Guild Wars 2

Tiglie.5834:

Zerg ball stacking and spamming 1111111111111111111111111 is what makes up 95% of this game’s playerbase. I have literally no idea how it’s fun to people, but then again, I also have the luxury of playing with an amazing group of people that has been static since Daoc. We know what we can do.

While it’s laughable hearing people defending zerging as tactical realm choke point strategical, blah blah blah, it’s all they know. As soon as they break off solo / smaller groups they get killed and go back to rolling in the 1 spam ball. It will never change, it makes up a majority of a game’s playerbase until it gets much much much matured, Daoc was a kittenzerg for it’s first 2 years too.

I guess what i am rambling about is it’s not the players problem, they will not change. It’s arena’s problem for making the mechanics like aoe cap, downed state, and it will not change. They are actually so dumb that they think the solution to zerging is buffing siege damage. I mean kitten …….really…….do they even know why we kitten, do they even play their game, do they want this to be online virtual arrow cart simulator 2013?

Thank the mmo heavens LARP kinda guys exist. Thought PAXA was the ONLY guild left that wants small man vs small man open pvp. Anet wants customers to stick around . Should have been advertised as starter mmo to keep the skillful 20-30% old schoolers from falsely buying the game to open world pvp. Do the right thing Anet and call it “Warhammer 2 for people wanting to test mmo waters”. I agree it’s not brand new people’s fault they Zerg, I zerged for about a year in Daoc then graduated. My point is always that a player should graduate from Zerg/seige school after half a year to a year of doing the same easy thing. Gw2 doesn’t promote that. It’s only harder to win as you decrease reliance on others and seige in open field combat, so as Tiglie said they go back to spamming 1. Lame. Bring on unchained. Mark Jacobs the hardcore savier!

Anet really needs to decrease rewards for zerging. I would love to be rank 150. Only problem is I got 10 more ranks in a week on my commander than my solo roamer, and I prefer solo roaming. Then, every time I meet more than 10 people running together (I can occasionally win 1v10, and always love to try) I have to gtfo. Only problem is, 90% of people are running with10+, and the ones that aren’t, are actually good (with the exception of a few). I spent 30 minutes in WvW trolling people because they thought having the advantage of a supply caravan and 2 guards would help them win. I think I made 5 people rage quit/move to a different map, including 2 bronze assaulters. Seriously, if you have the bronze assaulter rank you should have deserved it, not spammed 1 for 10 hours.

As WvW stands now, there is something to do for everyone’s play style. There are opportunities to play 1vs1, 5vs5, 10vsXXX, use the siege, defend the castle, run the dolyak, grab that supply camp, or whatever you consider “fun”.

You elitists that insist WvW is completely going downhill because it doesn’t support YOUR view (and ONLY your view) of “fun” need to pull your head outta your hineys and realize the world (or a game) don’t revolve around your gaming preferences.

I enjoy all the above mentioned aspects of WvW, which is why I’m there almost every day, as time permits. You whiners and haters? Hit the road. I surely won’t miss you.

Shademehr.1397:

As WvW stands now, there is something to do for everyone’s play style. There are opportunities to play 1vs1, 5vs5, 10vsXXX, use the siege, defend the castle, run the dolyak, grab that supply camp, or whatever you consider “fun”.

You elitists that insist WvW is completely going downhill because it doesn’t support YOUR view (and ONLY your view) of “fun” need to pull your head outta your hineys and realize the world (or a game) don’t revolve around your gaming preferences.

I enjoy all the above mentioned aspects of WvW, which is why I’m there almost every day, as time permits. You whiners and haters? Hit the road. I surely won’t miss you.

Wrong buddy, not something to do for everyone. There aren’t highly skilled groups running around. I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands. That’s pathetic considering there are 20-60 mans running around. So what you said is false. 90-95% of the population does the same thing. And calling us elitests is just pointing out what we are and what we’ve earned. We’re here to compete, not kitten around and play grab kitten with buddies somewhere in the Internet world . Like I said earlier… Most of the population is here for social gathering, reason I’m complaining is because I’ve played other games with WAY less potential with WAY MORE competitive people/teams. Just doesn’t exist here nor does Anet want that. They like majority money spending casuals.

Jscull.2514:

I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands.

Then either:
A) You don’t WvW very much and the majority of the time is spent forum warring.
B) You are a mutant with way too many fingers of questionable purpose.
C) You have a perception filter preventing you from acknowledging the plethora of small man groups for fear of losing comparative kitten size.
D) You truly are the best of the best, might as well go home and cry to the world about how superior you are, because obviously they care more than we do.

No other options, the only possible conclusions here.

Jscull.2514:

Shademehr.1397:

As WvW stands now, there is something to do for everyone’s play style. There are opportunities to play 1vs1, 5vs5, 10vsXXX, use the siege, defend the castle, run the dolyak, grab that supply camp, or whatever you consider “fun”.

You elitists that insist WvW is completely going downhill because it doesn’t support YOUR view (and ONLY your view) of “fun” need to pull your head outta your hineys and realize the world (or a game) don’t revolve around your gaming preferences.

I enjoy all the above mentioned aspects of WvW, which is why I’m there almost every day, as time permits. You whiners and haters? Hit the road. I surely won’t miss you.

Wrong buddy, not something to do for everyone. There aren’t highly skilled groups running around. I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands. That’s pathetic considering there are 20-60 mans running around. So what you said is false. 90-95% of the population does the same thing. And calling us elitests is just pointing out what we are and what we’ve earned. We’re here to compete, not kitten around and play grab kitten with buddies somewhere in the Internet world . Like I said earlier… Most of the population is here for social gathering, reason I’m complaining is because I’ve played other games with WAY less potential with WAY MORE competitive people/teams. Just doesn’t exist here nor does Anet want that. They like majority money spending casuals.

I have to agree with you. I have found so few good roaming groups (TFI still isn’t great as it is, but we still rarely run into groups we can’t beat). I rarely run into solo roamers I can’t beat, even this week while I’ve been testing out a new build. The reason (imo) for this is people don’t do these things because it’s not rewarding (except for personal gratification). How do you get rewards for WvW? Certainly not killing 1 person every 5 minutes. Anet rewards zerging over any other type of gameplay, and the skill level of people who do WvW reflects that. Until Anet starts rewarding people for fighting outnumbered and winning, we won’t see a change in this, which is sad. Those of you saying there is stuff for everyone to do: you’ve never played in a coordinated, good, small man roaming group, cause if you had, you would know how boring it is when you don’t find anyone that’s good, and every time someone’s losing, they run into the nearest tower/keep and start firing a cannon at you. The only enjoyment is demolishing zergs 10x your size, and that gets old after a while. I’m NOT saying it should be ONLY small man groups, I’m saying Anet needs to make it so there are more than 1 per world (which is how it is now). How many zergs do you see every night? I’m betting it’s more than the number of solo roamers and small man groups combined.

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Jscull.2514:

I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands.

Then either:
A) You don’t WvW very much and the majority of the time is spent forum warring.
B) You are a mutant with way too many fingers of questionable purpose.
C) You have a perception filter preventing you from acknowledging the plethora of small man groups for fear of losing comparative kitten size.
D) You truly are the best of the best, might as well go home and cry to the world about how superior you are, because obviously they care more than we do.

No other options, the only possible conclusions here.

You didn’t make the option E) Anet made an ez mode game for people who haven’t really ever played mmos before, marketed it to the competitive 20-30% hardcore mmoers as the newest tri-faction open world platform since forever ago, and upgrade and fix the current issues with as much urgency as mythic did with Warhammer. FULL ON encouragement of Zerging with Aoe cap being 5 (unheard of) and downed state. Capturing objectives is more valuable than fighting actual players and either living or dying. And purchaseable “commander blue Doritos” w/ in game gold a zero reflection of skill or experience. And lastly a game filled with people afraid of fighting because the thought of ridicule eats them alive so instead they guarantee wins by running with AS MANY people as they possibly can. Gross.

Jscull.2514:

Shademehr.1397:

As WvW stands now, there is something to do for everyone’s play style. There are opportunities to play 1vs1, 5vs5, 10vsXXX, use the siege, defend the castle, run the dolyak, grab that supply camp, or whatever you consider “fun”.

You elitists that insist WvW is completely going downhill because it doesn’t support YOUR view (and ONLY your view) of “fun” need to pull your head outta your hineys and realize the world (or a game) don’t revolve around your gaming preferences.

I enjoy all the above mentioned aspects of WvW, which is why I’m there almost every day, as time permits. You whiners and haters? Hit the road. I surely won’t miss you.

Wrong buddy, not something to do for everyone. There aren’t highly skilled groups running around. I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands. That’s pathetic considering there are 20-60 mans running around. So what you said is false. 90-95% of the population does the same thing. And calling us elitests is just pointing out what we are and what we’ve earned. We’re here to compete, not kitten around and play grab kitten with buddies somewhere in the Internet world . Like I said earlier… Most of the population is here for social gathering, reason I’m complaining is because I’ve played other games with WAY less potential with WAY MORE competitive people/teams. Just doesn’t exist here nor does Anet want that. They like majority money spending casuals.

Well, technically he’s correct. You can do whatever you want in WvW. Nobody is beholden to a certain paradigm. It’s just that the balance between the different groups is utterly fubar’d. So it’s not a spectacularly viable & sustainable playstyle.

Since numbers give way too much of an advantage for skill to reasonably overcome past certain points. The vast majority of the competitive small group people have either…

1. Quit.
2. Joined the zerg.

Which is, of course, why you can’t find the buggers. There are some other, more minor, issues as well, but that’s the big one.

Again, there’s nothing inherently, objectively wrong about people wanting a less competitive, more social playstyle. In a better game they would be the prey for more cutthroat and aggressive small man groups and you would get good competitive roaming groups clashing against one another in between culling zerglings. It’s just that here the zerg is all powerful and cannot be defeated by skill alone. Taking on any group that is more than say 50% larger than your own is a pretty dicey proposition unless they are both really bad and have a disadvantageous class/gear setup.

ANet will probably learn their error the hard way eventually. Zergs don’t drive lot of retention as a general rule; the average zergling just doesn’t have the desire to by that dedicated. Whereas the opposite is true for the professional zerg handlers and the competitive groups.

As with PvE it all boils down to content creation at the end of the day. Zerglings create content, and by association drive retention, for the people who command them and the people who prey upon them (and a little bit for other zerglings, though not enough to really generate much retention. A zerg is too fragile for that, just like a house of cards is too fragile to support a bowling ball.). Zerg commanders create content for the zerglings and the people who kill the zerglings. And small, competitive groups in turn are supposed to generate content for the zerg commanders and zerglings, albeit usually as something to avoid, and for other competitive groups who want a good fight.

Too bad the last piece of the puzzle is pretty much missing in this game. There is no bigger fish for the zerg to be afraid of, except maybe a bigger zerg. It upsets the balance and hurts long term player retention

I agree attic. Anet could fix a lot of these issues / increase competitiveness by a couple easy fixes. Raise Aoe cap to 10 or 15, scale wxp/xp so the smaller the group used to kill a player / take a tower the more xp given (running in Zergs basically weeding out any xp given because its just too easy to get) out of combat rezzing of the dead, and the big one IMO other than Aoe cap GROUP BUFFS ONLY. People grouped get the buffs/condi removal… non grouped members get notta. This stuff was used in games 10 years ago. It really isn’t rocket science.

Jscull.2514:

I agree attic. Anet could fix a lot of these issues / increase competitiveness by a couple easy fixes. Raise Aoe cap to 10 or 15, scale wxp/xp so the smaller the group used to kill a player / take a tower the more xp given (running in Zergs basically weeding out any xp given because its just too easy to get) out of combat rezzing of the dead, and the big one IMO other than Aoe cap GROUP BUFFS ONLY. People grouped get the buffs/condi removal… non grouped members get notta. This stuff was used in games 10 years ago. It really isn’t rocket science.

Yes yes yes, if these few fixes were done it would alleviate most of the imbalance there is in favor of zergs. Hell, even just getting my buffs on to the people I am GROUPED with would be nice. It is so simple, and as stated above….its been done for YEARS. The grouping mechanic of this game literally only gives you a blue dot on your map. Pointless. But, on the downside, Anet said in a WvW discussion post earlier this week that the AOE cap will never be raised because ‘the servers can’t handle it.’ So, our hopes and dreams there are crushed. Oh well, back to smashing my face into a zerg and running hoping to string a few out…

Jscull.2514:

I agree attic. Anet could fix a lot of these issues / increase competitiveness by a couple easy fixes.

It’s a shame that they won’t do them because of how little value they placed on WvW back in beta. Now they seem to realize that WvW is a bigger deal than they thought it would be and they have no really thought out plans to implement. So they’re just grasping at low hanging fruit like the near useless wxp system; a poor replacement for realm ranks in any light.

Raise Aoe cap to 10 or 15

Nah, that would only move the goalposts. A better solution, that would still keep the game from turning into a complete AoE-fest like Warhammer did, would be to limit the amount of AoEs that a player can be affected with at once, instead of limiting how many players can be hit with a single AoE.

With the current system, if 5 people throw all throw an AoE into a group of 20 people then the 20 will only take damage from 1-2 AoEs on average and then if the group of 20 players toss 20 AoEs at the 5 man group each member of the 5 man group will take 20 AoEs of damage.

Whereas, with say a 10 AoE per second limit per player what would happen is that all the players in the 20 man group should be hit by all 5 AoEs, but when the 20 man group returns fire with there 20 AoEs each member of the 5 man group would only take 10 AoEs worth of damage.

Obviously the numbers are up for debate, but such a system would help neutralize the great benefit large groups have over smaller groups, without turning large group vs large group combat into a massive instagib-fest. Big groups would still have some inherent advantages over smaller groups, but they would be diluted.

scale wxp/xp so the smaller the group used to kill a player / take a tower the more xp given (running in Zergs basically weeding out any xp given because its just too easy to get)

I doubt that would do anything substantial. People don’t just run in zergs because of the payout. Often they do it for safety, because they don’t want to lose. This is easily observable in games like say, Planetside 2, where you can easily get vastly greater xp rewards for killing people rather than zerging around capping bases every 5-10 minutes and zergs are still extremely prevalent.

Many people are very, very bad at losing and tend to fall into behaviours that reduce the risk of failure to whatever level they feel comfortable with. And safety does come in numbers. This is what drives the zerg mentality more than almost anything else.

Of course, the increased reward payout doesn’t help anything, but it’s far from being the prime motivator.

out of combat rezzing of the dead, and the big one IMO other than Aoe cap GROUP BUFFS ONLY. People grouped get the buffs/condi removal… non grouped members get notta. This stuff was used in games 10 years ago. It really isn’t rocket science.

Yeah, there’s no real arguing with this. The downed state could really use a good overhaul too. Multiple rezzers should not stack additively.

Too bad it’ll never happen. Or at least won’t happen soon enough. Could have been a pretty bloody good game otherwise.

dreztina.4820:

MethaneGas.8357:

Never talked to Oozo, but some of us like to keep our old builds despite the new “OP” stuff going around
- props -

It’s funny how things come full circle. When I first started playing my ele, d/d was considered a weak novelty build that was only good for messing around. Then, for various reasons, it got popular, and all the people I killed called me a fotm bunker ele (because they’re dumb). Now, after all the nerfs, d/d in general has gotten pretty rare, and glass d/d has disappeared altogether and the build is back to being considered a weak novelty.

Hah, we’ll see if the same will happen to Necros
(although I still see some good D/D eles around, and still see very, very few good necros around)

Our navy strikes again this time in ET BL

Spirit Ritulist.9314:

Our navy strikes again this time in ET BL

Unfortunately, Anet corners you into relying on the surface navy. Everyone (especially bubbleheads) knows they’re just targets waiting to be sunk.

MethaneGas.8357:

Kittens ;D

Xom.9264:

Ozoo go conditions before they nerf fire + terror, its worth it. Power will be untouched come nerfs so your spec will still be there.

Never talked to Oozo, but some of us like to keep our old builds despite the new “OP” stuff going around
- props -

Well your not oozo, but if you need to know I was running 30/30/10/0/0 conditions before the patch it had benefits without burning, now its stronger and its worth a try.
Im a power necro at heart but at somepoint if you want to play high level with a team you need to maximize what the class is capable of / fill a role only your class can.

Selfish builds vs builds that add to the group/fill a role others cant. This is not a reference to Oozo at all, but others.

There are many roaming guilds on DR that would be better, if they did not have players running selfish builds, run away builds or overly bunker builds. If I said it once I said it a million times, you have to risk dying to win vs good groups far to many seem to think getting away while your group a fight they should of won is a win.

Alot of these fights are so close 1 person could of turned it with correct utilities and small trait changes but filled their bar and traits with run away skills or self defense skills.

/shrug

Xom.9264:

MethaneGas.8357:

Kittens ;D

Xom.9264:

Ozoo go conditions before they nerf fire + terror, its worth it. Power will be untouched come nerfs so your spec will still be there.

Never talked to Oozo, but some of us like to keep our old builds despite the new “OP” stuff going around
- props -

Well your not oozo, but if you need to know I was running 30/30/10/0/0 conditions before the patch it had benefits without burning, now its stronger and its worth a try.
Im a power necro at heart but at somepoint if you want to play high level with a team you need to maximize what the class is capable of / fill a role only your class can.

Selfish builds vs builds that add to the group/fill a role others cant. This is not a reference to Oozo at all, but others.

There are many roaming guilds on DR that would be better, if they did not have players running selfish builds, run away builds or overly bunker builds. If I said it once I said it a million times, you have to risk dying to win vs good groups far to many seem to think getting away while your group a fight they should of won is a win.

Alot of these fights are so close 1 person could of turned it with correct utilities and small trait changes but filled their bar and traits with run away skills or self defense skills.

/shrug

Played condition for the past few months on the necro and just needed a change of pace. IMO, condition was better before dhuumfire, better with dhuumfire, and will still be better than power for group fights after whatever nerf is coming. :P

As far as filling roles, most of us just run with whatever we feel like playing that night. You will rarely see us running the same composition. And, we really don’t have anyone consistenly running guardians ATM. Although, I’ll probably go back to playing mine for a bit.

One of the things that kind of bothers me about GW2 is the lack of variety in the number of moves available to use. I just start growing bored playing the same class/build for too long.

Xom.9264:

MethaneGas.8357:

Kittens ;D

Xom.9264:

Ozoo go conditions before they nerf fire + terror, its worth it. Power will be untouched come nerfs so your spec will still be there.

Never talked to Oozo, but some of us like to keep our old builds despite the new “OP” stuff going around
- props -

Well your not oozo, but if you need to know I was running 30/30/10/0/0 conditions before the patch it had benefits without burning, now its stronger and its worth a try.
Im a power necro at heart but at somepoint if you want to play high level with a team you need to maximize what the class is capable of / fill a role only your class can.

Selfish builds vs builds that add to the group/fill a role others cant. This is not a reference to Oozo at all, but others.

There are many roaming guilds on DR that would be better, if they did not have players running selfish builds, run away builds or overly bunker builds. If I said it once I said it a million times, you have to risk dying to win vs good groups far to many seem to think getting away while your group a fight they should of won is a win.

Alot of these fights are so close 1 person could of turned it with correct utilities and small trait changes but filled their bar and traits with run away skills or self defense skills.

/shrug

Xom, do you participate in PAXA vent everyday dude? You’re hitting the hammer on the nail everytime. 100% agreed.

Jscull.2514:

Shademehr.1397:

As WvW stands now, there is something to do for everyone’s play style. There are opportunities to play 1vs1, 5vs5, 10vsXXX, use the siege, defend the castle, run the dolyak, grab that supply camp, or whatever you consider “fun”.

You elitists that insist WvW is completely going downhill because it doesn’t support YOUR view (and ONLY your view) of “fun” need to pull your head outta your hineys and realize the world (or a game) don’t revolve around your gaming preferences.

I enjoy all the above mentioned aspects of WvW, which is why I’m there almost every day, as time permits. You whiners and haters? Hit the road. I surely won’t miss you.

Wrong buddy, not something to do for everyone. There aren’t highly skilled groups running around. I have fought every tier below 5 for a year now and can count the groups that give us a solid fight with both hands. That’s pathetic considering there are 20-60 mans running around. So what you said is false. 90-95% of the population does the same thing. And calling us elitests is just pointing out what we are and what we’ve earned. We’re here to compete, not kitten around and play grab kitten with buddies somewhere in the Internet world . Like I said earlier… Most of the population is here for social gathering, reason I’m complaining is because I’ve played other games with WAY less potential with WAY MORE competitive people/teams. Just doesn’t exist here nor does Anet want that. They like majority money spending casuals.

Can’t find something you like with the game? I think my last three sentences address your concern.

Alternatively, you could try Gears of Modern Call of Battlefield Warfare on consoles. I hear Xbox Live would be great for you to find like-minded individuals.

Oozo.7856:

One of the things that kind of bothers me about GW2 is the lack of variety in the number of moves available to use. I just start growing bored playing the same class/build for too long.

And it’s so boring/time consuming/gold consuming leveling and gearing out new characters too boot. Terrible isn’t it?

Berk.8561:

katz.8376:

on the other hand, all is fair in war.

No, not really. The people who engage in war without restraint or humanity tend to get remembered as monsters and war criminals, the Geneva Conventions exist for a reason, and things can get very nasty for everyone when people don’t restrain themselves at all, even in real war. Yes, this is a game and far less is at stake, but the psychology of what is decent and fair is similar.

I don’t personally have a problem with players attacking other players in the WvW jumping puzzle and I can even accept denial without a kill for loot as a legitimate goal but making a cooperative deal and then turning on a person who helped you is a jerk move no matter how you cut it.

And for the players who are defending this who enjoy dueling challenges, would you be fine with a commander showing up to Fight Night with a zerg to make it impossible to have it and for no other reason or would that be a jerk move? How about players who follow the duel protocol and then have their friends jump in to help if they start losing?

i was more referring to half of the expression “all’s fair in love and war.”

what that guy did is kitten, without question. he relied on the kindness and trusting nature of someone, and then turned around and bit them in the kitten, and then proceeded to make life suck for anyone else wanting to get the jp puzzle done… and didn’t even kill them (death should be expected anywhere in wvw, even the puzzle. it’s just a nice turn of events when you run across someone and they don’t try to kill you outright). no matter how you slice that, that’s a no-skill class “A” jerk right there, and not deserving of respect in the slightest.

Jscull.2514:

I agree attic. Anet could fix a lot of these issues / increase competitiveness by a couple easy fixes. Raise Aoe cap to 10 or 15, scale wxp/xp so the smaller the group used to kill a player / take a tower the more xp given (running in Zergs basically weeding out any xp given because its just too easy to get) out of combat rezzing of the dead, and the big one IMO other than Aoe cap GROUP BUFFS ONLY. People grouped get the buffs/condi removal… non grouped members get notta. This stuff was used in games 10 years ago. It really isn’t rocket science.

In my opinion I have always seen smart Mobility > Zerg mentality. [Bags] focuses more on moving around and striking smart, and when we see a Zerg we never have a problem, we engage from ranged to get their attention, but with the idea that we are going to feint retreat hoping they chase us. And it works. Yes it sucks we have to avoid these full zergs but it’s a part of the game.
We find if we use builds that offer as much mobility as possible, and high damage we can string out groups of people, turn and get a few quick kills, and continue moving before the rest catch up. To be fair in our HoD matchup I never saw paxas 5 man. We ran into 5 KoM guardians, but they were a lot of bunker and nobody was winning. I think the 5 mans are around just not all at the same time.

I guess what I’m saying is we substitute going bunker/ group support for group mobility and burst damage. No we won’t be taking out zergs, but the zergs sure as hell don’t take us out. Maybe roaming groups need to try out thief mentality applied to group situations. Move smart and pick your kills.

Also you’re saying fix WvW for small man. One could also argue that WvW isn’t designed for small man, but large epic group fights. That’s why it makes small groups more impressive. If you want serious small man, reinvent your builds in sPvP because you’re playing the wrong game.

Xom.9264:

Selfish builds vs builds that add to the group/fill a role others cant. This is not a reference to Oozo at all, but others.

There are many roaming guilds on DR that would be better, if they did not have players running selfish builds, run away builds or overly bunker builds. If I said it once I said it a million times, you have to risk dying to win vs good groups far to many seem to think getting away while your group a fight they should of won is a win.

Alot of these fights are so close 1 person could of turned it with correct utilities and small trait changes but filled their bar and traits with run away skills or self defense skills.

/shrug

Not really sure who you are referencing. I know of almost all of the roaming groups on DR, at least the ones that still play, and I can’t think of a single person that plays a selfish build, or at the very least doesn’t have a specific role that they fill in a group. Overly bunker builds are not bad builds in any sense as they provide a source of damage mitigation, especially when considering the 5 man AoE cap. Personally I run a support build on my guardian that also has the added bonus of being exceptionally bunker just because of the way that healing power effects guardians. I would still run the build though even if I wasn’t as bunker just because of how effective it is in a coordinated group composition. On the same note, overly glass builds that you might consider selfish are also extremely viable in coordinated groups. As long as those playing them understand their role and have good positioning and combat awareness so as to not die instantly.

Hopefully that helps explain some of the builds you might be seeing in the groups you fight against, and understand why they run what they run. I can tell you for certain there has never been a successful roaming group that has just been random builds with no coordination and purely selfish play. Also if you have any specific groups/guilds in mind that you think implement your aforementioned style of play (selfish builds etc), I’d like to know who they are, because I personally can’t think of any.

Tots.3056:

Also you’re saying fix WvW for small man. One could also argue that WvW isn’t designed for small man, but large epic group fights. That’s why it makes small groups more impressive. If you want serious small man, reinvent your builds in sPvP because you’re playing the wrong game.

Not really. We’re not saying fix WvW for small man, we’re saying make small man a viable option. And spvp is not small man, it’s still zergy in a sense. tPvP is a bit better, but you still only get 3-4 people in a fight, and the fights are always on the same ground. Part of the fun of WvW is the unexpectedness of running into the group: no pre-buffs to help in the fight, just pure reacting correctly. And while in tPvP environment has some play, everyone knows the environmnet beforehand, as opposed to the team that can take note of their surroundings and use it to their advantage first. And in tPvP you must have someone on the point to keep it from getting capped. This changes how people can play. WvW allows for the small groups to run around not knowing how many, when, or where they will fight. This forces the group to have such great synergy to be able to adapt to any situation. A 5-man group can take down a zerg, but when the zerg runs to the nearest tower and half the zerg gets on arrow carts and fires away, it’s not fun for anyone at that point. The 5-man group lost their challenge, and will most likely just run away, the zerg just lost time for what it was going to do in the first place and now they just lost those 5 “free” loot bags. Granted, there are very coordinated guild zergs out there, and they have their purpose. However, it should not be JUST zergs. There should be an option for small man roaming. Because of ET’s low population, we need an option to have small man groups be effective. Unfortunately, they can’t be because of the reasons Jscull and some others have described. We want WvW to be fun for EVERYONE, not just zerglings.

Well. While you guys are complaining about zergs. I’ll be that Mesmer hiding in the tower after the Zerg leaves to pick off the few stragglers and port my 5 man back in for the easy recap.

Can always appreciate the mindlessness of the zergs.

Tots.3056:

Jscull.2514:

I agree attic. Anet could fix a lot of these issues / increase competitiveness by a couple easy fixes. Raise Aoe cap to 10 or 15, scale wxp/xp so the smaller the group used to kill a player / take a tower the more xp given (running in Zergs basically weeding out any xp given because its just too easy to get) out of combat rezzing of the dead, and the big one IMO other than Aoe cap GROUP BUFFS ONLY. People grouped get the buffs/condi removal… non grouped members get notta. This stuff was used in games 10 years ago. It really isn’t rocket science.

In my opinion I have always seen smart Mobility > Zerg mentality. [Bags] focuses more on moving around and striking smart, and when we see a Zerg we never have a problem, we engage from ranged to get their attention, but with the idea that we are going to feint retreat hoping they chase us. And it works. Yes it sucks we have to avoid these full zergs but it’s a part of the game.
We find if we use builds that offer as much mobility as possible, and high damage we can string out groups of people, turn and get a few quick kills, and continue moving before the rest catch up. To be fair in our HoD matchup I never saw paxas 5 man. We ran into 5 KoM guardians, but they were a lot of bunker and nobody was winning. I think the 5 mans are around just not all at the same time.

I guess what I’m saying is we substitute going bunker/ group support for group mobility and burst damage. No we won’t be taking out zergs, but the zergs sure as hell don’t take us out. Maybe roaming groups need to try out thief mentality applied to group situations. Move smart and pick your kills.

The thing we’re objecting to is that the rewards for individual player skill in WvW are few and far between. Numbers are the primary deciding factor in almost any engagement.

Numbers allow groups to soak more far more damage & CC then they otherwise would and gives them a massive advantage in rezzing in addition to the large advantages in firepower and general survivability that normally accompanies said large groups in all games. Player skill cannot realistically compensate for and overcome those bonuses once you pass a certain threshold.

Strategies that worked in other games to fight zergs just flat out don’t work in GW2, often because you have no way to keep people dead apart from slinging CC at the people trying to rez. You say you guys run an extending group. But you’ll almost never wipe people like that because people just follow along behind you picking up the bodies and giving chase again; unless you’re fairly even numbers wise. It can be kinda fun, but you’re still getting hosed by the game mechanics.

No other PvP game I’ve ever played has placed player skill at such an overwhelming disadvantage. It’s incredibly frustrating and just serves to drive competitive players away from WvW; which will eventually cause bad things for everyone else too.

Also you’re saying fix WvW for small man. One could also argue that WvW isn’t designed for small man, but large epic group fights. That’s why it makes small groups more impressive. If you want serious small man, reinvent your builds in sPvP because you’re playing the wrong game.

I wish people would stop saying these things. They’re complete nonsense arguments that serve no purpose but to deflect attention away from the real issues at hand.

Looking at ANets blog posts from pre- and post-launch all outline that small man groups are a valid and supported WvW playstyle. No discussion.

And saying “oh just go play sPvP” is insulting. We play WvW because we enjoy the chaotic and unpredictable nature of open PvP. All of the people I’ve spoken to think that sPvP is staid, boring, and overly predictable. We don’t want to run around in circles sitting on cap points. Personally, to me, that’s no better than karma trains.

Leave sPvP out of arguments about WvW.

(Warning: Lots of text. I even had to break it up into two posts…)

World vs. World is about accumulating points by holding locations and killing sentries. The end (of the week) result being the server with the most points wins. We each clearly interpret “winning” differently and some might even argue that there are no rewards for winning, but that’s not really true.

Anet gives world bonuses that are dependent on how many points you have accumulated. It stands to reason that a server that has the most points is also, on average, accumulating more WXP and more loot for its players. There is also an official “ranking” that a server attains by winning their matches. Until recently, one could have also said that winning a match would help you attain map completion too (by being green), but that’s been changed. Maybe some of us don’t like the rewards, but that certainly doesn’t mean that we don’t get any.

Craig.2403:

Not really. We’re not saying fix WvW for small man, we’re saying make small man a viable option.

Why don’t you think the small man is a viable option as WvW stands now? There are a few cases to be made about “small man” operations that fit into what I believe to be the intent of WvW:

1. Camps, and towers usually, are goals that are well within the capabilities of a small-man group. I can’t count the number of times where I’ve been a part of a small group that has taken a tower. It’s super easy, especially when an opponents attention is diverted because they’re facing a larger allied group (that “zerg” that lots of people seem to hate). Heck, camps can be solo’d. You can’t get any smaller than one.

2. Guerialla fighting. Your server’s zerg getting ready to attack Hills? Take a small group and go knock on the doors of Garrison and Bay. Divert attention from the true operation so your bigger team can put the smack-down on Hills.

3. Cut off reinforcements. Now that the previously mentioned attack on Hills is proceeding in earnest, start cutting off the reinforcements. Prevent those singles or small groups from getting into Hills to defend. Is your small man REALLY talented? Take on that zerg that’s heading to defend. Maybe you can’t stop them, but maybe you can slow them down enough to allow your allies time to get into the Lord’s room.

4. Do you feel like your enemy is hard at work building defenses or upgrading their structures? Grab the Quaggan island so the lightning can start working on the siege. Cut off supply by killing Dolyaks. Destroy cannons, mortars, oil, and other siege within the range of AoE. Basically soften up a target as best as you can to make it easier to take later.

5. Stop OTHER small teams from doing all those things that I just mentioned

6. Kill everyone you run across while doing all of the aforementioned things.

What I DON’T believe to be the intent of WvW with regards to small teams is simple:

1. Team vs. Team fighting, whether pre-arranged or roaming around with no other intent than to find other similarly-minded small teams looking for the same types of fights. This contributes nothing to the PPT.

(con’t in next post)

This next question is really aimed at everyone:
What, if anything, does ANET really need to do to cater to “SMALL MAN” warfare in a WORLD vs. WORLD setting beyond what is already available?

Craig.2403:

A 5-man group can take down a zerg, but when the zerg runs to the nearest tower and half the zerg gets on arrow carts and fires away, it’s not fun for anyone at that point.

See there’s one of the things that I believe a lot of us are overlooking. Fun. Fun, is a relative term. What one person considers fun is not necessarily what another person considers fun. Somehow we all seem to know exactly how people have their fun.

Protip: We don’t.

What you consider fun and what I consider fun are very likely two different things. If you (you generally, not YOU specifically) are not having fun, then find something else to do. PLEASE don’t assume that since you, or a very vocal minority, are not having fun with something, then it must surely mean that no one else is having fun.

Craig.2403:

However, it should not be JUST zergs. There should be an option for small man roaming. Because of ET’s low population, we need an option to have small man groups be effective. Unfortunately, they can’t be because of the reasons Jscull and some others have described.

Small man groups can contribute in all of the ways I’ve already described (plus many more I’ve probably overlooked). If anyone should know that, it’s we ET’ers. Sure we can toss a “zerg” together on occasion, but we are the epitome of getting things done with small groups. Just the other day, five random players grouped up (not even partied), and took back every single camp and veteran on our map in a ridiculously short amount of time. Five people, who didn’t know each other, talking in /S chat made a meaningful (as defined above) contribution to our server. Well, for at least one or two ticks anyway.

Craig.2403:

We want WvW to be fun for EVERYONE, not just zerglings.

That’s impossible. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. We play games in a fantasy world, we don’t actually live in them.

edit1: Impending editing for readibility. That was a lot of typing. Shew!
edit2: Our current train of discussion isn’t really matchup-oriented. I wonder if it’s better to move it out of this thread…

@Shademehr-

What I DON’T believe to be the intent of WvW with regards to small teams is simple:
1. Team vs. Team fighting, whether pre-arranged or roaming around with no other intent than to find other similarly-minded small teams looking for the same types of fights. This contributes nothing to the PPT.
Shademehr.1397
This next question is really aimed at everyone:
What, if anything, does ANET really need to do to cater to “SMALL MAN” warfare in a WORLD vs. WORLD setting beyond what is already available?

The fact that you wrote that wall text and then put this ^ in clearly tells anyone who is from the hardcore 20% of gamers that you have NEVER experienced and have no clue what competitive gaming looks like. You said small man players can find enjoyment in taking camps and towers…. Bro if I wanted to take objectives, I would have stuck around WAR and would still be playing that garbage game. Taking objectives can be done by 8 year olds…..you are the guy who can’t possibly fathom how our side of this story literally likes cancer more than ppt. You can’t fathom that because all you know is “epic battles” and playing like general Patton come Friday nights. OBJECTIVE BASED PVP IS THE WORST KIND. Mine as well play call of duty, rift, warhammer online, Star Wars…. All horrible outcomes for skilled base pvp.

Our main point is there isn’t ANY competitive hardcore players roaming looking for other competitive roaming players (the thing you said you couldn’t wrap your brain around or fathom) wanting to engage in whooping some kitten in similar skill level fights. This isn’t happening because most of the actual skilled players left gw2 because they came to realize this is a “starter mmo” for people who are money spending casuals.

Shademehr.1397:

World vs. World is about accumulating points by holding locations and killing sentries.

Your primary supposition is wrong and all of your points stemming from it are flawed.

WvW is not about ‘accumulating points.’ WvW is just an extension of the PvE side of the game with an alternate ruleset.

The main reason that points and objectives and such exist is to give additional goals for players to undertake beyond ‘kill everything that moves.’ Plus a crude balancing method in the case of points and more varied terrain over which to fight in the case of objectives. That’s all they do. Reading further into this is just over thinking things.

This conclusion is supported by the fact that there is no official or unofficial discouragement of activities that exclude all possibility of earning points or taking objectives. Namely organized fight club nights and the like.

Shademehr.1397:

Craig.2403:

However, it should not be JUST zergs. There should be an option for small man roaming. Because of ET’s low population, we need an option to have small man groups be effective. Unfortunately, they can’t be because of the reasons Jscull and some others have described.

Small man groups can contribute in all of the ways I’ve already described (plus many more I’ve probably overlooked). If anyone should know that, it’s we ET’ers. Sure we can toss a “zerg” together on occasion, but we are the epitome of getting things done with small groups. Just the other day, five random players grouped up (not even partied), and took back every single camp and veteran on our map in a ridiculously short amount of time. Five people, who didn’t know each other, talking in /S chat made a meaningful (as defined above) contribution to our server. Well, for at least one or two ticks anyway.

You’re overlooking the fact that many of us are dissatisfied with those ways we can ‘contribute’. What I believe most of us want is to perform similar functions that we did in previous games.

In Warhammer, for example, my guild could fairly easily zerg bust 3, 4, sometimes even 5 times our numbers. This is what we came into GW2 to do and this is one of many things that just is not reasonably possible within the game. The ultimate conclusion is that all of my original guildies left back in October and I only stuck around because I found a new group of people to run with in NoQQ and LARP, and the vast majority of those people are gone too for the same bloody reason.

This sort of bleeding is not healthy for the long term viability of WvW. It should have been stanched long ago, but ANet seems to either be afraid of scaring off the more timid casuals or is unwilling to actually attempt to balance combat within WvW for whatever reason.

Craig.2403:

Craig.2403:

We want WvW to be fun for EVERYONE, not just zerglings.

That’s impossible. You can’t please all of the people all of the time. We play games in a fantasy world, we don’t actually live in them.

Absolute twaddle and insultingly conceited. Nobody worth listening to is asking for small groups fun to come at the exclusion of the zerglings fun. What we want is our fair go; the ability to compete in a meaningful way instead of being limited to ineffectually backcapping points and killing yaks.

Jscull.2514:

@Shademehr-

What I DON’T believe to be the intent of WvW with regards to small teams is simple:
1. Team vs. Team fighting, whether pre-arranged or roaming around with no other intent than to find other similarly-minded small teams looking for the same types of fights. This contributes nothing to the PPT.
Shademehr.1397
This next question is really aimed at everyone:
What, if anything, does ANET really need to do to cater to “SMALL MAN” warfare in a WORLD vs. WORLD setting beyond what is already available?

The fact that you wrote that wall text and then put this ^ in clearly tells anyone who is from the hardcore 20% of gamers that you have NEVER experienced and have no clue what competitive gaming looks like. You said small man players can find enjoyment in taking camps and towers…. Bro if I wanted to take objectives, I would have stuck around WAR and would still be playing that garbage game. Taking objectives can be done by 8 year olds…..you are the guy who can’t possibly fathom how our side of this story literally likes cancer more than ppt. You can’t fathom that because all you know is “epic battles” and playing like general Patton come Friday nights. OBJECTIVE BASED PVP IS THE WORST KIND. Mine as well play call of duty, rift, warhammer online, Star Wars…. All horrible outcomes for skilled base pvp.

Our main point is there isn’t ANY competitive hardcore players roaming looking for other competitive roaming players (the thing you said you couldn’t wrap your brain around or fathom) wanting to engage in whooping some kitten in similar skill level fights. This isn’t happening because most of the actual skilled players left gw2 because they came to realize this is a “starter mmo” for people who are money spending casuals.

This is most definitely a starter MMO…I have been amazed at how hard of a time some people have had just picking up the basics of WvW (what siege does what, which is effective, when/where to use it, how to defend, etc)….
When you look at things from that aspect, that of “small roaming groups”, open field fights, understanding that winning a 1v1 doesnt mean you have a good build and/or even know how to play, you begin to realize that an argument of how the game SHOULD be played is really moot, because there are tons of people that really don’t even know how to play the aspect of the game that they think is “the point of WvW”.

These aren’t aspects that real players should have to learn, these are aspects that people who have never done anything but kill computer generated bad guys have to learn. If you are still lost after a month (generous) of WvW on what to do, then you have lived in a PVE closet too long…The game is so kittening simple it is borderline kittened. 4 maps, 3 the exact same, so you have to learn siege (off/def) and 2 maps essentially…After a few months if you still are getting a thrill by PVDooring SM then you make me sad….In these tiers you cant even lead a group of pugs PAST an objective because they magnetize to it if it doesn’t already belong to them. Sometimes I wonder if ANET just crashed two servers in a match, would the 3rd servers pugs be content to PVgate everything? I think they would…In fact I pretty much guarantee they would. At least for a day or two….

Like I said before, I have won a lot, lost a lot, either way my character plays the same week in and week out…The only thing that has ever made a difference to me in this game is how fun the fights are.

I hope all of you siegers and PPTers (meaning the people who think PPT is the only thing that matters) get the chance before you leave the game or ANET ruins it, to truly experience playing WvW for 4-5hrs and never checking the PPT because the fights are so engaging. If that ever happens you may discover why so many people have pretty much given up on the mindset of “we gotta cap SM”, “Erma gerd our garri is under attack”, etc….

Jscull.2514:

Our main point is there isn’t ANY competitive hardcore players roaming looking for other competitive roaming players (the thing you said you couldn’t wrap your brain around or fathom) wanting to engage in whooping some kitten in similar skill level fights. This isn’t happening because most of the actual skilled players left gw2 because they came to realize this is a “starter mmo” for people who are money spending casuals.

I’ll skip over the mischaracterizations, and Patton-quasi-insults, and get straight to the stuff I’ve quoted.

If a game does not provide you, or similarly minded individuals, with the satisfaction that you crave, why do you still play the game? It’s my belief that Anet strongly views their sPvP environment as their competitive (e-Sport if you will) “small group” fighting environment and WvW as the “army vs army” fighting environment.

So serious question here: Do you have any hope that Anet will start making the sweeping changes to accomodate your preferred playstyle? From your previous posts, it doesn’t seem like you do and I’m left to wonder, why not move onto a game that gives you the challenge you desire?

Shademehr.1397:

Jscull.2514:

Our main point is there isn’t ANY competitive hardcore players roaming looking for other competitive roaming players (the thing you said you couldn’t wrap your brain around or fathom) wanting to engage in whooping some kitten in similar skill level fights. This isn’t happening because most of the actual skilled players left gw2 because they came to realize this is a “starter mmo” for people who are money spending casuals.

I’ll skip over the mischaracterizations, and Patton-quasi-insults, and get straight to the stuff I’ve quoted.

If a game does not provide you, or similarly minded individuals, with the satisfaction that you crave, why do you still play the game? It’s my belief that Anet strongly views their sPvP environment as their competitive (e-Sport if you will) “small group” fighting environment and WvW as the “army vs army” fighting environment.

So serious question here: Do you have any hope that Anet will start making the sweeping changes to accomodate your preferred playstyle? From your previous posts, it doesn’t seem like you do and I’m left to wonder, why not move onto a game that gives you the challenge you desire?

This is the first mmo I have truly played longer than 6 months since I ran in an 8 man guild (a guild with literally only 8 guys) that ran every night in Daoc 7 YEARS AGO. Why did I come here? Advertisement of tri-faction open world “since dark age of Camelot” marketing. Along with the 20% of hardcore gamers in the mmo community that have been missing from MMO populations for the past 5-8 years since Daoc / UO/ couple others died. Literally had this conversation with our support guard three days ago, “joe let’s realize that we’re basically waiting for Camelot unchained and just lose all expectations of gw2 and the starter mmoer forum idiots”. That sentence says it all. We play because its the only tri faction open world system out there, and were waiting for Camelot unchained.

Edit: if Anet cared about improving player vs player based skill design of the game, they wouldn’t be adding door mastery and repair mastery, thus loss of hope.

Shademehr.1397:

It’s my belief that Anet strongly views their sPvP environment as their competitive (e-Sport if you will) “small group” fighting environment and WvW as the “army vs army” fighting environment.

I am pretty sure you are right sir…Which speaks to the overall problem, ANET has no kittening clue….I mean have you guys REALLY played sPVP? Bunch of cookie cutter gear combinations that dumb the game down, ran by cookie cutter build-players that even further dumb it down by running whatever “OP thing there is this week”, supposedly all in the name of capping/holding little red and blue circles….If that ever becomes a sport (e or otherwise), just shoot me in the kitten….

Hell the first 4 months I played this game I was convinced it was only there to buildcraft/test your WvW setups (even though the combination limitations prove even that difficult), I was surprised to find out that people took that kitten serious AT ALL. Hell I even used to troll PAXA and tell them to go to sPVP, until I spent any time in there and realized I would rather go run dungeons with the rest of the mouth breathers before I would consider that hellhole anything close to “pvp”.

Attic.1562:

In Warhammer, for example, my guild could fairly easily zerg bust 3, 4, sometimes even 5 times our numbers. This is what we came into GW2 to do and this is one of many things that just is not reasonably possible within the game. The ultimate conclusion is that all of my original guildies left back in October and I only stuck around because I found a new group of people to run with in NoQQ and LARP, and the vast majority of those people are gone too for the same bloody reason.

I wouldn’t leave Call of Duty and then jump into Uncharted and demand that it should be the same gaming experience.

Your guildies (and most of the other people you’ve hung out with) have come to the conclusion that five people could not compete with twenty-five people at one time and chose to vote with their feet. They discovered that Guild Wars 2 was not the gaming experience they desired. Based on what you’ve said, I believe they made the right choice and you may want to consider following in their footsteps if you are also disappointed with the fact that you can’t compete against up to five times your numbers.

Attic.1562:

…ANet …is unwilling to actually attempt to balance combat within WvW for whatever reason.

Balanced in what sense? By allowing five people to “zerg bust” twenty-five people? I’d wager that isn’t quite the definition of “balanced”.

Shademehr.1397:

Balanced in what sense? By allowing five people to “zerg bust” twenty-five people? I’d wager that isn’t quite the definition of “balanced”.

It would be balanced if that 5 could hit that 25 with all of their skills, it would if those 25 weren’t counting on their buddies to help them up when their glassy selves inevitably hit the ground 3 times in one engagement…Just because you have 25 people doesn’t mean you should win against 5…You should probably be better than those 5 people to actually win, and on the other side if those 5 are better than your 25 they should win, whereas now they have to be exponentially better because they have to overcome AoE caps, rezzers, etc. You just think the QQing and nerf-crying is bad in this game now, if they ever find a way to increase the AoE cap without frying their servers it will be goodnight sweet prince….

Oldschool PvPers don’t consider objective-based PvP as real PvP. The closest thing to real PvP to them is an open field fight in WvW.

By oldschool PvPers, I’m talking about people who played DAoC or perhaps even UO (which I did not play) or Meridian 59 (which I did play). In M59 there were no PvE servers. It was full PvP outside of the cities and when you died all of your inventory, armor, and weapons could be looted.

It had guild halls which could be taken by enemy guilds. This was usually done by infiltration and betrayal. And if it was taken all of the stuff you had stored there was taken.

There was a player justice system. People who killed innocents turned red and could be killed with no consequences. People who killed innocents would also be haunted by revenants that would attack them randomly. Revenants were difficult to kill.

The innocents on the server could elect a “governer” (which was a player) and that player had the power to pardon people who turned red. The game had PK (player killer) and antiPK guilds. It had gulds that declared war on each other, infiltrated each other, and took guild halls. It had a political system. And that was decades ago.

I was in an antiPK guild, but also played PKers which I used to infiltrate and sabotage PK guilds. I actually created a different persona that “spoke” in a different way than my main character to fool the PK guilds. When I killed people I always returned their most valuable items. But, for a price… Dark Angel Feathers, which were needed to cast dark magic (Qor).

Compare that to the direction that MMOs have gone in today’s market. And ask yourself why that is. :P

Oozo.7856:

Oldschool PvPers don’t consider objective-based PvP as real PvP. The closest thing to real PvP to them is an open field fight in WvW.

By oldschool PvPers, I’m talking about people who played DAoC or perhaps even UO (which I did not play) or Meridian 59 (which I did play). In M59 there were no PvE servers. It was full PvP outside of the cities and when you died all of your inventory, armor, and weapons could be looted.

It had guild halls which could be taken by enemy guilds. This was usually done by infiltration and betrayal. And if it was taken all of the stuff you had stored there was theirs.

There was a player justice system. People who killed innocents turned red and could be killed with no consequences. People who killed innocents would also be haunted by revenants that would attack them randomly. Revenants were difficult to kill.

The innocents on the server could elect a “governer” (which was a player) and that player had the power to pardon people who turned red. The game had PK (player killer) and antiPK guilds. It had gulds that declared war on each other, infiltrated each other, and took guild halls. It had a political system. And that was decades ago.

Compare that to the direction that MMOs have gone in today’s market. And ask yourself why that is. :P

Because 8 year olds won’t beg their parents for their MasterCard without seeing in the games advertisement “ease of use”.

Shade, I’m sure you don’t know my guild.. And this isn’t to measure unknow what’s…. Because there are other guilds that can do and do do it, but the guys talking to you, regularly (for us it’s probably 2-3 times a week) will wipe 15-25 players with 5 guys. We aren’t crying because we can’t win pal.

Shademehr.1397:

Attic.1562:

In Warhammer, for example, my guild could fairly easily zerg bust 3, 4, sometimes even 5 times our numbers. This is what we came into GW2 to do and this is one of many things that just is not reasonably possible within the game. The ultimate conclusion is that all of my original guildies left back in October and I only stuck around because I found a new group of people to run with in NoQQ and LARP, and the vast majority of those people are gone too for the same bloody reason.

I wouldn’t leave Call of Duty and then jump into Uncharted and demand that it should be the same gaming experience.

Your guildies (and most of the other people you’ve hung out with) have come to the conclusion that five people could not compete with twenty-five people at one time and chose to vote with their feet. They discovered that Guild Wars 2 was not the gaming experience they desired. Based on what you’ve said, I believe they made the right choice and you may want to consider following in their footsteps if you are also disappointed with the fact that you can’t compete against up to five times your numbers.

Maybe, but I can’t help but feel mislead by ANet’s pre-launch assurances that small group PvP would be supported and that player skill would be rewarded.

Shademehr.1397:

Attic.1562:

…ANet …is unwilling to actually attempt to balance combat within WvW for whatever reason.

Balanced in what sense? By allowing five people to “zerg bust” twenty-five people? I’d wager that isn’t quite the definition of “balanced”.

By definition ‘balance’ is a way to describe a relationship between two or more factors that is in equilibrium.

In this context the factors being discussed are player skill vs number of players; a relationship that is clearly not in equilibrium in any way, shape, or form once a certain threshold of ‘number of players’ is crossed. You cannot reasonably dispute that.

Oozo.7856:

[stuff] :P

These are the sort of things that make me anxious to get my hands on Star Citizen. I can live with random impersonal fights but I really want a digital home to build and defend.

blargh. why is this argument/discussion/whatever happening in our matchup thread >.>

Jscull.2514:

2. Berk- you are 1 of 95-99% of this game that doesn’t want to do anything else but use wvw as your “epic battlefield”. Dude it’s pvp… Player vs player… There are towers and keeps here And that is all you see. Forget the red players running around, theyre just annoying right? Forget that running around with 20+ people makes this game ez mode because of dumb mechanics like 5 person Aoe cap and downed state (worst idea ever in mmo history btw).

Not at all. I’ve done all sorts of things in WvW ranging from running with a zerg and camping sites to chasing a single player half-way across a map and taking him out at the end and charging a group of three alone and scaring them off. Heck, I’ve even repeatedly thrown myself into a spawn camping zerg with the Outmanned buff to see how I’d do for an hour or so.

I don’t think it’s just towers and keeps but I also don’t think they are just there for decoration. I’m fine with the PvP part but I think there is more to PvP than well-practiced teams fighting in an open field. I find the fortification and siege mechanics interesting when they are actually PvP instead of PvDoor. I think cracking a defended fortification is interesting, both as a defender and an attacker. And I think that part of the game suffers as much from players not knowing how to use all of the other tools the game gives them as much as the open field combat does.

When I first started playing WvW and reading the forums, I thought there were all sorts of things wrong with WvW ranging from balance to overpowered mechanics but as time goes on, I think many, if not most, of the problems in WvW are related to how the players play the game (there are still some true problems, such as the AoE limits which are the natural and realistic solution to a stacked zerg — the problem with the downed state in WvW is how rallying works, not the whole concept, in my opinion) and ANet’s problem is largely a matter of what they reward and “punish” (I lose gold whenever I play a defensive game). Players zerg because that’s how they make money. If you could earn a lot defending a tower or engaging in small group combat, more people might do those things.

I’ve demonstrated to my guild of friends that a fairly small number of people in a pre-siege equipped tower can melt zergs and they told me it worked exactly the way I told them it would. And the reason for that is that the siege weapons have a much higher AoE limit than my ranger’s Barrage does and that’s what busts zergs. I see siege weapons as the anti-zerg work-around for the ridiculously small AoE limit that ANet isn’t in any hurry to get rid of for characters.

Siege weapons also require a certain amount of skill to place and use and a lot of it gets used badly and sometimes, amazingly, not at all (I’ve been in plenty of attacks in towers or keeps with siege weapons not being used by players standing on the walls watching the attack). It’s not easy to kill player-characters with a cannon, for example, but I’ve done it. In fact, I’ve killed a team of two scouts when the thief wouldn’t leave their downed friend behind and wasn’t nearly as clever with their stealth as they thought they were. I’ve actually been training newbies about how to find and use the siege equipment properly because that’s the best change an outnumbered server like ET has to fight off the zergs.

Have people camp the towers and keeps with manned siege weapons and they’ll need to build their own in the field to crack the tower or keep. PvDoor disappears once the arrow carts and other siege weapons start raining death down on the zerg looking to press 1 to win. And when they build field siege weapons, that creates a great opportunity for open field combat with an objective. Some of the best open-field combat I’ve seen between large groups on ET has involved surging out to attack a siege weapon set up to take a tower, both as defender and attacker.

I’ve also been part of a group of people that I wasn’t even in a party with that held a tower despite the wall going down twice because we were ready for the enemy and took them out as they came in (not even using siege weapons) and they only took the tower with a much larger zerg on the third try. I find that defend and hold game, against other players, every bit as interesting as chasing the guy half-way across the map and taking him out. And I’ve also found it interesting being on the invading side of that same scenario and being driven out of a tower we didn’t have sufficient numbers to take. That’s not PvDoor. It is PvP. And my feeling about PvDoor is that if I wanted to attack NPCs that I’m guaranteed to beat for loot, I could go back to PvE and get a much better experience doing that.

Jscull.2514:

Just play general Patton every night and feel epic like youre living lord of the rings? 95-99% of this game hates competition. Hates when enemies kill/troll them in a jumping puzzle so they waste RL time and are “appalled” at the actions. Please graduate from lalaville and jump into wanting to use your own skill to kill other people. Not Anets seige skill. Like king AMA said, take out siege – I bet 40% or more would quit the game.

I could easily come up with a pop-psychology analysis of your motives that would make you sound pretty lame so please spare me the same. It’s a game that most people are playing for recreation, not a lifestyle or a second job. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people want a recreational activity that’s a pastime rather than a challenge and I also understand why other people want and enjoy a challenge. There are times when I’m looking for one or the other and one of the things that works well for me in GW2 is that I can find both in the game. When I want easy, I do the Frozen Maw. When I go into WvW, I’m not looking for easy but I’m also not looking for futile, which is where I think a lot of the highly skilled players make a mistake they might not even realize they are making.

The point where the game is challenging is somewhere between easy and futile and that’s going to vary from player to player based on a variety of factors including both experience and natural aptitude. If players perceive an encounter as futile, they’ll tend to give up and avoid it. If they perceive it as challenging, they’ll often work on getting better, even if they lose a lot at first.

When I encounter PAXA/KoM when I’m solo roaming, I usually either run or stand there and die. Why? Because I perceive the encounter as futile. Why? Because I’m predictably attacked by two people (outnumbered) working in coordination following a clearly well-practiced attack plan (it looks identical every time) that takes me down in a few blows. It might as well be a zerg running over me for all it matters. I don’t learn anything and don’t bother trying because it’s over so fast I’m luckly if I get an attack off or even see what is hitting me. It feels futile.

It’s not as if I’m not willing to fight one-on-one. I’ve done it and even won a few. It’s also not that I’m unwilling to take on larger numbers. Heck, I’ve even jumped into full parties to see if I could take someone down before they took me down. But in the case of the elite hunter-killer guilds, they are so good and so fast it’s futile for me to even try, and I’m going to avoid futile.

So here is my suggestion. If you want people to try, learn, and enjoy the sort of open-field PvP combat you enjoy, don’t make their first experiences with it feel like futility. If you see a lone player wandering around their borderlands, don’t blindside them with a stealthed thief that hits them with a few shots while a warrior rushes up to them and finishes them off before they know what hit them. Have the warrior walk up and one-on-one them. Basically go easy on the newbies. Why? For the same reason you don’t teach a young child to love chess by mating them in a few moves the first few times they play. That’s not how you get someone to love a game.

Are there risks involved in doing what I’m suggesting? Sure. If you pull your punches, you could wind up leaving yourself exposed to an opponent that’s actually quite good and defeats you. They might also have their own stealthed thief waiting for you.

But if you want me to stick around and fight you guys PvP instead of running or standing there while you slay me (I can’t imaging the latter being much fun for you guys, either) when I’m solo roaming, then try attacking me one-on-one rather than two-on-one or with your whole team. If you’ll notice in last week’s treat for the match-up involving ET, I mentioned getting taken down while harvesting gold and not looking for a fight but didn’t complain about it. I should have stood and at least tried to fight but part of the reason why I didn’t is that I’m so used to getting wiped out by a team that I do expect such encounters to be futile, so don’t have a lot of incentive left to try it and actually was more willing to try such things when I first started WvW than I am now.

katz.8376:

blargh. why is this argument/discussion/whatever happening in our matchup thread >.>

I think it started with someone mentioning PAXA, but I’m enjoying the discussion.

So, was fighting a random warrior. Right before I ended their life, This guy starts warping away. From [EWOK] and using a speed hack to instally warp and drop combat. All ready been reported by about 25 people cause they were smart enough to use it to run away from a zerg.

Anyways, this was no “lagg” Got full video (will update once uploaded) plus about 3 other’s videos when he passed by.

Have a nice day

sighs ….
looks at the poor dead horse
sighs…
Bones have been reduced to powder… let the poor horse rest.

A friendly reminder! Fight Club will be occurring on Thursday afternoon at 8 PM EST (5 PM EST server time). Everyone is welcome, bring friends, family, guild mates!

Rules, location, and additional information will be given earlier on the day! Stay tuned.

@Berk
You want PAXA to fight you 1v1 when they have told people countless times that they’re not built for 1v1?
Anyways, the problem with your post about siege is that the larger group ALWAYS has more siege. So, you see, while this small group builds 1 or 2 arrow carts (because that’s all they have supply to build), the zerg is quickly building 10… and how does this help the small group? You make it sound like only the small group gets siege, which is clearly wrong.
Next, PAXA and KoM are specific guilds that are coordinated and built to effectively work together. Put PAXA vs Red Guard and what would happen? PAXA would get destroyed. Why? Because Red Guard has the same organization PAXA does, but with more people, thus they will come out on top. Equal skill and unequal numbers should mean that the bigger numbers wins, which is correct in this case. However, when you put PAXA vs a pug zerg of more than 30 people, PAXA will still lose (unless the zerg is utterly terrible) even though PAXA clearly has better skill and organization. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE!!! This is the point we are trying to get people to see. There is an imbalance in this game between player skill and group size that makes group size much more meaningful than player skill.
And yes, I’ve had 3 people kill a 25 man zerg before without siege just by using a series of choke points and great coordination against a pug zerg with no organization. Take into account, however, that this was not an open field fight, which is what we are discussing here.
And, to drive the point home more: I went to the WvW general discussion forums to see what was there regariding this topic, and what do I see? First post: “Idea for encouraging small group play.” Hmmm, sound familiar? Then, curios, I check it out. The main criticism: “better idea: remove downed state and aoe cap.” Hmmm, this is getting freaky, it’s almost the exact arguments we are putting up, coming from completely different people, I wonder if it’s cause they’re legitimate.
P.S. it’s not the amazing small man groups keeping other small man groups away. It’s the lack of reward, extremely high skill cap required to be successful against larger numbers, and lack of other small groups that make people run away from it. When TFI first started to get our group together, we asked for a 5v5 against PAXA to see how far we had to go. The complete and total clobbering they gave us didn’t make us give up, it only made us realize how far we had to go before we could truly call ourselves a party (which we still don’t yet). In fact, it had the opposite effect as what you described: it made us work harder. And you can’t say that these are just people who like a challenge, because about half of our group are more pve focussed than WvW focused, which as you know, is about as far from a challenge as you can get.

Craig.2403:

@Berk
You want PAXA to fight you 1v1 when they have told people countless times that they’re not built for 1v1?
Anyways, the problem with your post about siege is that the larger group ALWAYS has more siege. So, you see, while this small group builds 1 or 2 arrow carts (because that’s all they have supply to build), the zerg is quickly building 10… and how does this help the small group? You make it sound like only the small group gets siege, which is clearly wrong.
Next, PAXA and KoM are specific guilds that are coordinated and built to effectively work together. Put PAXA vs Red Guard and what would happen? PAXA would get destroyed. Why? Because Red Guard has the same organization PAXA does, but with more people, thus they will come out on top. Equal skill and unequal numbers should mean that the bigger numbers wins, which is correct in this case. However, when you put PAXA vs a pug zerg of more than 30 people, PAXA will still lose (unless the zerg is utterly terrible) even though PAXA clearly has better skill and organization. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE!!! This is the point we are trying to get people to see. There is an imbalance in this game between player skill and group size that makes group size much more meaningful than player skill.
And yes, I’ve had 3 people kill a 25 man zerg before without siege just by using a series of choke points and great coordination against a pug zerg with no organization. Take into account, however, that this was not an open field fight, which is what we are discussing here.
And, to drive the point home more: I went to the WvW general discussion forums to see what was there regariding this topic, and what do I see? First post: “Idea for encouraging small group play.” Hmmm, sound familiar? Then, curios, I check it out. The main criticism: “better idea: remove downed state and aoe cap.” Hmmm, this is getting freaky, it’s almost the exact arguments we are putting up, coming from completely different people, I wonder if it’s cause they’re legitimate.
P.S. it’s not the amazing small man groups keeping other small man groups away. It’s the lack of reward, extremely high skill cap required to be successful against larger numbers, and lack of other small groups that make people run away from it. When TFI first started to get our group together, we asked for a 5v5 against PAXA to see how far we had to go. The complete and total clobbering they gave us didn’t make us give up, it only made us realize how far we had to go before we could truly call ourselves a party (which we still don’t yet). In fact, it had the opposite effect as what you described: it made us work harder. And you can’t say that these are just people who like a challenge, because about half of our group are more pve focussed than WvW focused, which as you know, is about as far from a challenge as you can get.

Can you please proof read your text to make it logical. Please and thanks. I’m not going to go into detail I’m too confused as to whether or not it would be of any benefit :S

And Berk,

We don’t want to only fight Zergs. You and all other Zergers make this mistake of assuming the current meta is only a “bit” off. Literally 95% of the time the ONLY thing to fight regardless if your solo, duo, organized 5 man, even 10 man….. The option to fight is 20+-60 mans. The argument is being made by many competitive players across the game in general is to encourage smaller group play AS WELL. So telling me how best to “deter a Zerg” isn’t of interest as open field we take 20-25 couple times a week. I’d rather take my 4 guys against ridiculously coordinated other 5 mans roaming looking to kick the kitten out of us. Anet needs to bring skilled players back to open world pvp or it is undoubtedly inevitable the next game that comes out will plummet wvw’s population. Tell us we are wrong all you want to, when you have no one to Zerg anymore… Let me know how fun those “objectives” are to take and how “epic” you feel.

Craig.2403:

Equal skill and unequal numbers should mean that the bigger numbers wins, which is correct in this case. However, when you put PAXA vs a pug zerg of more than 30 people, PAXA will still lose (unless the zerg is utterly terrible) even though PAXA clearly has better skill and organization. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE!!! This is the point we are trying to get people to see. There is an imbalance in this game between player skill and group size that makes group size much more meaningful than player skill.

They’re outmanned 6:1 in your example. Why shouldn’t they lose? This isn’t some crazy Bruce Lee movie where fifty people run up on Bruce and rush in (one at a time haha) and individually get their butts kicked. This is a large group of people with a ton of attacks, conditions, heals, buffs, debuffs, shields, etc. going against a much smaller group.

What is the “magic number” where skill is no longer relevent against numbers? 5 vs 20? 5 vs 30? vs 60? vs 100 vs 200? How many people, in your opinion, must a zerg have before skill no longer makes a difference? It looks to me that you’re saying a five man group, just because they individually have a higher proficiency at the game, should always be able to defeat a much larger force. ALWAYS. That’s just crazy, imo.

Let’s look at it another way. (Slippery slope and all).

I’m one guy roaming around a BL. Suddenly, a wild PAXA group appears! I engage them and lose. Horribly. Individually, my skills at GW2 are superior to each of their individual skills but they STILL beat me. THAT’S NOT FAIR!!!! Anet should stop ruining the solo play and make it so that I can beat a five man group. I don’t care that they collectively have 40 more skills and 120 more trait points than I do. I don’t care that they can look at their teammate next to them, who is on the verge of death, and pop a heal to restore him. 5-man zergs should be nerfed until I can compete as a solo roamer.

Crazy talk.