Guild Wars 2

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

• Please no swearing (if there’s TeamSpeak or map chat), no music and clean game footage

uh oh… I don’t think our guild will meet those request. lol sorry John

Chris Cleary.8017:

With the number of ballistas that have been thrown on my dead body, I expect someone to send a video of it!

that’s what she said.

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

• HD quality; we need the actual video file, no link to YouTube please; the ideal way for you to share this with us is probably a hosting service such as Google Docs for example;

• Please no swearing (if there’s TeamSpeak or map chat), no music and clean game footage

OK, so I have some footage of Hugh running around with CERN last reset (not much). Here’s the catch. You seem to be asking for the actual video file and no music. It is a confusing request. Are you asking for the raw video file or the edited and rendered video file that I upload to YouTube? The raw files are unedited and include an audio track. That means it would be up to you guys to strip that out when you edit the footage. A rendered video file means some quality is lost but I can strip out the music/audio for you.

Which file do you really want?

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

• Please no swearing (if there’s TeamSpeak or map chat), no music and clean game footage

i hypothesize that the subset of people who record gameplay has almost nobody who doesnt record music… =/

insanemaniac.2456:

Stephane Lo Presti.7258:

• Please no swearing (if there’s TeamSpeak or map chat), no music and clean game footage

i hypothesize that the subset of people who record gameplay has almost nobody who doesnt record music… =/

They’re also asking for no swearing in mapchat. I highly suspect they’re asking for a rendered video file. Which leads to another question: which render settings do they want the files in? I can strip the audio out and cover up the chat box. The render settings I use for YouTube though produce a lower quality product than if I just re-render at a higher quality and upload that to Google Drive.

What if the dev never shows up?

killed 10 Kodash in the last 30mins and got 1 loot bag – is this a dev thing?

How many Devs have actually spent time outside the gold leagues and on EU servers?
From skimming over the last pages I got the impression that a lot of them spent their time with strong servers (with a lot more of them on NA servers than EU) that don’t suffer from the coverage issues like many lower level tiers. How will they get “the whole picture” of the state of WvW? Wasn’t that the initial goal?

Gorani.7205:

How many Devs have actually spent time outside the gold leagues and on EU servers?
From skimming over the last pages I got the impression that a lot of them spent their time with strong servers (with a lot more of them on NA servers than EU) that don’t suffer from the coverage issues like many lower level tiers. How will they get “the whole picture” of the state of WvW? Wasn’t that the initial goal?

Problably because of the time they play… Since most devs play on PST, they moved to servers where there are people during that time…

I’m impressed however that ET received one, as the server pretty much dies after midnight EST.

An entry from Knights Templar on SBI. Mailed the raw video file to the email address, but just sharing the YouTube version here:

http://youtu.be/5uGIk7aRYko

I’m so late to this thread, but I’ve been relocating and with spotty Internet I have not been keeping up.

I see we, Maguuma, have a dev in SFD. I didn’t really know they still existed, so I’m extending a late but hopefully well received invitation to any dev to join Maguuma as a pug. It’s really the best way to see Maguuma anyway. To pug is to understand Mag.

-Mananas, formerly of [VR] but lately of no particular guild.

edit: Sorry SFD that came out harsh. I never see y’all anymore.

So, after ignoring queues, deserted servers and solo anything, get ready for the ‘devs had a blast in wvw’ promo video where it’s all excitement and action to try and entice new players into the game.

The only downside- nothing has changed in the core maps in two years and with nothing seemingly planned for the next year, there is nothing to keep existing players playing apart from subbornness or a target of 10,000 ranks (which is fastest to get by following a mindless upscaled karma train in EOTM, making your wvw efforts look feeble).

^This.

After 2 years of wvw not getting much attention and becoming the stale, dry crust of an experience it is now I was a little bit cynical when the op stated: ‘We want to fight by your side, experience the ups and downs, have fun and learn together with you how to make a better WvW experience.’

But then on page 5 it turned into ‘We’d like your Adopt-A-Dev video footage’ for a ‘cool project’ and it all became a lot clearer.

Forget promotional videos, breathe some life back into wvw… Without putting any more unwanted pve into it please – this forum is full of many great suggestions made by the wvw community on how to do this.

To get a more realistic idea of what wvw is like for many people – go undercover pug, no guilds, no anet tags just a part of the unwashed pug masses. Although zerging around in a blob of guardians and warriors probably won’t make an interesting promotional video.

You know whats really crazy, their like real people, not ninjas from outerspace…

THE MORE YOU KNOW

Wait a second. The/A Producer for Anet hadn’t played WvW prior to that? Yikes…

Hi,
I am a guild leader on Devona’s Rest. We were honored to have John Corpening in our guild. We are indeed a fun loving group of misfits, not a large WvW force, we often run in a small group of skilled players but by no means zerg bust or a zerg. Our strongest hours are in the late PST evening when alot of our server has logged off to go to bed.

During the tournaments we encountered some very rough nights and some very good fights. John was there through all of this, he saw things at a different level. John remained fairly anonymous, some of my own guild was not aware he was a Dev. He heard alot of raw comments in map chat, guild chat, ect. about the things people liked and didnt like and saw first hand why. We have a better understanding of some of the challenges he faces and he definitely has a better understanding of the challenges a guild like ours that loves to WvW faces.

They did this on their free time, I know that it was a fun exercise for them (I hope) but it was still a work related item. John listened and watched and picked up on some things that weren’t even complained about to him.

It has been quiet without much activity from Dev’s in the WvW forums in the past few months. I am glad they are taking an interest and anything that comes out of this is better then silence.

I want to thank him, and all the Devs for trying to get a better view and understanding. For taking their free time to come and hang out with us, I know some of them are very passionate about WvW and already play all the time but its nice to see an effort like this bringing new ideas and someday perhaps new challenges in WvW.

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

Blackarps.1974:

Wait a second. The/A Producer for Anet hadn’t played WvW prior to that? Yikes…

There are many producers here! I am quite new to the company, and I do not produce for a team that is related to WvW in almost any way; trust me, if I were I would have played WvW prior to my starting here

I actually think this is a GOOD thing. If a newbie at Anet who never participated in WvW much before tried it out, then it gives fresh feedback to the devs on new people trying to join, and perhaps moreso on how WvW is becoming stale.

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

Blackarps.1974:

Wait a second. The/A Producer for Anet hadn’t played WvW prior to that? Yikes…

There are many producers here! I am quite new to the company, and I do not produce for a team that is related to WvW in almost any way; trust me, if I were I would have played WvW prior to my starting here

Okay thanks for clarifying. Hope you’re enjoying the newish job

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

Blackarps.1974:

Wait a second. The/A Producer for Anet hadn’t played WvW prior to that? Yikes…

There are many producers here! I am quite new to the company, and I do not produce for a team that is related to WvW in almost any way; trust me, if I were I would have played WvW prior to my starting here

brave soul

thx for playing with us, always appreciated!

Just wondering regarding the footage that has been sent. I send my World Versus World raid footage (RAW files as per guidelines) to the provided e-mail address although, it has been a few weeks without any word on that. What is actually being done with the footage and when would we be able to see a result?

Lauree Akhtar.3205:

Hey guys!

I wasn’t able to make an introduction post due to not having a proper shiny account, but I’d like to thank Hordes of Denravi of HoD for the great time I’ve had! I hadn’t played WvW prior to this and it was a super cool experience to run with the guild, learn the ropes, and get their amazing feedback on the game! It’s been a grand time and I look forward to my continued WvW playing.

It was great fun having you join us on Theme Night, at least I think you did form the convos going on on our TS last week…lol!
Tonight looks like we are going to do a “Thief Night”, so if you have time, come join us again!

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

Hey everyone,

I had a blast playing with [CERN] on Tarnished Coast! That was some of the most intense WvWing I have experienced hands down. How fast everyone adapted to the new trick and the tactic every world brought to the table was amazing! The guild I was in was super nice and very hospitable. I really can’t say enough about everyone as the community playing and showing such passion for this game type, really thank you everyone. I hope I can see more of everyone in the coming months as I bounce around playing WvW and PvP.

See you in the mists . . . either friend or foe. . . prepare for glory!
Hugh

Maybe you should try Borlis Pass where the entire tournament was a disaster and pretty much all of the WvW guilds are leaving for other servers. But then all those transfers make you money…. There are no “coming months” for BP WvW. Spoon

John, thanks a lot for the report, it was really interesting to read.

The smaller tweak are interesting (siege disabler balance, white sword, PPK and rally off a kill ). I’m really looking forward to see them, not going to discuss them now because it’s time to test features, not discuss them . I hope the schedule for those will be short (no Soon TM please ).

Regarding discussion on rewards for scouts and defenders: yes please. YES. Quick discussion and quick implementation

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

This would be a mistake.

morrolan.9608:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

This would be a mistake.

Very much so, it would be fine for full servers, but for those with low populations it would be a disaster….

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

I am someone that often runs around alone and tries to capture towers alone with a single guild catapult (I succeed very often with that). While this change would be perfect to me, it would make WvW in general much worse. It’s already not fun having to scout inside a tower. Most servers that are not in absolute high tier can’t afford to have scouts all around and need to rely on those white swords.

Something like this would could only work if you add something like a beacon trap, that is cheap and when activated gives a signal on the map at the point where it was activated. Removing the white swords would make the current game much worse, as you can flip towers very fast as it is right now anyways.

Tspatula.9086:

morrolan.9608:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

This would be a mistake.

Very much so, it would be fine for full servers, but for those with low populations it would be a disaster….

What if they removed white swords for servers that have the outmanned buff only (for objectives they attack, not their holdings)? There’s some ways this could be abused and makes the implementation much more complex I imagine, but it could be interesting.

Losing white swords could be an interesting thing though, it will be cool to see how it plays out as a test. And implementing all of these things now gives them time to get feedback and make tweaks before season 4.

One other quick change they could test… Increase the duration of RI on keeps and maybe towers. This might be another change that would need to be applied selectively.

Wonder if they’ve considered having multiple-sized swords (rather than just the standardized orange swords) on a map.

IE. 10 people involved small orange/yellow/whatever colored swords, 25 people involved medium sized swords, 40+ people involved big swords.

Tspatula.9086:

morrolan.9608:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

This would be a mistake.

Very much so, it would be fine for full servers, but for those with low populations it would be a disaster….

Definitely a mistake. Lower population servers count on the swords popping so they can respond. They don’t have teams posted in every tower, camp or keep. This would basically be a gimme for large servers. They’d flip a keep before anyone knew there was a problem.

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

That would be a big, very big mistake. Scouting is already pretty unfun and unrewarding job, and you trying to force people even more into this.

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

So instead of making defending more fun, you’re simply going to require that there be more defenders?

How is it that you cannot see that this destroys lower tier servers all over again?

Removing white sword would be absolutely terrible.

Also, it would allow for major griefing by pretending something is under attack while it’s not.

morrolan.9608:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

This would be a mistake.

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to make Guild Claiming more useful.

Add notifications to the guild that has the location claimed.

This adds value to guild claiming and puts in a place a way to mitigate the problem of lower population servers not having enough people to scout.

All for what seems to me would be a very minimal development cost.

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

Don’t slow down the Karmatrain :/…
I think it is an interesting point and a good thing you brought it up. But I wouldn’t expect that change to bring more positive effects than negative side effects. Well, if it is implemented in the next build, we will (most likely) give negative feedback about it, and if this current pace persists, we get some fixes soon after that. Maybe I like it in its original state as well.

All in all, the post sounds promising. In the meantime i have to figure out how to stuff a waypoint into a tower. >.>

Like some before me already posted: Removing white swords would make scouting way worse for lower servers. It is already hard enough to find scouts at all and with this change they couldn’t even scout multiple objectives on one map anymore.

Also I’m highly against PPK. Right now one of the most difficult things in wvw is attacking/sieging defended T3 structures. This usually involves getting killed a lot and takes a lot of time so it is already quite ineffective when playing for a high PPT score. This change would actually make it even worse because the attackers would now also donate points to the defending side because they die in the AC/cannon/AoE rain. This would overall discourage attacking upgraded and well defended stuff even more than it already does now and would promote capping wooden/undefended stuff(esp. in off-peak hours) so basically karmatraining. Plz no!

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

No. Scouting is not fun for the vast majority of players. No amount of rewards (except maybe precursors) is going to get people to do the most mind numbingly boring aspect of WvW.

I completely agree that removing white swords is a massive mistake. Even in T2 on FA we respond to white swords; there isn’t scouts posted all the time. Only full servers like SoS can afford to have 10-15 people just scouting at all times.

Rewards for scouting better be massive if you remove white swords, and I mean GOLD not silver. Think Dungeon rewards. If I can spend 10 min doing CoF p1 and get 1.5g. I should be getting at least a Gold an hr if I am spending hours scouting and patrolling.

John Corpening.9847:

These include reducing the number of people who can rally off of a kill.

The correct number is probably zero, but experimentation is a good way to test things out.

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

As others have already said, this would be a disaster for low population periods in the lower tiers where there might be only a couple of people on who can’t possibly scout everything. Elsewhere, I’ve recommended:

• Defender Outnumbered = No Delay Before White Swords
• Attacker Outnumbered = No White Swords.
• No Outnumbered Buffs = White Swords with existing delay

This would allow ninja attacks against superior forces that have the numbers to scout but also help outnumbered servers defend their stuff from much larger forces.

John Corpening.9847:

We are also going to test out awarding points per kill. PPK was part of the scoring discussion and something we wanted to try.

I’m skeptical this will be a good thing but I’m willing to give it a try.

My concern about the last two ideas is that they seem to hurt the weaker or outnumbered opponent who is going to die more, unless they avoid most fights, and has fewer resources to scout their map for attacks. I don’t think fixing WvW involves making things worse for an outnumbered server with coverage holes. If your goal is to help the underdog, then giving the more powerful server even more points for rolling over a smaller force and giving them no warning before they lose objectives is not the way to do it.

Also bear in mind that rallying and points per kill make inexperienced players, casual players, and uplevels a liability to their server and, on the case of rallying, any hardcore or experienced group they try to travel with. That runs counter to what I thought was an important design goal for GW2, which was to always welcome more help. It also makes me more incentive not to stand and fight if I can’t win, and fewer fights isn’t going to make WvW better.

I’m pleased that the developers are listening, pleased you are talking to the community and each other, and pleased that you are giving us some insight into the direction you are thinking about going in, but I do have some serious concerns from this that my server and how I enjoy playing WvW are going to be casualties of future changes, just as they were in PvE with the megaservers.

Grav.3568:

How is it that you cannot see that this destroys lower tier servers all over again?

It looked like very few of the developers went to the bottom tiers. It’s possible they just don’t have any experience with it. It’s possible that they share the preferences of T1 and T2 players for guild focus and huge armies on stacked servers. It’s possible that’s one there are so relatively few WvW players on the bottom tiers that we are an irrelevant part of their market and they don’t care. For whatever reason, they keep seeming to not get it.

The megaservers were horrible to a lot of people, too, including role-players and people who enjoyed the smaller server communities.

I can only guess from the massive population caps on the megaservers, the way they group players, the massive zergs now at all of the world boss events, and the focus of the recent CDI threads that they must assume everyone is looking for a very high population experience and want to orient their game around huge numbers on a map and a large guild experience.

I see plenty of independents, casuals, people who deliberately chose lower population servers, and people who hate the megaservers (including some who have stopped playing because of the megaservers), but maybe their numbers just aren’t enough to matter, maybe their voices aren’t loud enough or organized enough to be heard, or maybe the preferences and style of such players is simply so different from what the developers expect and enjoy that they can’t relate.

It’s not ANet’s fault, but I don’t see a lot of gray hair on their staff, doubt many developers are playing with their spouses and kids, and doubt many of them are newbies to computer games or MMOs. There are a lot of perspectives likely missing there. GW2, by the way, is the first MMO I’ve ever played (not counting text MUDs). It might help a little, though, if all of the developers spent a few weeks playing on the servers at the bottom of the rankings.

Knightmare.8634:

Sounds like a perfect opportunity to make Guild Claiming more useful.

Add notifications to the guild that has the location claimed.

This adds value to guild claiming and puts in a place a way to mitigate the problem of lower population servers not having enough people to scout.

All for what seems to me would be a very minimal development cost.

I like the idea on principle, I think that’s an interesting concept… but the dynamics of guild claiming would have to change. You’d have to have it time out after a while, otherwise low-pop servers would get screwed when the guild that’s claiming a Keep or SM goes to bed (trust me this happens a lot).

Syndictive discussed this concept with our developer briefly, but I hope this was brought to the table:

Removing the ability to hard-rez fully-dead players while in combat, or putting a timer on WHEN you can rez fully-dead players. (IE, 2:00 after they die)

This thought arises from the issue that if my guild (a skill group) is fighting 20v50, we manage to kill a lot of players on our first pass, say 10. The next players push up into us, and make us kite back from the dead-state players. The players in the back of this massive group then rez the fully-dead players nullifying our work. This makes fights against double our numbers nearly impossible – they become simple attrition battles no matter our organization or skill level.

This change would empower skill groups and outnumbered servers during open-field and in-keep fighting without completely destroying numbers advantage.

This change I suggested, in addition to your new PPK system, could easily break down social barriers that exist in WvW currently between the fights/GvG guilds and the PPT focused players. The rift could essentially be non-existent if the kills are a substantial part of the score as well. The only worry that I have is that now PPT-focused groups and players will only run away from skill groups, because they would be afraid to hurt the server score.

Berk.8561:

John Corpening.9847:

Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled.

As others have already said, this would be a disaster for low population periods in the lower tiers where there might be only a couple of people on who can’t possibly scour everything. Elsewhere, I’ve recommended:

• Defender Outnumbered = No Delay Before White Swords
• Attacker Outnumbered = No White Swords.
• No Outnumbered Buffs = White Swords with existing delay

This would allow ninja attacks against superior forces that have the numbers to scout but also help outnumbered servers defend their stuff from much larger forces.

Agreed, simply removing white swords would really hurt low pop servers. Berk’s ideas seem reasonable if there needs to be a change, but I would rather just see it stay the same (and this from someone who enjoys ninja-ing keeps). The rest of the changes seem all right to me, particularly the potential build site changes and a balance pass on the disablers.