Guild Wars 2

Ok I get it that you wanted to make things easier for new players, but what about the veterans? you gave us nothing, I have a stupid amount of ability points that I cannot even spend, is this system still in beta or what? or do you think having over 5k ability points that are completely useless to me is working as intended?
I honestly expected you to expand this ability system not water it down….

Indeed, this further casualisation of WvW makes me sad and angry at the same time.

Why are we assuming that there won’t be new abilities added?

Holy cow Vavume, 5k that you can’t spend? I thought my nearly 2k was bad. I agree, I feel a bit left out to dry with these changes. I was hoping for more things to invest my ability points with the expansion, not less. I don’t understand the logic behind this move by Anet, other than to keep new players in WvW from quitting when they run into someone who has a bit of extra help from Applied Fortitude/Strength I guess. I don’t know… this feels like just another one of those decisions that we’ll be able to look back on and make the claim, once again, that Anet has absolutely zero clue how to make WvW more interesting and a better experience for the veteran WvW players.

lordkrall.7241:

Why are we assuming that there won’t be new abilities added?

Well if there was a good place to mention new abilities being added, you would think it would be in the same article where they discussed removing a few and removing half the cost of current abilities.

godz raiden.2631:

Well if there was a good place to mention new abilities being added, you would think it would be in the same article where they discussed removing a few and removing half the cost of current abilities.

Assuming that they were done.
It would however be a rather bad place to mention them if they are not done and and up not working by the time HoT is released, considering how people here take every single word as set in stone promises.

Vavume.8065:

Ok I get it that you wanted to make things easier for new players, but what about the veterans? you gave us nothing, I have a stupid amount of ability points that I cannot even spend, is this system still in beta or what? or do you think having over 5k ability points that are completely useless to me is working as intended?
I honestly expected you to expand this ability system not water it down….

Also the obvious reason why anet reduced the cost of ability points is to make it easier for roleplayers to start trying out wvw. Adding more lines would do exactly the oposite, so don’t bother for hoping for new ability point lines.

Oh and @ lord krall, if they can’t make just a couple of ability lines in like a 6 months time period you should seriously start question the capabilities of anet XD

lordkrall.7241:

godz raiden.2631:

Well if there was a good place to mention new abilities being added, you would think it would be in the same article where they discussed removing a few and removing half the cost of current abilities.

Assuming that they were done.
It would however be a rather bad place to mention them if they are not done and and up not working by the time HoT is released, considering how people here take every single word as set in stone promises.

That’s a fair point. I’m not committing 100% to the idea that Anet isn’t adding anything new in terms of WvW abilities to invest in just yet, but the fact that they’re removing the only two things worth investing in for most players right now, coupled with the general lack of attention to WvW given by Anet devs, I’m obviously a bit skeptical.

I also hopped to see some new abillitys with the xpac. I got over 1000 abillitys that I dont know what to do with.

They’d be telling us all about how great and awesome the new abilities were going to be if they were planning to add new ones. At the very least they’d mention that they’re working on new ones or something; I’ll be very surprised if they do add new ones with this change.

If anything they should have made the lines cost even more but w.e

well i assume the new siege weapons at least will require new ability lines

To be fair, I think ANet has a difficult situation here since players have WvW points spanning 1-2 orders of magnitude. They have to simultaneously make players with 50 points feel like they can do something meaningful with them while also allowing players with 5000 points to continue to advance. I am not defending their solution, since it clearly caters to the former group at the expense of the latter, but I am recognizing the difficulty of the problem.

One solution I can think of would be to increase the point cost per rank of a WvW skill even more, rather than normalizing it (as Manimarco Devil said).
E.g. supply capacity rank 1 cost = 5 points, rank 2 = 20 points, rank 3 = 100 points, rank 4 = 500 points, etc.
While this could work in concept, I doubt that it would make players happy.

Another option might be to reduce the number of rank points awarded for each WvW level as your level increases (e.g. at rank 100, you only get 1 rank point every 2 levels, and at rank 1000 you only get 1 rank point every 5 levels). This would work really well if WvW ranks were a new system. But changing the current system to this method would retroactively reduce many players’ point totals, which would also lead to raging (even if the system would be more balanced as a result).

Does anyone have any other suggestions? Is the problem statement I made earlier valid (the difficulty caused by the wide range in points available to new vs. experinced players)? Is it worthwhile or even possible to try to make both groups feel rewarded?

fluidmonolith.3584:

Does anyone have any other suggestions?

Yes, There should be some type of rewards available for high ranks, as example :

A player with a WvW rank of 2000 can obtain new WvW weapons skins, only available this way, they add BL skins all the time so why not? The skins could cost ability points that are non refundable and do not reset if there is a ability point reset, each skin costing 100 ability points, this would put a full set of 19 weps at 1900 ability points.

A player with rank 3000 can buy a unique WvW armor set (SPVP has glorious so why not) each piece costs 200 ability points, so full set is 1200, again these points are non refundable.

A player with rank 5000 can buy different color commander tag, Green for example, this tag could cost 1000 ability points, non refundable.

A player with rank 7000 can buy a unique WvW finisher for 2000 ability points, non refundable.

A player with rank 10000 can buy the title “World Champion” for 2000 ability points, non refundable.

Total cost of all these rewards = 8100 ability points, which leaves plenty of room for the actual abilitys.

This is what we should have.

Problem with adding things for ranks is that it rewards the eotm karma trainers more than regular WvW players.

Kaos.9162:

Problem with adding things for ranks is that it rewards the eotm karma trainers more than regular WvW players.

Problem with not adding rewards is no one feels rewarded, but honestly they could easily nerf the amount of wxp available from objectives in EOTM if they were to go with a reward system like I suggested.

Vavume.8065:

Kaos.9162:

Problem with adding things for ranks is that it rewards the eotm karma trainers more than regular WvW players.

Problem with not adding rewards is no one feels rewarded, but honestly they could easily nerf the amount of wxp available from objectives in EOTM if they were to go with a reward system like I suggested.

I think the additional weapon/armor skins is a very reasonable idea. I also agree that the advantages of giving people an outlet for their points significantly outweighs the drawback of potentially increased karma training. Anyways, as long as karma-training is more effective in EOTM than in normal WvW maps, then the normal WvW maps shouldn’t be affected much.

• In PvE, you choose which mastery you want to work on and which specializaiton track you want to spend your Hero points on.
• In PvP, you choose which reward track you want to work on, gaining benefits from dungeons and specific zones.
• In WvW, you get generic rewards, pointless points (past a certain point), and constantly shifting titles.

Makes perfect sense.

lordkrall.7241:

Why are we assuming that there won’t be new abilities added?

I laughed. I cried. All is vain.

1st off all. I realy like Vavume’s idea about the skins, titles… green would totally be my tag ^^

fluidmonolith.3584:

To be fair, I think ANet has a difficult situation here since players have WvW points spanning 1-2 orders of magnitude. They have to simultaneously make players with 50 points feel like they can do something meaningful…

All Players can do something meaningfull. Even upleveled characters can carry supplies and man weapons when there is no skilled player in reach at the time.
Applied fortitude/strenght is just the cherry on the cake. And when u have 25 ppl infront of an enemy-tower u obviously dont need 25 rammasters. 2 are enought usually…

the krytan assassin.9235:

Also the obvious reason why anet reduced the cost of ability points is to make it easier for roleplayers to start trying out wvw. Adding more lines would do exactly the oposite, so don’t bother for hoping for new ability point lines.

If ppl join in WvW, open their pannel, check their skills and be like: “ohh… that is many points i will need… hard work… i better do something else then…” i would be keen enought to say… We dont want such whiners anyway. They should better stay in PVE as this seems to fit their needs better anyway.

WvW was always a challenging gamemode and should always be one.
That “new-generation-players” who only want the highest possible reward/time and dont care about challenges will never be realy usefull in WvW. What we need are ppl who care about the structures and tactics.. think for their own and dont bother to help deffing a keep for hours even if the reward isnt realy high and not more and more karma-train-drivers who hit the “leave the mists”-button as soon as all paper is switched. And in fact noone will get those to play WvW more anyway even if u would give em every skillmastery for free.

On the other hand there are many players who take the challenge and walk their way through those lines… feeling awesome by every line they achive (especially doublestack those nice stacks ^^). And i would say this is the right spirit.

Just to mention: I still need some points to have everything at the maximum. I decided to climb that ladder on some point and now i dont want to see it cut down. Even if i would max everythin much earlier then..

lordkrall.7241:

godz raiden.2631:

Well if there was a good place to mention new abilities being added, you would think it would be in the same article where they discussed removing a few and removing half the cost of current abilities.

Assuming that they were done.
It would however be a rather bad place to mention them if they are not done and and up not working by the time HoT is released, considering how people here take every single word as set in stone promises.

Well don’t mention the changes to guard killer and guard defence stacks yet then. Its poor PR being seen to take away without any compensation.

I mean if you want to be stronger then other ppl becuse you played longer by all means you can feel that way but GW2 realty is NOT that type of game. If you have that many points and yet you feel you should be stronger in this game then others i am not sure what have you been doing with you gaming life there are a lot of power creep games out there to chose from that have some pvp in them.

There is no power creep, the abilities stopped at these 2 and most players have them.

Vavume.8065:

Kaos.9162:

Problem with adding things for ranks is that it rewards the eotm karma trainers more than regular WvW players.

Problem with not adding rewards is no one feels rewarded, but honestly they could easily nerf the amount of wxp available from objectives in EOTM if they were to go with a reward system like I suggested.

Sadly EoTM made the rank system a joke, with completely clueless people who wouldn’t know what a skill is being rank 3000+ while someone could play for years in wvw and not get to 500.

I like the idea of reward tracks but again, these would only work if rewards are shared across the battlefield so that you defenders are rewarded too, not just the usual spam 1 suspects- but how to do that without the inevitable leechers?

I don’t think Anet know how to solve this problem, so they won’t waste the resources – we’ve already seen the latest patch and how that screwed up wvw for a couple of days and apparently still has issues (which have been moved to the bugs section, never to be read)- and that was for a patch which had nothing to do with wvw.

Jski.6180:

I mean if you want to be stronger then other ppl becuse you played longer by all means you can feel that way but GW2 realty is NOT that type of game. If you have that many points and yet you feel you should be stronger in this game then others i am not sure what have you been doing with you gaming life there are a lot of power creep games out there to chose from that have some pvp in them.

The ability point reward system I suggested is purely cosmetic, it does not involve any form of power creep or ability to be stronger than the next guy, not even sure why you came to that conclusion….

lordkrall.7241:

Why are we assuming that there won’t be new abilities added?

I’m sure there will be in HoT for the new siege weapon, at least.

Vavume.8065:

Jski.6180:

I mean if you want to be stronger then other ppl becuse you played longer by all means you can feel that way but GW2 realty is NOT that type of game. If you have that many points and yet you feel you should be stronger in this game then others i am not sure what have you been doing with you gaming life there are a lot of power creep games out there to chose from that have some pvp in them.

The ability point reward system I suggested is purely cosmetic, it does not involve any form of power creep or ability to be stronger than the next guy, not even sure why you came to that conclusion….

I must of missed that i was looking at it from the point of view of losing the “must have” such as + to vit and power that is a type of power creep and it dose reward ppl who have been playing longer to make them stronger then newer player. But ya cosmetic would be fun but they would need to be wvw only.

Jski.6180:

But ya cosmetic would be fun but they would need to be wvw only.

Why? nothing else in this game has skins only for use in spvp or only for use in pve, cosmetic rewards can be used everywhere.

as a vet, you are getting something out of this change. in the future, when you or your group wipes, the battle you have to fight is less uphill, because your enemies wont have guard stacks. as it is right now, you map in to a map to defend something or you wipe in a defense, and you have no stacks. your enemy gets a huge advantage fighting fully stacked just because theyre attacking and/or winning.

insanemaniac.2456:

as a vet, you are getting something out of this change. in the future, when you or your group wipes, the battle you have to fight is less uphill, because your enemies wont have guard stacks. as it is right now, you map in to a map to defend something or you wipe in a defense, and you have no stacks. your enemy gets a huge advantage fighting fully stacked just because theyre attacking and/or winning.

Removing guard stacks is not my idea of rewarding veteran players and I would bet you are in the minority with that view.

You have to wonder why they would bother making a blog post about removing stuff and making things more casual: “Dear hardcore players, we wish to tell you that when we release the expansion we’re going to remove these features and make everything easier for people that don’t know how to play… See ya”

GreyWraith.8394:

lordkrall.7241:

Why are we assuming that there won’t be new abilities added?

I’m sure there will be in HoT for the new siege weapon, at least.

You mean the expansion with no release date? Yeahh…lets take stuff away from players til whenever that launches. Game will be in tip top shape til then. No worries, sounds good.

maybe a title with our rank is enough and easy to implemented .

gennyt.3428:

You mean the expansion with no release date? Yeahh…lets take stuff away from players til whenever that launches. Game will be in tip top shape til then. No worries, sounds good.

I suppose we ignore the fact that these changes are coming with the very same expansion as well…?

You can quote me when during year 2015 they lower ultimate dominator requirement so that 70% existing players will get it immediately. Similarily to pvp kittenf. So frustrating.

lordkrall.7241:

gennyt.3428:

You mean the expansion with no release date? Yeahh…lets take stuff away from players til whenever that launches. Game will be in tip top shape til then. No worries, sounds good.

I suppose we ignore the fact that these changes are coming with the very same expansion as well…?

I stand corrected! I think I’ve revealed how super excited ™ and involved I am with this expansion!

lordkrall.7241:

godz raiden.2631:

Well if there was a good place to mention new abilities being added, you would think it would be in the same article where they discussed removing a few and removing half the cost of current abilities.

Assuming that they were done.

Yeah, it’s always “remove things now, and maybe we’ll add up something else later on. Or maybe not” with Anet.

Reborn.2934:

maybe a title with our rank is enough and easy to implemented .

and maybe up of a rank has the ability to order manual updates after lord buff expired .

this will remove the ability from spies with new accounts manipulate with any way the upgrade orders in wvw

p.s. sorry i quoted myself , but the edit link bugged on my browser

Vavume.8065:

insanemaniac.2456:

as a vet, you are getting something out of this change. in the future, when you or your group wipes, the battle you have to fight is less uphill, because your enemies wont have guard stacks. as it is right now, you map in to a map to defend something or you wipe in a defense, and you have no stacks. your enemy gets a huge advantage fighting fully stacked just because theyre attacking and/or winning.

Removing guard stacks is not my idea of rewarding veteran players and I would bet you are in the minority with that view.

i prolly am, but the fact is this “reward” for playing has always been a snowball mechanic that helps winners win moar, and no matter how you look at it wvw is better off without that kitten.

they can design a mechanic better, so that it doesnt potentially snowball an attempted defense into 2 wipes or 3, and a lost objective. or a spawn camp or map hop, if the attackers happen to wipe and the defenders get their stacks off the camp that every zerg ever takes along the way to the nearest keep.

snowball mechanics suck. its the reason orbs were nerfed into bloodlust. (that also had to do with hackers, but the mechanic is fairly weak in addition to being virtually unhackable now)

rubberband mechanics are good, but only if they arent the sole reason 1 team gets a lead on another.

The new system is really kitten

Reborn.2934:

maybe a title with our rank is enough and easy to implemented .

I would be happy with that for a start, they could also add achievement point tiers to the ranks same as there is for wins in SPVP. There is actually a lot of diff ways they could reward WvWers, they just seem unwilling to do it.

I would of been okay with them making WvW ability points into a currency to buy stuff with.

This is NPE for WvW. And I don’t like it.

Vavume.8065:

Removing guard stacks is not my idea of rewarding veteran players and I would bet you are in the minority with that view.

I’ve never liked AF and AS. I don’t really understand why they are lauded by some players, while killing uplevels in EotM is seen as cheap. Both are essentially saying “I’ve played longer than you, so I’m more powerful”. Yet only the latter gets labeled scrub behavior.

Re: ability points in general, I never understood why WvW ranks used a different philosophy than trait lines. Trait lines have specific issues, but the core idea is great: you have to make choices, and that means leaving abilities behind. WvW ranks, on the other hand, are just a system of piling on numbers, so players who have played longer have more abilities than new players. Why?

To me, the ideal reboot of this system would have WvW abilities operate in the same manner as current trait lines. Maybe speccing for extra supplies means you can’t spec for extra health, etc. Obviously, they would need to be tweaked so lines were competitive with one another. And obviously, you should be able to change your point allocations, perhaps only in a held structure.

What about rank points then? Go with the PvP reward track system for those points. Let us earn dungeon armors, Silverwastes materials, etc.

This way, old players wouldn’t have a huge advantage over new players, you’d have to make meaningful choices for WvW abilities, and WXP gain would translate to PvP-like reward tracks (WvW method for acquiring PvE rewards).

Astralporing.1957:

Yeah, it’s always “remove things now, and maybe we’ll add up something else later on. Or maybe not” with Anet.

Not being done at the time of the blog post does in no way or form mean that they are not done by the time the expansion (and thus they changes) actually happens.

insanemaniac.2456:

as a vet, you are getting something out of this change. in the future, when you or your group wipes, the battle you have to fight is less uphill, because your enemies wont have guard stacks. as it is right now, you map in to a map to defend something or you wipe in a defense, and you have no stacks. your enemy gets a huge advantage fighting fully stacked just because theyre attacking and/or winning.

in conclusion it will matter less in the future if u wipe at all. which is not good. So wiping can be more of a “tactic”.

Now: “Safe your stacks.. retreat..”
then: “Jump in and take as many with u as u can.. timer 15 seconds.. no stacks => doesnt matter…”

Genitor.1970:

insanemaniac.2456:

as a vet, you are getting something out of this change. in the future, when you or your group wipes, the battle you have to fight is less uphill, because your enemies wont have guard stacks. as it is right now, you map in to a map to defend something or you wipe in a defense, and you have no stacks. your enemy gets a huge advantage fighting fully stacked just because theyre attacking and/or winning.

in conclusion it will matter less in the future if u wipe at all. which is not good. So wiping can be more of a “tactic”.

Now: “Safe your stacks.. retreat..”
then: “Jump in and take as many with u as u can.. timer 15 seconds.. no stacks => doesnt matter…”

bullkitten

doing that would make you a rallybot in both cases. you arent gonna “take as many with you as you can” ever.