Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing WvW during the weekend around 16 hours.

Only legitimate reasons i found the decay catch up to you:

• Defending(1) an structure is not being attacked.
• Escorting(1) dollies to a full supplies tower/keep.
• Looking for duels(1) in EB.
• Scouting(1) in own keep/closest towers to spawn in home map.

(1) : Afkers in disguise.

As only improvement to WvW I would give small number of skirmish tickets for the ascended armor with every single skirmish chest as the actual number is too low (you need at least 2 week for the chest piece + lots of lots of gold )

And balance. The classes balance.. For the love of god the broken builds this game has are painful to watch.

expect balance to get worse…….Anet does not care,while they keep designing pve classes with stupid pvp gimmicks for the good looks.

It was one of the main objectives of this game….

I’d prefer the cookie cutter balance stay in sPvP, WvW isn’t meant to be fair. Unrestricted PvP is what makes it fun.

Agreed, since the patch, i noticed many roamers being on frontlines, instead of “afk in disguise” on backlines. The population of rangers / thieves practicing this was well underestimated, now I understand why Anet has taken such a hard measure .., probably they saw the numbers in their metrics.

ugrakarma.9416:

Agreed, since the patch, i noticed many roamers being on frontlines, instead of “afk in disguise” on backlines. The population of rangers / thieves practicing this was well underestimated, now I understand why Anet has taken such a hard measure .., probably they saw the numbers in their metrics.

The difference is indeed obvious. People whine a lot about the measure, but a lot of players brought this on themselves to be fair.

The question is, are you running with a big zerg? So many people keep posting about how they don’t have a problem with decay and they are saying they are with their “guild” (zerg). Of course if you are in a huge group you are getting kills constantly and able to get objectives easier.

As a legitimate WvW’r, I can tell you that our small roaming/havoc group has a huge problem with decay. We aren’t AFK’n we are going for every camp, every kill. Sometimes that doesn’t work because while we are fighting equal fights the zerg comes, or we have to go all the way north because all the south objectives belong to us. We can usually win most of our outnumbered fights, but a lot of times we spend a good 5 minutes running from the zergs that are called while we are trying to get the north camps. Afterwards we have to run all the way back north, sometimes without any sight of anything/anyone to kill because they are all with the zergs.

Basically the only thing the new decay has done is promote zerging, if you are a zergling and think you have answers, please don’t.

Nevaahe.6308:

The question is, are you running with a big zerg? So many people keep posting about how they don’t have a problem with decay and they are saying they are with their “guild” (zerg). Of course if you are in a huge group you are getting kills constantly and able to get objectives easier.

As a legitimate WvW’r, I can tell you that our small roaming/havoc group has a huge problem with decay. We aren’t AFK’n we are going for every camp, every kill. Sometimes that doesn’t work because while we are fighting equal fights the zerg comes, or we have to go all the way north because all the south objectives belong to us. We can usually win most of our outnumbered fights, but a lot of times we spend a good 5 minutes running from the zergs that are called while we are trying to get the north camps. Afterwards we have to run all the way back north, sometimes without any sight of anything/anyone to kill because they are all with the zergs.

Basically the only thing the new decay has done is promote zerging, if you are a zergling and think you have answers, please don’t.

I ran alone half the time all week-end and had no issues whatsoever. That doesn’t mean there aren’t issues. But I personally didn’t saw any so far.

I think people fixate too much on the timer out of fear.

Nevaahe.6308:

The question is, are you running with a big zerg? So many people keep posting about how they don’t have a problem with decay and they are saying they are with their “guild” (zerg). Of course if you are in a huge group you are getting kills constantly and able to get objectives easier.

As a legitimate WvW’r, I can tell you that our small roaming/havoc group has a huge problem with decay. We aren’t AFK’n we are going for every camp, every kill. Sometimes that doesn’t work because while we are fighting equal fights the zerg comes, or we have to go all the way north because all the south objectives belong to us. We can usually win most of our outnumbered fights, but a lot of times we spend a good 5 minutes running from the zergs that are called while we are trying to get the north camps. Afterwards we have to run all the way back north, sometimes without any sight of anything/anyone to kill because they are all with the zergs.

Basically the only thing the new decay has done is promote zerging, if you are a zergling and think you have answers, please don’t.

I do both. This last weekend I spent maybe total of about 2-3 hours solo roaming / scouting home BL, another 6 hours or so in large group raids, and another 3-4 hours doign havoc / small group roaming.

Havent noticed any big difference as far as the whole participation thing goes, except for the times when I go AFK, which is exactly and precisely as it should be. The only exception to this is was when I was babysitting objectives on home BL without squad participation. But, even with that, I would rather have that, then to give participation to all the AFK farmers that were stacking at spawn and doing nothing 100x over. It is well worth it.

Now the bags and kills are obviously a different matter, you get more in large battles then small ones, for obvious reasons. But the whole participation thing is really not that bad, maybe needs a tweak here and there by 30-60 seconds, to allow for better travel on DBL, but thats it really.

Klipso.8653:

I’d prefer the cookie cutter balance stay in sPvP, WvW isn’t meant to be fair. Unrestricted PvP is what makes it fun.

Yeah I’m still waiting on the 50k damage skills for every class, hopefully this is addressed in the next expansion with the new elite specs.

anduriell.6280:

I’ve been playing WvW during the weekend around 16 hours.

Only legitimate reasons i found the decay catch up to you:

• Defending(1) an structure is not being attacked.
• Escorting(1) dollies to a full supplies tower/keep.
• Looking for duels(1) in EB.
• Scouting(1) in own keep/closest towers to spawn in home map.

(1) : Afkers in disguise.

As the Quarry’s Legendary Scout, this is bull patties! Learn how to WvW please???

Idk maybe its me, am not the type of somebody to brag about being butt whopped so i can get done with my standing ovation. perhaps the design intention is to tag along with someone or somebody that really cares about them forts as much as the genre is concern but hey, what do i know, am new to wuv.

Best change to WvW kitten that.

Apparently when you fight like below 1vX multiple times trying to defend kitten you’re not kittening participating in WvW. I started at mid T4 when I joined the border because the other border was dull fighting 1v3+ at every turn.

kitten Anet and kitten their idea of what participation is

After that I logged because guess kittening what, going to defend the kittening camp, 5 people, going out of spawn, 5 people, by the time I took a kitten ruin just to try to stop that kittening decay I was T1.

Dawdler.8521:

Best change to WvW kitten that.

Apparently when you fight like below 1vX multiple times trying to defend kitten you’re not kittening participating in WvW. I started at mid T4 when I joined the border because the other border was dull fighting 1v3+ at every turn.

kitten Anet and kitten their idea of what participation is

After that I logged because guess kittening what, going to defend the kittening camp, 5 people, going out of spawn, 5 people, by the time I took a kitten ruin just to try to stop that kittening decay I was T1.

Yeah, it should matter if you try and defend no matter how successful you were.

I was roaming for almost 2 hours today, watching home BL, and i noticed the decay. I zipped around looking for action so I can keep my participation up, however going from point to point it was below T3 for a while (maybe an hourish) until I found enough action to put me in T3/4 and barely kept it in T3.

This was just my experience.

If I am in a huge group I do not see a difference. If I am roaming with a small party or havking with my guild we all struggle a lot against the decay factor.

Putting a timer on anything, adds needless pressure. As many vets have said they don’t care about the rewards, if so, then who cares about including a mechanic that dictates how loot is awarded.

Additionally, The timer pigeon holes players into specific activities, which is totally unnecessary and too much of a strong arm approach on a-nets part. It also adds unnecessary pressure to keep moving, and instead of rewards feeling like a carrot on a stick it now feels like a slave driver cracking a whip, constantly reminding you that you might not be “participating” in the way anet wants.

There are a lot more problems associated with wvw then worrying about “AFKers.”

The biggest concern about them was that they were taking up spots when maps were full. Now that the patch is out and the grind for rewards has proven to be ridiculous, 99% of those filled maps aren’t filled anymore. So who cares about any of this anyways, it has become a moot point.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Putting a timer on anything, adds needless pressure. As many vets have said they don’t care about the rewards, if so, then who cares about including a mechanic that dictates how loot is awarded.

Additionally, The timer pigeon holes players into specific activities, which is totally unnecessary and too much of a strong arm approach on a-nets part. It also adds unnecessary pressure to keep moving, and instead of rewards feeling like a carrot on a stick it now feels like a slave driver cracking a whip, constantly reminding you that you might not be “participating” in the way anet wants.

There are a lot more problems associated with wvw then worrying about “AFKers.”

The biggest concern about them was that they were taking up spots when maps were full. Now that the patch is out and the grind for rewards has proven to be ridiculous, 99% of those filled maps aren’t filled anymore. So who cares about any of this anyways, it has become a moot point.

I personally don’t care that you get all you want instantly and for free. You, or anyone else. And I don’t like the timer either…

What I do care about though is how you will play differently if you are motivated by doing your best winning the game vs doing your best getting more external reward. It provides a very different gaming experience for all involved.

Sometimes, you actually aren’t contributing.

Most people don’t expect recompense for loitering.

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

Shining One.1635:

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

Maybe instead of everyone playing solo you’d have a better WvW experience if you tried to group up with others on the map.

There’s too many “I” complaints about decay, I don’t hear any “WE” complaints about it, especially for a game mode that is supposed to be about large scale combat.

Swamurabi.7890:

Shining One.1635:

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

Maybe instead of everyone playing solo you’d have a better WvW experience if you tried to group up with others on the map.

There’s too many “I” complaints about decay, I don’t hear any “WE” complaints about it, especially for a game mode that is supposed to be about large scale combat.

Do you see how you replied to that post without actually answering the question it posed . . ?

The poster asked why his current behavior should not count as activity, but you answered as if he had asked how he could change his behavior so that it would count as activity . . .

Your answer carries within it the implication that there is no place in wvw for solo play and therefore it should not count as activity, but you do not give any argument or support for the assertion . . .

If you were able to support that idea, in order to then answer the actual question posed you would also need to explain why the behavior the poster described in the post you quoted didn’t actually qualify as activity . . .

So I log into EB, group with the usual 1 or 2 guildies already on map, kill a few people and stay at t6 til I log off.

See the difference now?
It’s pvp

If your point is that the decay timer update might be an attempt to gently nudge the game mode towards more pvp, there is an argument to support that since pvp didn’t have its timer reduced and some other aspects of the game mode did. But it isn’t a very strong argument bc it is still much easier to maintain participation through the pve aspects of the game mode than through pvp. They also did nothing to address the fact that ppt is worth so much more than ppk. Devs also gave no actual verbal indication that moving the mode towards more pvp was the goal of the update . . .

So if your goal was to provide the yet another alternative to the play style described, gj. But you’ve still done nothing to address the question posed . . .

Gop.8713:

Swamurabi.7890:

Shining One.1635:

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

Maybe instead of everyone playing solo you’d have a better WvW experience if you tried to group up with others on the map.

There’s too many “I” complaints about decay, I don’t hear any “WE” complaints about it, especially for a game mode that is supposed to be about large scale combat.

Do you see how you replied to that post without actually answering the question it posed . . ?

The poster asked why his current behavior should not count as activity, but you answered as if he had asked how he could change his behavior so that it would count as activity . . .

Your answer carries within it the implication that there is no place in wvw for solo play and therefore it should not count as activity, but you do not give any argument or support for the assertion . . .

If you were able to support that idea, in order to then answer the actual question posed you would also need to explain why the behavior the poster described in the post you quoted didn’t actually qualify as activity . . .

The problem with solo play in WvW is that players have gotten good enough to contribute to the overall team effort as solo players, without the need to group up.

This leads to a mentality that you don’t have to work together as a member of a group, which is one thing that goes against the large scale combat model that is WvW.

The poster was inactive both in waiting for something to flip AND in not going to another map to find something to flip. The poster could have grouped with other solo players and might have been able to take an objective that would have given them participation. If the whole map was one color, move to another map. If the enemy has a tower or keep then group up with other players.

Sitting around and waiting for something to do, something you can do by yourself, is not participation and shouldn’t be rewarded.

Swamurabi.7890

The poster was inactive both in waiting for something to flip AND in not going to another map to find something to flip. The poster could have grouped with other solo players and might have been able to take an objective that would have given them participation. If the whole map was one color, move to another map. If the enemy has a tower or keep then group up with other players.

Sitting around and waiting for something to do, something you can do by yourself, is not participation and shouldn’t be rewarded.

I was not standing around waiting for anything. I went directly from one objective to the next. The only waiting involved standing in capture circles. How exactly is that inactive?

LetoII.3782:

So I log into EB, group with the usual 1 or 2 guildies already on map, kill a few people and stay at t6 til I log off.

See the difference now?
It’s pvp

I was actively participating in PVP (fighting two players) while my participation was decaying. In retrospect, if I had just let them kill me quickly by not participating in the fight, I would have suffered less decay.

Shining One.1635:

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

You did not participate for at least more than 10 minutes. In 10 minutes you can go from one corner of that map and back. The situation you expose is unrealistic.

The actual timers help you realise that playing a running simulator does not help your server and actually you are damaging it as you don’t contribute but you are occupying one spot in a very limited amount of those. You constantly dying you are not helping. You trying hard to kill and fail dying in the process, you do not helping your server but the enemy’s.

I roam a lot and sometimes i go with the zerg if there are big battles going around. Either case i’m always out from the squad and i play solo most of the time. I don’t have any problem with the timer. Ofc i’m not a try hard and i don’t try to solo 1v3 or i run around DBL just because the map is beautiful (because as much as inconvenient for solo roamers i have to admit the map is very pretty ).

Sometimes the timer catch up if i’m Afking in a tower but then i can recover the participation easily.

Again this decay timer although rough, is the best thing ever happened to WvW.

Shining One.1635:

Swamurabi.7890

The poster was inactive both in waiting for something to flip AND in not going to another map to find something to flip. The poster could have grouped with other solo players and might have been able to take an objective that would have given them participation. If the whole map was one color, move to another map. If the enemy has a tower or keep then group up with other players.

Sitting around and waiting for something to do, something you can do by yourself, is not participation and shouldn’t be rewarded.

I was not standing around waiting for anything. I went directly from one objective to the next. The only waiting involved standing in capture circles. How exactly is that inactive?

Shrines, sentries, ruins and yaks are the lowest participation events for a reason. They don’t have as high a value as camps, towers, keeps, SMC or players. You only did one high value objective, the rest were low value. You were rewarded according to your contribution to the overall score, which wasn’t much.

Who had air keep? Who had S camp, NET, SWT? Those are the objectives you should have been looking at instead of two sentries and four shrines.

anduriell.6280:

Shining One.1635:

I started at southeast spawn on DBL. Spawn tower was ours, camp was not. I flipped the two nearby sentries while I waited for the RI to finish on the camp, then I flipped the camp. I proceed to flip all three Air Shrines. Someone else on my team had already flipped northeast camp and the two nearby sentries. I went to flip the east Earth Shrine. After killing all of the guards, I got attacked by two defenders. I managed to down one of them, but not get the kill before I died myself. I was already in a state of decay when I respawned. I had no nearby objectives to flip, so I lost more than a tier by the time I could get to something to stop the decay. Explain to me how I was not participating.

You did not participate for at least more than 10 minutes. In 10 minutes you can go from one corner of that map and back. The situation you expose is unrealistic.

The actual timers help you realise that playing a running simulator does not help your server and actually you are damaging it as you don’t contribute but you are occupying one spot in a very limited amount of those. You constantly dying you are not helping. You trying hard to kill and fail dying in the process, you do not helping your server but the enemy’s.

I roam a lot and sometimes i go with the zerg if there are big battles going around. Either case i’m always out from the squad and i play solo most of the time. I don’t have any problem with the timer. Ofc i’m not a try hard and i don’t try to solo 1v3 or i run around DBL just because the map is beautiful (because as much as inconvenient for solo roamers i have to admit the map is very pretty ).

Sometimes the timer catch up if i’m Afking in a tower but then i can recover the participation easily.

Again this decay timer although rough, is the best thing ever happened to WvW.

So what you are basicly saying is that if you arent winning you’re not playing WvW and that’s the best change ever to WvW. Got it. Everyone that looses is a sucker that doesnt deserve participation or to play WvW, be it fighting a duel for 5 minutes or fighting 1v10 gank thieves outside spawn and dying instantly half a dozen times. Nothing is participation unless you win.

Here’s an idea – freeze decay while in combat with another player and start it again a minute after combat ended.

There I just made the best change to WvW 1000x better and it only took me a second to think of it. I must be the kittening Einstein of game design.

Swamurabi.7890:

The problem with solo play in WvW is that players have gotten good enough to contribute to the overall team effort as solo players, without the need to group up.

This leads to a mentality that you don’t have to work together as a member of a group, which is one thing that goes against the large scale combat model that is WvW.

The poster was inactive both in waiting for something to flip AND in not going to another map to find something to flip. The poster could have grouped with other solo players and might have been able to take an objective that would have given them participation. If the whole map was one color, move to another map. If the enemy has a tower or keep then group up with other players.

Sitting around and waiting for something to do, something you can do by yourself, is not participation and shouldn’t be rewarded.

I think the fact that wvw allows for solo players to make contributions is an intended feature, not a problem as you see it. In support of this contention I would point out that most objectives can be soloed by casual players, and the npcs that defend the objectives scale with the number of players present. If the objectives were meant to be reserved for groups, the npcs would already be scaled up, and soloing would be much more difficult . . .

I would also point out that this is not an oversight by the devs. They just released a patch intended to make players more active. They could have just as easily released a patch intended to make players group up more, but they did not . . .

I would also argue against your contention that doing the most immediately available thing is better than waiting to do some other thing. While I agree that at times waiting for ri is just lazy, there are plenty of other times when flipping that camp is important enough to wait for. Most times it depends on how long you have to wait and how far away the next best thing to do is . . .

Which is another problem introduced by reduced decay timers: I now find myself frequently choosing between the thing that is best for me and the thing that is best for my server, while before I could always just do the thing that was best for the server and I didn’t really have to worry about myself since my participation wouldn’t decay as long as I was staying active . . .

And finally I’ll mention one last thing from a solo player’s perspective that might help you understand another point of view. Zergs are great. There aren’t many things a zerg can do that a smaller group can’t, and there aren’t many things that a small group can do that a solo player can’t, but in a lot of situations more is better in a lot of different ways. But as a solo player, everything I do is a contribution that would not have occurred if I hadn’t done it. I can join a twenty-player group and the resulting twenty-one player group is going to get me a lot of rewards, but it isn’t very likely that it will accomplish anything that it wouldn’t have accomplished in my absence. It is far better then for me to continue making my solo contributions until I encounter a goal that I cannot accomplish alone, then banding together with other players only for as long as it takes us to accomplish the goals we could not accomplish alone . . .

So while wvw certainly allows for large scale combat, I don’t think it can be persuasively argued that large scale combat is wvw . . .

Shining One.1635:

LetoII.3782:

So I log into EB, group with the usual 1 or 2 guildies already on map, kill a few people and stay at t6 til I log off.

See the difference now?
It’s pvp

I was actively participating in PVP (fighting two players) while my participation was decaying. In retrospect, if I had just let them kill me quickly by not participating in the fight, I would have suffered less decay.

You were backcapping 2 players who had flipped the 2 sentries and the camp.. They saw you coming. The sentry reveals you on the minimap as you fight it. I’d have doubled back on you too xD
Bad pvp, bad reward. Best part of WvW over fighting NPC’s is that things like that DO matter.

Klipso.8653:

I’d prefer the cookie cutter balance stay in sPvP, WvW isn’t meant to be fair. Unrestricted PvP is what makes it fun.

Problem is the mechanics are too friendly towards already overpowered/unfair builds. We don’t actually need to address the unfair/overpowered builds to fix the problem though, rather how favorably they interact with the mechanics of the mode.

Mechanics:
-waypointing and respawns
-rezing of downed and dead
-guild aura/upgrades
-siege in general
-the npc’s in general

So the balance should be fixed by addressing how the differnt types of builds, aka power/condi/tank/glass/heal/boon, interact with the above mechanics.

So for example take the second tier of guild upgrades for objectives. We have hardened siege which only p rovides 50% damage reduction against power based attacks. This strategically is only useful on outlying towers where there is an active defense of some sort. It also has some usage against enemies that you know are going to ram the double gates of keeps (keeping that second oil up is a key to victory). The other option which is by far the best 90% of the time is iron guards. BOTH these mechanics only affect power users though, and condi attacks are exempt last I checked.

Combine this with the fact that condi attacks are aoe based and most of the structures in wvsw have chokes and spawns that are known ahead of time. ANd aoe are created in a way where they do much much more total damage since t hey hit more people and wvsw means tons of people per unit of area. COuple this with the fact that aoe in gw2 are just as, and sometimes even more, powerful than single target attacks.
Also consider the fact that condi users can do the same damage as power with only 1 stat, and the rest in tank instead of 3 in damage; pair this with the fact that most defensive siege is based around doing low-medium intensity aoe…….we can see that condi is presents build options that make you immune to enemy siege and defenses while making ur ability to capture objectives much faster with ur bypassing of iron guards and other stacking abilities….

I can go on and on and on….

….and we get a situation where multiple mechanics are favouring a single build style.

IN other words ideas like allowing us to apply bleeds, torment, confusion etc to inanimate objects like siege……was a bad idea since it just further tilted the table.

Wvsw isn’t complicated, but its a bit more complicated than the devs have taken into account in their planning

LetoII.3782:

You were backcapping 2 players who had flipped the 2 sentries and the camp.. They saw you coming. The sentry reveals you on the minimap as you fight it. I’d have doubled back on you too xD
Bad pvp, bad reward. Best part of WvW over fighting NPC’s is that things like that DO matter.

If you’ll reread the post in question you’ll discover that nec and its sentries were flipped to the poster’s team before his arrival, and he hadn’t been spotted by a sentry since before he flipped sec. It is far more likely that he suffered the misfortune of being between enemy’s garri and one of the only remaining reliable means of avoiding decay . . .