tag or I can buy another LW more or less, ya know?
The idea og get rid of the party system show how far away from helping starting players you have become: Party interface have some features the squad does NOT have: - Invite people to story or home instance: Only party can do that - Party interface also show progress of the heart of people in party (Yes I'm helping newer players in open world a lot) - Party interface makes it easier to see who is who: Avatar picture is shown - Party interface makes it easier to see if the new person added the masteries after filled the XP bar (you see the number of masteries spent). If remove party interface: Anet have to implement the extra features from party into squad.... And what to do with those that want to do story and home instance together? Need a commander tag first? My focus is helping newer players in open world. I have commander tag, but rarely use it, since I prefer the cozy open world with newer players and show them the world and basic mechanics. For me it seems that most people that enjoy raids, strikes, fractals have a tendency to forget about the huge awesome open world and it's great aspects.
I don't think the game needs a random matchmaking system. I mean maybe for dungeons because that's mostly just for story. But I think it would be a lot better to just implement more incentives for guilds to group up and especially with newer players. Maybe have a tab in the guild menu where you can sign up for certain types of content and a ranking system that resets every season to tell how experienced that player is. If a guild runs newer players with lower rank in raids/strikes/fractals or whatever that contributes to a weekly guild chest that gives all guildmates loot. But the rank would have to be only visible by fellow guildmates to avoid toxicity.
I also would like to point out that eso (gw2's adopted cousin) has had a dungeon finder and it is a terrible mess. Que times for dps players are ridiculous especially if you want a specific dungeon which can take up to an hour. And often the tank ends up being a dps and the group disbands shortly after finding out. The eso community has wanted a premade group lfg like gw2's for a long time and they're finally getting it soon. But anyway imagine waiting in que for an hour just to have it disband because someone isn't actually a healer, that is what would happen if gw2 got a random group finder.
GW2 has some of the most unique problems I've seen in any MMO. It's crazy to me how many people are afraid to "waste time" in this game by having to learn a hard encounter rather than just be carried through it for example. To me, the real reward of playing GW2 is the content itself. I don't care about a few gold or some mats or whatever, I want to be challenged and have a good time learning an encounter but it's so hard to find people who feel the same without going outside of the game to discord to set a static up. Failure is part of the enjoyment of learning a game and I'd like to be able to have the opportunity to fail more often in PUGs without groups disbanding immediately.
I mean, you never really "know" this game. I mastered Bladesworn, am learning Vindicator, and now they changed Bladesworn, lol. What I thought I knew about Bladesworn already changed! It's cool to see my skill improve over what it previously was. I still remember all the stuff I didn't know back when I was playing story the first time through.
Paused at 30mins. Says that composition is not that important and yet you will keep wiping in Boneskinner if the grp does not have a healer, and that's Strike and not even Raid. Fact! (add) Nike style of talking down at Anet, saying they can't do it, they can't do that, is actually "reverse psychology". He wants Anet to hear what he just said and take up the challenge. Hope Anet is really listening.
I used to run Dragon's End and at one time, someone merged my tiny pre-squad with a RIBA group. I was the commander, so all 30+ of em had to regroup. :V
For matchmaking: can the system identify player gear and set the role based on gear, then they could streamline gear stats so if healer/ supp or dps, api key ?
The first 20 days of eod i spent up to 4 hours a day doing jade sea meta, with 0% winrate. I could see how the commie feels really bad. But we as the average player just want to learn, so that was how so many player still try to play the meta. Now even after nerf, the winrate was still 70%. The new commie with their newly bought tag still want to learn (not to ignore tail, please don't ignore tail), and we as the average player still want to follow.
This game would greatly benefit from a matchmaking system. I feel like there are tons of players that would participate in fractals/raids if they could just queue up and not fiddle with LFG. Role selection should definitely be a thing. When you queue up you should be prompted to choose what you are bringing (DPS / support and also Quick / Alac). I’m not familiar enough with how tanking works in this game to know how to add it to the selection screen. Then you just have to let players govern themselves. If someone queues up as an alacrity dps but they don’t have alacrity, vote to kick them. And then the system queues again. Players need to be able to inspect each other though. Another thing is, the game really needs to help players understand what the typical roles are. Giant tooltips in the queue screen explaining what quickness and alacrity are might help. The stat requirement thing could work too. If you try to queue for boon support dps but you don’t have at least 25% boon duration, and maybe a certain amount of power/precision or Condi damage/duration, it just tells you no. Some players would rage, but most would actually seek out those stats and it would actually help uninformed players get better. This could be really tricky though, because some specs need way more concentration than others to perform the same role.
even the boon duration doesn't always work, alac mirage runs full viper, their alacrity comes almost entirely from having 3 clones and the staff ambush, no concentration from gear.
@@insertwordthere That’s true, but it doesn’t need to be. If Anet commits to the roles currently in the game, and balance around those roles, then hopefully they wouldn’t change. And also keep in mind that this is just for a match maker, it wouldn’t bleed over into LFG. For example in elder scrolls online, the dungeon queue requires a tank, healer, and two dps. But in experienced groups the healer isn’t necessary because a third dps is just more beneficial so a lot of groups run that. But you can’t queue for that and that’s okay because it’s just for pugs.
After playing ff14 for a year and then joining gw2, it feels like I'm the rich relative visiting my poor country folk family, watching them struggling in the fields, farming potatoes. It's kinda funny but in a tragic sort of way. It's so easy to just press a button and get matchmade with random people and enjoy an awesome looking and fun raid with badass music. Meanwhile here you people are struggling with an LFG menu 😂 It's 1 to 1 the Swole doge vs cheems meme.
Awesome guests! As someone that also kept putting off the com tag purchase you get used to not having it. Constantly putting it off and got into a habit* of not using it. If anything the game should want you to heavily engage with the system very early on. I still don't tbh and that is not good. My main content is fractal and raids, sometimes strikes if time allows. Com tag not needed for fractals, 5 man. Gg
I myself as a noob who would like to que for a raid would love to see a matchmaking system for everything because I would prefer to figure it all out rather than follow instructions anyway. Though I do think raids are a big draw for guilds, finding groups for things is what fosters community.. que system maybe did more harm than good in WoW for instance.
300g for commander is not a big deal. As a new player you do not need to worry about it so the cost is irrelevant. Once you reach the point that you need/"can use" commander correctly you will then have the gold to buy it. I have commander and just use it to taxi ppl to maps for OW content rather than leading as the way I tend to play no-one should ever follow my example :)
Who refuses to use 3rd party programs? Im 38 and used vent or teamspeak before discord while playing Dark Age of Camelot. I think not wanting 3rd party apps is more damage meters or just like addons in wow
IMO Having anyone able to place markers will lead to massive trolling. If you need markers to be able to control the flow of a group, and someone is just changing them all willy nilly you think that would lead to a better experience?
As a long time WoW player, who is newer to GW2, the lack of a matchmaking system is a net negative. I think one could be built that accounts for the need to various roles even without the hard trinity. Getting into this group content is not easy, especially for a newer player, and you should not have to resort to a Discord outside of the game to accomplish this.
Sneb, I appreciate your desire to lead to more one shots, as winning makes people feel good, but at some point you gotta ask, are more likely hurting the newer players/pugs and even overall community more than helping them with a blood scourge? People learn far more from failure than they ever do from winning without understanding why they won. If they died full dead instead of you just rezzing and saving them, they will actually have to think about why they died. Vs if you hard carried the kill, they now have some kill proof that means nothing as they didn't really understand how they won, and then if that person goes out and plays with a different exp group, they are going to have a way worse time, especially if they get flamed and kicked for not understanding an encounter. Just my thoughts on hard carrying vs letting people learn through failure.
I personally prefer to have more positive experiences than negative experiences. This may sound bad, but most people aren't going to know why they died. It's just not really accessible without add-ons. If they don't have the addons, they won't know. In short, I believe creating positive experiences is more important right now, especially given the size of the raiding population and particularly on NA. I don't like seeing people argue about why we're losing. It's not fun.
"Not sitting around doing nothing for 20min" - That is my worst issue in GW2 lol. I log in, look at LFG, no group to start a W1 to W4 raid. Check LFG for a meta train or something going on. If none are true, I log out because I cannot start raid 1h later because then I have to quit mid run.
I think guilds contribute to this problem by having verified tags. The impression I get is that I would get excluded from the guild if I tagged without their permission. This is especially true in wvw. Also Teapot what are you doing with your hair?
Here' the truth about why forming groups is so hard in GW2 that no one wants to admit: this game was not designed with organized group play in mind. With undefined roles, community biases on "acceptable" builds and years of training the player base to simply do map metas and non-cm fractals as 90% of the content over the last 10 years leads to a community very wary of putting the "M" in "MMO".
Bloom was really the star in this podcast. He's in touch with the reality with the new players or even casual players. All everyone else is saying is some elitist shit like "git gud" you can never fail. It's ok to fail. Matchmaking should be implemented
it's insane to me that we're discussing whether MMO should have an automated lfg system for easy content (especially leveling through dungeons and introduction to endgame content). i bet that % of players who dinged max level and never seen instanced content in gw2 is far beyond 50%. that just leads into ppl feeling insecure to try anything in the game cuz the game never thought them anything (for me at least gw2 is one of least intuitive MMOs - and it feels by design)
You misunderstand. No one was arguing against having an automated system. I was being realistic and saying that the way character and team builds work in GW2 makes it significantly harder to implement, and there is no realistic way that Anet could do it, so its pointless to discuss or think about.
4:27 very good point, I never realized this but it's very true. And you also can't get rid of it other than leaving and re-joining the group, which is really strange. (my guild does this in WVW because we are in a roaming guild, and we target and call out wherever we are needed instead of running after a tag).
Bloom is 10000% right, this topic doesn't need at all to be this complicated of a conversation. Matchmaking system for a ton of non CM content could be plenty easy. Add a lil buff if you wipe. you wipe a couple times people ask questions and you over power. woohoo it isn't CM who cares.
Outdated/limited group tools as well as having the few tools locked behind a 300g tag is such a meme only in gw2 you would find it. Im shicked anet hasnt changed that.
My old-school MMO experience: In the games I played before WoW like EQ, DAoC, and Ragnarok Online (lul) we organized, and applied to guilds/raids on actual websites, and/or teamspeak/vent. Guilds that didn't have some sort of external organization method didn't really do much content in comparison. Later in WoW, raids were led and organized by the guild officers, many of these people were tanks, but it really was just done by the people with enough knowledge to take the lead. I think this often ended up being the tank or healer because both of those roles require the same kind of experience with/knowledge of encounters that leading often requires. I really think 90% of this is a human problem, and don't think lowering the bar will lead to more success in GW2 in particular, there's not much more room beneath us. The idea of 10-man commanding functionality being free is a good way to go, though.
Thanks for having me on! Had an awesome time - always keen for more GW2 chats :)
As a hardcore noob, I have to say that your initial take on automatic matchmaking is 100% correct. The other guys, no offence, seemed quite detached from an actual noob's experience and train of thought.
Bloom really ought to be brought on more often because his perspective of someone who isn't painted by having access to entire discord communities speaks more true to the experience of the new/returning player.
We constantly say the same things as Bloom and we have been doing so for years. To be clear I love having different gamers on but I think it's super important to recognise that our messaging is extremely similar despite being from different areas of the game.
@@MightyTeapot don't get me wrong, I mostly made that comment not as a dig against you, Sneb or Nike as you guys go out of your way time and time again to see that perspective or at least meet a lot of us halfway.
I mostly brought it up because from what I understand he has the most experience playing other MMOs and isn't as entrenched as some of you guys. That comment about a minimum stat requirement is something that is present in quite literally every other MMO out there but it still caught a lot of you guys off-guard when it was presented - and it's something that only someone who isn't in the milieu of playing GW2 as much as you guys.
Either way I do hope that my comment came across as praise for Bloom and not as a dig against the rest of the cast especially when I'm a big fan of you guys.
o/
@@Leuk0s It caught us off guard because it's something that we've had EXTREME pushback when we suggest it so we view it as a very spicy topic.
Me, sneb (and especially nike) have ALL argued in favour of this in the past and in STRONGER terms! The difference is that we all experienced EXTREME pushback against that idea and got called toxic and elitist.
This is why comments like yours are somewhat troublesome to me, me and sneb get judged entirely because of our position in the game and not because of what we actually say. We say the exact same things but get completed destroyed for it.
@@MightyTeapot I think a lot of the players that complain about gear checking aren't really interested in raids or end game content. They might be interested in the rewards but not the content itself. Ive played plenty of MMOs with gear check in it, and it only mattered in end game content if I was in a group that cared. Whenever someone just wanted to clear content we would rough it out and make it work. Took a little longer but we were still able to do it. I think your comment about how GW2 has taught players to be kind of lazy is true. However, I think a gear check system would help those that want to seriously try some of the harder content. Not only will it help them, but it could help vet players in helping out those newer raiders/end game players. That's just my opinion though.
As an FFXIV vet who's been playing GW2 for about a month now, everything Bloom said really speaks to me. I did all the hardest content in FFXIV and want to do the same in GW2, but it feels wayyyyyyyyy harder to just get shit done in GW2 due to the LFG system. I don't want to have to sign up to organized events every time I want to do something. I also don't want to make the groups myself because I am still so new and have very little knowledge about how shit works. I'd say GW2's LFG system is hands down its biggest flaw. Many of my FFXIV friends who tried GW2 told me they 1. didn't even know it exists and 2. gave up playing because they didn't know there was instanced group content. Considering GW2 is an MMO, that is just insane.
It doesn't help that the "gap" between noobs and experienced players is more like a massive canyon where you can't even see the other side, which is a huge issue because how are noobs supposed to know where to go when they can't see where they're going? I've never used a wiki more in my life lol. It's a bit disruptive having to look up the most basic information every 10 seconds. Trust me, I know MMORPGs are always overwhelming when you're first starting out. This isn't my first rodeo. But GW2 makes the second M in MMO feel way more convoluted than it really should be. But those are just my thoughts as a very new player who's only done T1 fractals and some metas.
On a completely unrelated note, I freaking love the mounts in this game. The LFG may be severely outdated and flawed but at least the griffon is *hella* fun to fly.
Those vet commander tag was forged with blood and tears. I really can't blame you on that, as i myself was the one staging mutiny on dragon fall map at one time. I still remember the commander tears and dissapointment as i and some other player solo some key boss XD. I dont do something like that anymore
She later became a good commie after some hardship and do regular key run that i regularly join.
I completely agree with your statement my fellow WoL! I feel that GW2 really struggles to communicate what is required to enter hard content without being a burdern for other players.
The idea of a "role" in GW2 is something that only pops up by players if you're gonna do strike missions or raids. Players who join into a strike mission for the first time will most likely have no idea what players means by alac. There should be some sort of diagram from the very start of the game where you can see what role your build and stats lean into. That way the player can more clearly choose from the very start what role they wanna aim for, start thinking about the skills needed for it and also which gear is needed as well.
I just started playing FFXIV as a GW2 veteran and holy shit it's absolutely night and day. Imagine being told how to play the game you're playing and tutorials for your role and a gentle gradient of difficulty into the content. Had no idea what I was missing
drop it right now if you are into raids/dungeons. I have pugged every raid here including dhuum cm, the biggest challenge is finding a competent squad. I literally spent a month actively looking everywhere for dhuum cm. The raiding scene is the TINIEST in this mmo. I was a gw2 zealot until I tried ffxiv. Even arr encounters are far superior than anything gw2 can offer.
Bloom was a breath of fresh air this teatime, he masterfully brings the real point of view of semi casual players instead of the usual guesses and projections from the recurring guests.
I agree. Gw2 veterans think that clearing is the most important thing. But it's not. U can fail and learn. Do it again and again and fail and still have fun.
And of course confirms that we were correct in our assertions (he agreed with us), probably best not to miss that point btw.
@@MightyTeapot he didn't agree on every point and he made valid points about what the average player is looking for. You guys just said "nah bro" Bloom is right, people arent afraid of challenge. when aetherpath first dropped I did it with a pug and we hit our head against a wall for like 3 hours until we got it.
Yeah bloom is GREAT content.
@@fadedcrayon4764 if people aren't afraid of challenge, then why was Dragon's End nerfed?
Bloom was a fantastic guest this Tea Time, looking forward to seeing him more on these
As someone who has a catmander that im generally afraid to turn on I love hearing these talks, and this general conversation about whats reasonable from a commander.
Side note i seem to find two types of groups for IBS 3. "1/10 need HAM and QHB" or "Just bring whatever dudes" The second group almost always goes better lol. Granted its very easy content, but i just find it a red flag when people insist very specific builds that arent even OP anymore for easy content.
Aww, I always appreciate a commander/catmander. It's got to be a lot of pressure, and I respect anyone who:
1. Paid the gold for the tag
2. Took on the pressure of turning on the tag
If you know the meta, then you know you know it. Don't let anyone make you second guess that.
Bloom I would used to solo the crota raid in destiny 1. Two man the witches. With a couple friends watching on the side. Eventually they caught on to what I was doing and learned. I think it would be nice and relatively realistic to be able to spectate another player while dead in a raid etc in gw2. Some of the best learning is watching someone else do it live.
Edit: maybe added jade bot functionality for spectating
Bring Bloom on more often! Great guest!
this was a fantastic video, I only came back a few weeks ago after 5 years away and feel the same, the LFG needs alot of work, the few times I dealt with the LFG it was pretty toxic and made me just move on and not bother with that attitude, in the end I went and did Living season 3/4, got my Beetle and skyscale and half way through IBS , honestly had no idea of the discord communities for LFG due to being away for so long, sometimes GW2 feels like it has the best and worst of mmo culture, thankfully 90% of the players I meet are amazing.
I love Nike's idea about removing the idea of having a party and consolidating the idea of having a squad of varying size
timestamp?
The thing is if you are expecting 10 ppl to know what to do to from a group, you better off putting hope in 1 person that know and organize it. It is sad but there are many people that don't talk, don't read, don't response at all, they just want to press button and kill stuff.
1:14:50
"The game *appears* dead"
Agreed 100%. As a new player, when I saw the lgf screen the very first time, I ASSUMED it was an old system no one actually used any more. (Much like dungeon lol)
It wasn't until watching a video that I realized I had to scroll, and pick specifically what I wanted to look for. Then, I only saw 2 groups.
It wasnt untill using it multiple days that I realized they just fill quickly lol
I just rely on mapchat and minimap mostly these days. If I see a mentor or commander tag, or someone saying stuff in mapchat, then I get a better feel for what's going on. Sometimes I might call out an important event, or sometimes I'll ask where X is. I don't let non-response discourage me; I just keep looking forward. Also, sometimes the map's just not active, so I just switch to another "todo" thing and try again later.
The game's got hundreds of thousands of daily active users. It's not a dying game. It's just that "intuiting the map" is a skill that new players have to develop. The game needs that as a tooltip.
To that, you have to add that at least another 30% of the groups for end game content are done and filled exclusively via discord.
From open world meta events ( in a smaller proportion) and strikes/raids, all the way to encounter specific groups like KO CM and HT CM.
I know of a various ht cm servers that lfg exclusively using discord for all endgroup pve cobtent and rarerly on the ingame lfg. Some of them have 1000+ players.
1:55:30 - So true. The 'utility spam' boon generation design for Specter, Herald, etc. just ruin those specs. It's like driving your car and having to constantly spam the windshield wipers on/off, radio on/off, and shift gears every 7 seconds just to keep the headlights on.
i LOVE TeaTime, great discussion btw.
one thing i would like to highlight that Bloom went over which i thought was a really good idea about the elite specs having different weapon skills. i feel like that will help flesh out the elite specs even more and play a lot more into there fantasy. it has the potential to give you a lot more freedom with that elite spec i would imagine.
Even if we never try any party queue system, the devs should still cull a lot of the build bloat. There are so many stat types, sigils, and runes that are just traps for new players. Trait choices as well suffer from some really bad choices.
Bloom's idea for a view count for the LFG is fantastic. It would do a lot to combat the perception that the LFG is dead. Anet probably won't do it though, since they don't prefer transparency on things like content activity.
I think that the basic squad commander funtion should be moved to the mentor tag and used for dungeons, fractals and strikes. The party group system rolled in to that. Give the mentor basic squad functions and the ability subdivide into 2 sub groups [ max 10-15 players]. The mentor can set their group open, private, or invite only. Someone tagged up as a mentor or tagged commander would be able to join merge up but would have to give up their tag to do so. This would prevent a commandeer from hijacking a smaller group.
The commander tag is then used for everything adding raids, WvW and open world meta/world bosses and gives you every thing that we have now . Keep the 300g cost as well.
Teapot, I've been binging your content since I rejoined GW2 last month and firstly, I love these teatimes.
Secondly, I think you overvalue win rate in terms of the wider community. Especially newer players. I think a lot of people really want to find that wall to climb. Just looking at how many people were intrigued by Harvest CM first clear I think speaks to that. I really enjoyed this teatime for this conversation. Difficult games get accolades the same as easy games. The issue is, in my opinion we want the barrier to be the game play and not finding a group and resources among the obtuse systems.
I think this might be a bit of an oversight on our part. When Teapot says people want a 90% win rate, I think he means the traditional Guild Wars 2 player isn't as up for a challenge as maybe players in select other MMORPGs, which I would argue is probably true, to an extent.
However, I think people coming from those other MMORPGs (new players) DO want a challenge similar to what they've seen in their other games. For that reason, maybe the challenge would be fine.
People were intrigued to watch HT CM, not so much play it. As it stands squad content is absolutely tiny in GW2 definitely one of the smallest game modes that exists. Difficult games do get acolades but they are exclusively marketed entirely around them being challenging, GW2 is kinda the opposite lol.
Have an achievement for getting full exotic armor. Make that achievement a requirement for instanced content. Get rid of these useless trash stats that don’t matter. Make a power set, a condition set, a tanking set, and a healing set. Make everything else happen behind the scenes with skills and trees. Make it so people can just queue remotely, don’t have it so that people have to run somewhere. Let’s get rid of all this fluff, and get us in the content.
I'm pretty early in the vod maybe you touch on that later, but i think the main thing that "scare" ppls from tagging is failure, with some exp it's easy to ask for the roles makes the sub and rush in, issues come when/if things go wrong, some ppls expect the comm to kick or changes things around, putting pressure on the tag, and if they struggle finding why the group fail they will more likely all leave blaming eachothers, giving a bad experience for everyone
Great discussion! Thanks for the chat. I'm crossing my fingers that we get LFG changes.
My thought, add to the LFG, the ability to l ist yourself into a pool of roles you can perform for content you are trying to do. Ie. IBS strikes, you flag yourself as dps, heals, alacrity and dps, looking for these strikes. Then when someone creates a group in that setting, they get a button that lets them for example click the alacrity pool, and pull someone who has been waiting in that pool. It lets people fill the actual and strange roles that this game has, while not making us constantly check or sit with our lfg open just waiting.
Btw if nike can read this from his high horse. Discord is functional for voice chat, but tabbing out constantly is a stretch. And no most boomers are the 2-3 22 inch monitors camp. Most people moved past this in the last decade to a big ultrawide. Even if you feel like taking up the desk space, theres not much point having a monitor off to the side of a 34+ inch ultrawide.
Rolling comments for first hour:
-Put commander tag behind LI or blue/green crystals + gold
-Merging parties and squads is a great idea
-Commanding a 50 man squad with subs (DE meta) is a ginormous pain for one person. I only do it with one or two friends as lieutenants to organize.
-I joined a W1-4W4 FC group from LFG. Commander had something come up after VG and leaves. Entire squad instantly bolts.
-The community needs to normalize bringing a third heal or heal scourge into raids. The facts that people view it as "cheating" is preposterous.
-I have serious doubts that ANet will ever do matchmaking. I feel like it is major copium to even think they will.
-They should have a lobby for each raid wing. Aerodrome has too much going on. If you could hang out in a W1 lobby, then people could use map chat to fill groups.
-People aren't afraid of failing or a challenge, they are afraid of the backlash from other players. Elden Ring and Dark Souls are solo encounters.
More Bloom, more Emi in teatime. They are both refreshing and actually constructive.
Not to be impolite to the classic faces but so often they seem to be constantly on edge and have a chip on the shoulder when making arguments that it is getting tiring.
Examples?
@@Snebzor often when you talk about pug groups there is a very negative look painted onto inexperienced or oblivious players. I don't blame you at all and it sounds like you have dealt with a ton of pain in the ass players, enough to justify your outlook and probably significantly more negativity than you exhibit. But that's just the first thing that came to mind. Besides that there is often an exasperation shown towards the established social "norms" of the semi-hardcore instanced player base (does strikes everyday and puts up their post as 1/10 lf HAM HB HS ibs5 type of people) in this video for example you guys were talking about how they should stop having such sticks up their asses for content that is so easily clearable. I think that your points are completely justified and most everything said in this teatime and other similar ones is true, but I think that the tone has become more negative as these problems persist. I'm of the opinion that guest stars always make teatime more interesting just because I get to hear different people explain their views even if they don't differ very much, and I think that other people find the less jaded discussion that some of them bring to be refreshing.
@@insertwordthere
I try not to be too harsh about pugs, but man, they do tend to screw up Dragonfall meta hard. Like, there's a special order in which things are supposed to be done, and if pugs go in and kill half the champs, it damages the meta train and its "gold per hour". Not everyone has full legendary everything and 10 billion gold stored up in the bank, so gold per hour does matter to them.
@@Snebzor Others gave some examples that i can kinda agree with. Although i have to say i did not have you in mind when saying that. You can be a bit jaded at times but not as much as others from the classic people. It is just that Bloom and Emi come out as more prepared and down to earth without making sweeping arguments and it is pretty nice to engage with that. As others said it is more an issue of tone than what you are actually saying. I actually tend to agree with you, Teapot and Nike more often than with Emi or Bloom and it still feels better engaging with them just on the tone of the discussion.
@@mormegil231 I'm curious, what makes you say I'm unprepared?
A group leader would be a nice functionality.
Ready check for groups would be great, prestacking in fractals can often be anoying when playing in pick up groups
As a person who played mostly open world until about a year ago
I can tell you that I had no idea why sub groups were needed, it's not that I didn't care about sub groups.
Ever since dragon's end meta, I was introduced to the idea of sub groups, since suddenly in an open world meta, the commanders would always divide into sub groups, and they'd also make sure there is quickness and alac in each. I didn't know why that was important until I looked it up and realized it is because most skills affect 5 players, and its a way to make sure everyone get these boons. And only a while later did I also read that those in your sub group have a preference over others in the squad when it comes to boon distribution. I had no idea. The game doesn't explain any of those things, and it was hard to come by this information from just playing regular open world content, with or without a commander.
Yesterday i seen the most disgusting thing player ever done on LFG i seen training group without commander being taken over by raid seller with commander tag and LFG description being changed from training group asking for help to raid selling ad.
These poor people without tag couldn't do anything about it.
ArenaNet must do something about commander tag as fast as possible.
Anet should also make it so more people in a single group can put up a tag.. It's much clearer to indicate subgroups and their required locations
Honestly not super hard to solve just have the mander make someone a lutenient or just put a marker on their head
@@BorderFreak true but then you only have 2.. but ok 2 is better than 1..
@@woof3065 you can make more than 1 person luteinant and put a marker on i believe 8 peoples heads so not impossible as it sits now
@@woof3065 you can have 9 or 10 different people with raid markers on their head.
@@insertwordthere oh didn't know!.. but does that also show on the minimap?
90% of people should get an A. It's not only a question of "welcome to modern gaming" sadly. I don't know why failure is so badly seen nowadays. Have the new kids never heard of "learn from your failure" or "you learn best by failing" ? It creates so many problems to not fail people that deserves to fail
I mean, I laugh at it sometimes. I can be really smart in WvW for like 30 minutes in a row, and then do something insanely dumb and die. And I just laugh, because it's so obvious what I needed to do or not do.
TLDR: Matchmaking could work for simple encounters only, anything that needs a specific mechanic covered by a specific build, would be a pain to auto queue. (Ex: Q2 pylons)
Talking about the idea of a matchmaking system in GW2 for LFG, it would have to work something like this I think: You'd have to pick options before you queue up. I recall something like this existing in WoW where they need in a party of 4, 2 DPS, 1 Tank, 1 Healer.
Squad Requires: 6 DPS, 2 Quickness, 2 Alacrity & 2 Healers (Between Alacrity and Quickness)
DPS
Quickness
Alacrity
Healing
Specific mechanics (Tanking, Pylons, Kiting, etc.)
You could pick up to only 2 options from the top 4 from this list and get queued, but then you'd need specific mechanics for fights that require it as well. This could work for easy bosses, but would be a nightmare for anything that requires specific mechanics to be coded by the devs. Like for example, only certain classes are good at taking pylons on Qadim the Peerless. Ultimately, with the way the encounters are designed, we would have a real struggle with implementing something like this that covers every permeation, but it could be done, but given the fact that they already neglect raids as it is, I don't think they ever would do this.
You can tell that Sneb and Teapot both not only don't play other games, but also have very sad expectations of the levels of intelligence of the players in their game. To put it bluntly they don't know much about modern gaming and think that people who play gw2 are incredibly stupid. Maybe the second part is coming from experience.
But people who play games like these are definitely not stupid. You absolutely don't need matchmaking to have a 90% success rate. That's absurd. People queue for extremes with complete randoms in ff14 and their rate of clearing is way lower. And that's okay, they learn and try again until they succeed. That's how gamers are. And sorry, but content in gw2 just isn't that hard to begin with, even at the peak difficulty. It's just not. To clear Ultimates in ff14 you need to have half a year of practice, a PhD and autism.
True
The 300g is the biggest barrier for getting the tag for me. The commander role sounds pretty interesting to learn and I'd like to try to lead groups in meta events occasionally :o
@xx xx
Instructions not clear, bought bolt for 1940 and spent a bunch on aurora. Still don't even have gryphon or turtle, lel.
I've just started doing strikes. The turtle pushed me passed my social anxieties and I've been having a blast. Still don't know what I'm doing but I've done more strikes in a month than I've done in 9 years. Even had a noob group attempt Whisper and we got it to 1% on first try with only 1 dead due to DC. That amazed me with what little instructions we were able to type out. That said no groups are in the lfg doing whisper. They stop at easy three which is a shame. The fear of failure or of leading is so great people don't push just a little further. Don't be afraid to make groups or ask for help. Most people learn better from trying. Failure happens but it isn't the end. I do hope they improve their lfg to make grouping faster and easier.
Sneb is the kind of guy that will argue against anything to the point where nothing ever changes. He's either really attached to the status quo, afraid of change or the type of person who is _so cautious_ that never even makes the first step.
Is he employed by Arena net by any chance? Would explain why the system is so rigid, outdated and nothing has changed for the better in years.
I freaken LOVE my tag, I remember I got it JUST before needing to go get the Turtle mount, and when I had to do the strike step, I tagged up, and put up a training LFG, I had never done the encounter ever, but watched a video on it, so I got 9 others, and explained the Strike to them, promoted another person who was more experianced to spread out the players, and boom we did it one go! Ever since then I tag up for EVERYTHING lol (except for WvW) I'm gonna try Raids next with randos :D
The idea that if you are forming a raid group you need to understand the content is absolutely true in wow. You are expected to either lead the group yourself or find someone in the group who is willing to assist and do it. Now, do people just make groups anyway? Sure. But when those groups then fail people leave.
I would imagine wow LFG for raid probably has an ultimate success rate of 60-70%, but that is really really squed towards the early bosses. Most late boss pugs probably disband at a +80% rate.
Tag should be also awarded through some grindy achievement
Also, maybe to encourage more tags, the commanders get additional rewards
It's peak hilarity when Teapot talks about other MMOs and immediately exposes himself as someone who never played any other ones.
"No MMOs have better in game social systems than 3rd party services like discord" I'm paraphrasing of course.
Man is huffing copium like he's about to experience addiction withdrawal. GW2 is one of the few that even has this problem, broski. Stop projecting. It's literally like the metaphor of people living in a cave and watching the shadows on the wall, thinking that it's their entire world.
It's kinda crazy how essential the commander tag is important to starting your own groups. Can be hard to even scrounge together a group for ez strikes without a tag.
Sneb hit the nail on the head with the point about overcapping on heals/cc/ boons.
I’ll be honest, I’m more of a long time casual player that jumps on for some strikes/world boss when I have time now but ever since I stopped playing peepo dps and changed to play HAM or support firebrand or tempest my win rate in the more difficult content has been much easier.
Well there's a reason for that and it sort of goes both ways.
As long as you aren't doing any encounter specific roles (i.e tanking specific bosses or extra mechanics), being a healer is much easier than being a consistent DPS pumper. There's no real rotation most of the time, and you can get away with usually by just pressing things off cooldown.
Without offending anyone, there's a reason why all the players I know that aren't too good at the game generally, main HealFireBrand.
On the same side of that coin, a very good support/healer is also the highest carry. Low DPS can be managed as long as the boss has no enrage/wipe timer, while people dying is a moment of no return. So a good support that keeps people alive more than otherwise, can make even less experienced groups clear more consistently(albeit slower).
This is also why Heal Scourge as Teapost says "breaks" the game. As long as you aren't doing CMs and some harder boss encounters, most content has no real time limit or overly punishing global wipe mechanics so as long as you stacks heals and perma revive people from bad spots, you can't really lose.
Thank you for awesome talk. To me, GW2 is a great game and it has own things to learn. I don't think it should change to "holy trinity" or do some drastic changes in difficulty or in party management for new players. The one thing that it should do --- is to teach players about these concepts. This is the true challenge ---- to explain players coming from different games about aspects of GW2.
1:43:23 I remembered in GW1 a friend invited me to tag along while he was selling runs of Catacombs of Kathandrax. In the end I got the Emerald Blade. Unfortunately it's just Req. 13 but I still sold it for 100 Plats and 35 Ectos. Because of that I was able to craft my Obsidian Armor by running the FoW with heroes and henchmen.
Lost Ark in my region has an official discord server with voice channels and there are lots of people all the time. Whenever you do a difficult raid or a learning run, everyone just goes there. There are also channels for guild advertising, looking for static, looking for a group, giveaways, all kinds of discussions. There's even a channel for voiceover feedback. I had a few times when I just forgot to get out of a voice channel and some newbie joined and asked questions about the game. The fact nothing like this officially exists for GW2 is sad.
I liked the criticism of GW 2 specific language. Brings back EVE Online flashbacks:) most of the games have their own language that makes communication faster for those in the know.
the commander tag should be moved into the mastery system it will slightly change the respective of it
They should definitely work on fixing party/squad issues and tag issues first, because this seems like a low lift - at least to give full tag squad functionality to the 10 man squad you can already have with private tag appearance. If there is some legacy party code that would for example prevent a squad from entering dungeons, fine shelf that until later.
They can keep the gold sink to go from 10 to 50 size squads. If they want to rework the mentor system, great, the mentor tag is pretty much pointless.
None of those changes fix the LFG, however they are incremental changes that begin with some pretty low effort stuff.
21:24 woah woah woah. You ABSOLUTELY CAN run strike groups without a tag! I did it for 2 months.
IT's A LOT MORE WORK (read: Talking)! But it CAN be done! So watch your use of the word "can't" Sneb.
That said Teapot is 100% right (aka parroting what EVERYONE is saying), Readycheck, Subgrouping and markers should all be baseline abilities of the person who starts a group.
You can nitpick the wording if you want, but the spirit of what I said is that it isn't really practical.
For really time-sensitive stuff, I find that Discord's better. I have a special WvW group that I join in on. It turns what used to be a grindy chore into a funner, team-spirited game of "Mad King Says". It takes less effort to stay with the group and I get to learn how the commander thinks. Instead of it just being "follow the blob and don't become tail", it feels like being part of something grander.
Watching this while being blissfully unaware of what subgroups are.
You want to know why I don't organize my own raid lfgs? I lack the commander tag. I can't move people into subgroups, I can't place markers, I can't put icons above other players. This is all stuff I'm used to from raiding in FF14, and their equivalents in that game are super useful for pugging prog/clear/farm for harder fights.
Why do I need a commander tag for this? Why is there a 300 gold barrier in front of this? That's just bullshit. Give me the same abilities as squad leader of 10.
nike has the most elitest takes on everything. its interesting seeing the contrast in opinions between him and bloom. bloom brings up something he thinks is a big problem, and nike thinks the problem is a good thing.
I know it was covered very quickly, but build craft for end game content is concrete to a lot of new players. It seems they go to snow crows or metabattle, they make that build and they think that's the only feasible way to play it, even though lower in the page it usually gives utility swap suggestions for some fights. People are very scared for going against the grain. Once I got my first set of leggy armor I fell in love with buildcraft, I got light first and played heal/alac chrono in w2 for "feedback" and we got the clear. It was a hilariously scuffed build, but a fun way to play the game. I was terrified of raids before I tried them, now it's the main reason I log into the game. I wish more people were prepared to have fun with their build.
FF14 matchmaking and Party Finder (Their version of an LFG) are a perfect example of a game that manages to work both in AND have them both work successfully. Not to mention Dailies and incentives to redo old content through random duty finders ( duty roulettes) and COMPLETE them, therefor teach anyone who is doing it on how to win and succeed with them. The only obstacle with GW2 is the fact that its a classless game, no set in stone trinity.
Besides legendary armor, what else do raids give you besides loot and the experience? I just play casually and for fun so I can't really think of any reason I'd want to do raids.
People play it because it's fun for them, especially when you have a group of like minded individuals with accomodating skill levels.
Teapot missed the mark so hard on this it’s kind of a shame. Win rates/clears on raids is never a good factor to be focusing on, when raid bosses gets cleared so much it becomes trivial, it turns off a lot players. Guild Wars 2 by far, i mean by far, have the highest clear rates in raids compared to every mmos out there, but the raid scene and the % of players partake in raiding is one of the lowest if not lowest pre EoD.
All of the games that have a really successful raid scene like WoW, FF14, Lost Ark, ect, they all have abysmal clear rates, like we’re talking 10-20% here in easier fights, and their scene is really populated AND gaining players while also REGAINING those same players.
Teapot has touched on the reason why this happens before with GW2, the class/role jobs and player personal mechanical skills has a pretty high requirement to reach and a really high ceiling should you ever want to get there, the ACTUAL fights design and progression is INSANELY linear and very simple for the most part. This has changes with the EoD strikes which is a good thing, but the progression period is still not diverse enough and mechanics aren’t really special, I was never a fan of insanely tight DPS checks, but with how strong current classes are, it made the checks non existent. I also hope they add more puzzle solving mechanics to the fights also, it’ll make the encounters have different feels and is unique, Dhuum CM and Qadim 1 CM is a good example of thid and they could’ve added more and crank up the difficulty more, how hard is a fight when you can clear them with less than 5 experienced people, i’ve done it a lot in sell runs and it’s trivial.
Some of Bloom Ideas are pretty great, having a stats requirement to hit before entering certain higher difficulty encounters is good and it will filters out people with bad/insufficient builds, there’s almost no downside to that as it’ll make people who do that content get a better experience, it’ll also help the scene becomes a little less toxic where the game will filters out and gate kept the content itself instead of having players do it and can sometimes lead to some not very desirable situations and interaction between players, eliminating that process is good.
mechanist is the most fun spec from EoD for me, HealAlac mech is such a joy to play! :D
just bought the commander tag after 2500 hours and totally agree with everything they say here.
Nice! Grats!
Right, don't need to watch the stream, you called out all the most important issues in the intro! 😆
Gw1 had a great farming method. There was no limit to how many times you could run a UWSC. The drops were rare. You could trade them. You could customize them to a character and then it was off the market. It made pve fun. It made your end game pve content extremely repeatable. I remember running the voltaic spear farm for months and man thousands of ecto selling them. It was good fun and very good for the health of the game.
Last 3-4 weeks I've been tagging up a lot to do content : calling people to do raids in discord servers and ingame, "commanding" bounty trains and achievement events etc.
I realized that tagging up is the opposite of scary (what I thought and many people think): most of the time people are just super kind to the commander because he was the one who took the initiative and usually helps him to command.
As I'm returning to do raids after some years, I've tagged up not remembering the full fights and mechanics, and most people really help you organize and remember/teach the mechanics to the group.
The thing is tagging up is just making an ingame mark that you are interested in doing x, and there are plenty of people just refreshing their lfg and checking the discord channel hoping someone call for x content.
(i'm not saying you should tag up for a quick raid clear group without knowing what you are doint, but you don't need to know everything to start a group for 90% of contents ingame)
That depends on when you play and from where you get the ppl that join you.
I've commanded alot and i would say the experience was so and so.
Fun and easy when using certain communities for lfg or playing with friends and statics.
Kinda meh or terrible whene doing ingame lfg.
One example would be for openworld on tangled depths( chack) meta, where, after having 4 comms on map, almost my entire squad left for a new map lead by a popular comm/streamer and the meta failed 🤣
As a new player LFG IS WHOLLY LACKING! If arenanet is looking to rebuild it they need to add rewards to LFG that you don't get from solo/squad play doing the same event. Quick fix is increase the drops for LFG runs for gold and magic find +5-10%, remove the vet/trainer group sections, add LFG dailies.
As a player from launch with several Legos and an absolute ton of time on my thief; I have only run 3 dungeons, 2 on story 1 on explore, 4 fractals, no raids, no strikes, all because this game's lfg is just crap and I have no desire to use it. It's great for hero point trains and meta events, and hilariously the best use of it is for TP taxis in lws3's puzzle... The perception it gives off and has always given is that in guild wars 2 you're alone, together.
I think automatic matchmaking could make A LOT of difference in GW2 but it needs to be both quite intelligent and intelligently implemented. 1. It will work only for less complex content like dungeons and fractals 2. It should take into account the current build of each player and try to not make 5 DPS or 5 healers comps (not that it matters much in dungeons and lower tier fractals). 3. It should provide some feedback on the overall quality of team comp (I see it as a chart/dashboard showing something like "DPS 6/10 healing 4/10 boons 1/10 boon diversity 3/10 adding more concentration recommended" 4. It would be helpful to be able to temporarily augment your build e.g. pay like 25 silver and "rent" a build for the current run (a gold sink btw) so you're say a core Mesmer and you see "boon diversity 1/10" on the dasboard and click "rent alac Mirage: 25 silver" and voila you're alac Mirage. In other words automatic matchmaking should be making easier tiers of instanced content more accessible for casuals rather than trying to populate raid and strike PUGs.
Hey TP, do you think there should be some kind of reward track for commanding up so that people feel incentivized to lead and start squads and invest in the Commander tag? I don't think it should offer too much in rewards, but I wonder if it would be enough to drive more leadership from the playerbase.
Yeah I think some light rewards for leadership would be really good
@@MightyTeapot and @pfelia89, similar to wvw where you get a higher amount of ppt as commander of a squad, but in pve maybe achievement points :)
@52:10 The success of New World. Pog.
Are there some community discords for mediocre casual players to find raid or fractal groups on EU, or a place where i can search for them, i mostly only find some for the veterans that know the game already in an out and expect the same from you.
35:00 what Sneb said here. I mainly play support and about half the time I tell myself that I'm gonna practice DPS I end up filling support.
I mean I assume someone’s already said the same or similar but re; Commander tag, as someone who’s been playing less than a year, I can buy commander tag or I can buy another LW more or less, ya know?
The idea og get rid of the party system show how far away from helping starting players you have become: Party interface have some features the squad does NOT have:
- Invite people to story or home instance: Only party can do that
- Party interface also show progress of the heart of people in party (Yes I'm helping newer players in open world a lot)
- Party interface makes it easier to see who is who: Avatar picture is shown
- Party interface makes it easier to see if the new person added the masteries after filled the XP bar (you see the number of masteries spent).
If remove party interface: Anet have to implement the extra features from party into squad.... And what to do with those that want to do story and home instance together? Need a commander tag first?
My focus is helping newer players in open world. I have commander tag, but rarely use it, since I prefer the cozy open world with newer players and show them the world and basic mechanics.
For me it seems that most people that enjoy raids, strikes, fractals have a tendency to forget about the huge awesome open world and it's great aspects.
I don't think the game needs a random matchmaking system. I mean maybe for dungeons because that's mostly just for story. But I think it would be a lot better to just implement more incentives for guilds to group up and especially with newer players. Maybe have a tab in the guild menu where you can sign up for certain types of content and a ranking system that resets every season to tell how experienced that player is. If a guild runs newer players with lower rank in raids/strikes/fractals or whatever that contributes to a weekly guild chest that gives all guildmates loot. But the rank would have to be only visible by fellow guildmates to avoid toxicity.
I also would like to point out that eso (gw2's adopted cousin) has had a dungeon finder and it is a terrible mess. Que times for dps players are ridiculous especially if you want a specific dungeon which can take up to an hour. And often the tank ends up being a dps and the group disbands shortly after finding out. The eso community has wanted a premade group lfg like gw2's for a long time and they're finally getting it soon.
But anyway imagine waiting in que for an hour just to have it disband because someone isn't actually a healer, that is what would happen if gw2 got a random group finder.
GW2 has some of the most unique problems I've seen in any MMO. It's crazy to me how many people are afraid to "waste time" in this game by having to learn a hard encounter rather than just be carried through it for example. To me, the real reward of playing GW2 is the content itself. I don't care about a few gold or some mats or whatever, I want to be challenged and have a good time learning an encounter but it's so hard to find people who feel the same without going outside of the game to discord to set a static up. Failure is part of the enjoyment of learning a game and I'd like to be able to have the opportunity to fail more often in PUGs without groups disbanding immediately.
I mean, you never really "know" this game. I mastered Bladesworn, am learning Vindicator, and now they changed Bladesworn, lol. What I thought I knew about Bladesworn already changed! It's cool to see my skill improve over what it previously was. I still remember all the stuff I didn't know back when I was playing story the first time through.
Paused at 30mins. Says that composition is not that important and yet you will keep wiping in Boneskinner if the grp does not have a healer, and that's Strike and not even Raid. Fact!
(add) Nike style of talking down at Anet, saying they can't do it, they can't do that, is actually "reverse psychology". He wants Anet to hear what he just said and take up the challenge. Hope Anet is really listening.
The last years Ive only ever done group stuff with random guilds I joined, all the LFG experiences were so terrible in the past I gave up on that.
I used to run Dragon's End and at one time, someone merged my tiny pre-squad with a RIBA group. I was the commander, so all 30+ of em had to regroup. :V
That "feature" is so ridiculous. I've seen that merging thing happen so many times.
For matchmaking: can the system identify player gear and set the role based on gear, then they could streamline gear stats so if healer/ supp or dps, api key ?
Not enough, theres support builds with 0 boon duration
The first 20 days of eod i spent up to 4 hours a day doing jade sea meta, with 0% winrate.
I could see how the commie feels really bad.
But we as the average player just want to learn, so that was how so many player still try to play the meta.
Now even after nerf, the winrate was still 70%. The new commie with their newly bought tag still want to learn (not to ignore tail, please don't ignore tail), and we as the average player still want to follow.
This game would greatly benefit from a matchmaking system. I feel like there are tons of players that would participate in fractals/raids if they could just queue up and not fiddle with LFG.
Role selection should definitely be a thing. When you queue up you should be prompted to choose what you are bringing (DPS / support and also Quick / Alac). I’m not familiar enough with how tanking works in this game to know how to add it to the selection screen.
Then you just have to let players govern themselves. If someone queues up as an alacrity dps but they don’t have alacrity, vote to kick them. And then the system queues again. Players need to be able to inspect each other though.
Another thing is, the game really needs to help players understand what the typical roles are. Giant tooltips in the queue screen explaining what quickness and alacrity are might help.
The stat requirement thing could work too. If you try to queue for boon support dps but you don’t have at least 25% boon duration, and maybe a certain amount of power/precision or Condi damage/duration, it just tells you no. Some players would rage, but most would actually seek out those stats and it would actually help uninformed players get better. This could be really tricky though, because some specs need way more concentration than others to perform the same role.
even the boon duration doesn't always work, alac mirage runs full viper, their alacrity comes almost entirely from having 3 clones and the staff ambush, no concentration from gear.
This runs into the problem that every role in the game other than arguably DPS and toughness tank is completely defined by the player base.
@@ridespirals Yeah that’s an issue. Stat checks on queues might be too tricky. It’s a lot harder than a simple item level check like what wow has.
@@insertwordthere That’s true, but it doesn’t need to be. If Anet commits to the roles currently in the game, and balance around those roles, then hopefully they wouldn’t change.
And also keep in mind that this is just for a match maker, it wouldn’t bleed over into LFG. For example in elder scrolls online, the dungeon queue requires a tank, healer, and two dps. But in experienced groups the healer isn’t necessary because a third dps is just more beneficial so a lot of groups run that. But you can’t queue for that and that’s okay because it’s just for pugs.
After playing ff14 for a year and then joining gw2, it feels like I'm the rich relative visiting my poor country folk family, watching them struggling in the fields, farming potatoes. It's kinda funny but in a tragic sort of way. It's so easy to just press a button and get matchmade with random people and enjoy an awesome looking and fun raid with badass music. Meanwhile here you people are struggling with an LFG menu 😂 It's 1 to 1 the Swole doge vs cheems meme.
Awesome guests! As someone that also kept putting off the com tag purchase you get used to not having it. Constantly putting it off and got into a habit* of not using it. If anything the game should want you to heavily engage with the system very early on. I still don't tbh and that is not good. My main content is fractal and raids, sometimes strikes if time allows. Com tag not needed for fractals, 5 man. Gg
I myself as a noob who would like to que for a raid would love to see a matchmaking system for everything because I would prefer to figure it all out rather than follow instructions anyway. Though I do think raids are a big draw for guilds, finding groups for things is what fosters community.. que system maybe did more harm than good in WoW for instance.
300g for commander is not a big deal.
As a new player you do not need to worry about it so the cost is irrelevant. Once you reach the point that you need/"can use" commander correctly you will then have the gold to buy it.
I have commander and just use it to taxi ppl to maps for OW content rather than leading as the way I tend to play no-one should ever follow my example :)
It’s subgroup organising, that needs to be more easily informed to the players.
Who refuses to use 3rd party programs? Im 38 and used vent or teamspeak before discord while playing Dark Age of Camelot. I think not wanting 3rd party apps is more damage meters or just like addons in wow
IMO Having anyone able to place markers will lead to massive trolling. If you need markers to be able to control the flow of a group, and someone is just changing them all willy nilly you think that would lead to a better experience?
That's why we also said you need to have a leader function as baseline
If they make the commander tag free, I’m cool with that, only if ANET gives me my 300 gold back.
As a long time WoW player, who is newer to GW2, the lack of a matchmaking system is a net negative. I think one could be built that accounts for the need to various roles even without the hard trinity. Getting into this group content is not easy, especially for a newer player, and you should not have to resort to a Discord outside of the game to accomplish this.
Sneb, I appreciate your desire to lead to more one shots, as winning makes people feel good, but at some point you gotta ask, are more likely hurting the newer players/pugs and even overall community more than helping them with a blood scourge? People learn far more from failure than they ever do from winning without understanding why they won. If they died full dead instead of you just rezzing and saving them, they will actually have to think about why they died. Vs if you hard carried the kill, they now have some kill proof that means nothing as they didn't really understand how they won, and then if that person goes out and plays with a different exp group, they are going to have a way worse time, especially if they get flamed and kicked for not understanding an encounter. Just my thoughts on hard carrying vs letting people learn through failure.
I personally prefer to have more positive experiences than negative experiences. This may sound bad, but most people aren't going to know why they died. It's just not really accessible without add-ons. If they don't have the addons, they won't know.
In short, I believe creating positive experiences is more important right now, especially given the size of the raiding population and particularly on NA. I don't like seeing people argue about why we're losing. It's not fun.
"Not sitting around doing nothing for 20min" - That is my worst issue in GW2 lol. I log in, look at LFG, no group to start a W1 to W4 raid. Check LFG for a meta train or something going on. If none are true, I log out because I cannot start raid 1h later because then I have to quit mid run.
This is what happens when a game is catered to gamers who think they want to play games, but actually just want to watch a movie.
people laughing about the "random lfg" but that's exactly how ffxiv works and it's great.
I think guilds contribute to this problem by having verified tags. The impression I get is that I would get excluded from the guild if I tagged without their permission. This is especially true in wvw.
Also Teapot what are you doing with your hair?
Here' the truth about why forming groups is so hard in GW2 that no one wants to admit: this game was not designed with organized group play in mind. With undefined roles, community biases on "acceptable" builds and years of training the player base to simply do map metas and non-cm fractals as 90% of the content over the last 10 years leads to a community very wary of putting the "M" in "MMO".
Bloom was really the star in this podcast. He's in touch with the reality with the new players or even casual players. All everyone else is saying is some elitist shit like "git gud" you can never fail. It's ok to fail. Matchmaking should be implemented
it's insane to me that we're discussing whether MMO should have an automated lfg system for easy content (especially leveling through dungeons and introduction to endgame content). i bet that % of players who dinged max level and never seen instanced content in gw2 is far beyond 50%. that just leads into ppl feeling insecure to try anything in the game cuz the game never thought them anything (for me at least gw2 is one of least intuitive MMOs - and it feels by design)
You misunderstand. No one was arguing against having an automated system. I was being realistic and saying that the way character and team builds work in GW2 makes it significantly harder to implement, and there is no realistic way that Anet could do it, so its pointless to discuss or think about.
Why is there no rss feed for this? I want podcast format
I will bully teapot
4:27 very good point, I never realized this but it's very true. And you also can't get rid of it other than leaving and re-joining the group, which is really strange. (my guild does this in WVW because we are in a roaming guild, and we target and call out wherever we are needed instead of running after a tag).
Everything said here is real and true
Bloom is 10000% right, this topic doesn't need at all to be this complicated of a conversation. Matchmaking system for a ton of non CM content could be plenty easy. Add a lil buff if you wipe. you wipe a couple times people ask questions and you over power. woohoo it isn't CM who cares.
I hope they give us a QoL to allow us to mark ourselves as boon/heal/dps or have it automatic with trait (I wish they'd just rework traits again tbh)
FF14 have matchmaking for xtreme trial, no one use it.
I once heard that in the east matchmaking for high end duty is pretty popular.
Outdated/limited group tools as well as having the few tools locked behind a 300g tag is such a meme only in gw2 you would find it.
Im shicked anet hasnt changed that.
My old-school MMO experience:
In the games I played before WoW like EQ, DAoC, and Ragnarok Online (lul) we organized, and applied to guilds/raids on actual websites, and/or teamspeak/vent. Guilds that didn't have some sort of external organization method didn't really do much content in comparison.
Later in WoW, raids were led and organized by the guild officers, many of these people were tanks, but it really was just done by the people with enough knowledge to take the lead. I think this often ended up being the tank or healer because both of those roles require the same kind of experience with/knowledge of encounters that leading often requires.
I really think 90% of this is a human problem, and don't think lowering the bar will lead to more success in GW2 in particular, there's not much more room beneath us.
The idea of 10-man commanding functionality being free is a good way to go, though.