Guild Wars 2

I’m calling out the Anet staff on what I’m about to write here. Any mod who wishes to dismiss it will simply have to keep on dismissing it because I am exercising my right as a dissatisfied customer, and voicing my opinion. I did pay $60 USD for it, I do reside in the state of California, and employees at ArenaNet/NCSoft fall under Federal jurisdiction by working in WA, therefore this post is protected by the 14th Amendment, Section 1. No censorship prz. I have scanned most of https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/ and found nothing preventing me from posting this.

Oh and its exceptionally long.
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It has been nearly 3 years since I’ve logged onto GW2 almost a daily basis, solely for the PVP and content related to it. I always found having an kitten nal of 5 characters to choose from and the diversity of professions fun.

What made it quickly boring, however, was when I realized that the server matchups and sPVP were governed by a small handful of people who could not possibly encapsulate or foresee balance problems between professions, servers, skills, or even the niche populations of servers (the PvE people vs. the PvP ones).

What I am referring to is, and this may be outdated information or even false because the last time I heard it was 2 years ago, that sPVP alone was spearheaded by only 2 individuals. That means that it was only up to 2 employees to oversee and fix the problems that arose out of sPVP, like balance, whatever.

Because of this, I thought the same to be true of WvW. At one point, matchups were so stagnant that we once had the same server as an enemy for 4 weeks in a row.

If you fast-forward to now, we have had RIDICULOUS matchups based on this “new” system. And if anything of what I know about the matchups are true, its that they are purely based only on server population. This is not only volatile, to me its pure laziness. Instead of incorporating a set of equations based purely on a player’s viability to contribute to 24/7 war on their home server, we get matched based on POPULATION.

When I say to take a lesson from other games, specifically Destiny, there is a Combat Rating that they use for each INDIVIDUAL player based on the matches they abandon, their K/D count, their 6v6 Win/Loss Ratio, and other factors. This makes for fun gameplay between players of equal skill. It makes things interesting. The game doesn’t just sit there and match based on internet connectivity and how close a person is in geography, or even worse, how immediately available a person is once they seek a match. There is actually thought that goes into those matches. If there was something like a Rating per player here, it would give value to their ranks. Anet, you did a POOR job of implementing ranks across sPVP and WvW. Rank should reflect time AND effort, not the ability to mob one person 20v1 or sit there in that same group of 20 for hours ranking up based on captures. There’s a reason major MMOs have loot go to the highest damage dealt players, its because they contribute the most damage to targets and do the most work most of the time. So instead of awarding WEXP to everyone when 1 person dies, boost the WEXP gained based on the level of the person and give it to the one person who contributed the most to killing them! Don’t just award ranks because of how long they’ve been running around in groups! Make people earn it!

This leads me to my next point. Condition meta in this game has made people so unarguably lazy that I have literally seen the same people who sit in those groups of 20 make a necro, equip a scepter, and spam 1. Or they made a thief, stole, inflicted torment, stealth, and then spam 1 using pistols. Or they got a warrior, 2 leapt to their target, used F1 after spamming 1 on swords, then proceeded to spam 1 even more. Why do I bring up conditions? Because conditions should have a purpose, not be a lazy mindless form of fighting. Currently the only ones I can agree with are Poison for reducing Healing, Freezing for reducing movement speed and skill, Torment because DoT while moving is actually forcing people to think twice before running away, Weakness for reduced damage and energy, and the powerful attacks on Burn.

(continued)
If you look at Aion, poison is nowhere near as powerful as it is here. Nor does it affect potions. The biggest advantage of having poison on a target is to force rangers and assassins out of stealth. The only thing we have close to that is Arrow Cart 4, AND YOU NEED T5 MASTERY TO UNLOCK IT! Thieves and Mesmers have way too much of a handicap on players who don’t have immediate access to condition wipes or AoE attacks to defend themselves against bleed. And the base damage for bleed on any profession is way too high in the first place. In fact, there is no purpose for bleed except on higher Toughness opponents, and this is where it should do the amount of damage it does-because physical attacks are not going to hit hard. This is where those players who excel in dealing conditions should find their use for bleed. This is where stats and smart gameplay should actually matter. But they don’t. Stats in this game are too linear in terms of what they are used for, Toughness to avoid physical attacks, ok, but wheres the mitigation stat against condition attacks? I dare you to say Vitality, which is just laughable considering most Vitality traits have healing power based on a raw number that gets reduced by a percentage…200 Healing wont do much once hit with 33% Poison reduction. And even then, you can heal with Conditions on in most cases and still die to a bleed.

Another thing I had to say about was communication across the map. Why is there no on-screen chat? Meaning, once again, in Aion, there are these Groups called Alliance, and the leader of the Alliance can send on-screen messages to EVERYONE in those groups, which can consist of 24 players at the max, which is 4 groups of 6 people. Why do we only have squads and parties? If ArenaNet had implemented a feature like this, we could organize at will without those who love to force people to get on TeamSpeak, and there could be clear communication from Commanders to even the people who have a hearing impairment because the text would be on screen in huge letters.

Anyways, I’m sick of the imbalanced matchups. And I’m sick of mindless sheep zergs. I’m sure others were too when last year [Os] decided to purposefully tank our ranks so we wouldn’t have to match with a server we would have clearly lost to. It’s sad to me when the playerbase, as a consensus, can tell what is right for their server and the devs cannot. Instead of these “Adopt a dev” events, how about you play the game more often instead of where, when you actually play the game, it gets turned into an event.

-slow clap- quite a rant. unfortunately our WvW situation is not going to improve until someone dies. (YB, DB, SoS, FA)

Could you post a summary of what you think is the problem and how to fix it?

FugueState.3842:

I’m calling out the Anet staff on what I’m about to write here. Any mod who wishes to dismiss it will simply have to keep on dismissing it because I am exercising my right as a dissatisfied customer, and voicing my opinion. I did pay $60 USD for it, I do reside in the state of California, and employees at ArenaNet/NCSoft fall under Federal jurisdiction by working in WA, therefore this post is protected by the 14th Amendment, Section 1. No censorship prz. I have scanned most of https://www.guildwars2.com/en/legal/ and found nothing preventing me from posting this.

People like you make me ashamed to be an American. You have no actual understanding of you own Bill of Rights.

As to the rest of your post, you do almost nothing other then compare this game to Aion and other games. Some of your comparison are that of what is generally considered some of the worst parts of those games.

FugueState.3842:

Another thing I had to say about was communication across the map. Why is there no on-screen chat?

Shakes head.

Have you tried looking in the actual chat window?

FugueState.3842:

Anyways, I’m sick of the imbalanced matchups. And I’m sick of mindless sheep zergs. I’m sure others were too when last year [Os] decided to purposefully tank our ranks so we wouldn’t have to match with a server we would have clearly lost to. It’s sad to me when the playerbase, as a consensus, can tell what is right for their server and the devs cannot. Instead of these “Adopt a dev” events, how about you play the game more often instead of where, when you actually play the game, it gets turned into an event.

That’s the spirit. I always admire a quitter. I mean, seriously. Why strive to beat a server in a tough match up.

If you actually think zergs are mindless, you know less about the game then you do your own rights and laws. In my experience, most of them are in TS, communicating together, with a command structure. Seeing as you made some irrational complaints about communication already, I would think you would be aware of this.

FugueState.3842:

If you fast-forward to now, we have had RIDICULOUS matchups based on this “new” system.

Exactly what new system would that be?

FugueState.3842:

And if anything of what I know about the matchups are true, its that they are purely based only on server population.

Apparently you knowledge is indeed limited in this area. It is based on your score compared to the score of other servers in your match up. As well as how you have done previously against those servers. The only thing population has to do with it, is the size of your army in the field to work for those points.

FugueState.3842:

This is not only volatile, to me its pure laziness. Instead of incorporating a set of equations based purely on a player’s viability to contribute to 24/7 war on their home server, we get matched based on POPULATION.

I am not sure “laziness” means what you seem to think it does. This last part you have here doesn’t make any sense.

Zenith.6403:

Could you post a summary of what you think is the problem and how to fix it?

Problems:
There are probably no dedicated WvW Devs#
There are no updates for WvW
WvW is not balanced,

Solutions:
Get dedicated WvW Devs, more than one.
Add real content updates for WvW
Find way to actually make WvW fair and balanced, rather than the bigger zerg is the “better” server.
Dont try silly little changed like you have now, it will just cause more players to leave

The WvW population has fallen dramatically, even in T1. Players are leaving and Anet has no idea, or no resources to add new content to it.
They know their only hope is PvE, hence why we have biweekly updates for Living Story. But even PvE isnt doing well for GW2. Even in PvE so many players have left the game that they had to resort to megaserver in order to make maps look active. If we still had server specific world maps, you’d see the real ghost town Gw2 has become.

Even if there is an expansion, a PvE expansion, in the next 6 months; who is going to buy it? When this expansion comes out, it is then when we will realise just how many players are still left in this game.

I Heard a good idea about 8 months back (unfortunately I cant remember the original posters name) about how they could fix WvW.

The problem with WvW is that it only tiers based on how well a server performed, it does not take into account their active WvW playing population & should transfers occur a home server can be stuck in a horrible place for months upon months.
This ^ has happened to a good deal of servers.

As for how to fix this problem.

1: Create a system that tiers people both on how well they perform & on how many players they have who are intrusted in that game mode.

2: There would be different group sizes/alliances for different tiers. The largest of which could be a thousand, perhaps 2 thousand. It would then get smaller by increments.
Each group/alliance would only be pitted up against others of similar sizes to ensure that one doesn’t just steamroll over the other with numbers as is happening in many WvW maps currently.

3: Leaving your current alliance is always free, joining a new one would cost gems. If not in an alliance you will be put randomly into a group in a tier specifically for randoms every week.

4: Get rid of the WvW score effecting things in PvE. Instead create tracks for it similar to Spvp that reward you as you complete events (taking objectives etc…) (the way it currently works with WvW score effecting PvE just causes people to go to higher tier servers to benefit without ever touching WVW)

This ensures people who want to do allot of WvW can do so with similar minded people, that they will have a larger variety of match up possibilities & that people who don’t want to WvW wont be lumped in with those who do.

Zenith.6403:

Could you post a summary of what you think is the problem and how to fix it?

There have been three years of discussion in this forum on what is wrong with WvW and suggestions on possible ways to fix it. The suggestions range from idiotic to clever and promising, but none have ever been taken seriously. The dev “support” has been comical, and ANet attempts to deflect and evade have achieved legendary status.

Play the game as it is or find another one, because sure as hell this one isn’t going to change.

FugueState.3842:

There’s a reason major MMOs have loot go to the highest damage dealt players, its because they contribute the most damage to targets and do the most work most of the time. So instead of awarding WEXP to everyone when 1 person dies, boost the WEXP gained based on the level of the person and give it to the one person who contributed the most to killing them! Don’t just award ranks because of how long they’ve been running around in groups! Make people earn it!

• cough **

Yeah – give the mighty warrior all the loot and EXP and dispose of those guardians who gave him stability which enabled him to finish, who gave him retaliation so that the enemy broke off their attack and do away with all those ele whimps who spammed water fields to keep the stout warrior alive and the necros who threw wells of darkness who blinded his enemies …

Zerg and group fights are not won because one single brave super dps hero does all the work …

FugueState.3842:

Another thing I had to say about was communication across the map. Why is there no on-screen chat? Meaning, once again, in Aion, there are these Groups called Alliance, and the leader of the Alliance can send on-screen messages to EVERYONE in those groups, which can consist of 24 players at the max, which is 4 groups of 6 people. Why do we only have squads and parties?

You played this game for … how long? And still have not figured out how to use squad commands, party commands and /s and /m … sigh.

Just to enlighten you … /s works (in WvW) for everyone close to you who happens to be on your side and /m works for the whole map – again only people from your side can read the messages.