Guild Wars 2

Why are the upcoming Ferocity changes also targeting WvW, instead of PvE-only? They were mentioned not to be necessary for PvP. I know it’s a small community, but this will hurt glassier builds in Obsidian Sanctum dueling. I’m guessing it also has larger implications for the Borderlands and EB, where tankier and condition/attrition builds are already more meta than pure damage builds. Thoughts?

EDIT: I posed the thread to one of my guilds since I have the first post, and they want to know when we’re getting Luxon Siege Turtles in WvW. I fully support this motion.

Darmikau.9413:

Why are the upcoming Ferocity changes also targeting WvW, instead of PvE-only? They were mentioned not to be necessary for PvP. I know it’s a small community, but this will hurt glassier builds in Obsidian Sanctum dueling. I’m guessing it also has larger implications for the Borderlands and EB, where tankier and condition/attrition builds are already more meta than pure damage builds. Thoughts?

EDIT: I posed the thread to one of my guilds since I have the first post, and they want to know when we’re getting Luxon Siege Turtles in WvW. I fully support this motion.

I second this. WvW is already riddled everywhere with tanky condition based builds. Ferocity changes will impact crit/power builds severely in WvW. Not to mention full zerkers will lose 10% of their total damage, this means that mixed builds with zerkers mixed lose more damage than full zerkers. What are your thoughts about this? Perhaps splike Ferocity changes so it only effects PvE? if not why does Condition damage get off free from damage nerfs in WvW.

I just have a quick question for Danicia regarding the previous Dolyak express on lore.

Are there going to be more lore answers posted later? Or is that all of them for now.

• My question is why there was a decision taken to make FREE transfers to not so populated servers which led to the destruction of the inner eco system of those server?

• And will there be more server destruction before Season 2 starts ?

We have the right to know so we can prepare our fragile communities.

Questions about WvW

1) In the current “fast cap” meta of WvW the standard tactic when attacking objectives seems to be: Either be fast and cap the objective in less than two or three minutes before any defenders arrive at the scene, or otherwise cancel the attack and try to find a different undefended target elsewhere. And since nowadays gold is so plenty in the game, the attacker often brings one or two or twenty omega golems along to speed up the process. True siege battles (that have been quite frequent in the time after release) have become the rare exception, especially on the Borderland maps. Are you happy with the direction the WvW meta is heading, or will you try to do something against this development?

2) It is a well established observation that the “victory” of a match up (i.e., having the lead in war score) is mainly determined by the coverage a server can bring to the battlefield during the off hours (like “at night” or “during usual work hours”). With the release of the Bloodlust buff you introduced a second source of war score points that is strongly correlated to “player activity” during the prime time hours and quite useless during the off hours (although its influence on the victory of a match-up is way smaller than the influence of the still dominating coverage advantage). Will we see further steps to let the total war score scale more with “player activity” and less with pure “coverage in the off hours”?

3) Since release of the game, guild squads (mis-)use the “call target” function to create some kind of poor-man’s-commander-icon for their WvW guild raids. Do you find this a satisfying solution for a guild’s WvW raid? Why don’t you implement a “guild commander” feature that provides a commander symbol that is only visible for guild members?

Keep up the good work, and many thanks for your time.

~MRA

I have 4 questions

- What is being done with regards to WvW coverage gaps and when can we expect results ? Not what is being discussed, fussed over, thought about, but what is actually in the works and when, need some concrete answers at this point.

- What is in the works, and again, when can we expect results, with regards to effort vs reward systems within the game. For example, TA Aetherpath or Fractal 40-50 yield much lesser rewards for far more effort then attending outdoors boss events which require occasional movement and auto attack on weapon skill 1. This goes to the extreme, when individual player rewards in WvW involving entire servers (qued maps) can take up to 6 hours of planning and execution followed by 1-2 hours of actual fighting and yield same rewards as a 5 man team capping same objective in few minutes flat because there is no one there. So both PvE and WvW are very much affected by these issues.

- Condition Balance. What can we expect in this area ? Currently conditions damage (not control conditions) are almost ineffective in large scale WvW fights as they often get cleansed even before they get a chance to tick a single time, while they are often very strong in 1 vs 1 and very small engagements. Condition damage also severly underperforms in PvE. Mobs die before they get “tagged” for loot, extremely inefficient vs Bosses for multitude of reasons such as 25 stack limit, not damaging certain targets (labeled as structures), etc. or are conditions considered “balanced” due to the fact that they are both underpowered and overpowered in roughly same amount of areas of the game ?

- In PvE, are future boss figths going to be more AI rather then hitpoint and defiant focused so to encourage more PvE build diversity such as control or support ? Or is the status quo going to remain as bad as it is ?

When is account bound WXP being implemented?

When is the Edge of the Mist Map being rolled out?

When will we see the fruits of the 2 CDis on WvW to date?

What was the intention behind increasing the power of Arrow Carts?

Question 1
Not looking for specifics, but will there be more worthwhile incentives to “lure” PvE people into WvW?

Question 2
Are you pursuing more ideas to make WvW stand on its own?

Question 3
How is WvW a “middle ground” for PvE and PvP to ANet?

Will you be looking into the medium armour class more specifically when it comes to WvW compatibility?

mainly because now that the monk is gone from GW2, there is no definitive reason to form front/mid/back-lines, meaning that various skills for the midline classes that seem to be designed for such a gameplay, don’t seem to be relative for the gameplay format that arose

Was it decided to award +1 point for a stomp instead of a kill because it’s just easier to attribute a stomp to the correct server? If yes, is there any possibility of taking this to the next level and finding a way to attribute the point to kills and not just stomps?

(Stomps are only a fraction of WvW kills. Making kills a bigger portion of the score would effectively weight the score based on active, current population, reducing the impact off-hours PvD’ing currently has)

When will the WvW achievements finnaly be toned down? It was promised for last year already.

Question 1
Condition damage is way too powerful for how easy it is to play. Is condition damage going to be looked at and reduced in effectiveness like critical damage?

Question 2
When are we going to get any of the community backed suggestions/improvements for things like bug/exploit fixes, commander tags, population imbalance, guild/party QoL changes?

Question 2 is a big selling point for me and others. For me personally it will decide how much more I will be playing or not.

1) What was the reason behind to make upgrade for objects so passive? Many people would welcome a more active involvement.

2) Will you broaden the portfolio of traps? Will we see a trap mastery?

How do you feel about the defensibility of keeps and towers?
I’m particularly thinking about the problems for defenders standing on walls and the speed with which a large group can burn through a door without needing to put any siege down. I can only speak for the battles I’ve been in on my realm (Underworld EU, which is admittedly one of the lower pop WvW realms) but besieging a keep is something that happens very infrequently nowadays. More often the strategy is to rapidly blitz through the doors and kill the Lord as quickly as possible. At most, 3 or 4 rams are used.
How does this more offensive, hit-and-run style of game, where keeps and towers are routinely flipped back and forth within minutes, match up to your original design philosophies for WvW?
One minor suggestion I would like to make is to change the order of upgrades so that doors are reinforced before walls – it seems to make little sense that we reinforce the more vulnerable part last.

With the announcement of the First season leagues for WvW we all saw a sudden drop in the performance in quite a few servers resulting in what should have been a Silver rank server dominating the Bronze ranking and the previously lowest server in Gold ranking doing the same in Silver. Is this consider smart play or “match” fixing?

It seems that the current game is based around a maxium 5 targets for (most aoe) skills. However WvW as place for massive group battle that target limitation creates a basic safety in exceeding that target limit. Is this being examined as groups are also able to exceed the increased target capacity of siege weaponary?

Question 1
When will the new Edge of the Mists map go live?

Question 2
When will WvW Season 2 start?

1) Some players are only interested in the PvP portion of WvW, with structure defense/assault dismissed as a bore, a nuisance. Do you think attacking/defending structures can be made into something more skillful, fun and worthwhile? If so, what are some ideas you are working on?
2) Could you discuss what issues of criticism Edge of the Mists’ design is meant to address? For example, it looks like it might be more conducive to skillful, small/medium sized battles, a counter to the predominant mode of play in WvW at the moment: blobbing/zerging.
3) What is your policy on balance in WvW? Some people have said that you won’t balance for WvW specifically, unlike PVE and sPVP. Is that true, and if so, why is that the case?
4) Would you consider designing NPCs that scale sufficiently according to the number of players attacking it?

If it would take 50 players the same amount of time to kill a keep lord as it does 3, not only would it, maybe, temper some of the zerging, but it would make that encounter much more meaningful. Even slightly fun.

Having watched some of the Edge of the Mists streams on Twitch, I’m encouraged to see some of the NPCs have much more interesting, even amusing AI. It was fun seeing players attacking the NPCs, solo. It was a challenge for them. However, I was concerned to see that when several people attacked that same NPC, it went down very quick. The didn’t need to heal, dodge or use many skills. It wasn’t a challenge. It wasn’t a fun encounter. It suddenly did not look at all different from present WvW NPCs.

Thanks for reading.

Role-playing (personal story) was announced as a big thing for PvE, with big features like a biography, a personality system à la Mass Effect, a home instance that evolves with your character’s story, and a lot of decision making. After launch however there has been almost no developer talk about it. (No blog posts, no interviews, nothing. I remember one or two developer comments about Trehearne’s character but that’s about it.) Also, the Personal Story forum has recently been archived, and in the first CDI, the devs mentioned that it was limiting the Living World because it prevents important areas to be changed, important characters to be killed, etc.

So my question is more of an open one. What are the developers’ thoughts about the personal story, 1.5 years after launch? Can we expect to see more of it in the future?

Sry for my English.

1.
Any chance for that the daily and monthly goals will not give achievement points? With this solution you just did a competition. Thus making it worthless to the other medium and long-term goal.

2.
Is there any chance for that you stop these temporary contents? You say living story change the evolved world. To me: living story = temporary content.

3.
Currently, the game is a one-character players’ paradise. Are you planning solutions which are worth playing several characters as well? Just to say example: Character rewards, GW1: War in Kryta, GW1 Zaishen dailies etc. (Valuable rewards, many-many hours in game).

4.
Do you have any plans against the owerflow situations? Have to wait a hour to get inside to your home server. (Tequatl etc) Just because there is a higher chance to finish. Okay, of course it is better to wait than one hour so you can log into the game, but I think you feel it is not a solution. A team like you who are able to do an update system which will make we do not have to wait for hours before logins. We expect more from this team.
For example: First erase home server idea; hidden servers, hidden districts, mega-server etc. What do you think?

5.
I feel it so you rest on your laurels only. Look at it what enduring happened in the past year. (Dailies for laurel, guild missions, fractal, ascended gears). I feel the Live Team in the GW1 executed more so enduring developments under a year, with what we may have spent more time than here in the GW2. On the other hand during that time (one and a half years) in GW1 two extension was already released. Planning something on this front? (and the question does not apply to you refreshing the gem store on all Tuesdays)

1) What exactly is the plot idea behind WvW? Thus far, just about everything seems to be forced into some part of the story, regardless of how mechanical the additions are. But when it comes to WvW, it’s just “go in and fight these evil forces!” Why are the other servers depicted as evil and what is the story view of the other servers – are they other dimensions/realities, or are we to think of it as something different (not other Tyrias but other worlds that just happen to have charr, norn, asura, sylvari, and humans)?

2) What’s with the statues of Balthazar on the walls of the WvW fortifications?

3) Who are the Mist Defenders, exactly, and why do the Zaishen no longer have a role in the battles within the Mists (like they did in GW1 and hinted at having in The Movement of the World)?

4) Will there be more maps in the future that are part of WvW proper rather than being for overflows like Edge of the Mists?

5) Is the Desert area of Edge of the Mists suppose to allude to the Crystal Desert? Does this hint to having the Crystal Desert as future content?

6) Will more unique objectives and means to complete them be added into the old WvW maps akin to what Edge of the Mists have? Perhaps something akin to guild puzzles?

7) Why does WvW map completion attribute to the world map completion for the achievement while Southsun Cove does not (yet other permanent PoIs/waypoints/etc. do)? Was there a conscious design choice to this? Why not change despite the relatively frequent requests to do so?

8) Will the story of WvW ever become a focus of the Living World? Or will the Living World’s involvement into WvW only be limited to things like the WvW Seasons?

Yeah, I know I mixed in some “lore of WvW” but WvW is WvW, even WvW lore! :P

Are you currently working or playing around whit new weapon types ? Can we expect them in the near future ?

Also can u make a assure collage finisher ? I am graduating collage this year and i would like to treat myself to on of those. A perfect nut shell collage of synergy finisher

With Ferocity replacing Critical Damage in the future, has the team considered that the damage nerf will affect celestial gear as well (likely even more than berserker)?

Having just started to level 2 characters i have noticed the new leveling system very boring.In fact its better and faster to just jump into WvW. With PVE leveling will their be a better way to level up as such now you get so little xp for doing anything.

Also in the Story leading up too killing Zhaitan i have noticed the the NPC’s are not as good as they should be. Almost not performing tasks as they should like evade,healing and rezzing. They are more of a hinderance than a help to you. Is this a bug or intentional as it stops many from completing this story.

Also in WvW since the League Matchups the WvW community seems to be more divided that previous with using Voip apps. With player such as myself who are partially deaf and those with Low End computers we cannot use these voip apps. To be deaf is one thing to be punished in game that is another story. Will their be a better form of mapchat allowing commanders to use mapchat better rather than rely on voip apps.

Will we ever see a Portuguese language translation? I’d love to see that.

Can you give a little more lore about waypoints and how they work exactly?

I mean portals are different and easy to understand. You go to a portal at point A and it sends you to the other end at point B.

However waypoints you can somehow “teleport” to from anywhere. How does this happen? Do we pull out some kind of communication device and say “beam me up Gadd” or some such? To which he is waiting for us on some flying airship and then swoops down to get us and then takes us directly to our destination.

Well this is the best example/idea I can think up. I am sure you guys can some up with something more creative than this but I would really like some idea.

Why does (or at least seem like) Anet not implement PK (Player Killing) in WvW and make Guild Wars 2 more like Sword Art Online (the light novel)?

If PK was implemented it would make the game a lot more intricate. To be more specific, I’m talking about allowing friendly fire to all players that are not in your 5 man party.
For example:

1. It would solve the mindless zerg vs zerg fights using only range skills. Warriors, Guardians and Thieves now have a reason to jump into an enemy zerg. The decision to form a massive group of people and then mindlessly steamroll through everything would no longer be the obvious choice. It would also enourage high coordination, player skill and small party adventures in WvW.

2. Players who have committed team killing will have their name icon turn red and the title “[server name] Traitor” for X amount of time. During this period if they are killed by someone who does not have the above title will be awarded 50 silver from the PKer. In the event that the PKer has no money on them all their equipment is broken (not damaged). Killing a PKer will not cause a normal player to become a [server name] traitor.

3. Killing someone from the same server should cause that server to lose points equal to somewhere between obtaining a supply camp or tower. While killing a PKer or enemy invader should equal to 1/10 of the previously mentioned score. Now whoever wins WvW gets more than just the title of “Largest Server Population,” instead they would have either “Strongest Server” or “Server with the most Server Loyalty.”

4. By implementing PK and friendly fire Anet would essentially have a self generating content. Guilds will naturally obtain the importance of protecting their members from PKers and now can challenge rival guilds to have their own flags on captured towers or castles.

5. Players that have a strong sense of morale, server loyalty and leadership will standout and create a police force (in the form of a guild probably) to protect the masses from PK. At the same time, players that enjoy playing the villain will choose to create chaos and create infamy for themselves (most likely making a guild as well). These players will have no problem walking through LA while getting heckled. Also dungeon parties won’t refuse them because their goal is to finish the dungeon quickly and efficiently, so someone with that much infamy will have the strength to satisfy that requirement. Through this method Anet would have created a situation where the players themselves are literally creating new content while doing literally nothing. This would give them more time when creating new content.

The reason why I bring this up is because i’ve been playing GW2 since beta and PvP balance aside, i feel like GW2 doesn’t have any concrete end-game material. The legendary weapons are more for looks, dungeons become too easy or don’t have adequate rewards for the difficulty.

The reason why I suggest PK as the end game material is because that is the nature of MMORPGs. Deep down people play MMORPGs so they can have the feeling of being superior to others. To have more gold, better looking gear, rarer equipment and so forth.

I really do hope you choose to answer my question, because with new popular MMORPG animes coming out (SAO 1&2 [however you begin to truly appreciate the author’s writing in the light novels rather than the anime] and Log Horizon) it’s hard to not feel the craving for GW2 to be like that.

There are my WvW questions;

• What tools are planned to add for Commanders? Placeable map signs, closeby buffs?
• Any discussion about who has the rights to become a Commander, or Leveling it?
• Why making a very nice looking child-care room for queue instead of overhauling the existing WvW maps to be more exciting & the borderlands to be different in style?
  (Green: Forest, Jungle | Red: Desert, Rocks with vulcanic | Blue: Snowy Forests & Ice, EB: Mixed)
• Most important: Will the forts to be less easy capture? How is it planned otherwise to prevent pathetic speedfarming & mindless zergs?

Asked straight on style of spike, but these questions are very important.
TESO will spin up the large-scale battles anyway, AN must make a professional response update on that.

Will personal story missions ever be replayble?

Here are my 4 points that I’ve in my mind right now, that I’d like to get an official Dev Answer from through this initiative:

1) Why has been Ferocity named Ferocity and not instead a better fitting Stat Name, like Dexterity, Courage or Perspicacity??
Or was it just something, that got forgotten, that there is already Ferocity in the game under a complete different function and that it might look very uncreative to name a Stat like a Personality Term that is used for a different gameplay mechnic?

2) When can we expect to see the blogpost about the next half year preview that will make us all happy, so that we can have a little overview on what we will see for GW2 getting implemented this year?

3) Why do we have not for the Underwater Gameplay of GW2 own Traits?
Can we expect to see anywhen some rework for the Underwater Gameplay, especially also a Skill Rebalancing for Underwater Combat?
What are you in fact planning on to improve Underwater Gameplay in then near future and integrate it more in the Game to the point, that more people will like it, rather than hate it due to all of the restrictions that feel more like a burden on you, than fun to play with?

4) What do you think about Class Specific WvW Traits to improve the special Roles of each class for WvW?
Something like this maybe as an inspiration to think about:

Thiefs could receive the WvW Skill Line “Infiltration” with 10 Tiers.

1) Stealth in WvW lasts 20% longer and Stealth Healing/Utility Skills recharge 20% faster.
2) Thiefs can read now the Enemy Chat, while being in Stealth
3) You can run over Enemy Traps now without activating them.
4) Killing Guards, Mercenaries and other NPCs out of Stealth, grants you a buff called “Cunning” Cunning is a Buff that lasts until you get downed/killed and increases up to 5x Precision and Boon Duration.
5) If you get hit when getting out of Stealth within the first two seconds, you will react with an automatic randomous Venom Counterattack.
6) Signet Activation will put you into Stealth for 3 Seconds and grants you 3 seconds of Super Speed
7) Your Shadow Steps become Shadow Walks with Auto Dodge Mechanic, while moving.
8) You will create automatically a Smokescreen now when being hit critically every 60 seconds
9) Dodging successfully Attacks and curing conditions will heal you now.
10) You gain Stability while being in Stealth.

And that could be just one of many diferent class specific WvW Skill Lines with that you could improve the Class Roles for WvW.

Will we ever see some kind of Guild Missions in WvW in order to earn Guild Commendations?

Question 1
Will we see more fight-action in wvw ? Currently I see more PvD(Player vs Door) than actual fights.

Question 2
Are you planning to give players more goals to achieve(more goals to play for) in wvw ? (other than achievement points) That would keep existing players playing.

Thanks.

1 Questions about Skins in WvW

Are there plans to allow us bring the armor/weapon skins we earn in PvP into WvW?

I am a player who almost plays PvP exclusively in Guild Wars and the recent Edge of the Mists really got me want to give WvW a big try.
However, when I realized I cannot bring any of my PvP skins into WvW~~~it just nullifies my reason to switch channels at all.