Guild Wars 2

BloodyPanda.6789:

good luck getting through to an objective to hold your participation without being jumped by few thieves.

A valid point, actually. I know it sounds weird, but dying should grant 2 minutes or so on the decay timer. That’s hardly something you can do while afk.

~ Kovu

Raiden.5621:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Balthazzarr.1349:

Flitters.4095:

Elric Of Melnibone.4781:

How about most of the people in this thread actually playing with the fix before condemning ArenaNet for not testing it?

If a camp really gets you 10 minutes and a sentry gets you five, that’s plenty of time to get to another objective and actually DO something.

I am curious how much killing a guard gets you as they are plentiful and do earn you WxP, not to mention credit for the objective if it’s taken later by someone else.

No it’s not working that way unfortunately. Some people are saying they are getting larger amounts of time for doing things but doesn’t seem to be doing that for everyone. Half an houra ago in EBG, I was with zerg, took tower.. ported back to garri and ran straight to SMC… by the time I got there was already in full decay.. so even tho I got credit for the tower, I didn’t get the extra time to the decay meter.

Well here’s a good one… I had almost 5 minutes left, then we took a tower… suddenly it was counting down from 4 minutes. So, if you take something that gives a lower reset time then something you just took before that you lose the benefit of the longer reset time… you get reset to the last taken/killed object. The benefit of killing someone and getting a 10 minute reset is wiped out by taking anything else with a lower reset time.

This is from personal experience a half hour ago.

oh joy…

The decay timer doesn’t show 4 minutes. It will only show the last 90 seconds before it starts decaying. I believe you were probably looking at the tick timer.

any chance we could see the full timer on the bar?

I was wrong,. looking at the wrong thing.. my bad

Killed while holding objective- Decay timer started at death- lost 2 tiers running across the map to find anything to Kill/cap or both to stop decay – Well Done ANet- Once again i’m impressed .
Working as intended

What about the creatures on the shrines (embers/earth eles)? You only seem to get credit for capping the shrine square and it’s the same as you’d get for a ruin which is dramically simpilier. Do these creatures fall under something on your list or were they an oversight? As it stands now, if 1 group kills the creatures and gets bum rushed by an enemy group, they get nothing.

Shouldn’t destroying an enemy siege blueprint like cannon on stone mist keep outter wall give participation bonus or at least stop decay?

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The reset times are as follows:
…

Which of these were reduced and by how much?

Hi I felt the need to login and say this because this truly is ridiculous:

This change hurts active players more than it does the pip farmers who would afk.

The priority should be to reward active players for their efforts. This change does not do that.

Rewarding active players > combating afkers

This change should be reverted immediately and then discussed with the community.

So many bads in this thread, the changes are barely noticeable to me solo roaming, I have no issue at all keeping my participation, if you are having trouble its a l2p issue, fact.

You think very highly of Anet during their bad choices seasons.. which lately has been nonstop. They have gone full kitten lately. It is all about damage and tell defense to sod off..

I just spent 2 hours roaming and did not experience decay once, with a combination of flipping sentries, camps, defending camps, and stomping enemy players. A couple tower captures and two failed attacks on a keep as well, but no decay to be seen.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Cashing out has a lot of issues. For example, we would somehow need to make cashing out be exactly as good as the rewards you would get if you were still playing. If it does not give as good of rewards no one would do it and still afk, and if we make it too good then everyone would just constantly cash out. It is impossible to predict all the rewards someone would be expected to earn because we cannot predict if a map will become outnumbered or if your world moves placements. We also wouldn’t want people to constantly cash out so then we would need to accurately lock them out of WvW for a set period of time. The period of time would probably need to be longer than just the amount of time it would take to decay because otherwise it could still be more ideal to play a little, cash out go back, repeat. We have considered it, we just don’t believe it is a viable option.

There’s an obvious answer to the problem of people cashing out multiple times to gain more than they’d otherwise get.

Either prevent them from returning to WvW, or prevent any participation gain, until an appropriate time limit is reached, while still zeroing out their current participation.

For example, it’s decided that cashing out grants 3 ticks worth of pips and reward track gain. That’d be 15 minutes of gain. When someone cashes out, their participation is zero’ed out, and for the next 20 minutes, they cannot gain any participation. That would need to be 20 minutes of real world time, account wide.

That’s not exploitable in the slightest, and gives people a reason to cash out and drop out of the map rather than AFKing in the spawn or safe areas. After the 20 minutes is up, they can return then start rebuilding their participation from scratch, that makes it worse to try to use it to gain more than is intended, while still giving the option to be useful to people who genuinely want to cash out for the day and don’t want to AFK.

Tamasan.6457:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Cashing out has a lot of issues. For example, we would somehow need to make cashing out be exactly as good as the rewards you would get if you were still playing. If it does not give as good of rewards no one would do it and still afk, and if we make it too good then everyone would just constantly cash out. It is impossible to predict all the rewards someone would be expected to earn because we cannot predict if a map will become outnumbered or if your world moves placements. We also wouldn’t want people to constantly cash out so then we would need to accurately lock them out of WvW for a set period of time. The period of time would probably need to be longer than just the amount of time it would take to decay because otherwise it could still be more ideal to play a little, cash out go back, repeat. We have considered it, we just don’t believe it is a viable option.

There’s an obvious answer to the problem of people cashing out multiple times to gain more than they’d otherwise get.

Either prevent them from returning to WvW, or prevent any participation gain, until an appropriate time limit is reached.

For example, it’s decided that cashing out grants 3 ticks worth of pips and reward track gain. That’d be 15 minutes of gain. When someone cashes out, their participation is zero’ed out, and for the next 20 minutes, they cannot gain any participation. That would need to be 20 minutes of real world time, account wide.

That’s not exploitable in the slightest, and gives people a reason to cash out and drop out of the map rather than AFKing in the spawn or safe areas. After the 20 minutes is up, they can return then start rebuilding their participation from scratch, that makes it worse to try to use it to gain more than is intended, while still giving the option to be useful to people who genuinely want to cash out for the day and don’t want to AFK.

I bolded a section. There already is a built in mechanic in game that prevents participation gain. When you have squad participation and the squad is idle, you get no participation and nothing you can do grants participation. This could be modified.

In terms of cashing out, just cash out at the lowest possible level:

• No outnumbered
• 3rd Place

Regardless of server position or map condition. It’s not optimal, but it’s a choice you’re making. You’re done and can go play another game mode or turn off the game.

The only real difference I noticed to Participation tonight was that it took a bit longer to get it up.. And I’ve been duo/solo roaming on BL pretty much all night. T6 all the time, even when I popped out to do some Home Instance farming and daily crafting.. I am wondering what people are doing if they have seemingly huge issues with decay. 0.o

Okay, ran a full raid tonight and saw no significant change in pip acquisition. I guess all you have to do is actually play the game.

Ran several hours tonight of scouting/roaming. I didn’t notice any changes to participation and never had any problems with decay. It did set in once or twice, but I had plenty of time and plenty of things to do so it never actually dropped a tier.

McKenna posted how much time each activity should buy a player and it seems reasonable. If you’re not getting that much time for those activities, it should be treated as a bug. Also, I got the impression that the speed of decay was not changed? Could use clarification on that.

If someone feels that the new decay grace periods are off, that would be a good place to start. We can’t expect good changes if our feedback isn’t rooted in facts.

Currently when solo scouting your home border the following often takes place:
1) You see an orange dot at a sentry near a camp.
2) You move to defend the camp.
3) The enemy runs away.
4) You recap sentry to keep participation
5) 2-10 mins later back to step (1)

Except under the new system step 4 no longer resets your participation to full.
This means under the new system if you want to keep participation you have two options:
A) Don’t scout – roam or zerg instead.
B) Don’t defend the camp, let them cap it and cap it back as soon as it is off timer.

Let’s put participation back to how it was.
Several times tonight I’ve had to hop to another border to cap a camp to keep my participation up and hope nothing happens on the border I was scouting while I was away. This is rather daft, especially now that stupid “Skirmish Details” box drops down every time you border hop. That is getting really annoying already – is there any way to lock it to stop it dropping down?

Since this evenings patch, I’m not seeing the 30 sec fast decays from this afternoon anymore. Perhaps it was a glitch, but it seems to have been resolved at least in my case.

Nidome.1365:

Currently when solo scouting your home border the following often takes place:
1) You see an orange dot at a sentry near a camp.
2) You move to defend the camp.
3) The enemy runs away.
4) You recap sentry to keep participation
5) 2-10 mins later back to step (1)

Except under the new system step 4 no longer resets your participation to full.
This means under the new system if you want to keep participation you have two options:
A) Don’t scout – roam or zerg instead.
B) Don’t defend the camp, let them cap it and cap it back as soon as it is off timer.

Let’s put participation back to how it was.
Several times tonight I’ve had to hop to another border to cap a camp to keep my participation up and hope nothing happens on the border I was scouting while I was away. This is rather daft, especially now that stupid “Skirmish Details” box drops down every time you border hop. That is getting really annoying already – is there any way to lock it to stop it dropping down?

Your A and B are both wrong.

A scout can roam and still do their self imposed job, you just need to know how to properly map read. This will open up several sentries for recap, as well as camps, plus a couple ruins if you wanted. if you are lucky, there will be a tower to kill guards at as you run by. A good scout actually lets their commanders know BEFORE the enemies contest the waypoint since they will find the zerg on the move. If the map is dead and nothing flips, then it is your fault for hanging around a dead map without having a commander share participation. so in short, this is a failing on your part

For B… You get 10 minutes for killing a player, ie defending the camp. So your point of having to let the camp flip is false.

neven.3785:

Nidome.1365:

Currently when solo scouting your home border the following often takes place:
1) You see an orange dot at a sentry near a camp.
2) You move to defend the camp.
3) The enemy runs away.
4) You recap sentry to keep participation
5) 2-10 mins later back to step (1)

Except under the new system step 4 no longer resets your participation to full.
This means under the new system if you want to keep participation you have two options:
A) Don’t scout – roam or zerg instead.
B) Don’t defend the camp, let them cap it and cap it back as soon as it is off timer.

Let’s put participation back to how it was.
Several times tonight I’ve had to hop to another border to cap a camp to keep my participation up and hope nothing happens on the border I was scouting while I was away. This is rather daft, especially now that stupid “Skirmish Details” box drops down every time you border hop. That is getting really annoying already – is there any way to lock it to stop it dropping down?

Your A and B are both wrong.

A scout can roam and still do their self imposed job, you just need to know how to properly map read. This will open up several sentries for recap, as well as camps, plus a couple ruins if you wanted. if you are lucky, there will be a tower to kill guards at as you run by. A good scout actually lets their commanders know BEFORE the enemies contest the waypoint since they will find the zerg on the move. If the map is dead and nothing flips, then it is your fault for hanging around a dead map without having a commander share participation. so in short, this is a failing on your part

For B… You get 10 minutes for killing a player, ie defending the camp. So your point of having to let the camp flip is false.

Nope you are wrong and A and B are correct because you did not read my post.
You get nothing for killing another player when they run away because they ran away and didn’t die. You only get to kill the other player if they stay and fight and if you are better than they are. When the other player runs away all you get to do is recap the sentry outside the camp.
The idea of scouting your home border is to keep your camps friendly to upgrade your keeps. If you leave the map then the enemy turns up, caps the camps and your stuff doesn’t upgrade.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

draxynnic.3719:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

I think some people are confused and think that whenever you do something that gives participation it adds to the decay, which has not been and is not the case.

Is this supposed to have never been the case?

Because I remember a time (not in this build, a few months ago) when capping a ruin would lead to a sharply reduced delay before decay kicked in – short enough, in fact, that if you held the ruin for the time it took to get Bloodlust, decay WOULD have kicked in by the time you got it. This could happen even if you’d capped a regular objective such as a camp or tower shortly beforehand.

So it seems there might be a bug in the code such that something that grants you participation, albeit with a shorter decay timer than your current timer, will sometimes overwrite your current timer. While this wasn’t that big a deal beforehand when most things had longer timers, when you have a lot of things with short timers, there’s probably a much greater chance for that bug to come into effect.

That is working as intended. These changes are just an extension of that system.

Okay, now I’m confused…

The sort of bug that I’m talking about was one where it seemed that, to use the present numbers you quoted earlier in the thread, if you capped a camp (which normally has a 10-minute timer), then claimed a ruin while you had about 8 minutes left on the camp timer, it would replace your 8-minute timer with the 2-minute timer of the ruin. Thereby meaning that if you cap a ruin after capping a camp, you lose 6 minutes of your timer.

In your earlier post, you indicated that this should not be happening. In the quoted post, however, you appear to be saying that the scenario I describe above is working as intended. There seems to have been a miscommunication in here somewhere…

Hesacon.8735:

Tamasan.6457:

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Cashing out has a lot of issues. For example, we would somehow need to make cashing out be exactly as good as the rewards you would get if you were still playing. If it does not give as good of rewards no one would do it and still afk, and if we make it too good then everyone would just constantly cash out. It is impossible to predict all the rewards someone would be expected to earn because we cannot predict if a map will become outnumbered or if your world moves placements. We also wouldn’t want people to constantly cash out so then we would need to accurately lock them out of WvW for a set period of time. The period of time would probably need to be longer than just the amount of time it would take to decay because otherwise it could still be more ideal to play a little, cash out go back, repeat. We have considered it, we just don’t believe it is a viable option.

There’s an obvious answer to the problem of people cashing out multiple times to gain more than they’d otherwise get.

Either prevent them from returning to WvW, or prevent any participation gain, until an appropriate time limit is reached.

For example, it’s decided that cashing out grants 3 ticks worth of pips and reward track gain. That’d be 15 minutes of gain. When someone cashes out, their participation is zero’ed out, and for the next 20 minutes, they cannot gain any participation. That would need to be 20 minutes of real world time, account wide.

That’s not exploitable in the slightest, and gives people a reason to cash out and drop out of the map rather than AFKing in the spawn or safe areas. After the 20 minutes is up, they can return then start rebuilding their participation from scratch, that makes it worse to try to use it to gain more than is intended, while still giving the option to be useful to people who genuinely want to cash out for the day and don’t want to AFK.

I bolded a section. There already is a built in mechanic in game that prevents participation gain. When you have squad participation and the squad is idle, you get no participation and nothing you can do grants participation. This could be modified.

In terms of cashing out, just cash out at the lowest possible level:

• No outnumbered
• 3rd Place

Regardless of server position or map condition. It’s not optimal, but it’s a choice you’re making. You’re done and can go play another game mode or turn off the game.

To put in my 2c…

This is an option I would at least consider using. for two reasons:

First, it would mean that I can actually go and do something else, rather than sitting around for however many minutes waiting for the participation to tick down.

Second, the rate of gaining the reward tracks is not going to be affected, while pip-based rewards are very threshold-based. If I feel I’m done with WvW for the week, and ‘cashing out’ will still be enough to get me over the threshold I’m aiming for, than any additional pips I’d get by hanging around aren’t going to benefit me anyway. If anything, I’d be happier not having them, as it would mean that I don’t end up wondering if I should try for the next threshold after all.

Mind you, I very rarely WvW in primetime, so I wouldn’t be occupying a queue anyway. With that said, if someone is in a map other players are queuing for, they probably don’t have the outnumbered buff, so at most, ‘cashing out’ under Hesacon’s proposal would mean losing six pips.

Nidome.1365:

Nope you are wrong and A and B are correct because you did not read my post.
You get nothing for killing another player when they run away because they ran away and didn’t die. You only get to kill the other player if they stay and fight and if you are better than they are. When the other player runs away all you get to do is recap the sentry outside the camp.
The idea of scouting your home border is to keep your camps friendly to upgrade your keeps. If you leave the map then the enemy turns up, caps the camps and your stuff doesn’t upgrade.

i read your post, i just think you are being ridiculous.

You are complaining about how it doesn’t work because you are the only person on map, and there are no enemies at all except one person who you cant lock down and kill who keeps contesting a camp. Well you are forgetting about escorting yaks, you are forgetting about ruins, you are forgetting that there generally is other sentries that flip randomly in the south and in ruins. So even without doing what you should be doing, getting shared participation, you can still maintain participation fine with your choice to remain on a dead map, in what is likely a dead time zone.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The reset times are as follows:
• Killing a Player – 10 minutes
• Killing a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 5 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 2 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 5 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 1 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 1 minute
• Destroying Siege – 5 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 5 minutes

These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Completing a Merc Event – 5 minutes
• Completing a Defend Event – 10 minutes
• Capturing an objective – 10 minutes
• Capturing a Ruin or Shrine – 2 minutes
• Capturing a Sentry – 5 minutes

Oh good. I thought it was much lower than that. Not much has changed from the looks of it.

Killing the veteran creature – more decay timer added than doing some of the actual WvW related stuff.

Well, we all are really into PvE I suppose.

neven.3785:

Nidome.1365:

Nope you are wrong and A and B are correct because you did not read my post.
You get nothing for killing another player when they run away because they ran away and didn’t die. You only get to kill the other player if they stay and fight and if you are better than they are. When the other player runs away all you get to do is recap the sentry outside the camp.
The idea of scouting your home border is to keep your camps friendly to upgrade your keeps. If you leave the map then the enemy turns up, caps the camps and your stuff doesn’t upgrade.

i read your post, i just think you are being ridiculous.

You are complaining about how it doesn’t work because you are the only person on map, and there are no enemies at all except one person who you cant lock down and kill who keeps contesting a camp. Well you are forgetting about escorting yaks, you are forgetting about ruins, you are forgetting that there generally is other sentries that flip randomly in the south and in ruins. So even without doing what you should be doing, getting shared participation, you can still maintain participation fine with your choice to remain on a dead map, in what is likely a dead time zone.

Nope, you are still not understanding the situation. I’m not going to give a blow-by blow account of my last four hours in WvW – some of it was hectic, other periods were quiet. I’m also not talking about the same reoccurring roamer either.
On EU servers we like to upgrade our keeps when we can – especially before the enemy morning blobs log in as it makes them a log easier to defend. For the same reason the enemy roamers turn up at random times to snipe dollies and camps to prevent them upgrading – sometimes they will turn up with a reasonable size group and try to rush it at which point you slow them down until help arrives.
Obviously by your remarks you think that EU players are stupid for trying to upgrade stuff on their home borders – we’ll just have to disagree on that.

I haven’t posted here for fun – I have posted here because I shouldn’t have to waste time checking my participation level when carrying out actions to the benefit of my server.
Oh and I did use ruin caps and dolly escorts but found them to be almost pointless as a means of keeping things going.
The best thing was finding that one of the vets was up.

To expand on my earlier points regarding ‘cashing out’…

I think, in outright rejecting the idea because the system can’t accurately predict how many pips a player would earn if they stayed, you’re falling victim to the perfect being the enemy of the good.

Let’s say that Hesacon’s system was implemented, wherein ‘cashout’ granted pips at the lowest possible level (no outnumbered, only 1 pip for server status – let’s say no squad leadership pip too, because let’s not encourage people to form a squad just to cash out). Sure, some people would still hang around looking to get the maximum possible number of pips. But let’s consider some people who wouldn’t:

1) Players on losing servers in primetime. Outnumbered is rare in primetime, and let’s face it, rankings are unlikely to change within 10-20 minutes unless it’s the start of a skirmish. Such players have little or no incentive not to ‘cash out’ once they’re done, since they’re probably going to get the minimum number of pips anyway. This also, incidentally, potentially allows the server to trade an inactive player for an active one, giving a boost for the server that needs it most.

2) Players that have something else they could be doing right now. Maybe it’s a world boss. Maybe they have a friend asking for a teamup in PvE or PvP. Without a cashout option, a player with a lot of participation has an incentive to turn that down and/or to start running down their participation beforehand. With a cashout option, then they could more easily decide that being able to move on to the next thing without a 10-20 minute wait is worth the opportunity cost of a few pips.

It would probably be fairly simple to to estimate how many ticks the player would still be able to earn pips for, and how much reward track progress they’d get over that time, and then lock them out from earning participation for a time afterwards. Sure, it won’t get rid of all the players waiting for their participation to run down, but as long as it causes some to move on, surely that would be an improvement?

Alternatively, what about simply allowing players to still receive rewards as their participation ticks down even if they aren’t on a WvW map? That way, there’s no prediction needed, and the only incentive players would have to remain on the map once they’re finished actively playing would be to get the Outnumbered bonus, and let’s be realistic here – if there’s a queue to get into the map, you’re not getting Outnumbered.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

the only thing we have changed is the reset time for each action.

The reset times are as follows:
• Killing a Player – 10 minutes
• Killing a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 5 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 2 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 5 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 1 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 1 minute
• Destroying Siege – 5 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 5 minutes

These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Completing a Merc Event – 5 minutes
• Completing a Defend Event – 10 minutes
• Capturing an objective – 10 minutes
• Capturing a Ruin or Shrine – 2 minutes
• Capturing a Sentry – 5 minutes

It is still possible that we will tweak these numbers going forward.

Why was this changed to begin with? What was wrong with what it currently was at?

Now it’s going to be near impossible to earn pips at non-peak hours. Which is my only time of day I can actually enjoy WvW.

Please change it back to what it was previously. I’m ok with the Outnumbered buff change that can stay I don’t care about that.

It’s already a chore as it is for anyone lower rank earning pips to reach Diamond chest each week.. now you make it even harder on them. This severely discourages new players to come into WvW as they learn that they can barely keep their participation going without decay kicking in.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

The reset times are as follows:
• Killing a Player – 10 minutes
• Killing a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 5 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 2 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 5 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 1 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 1 minute
• Destroying Siege – 5 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 5 minutes

These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Completing a Merc Event – 5 minutes
• Completing a Defend Event – 10 minutes
• Capturing an objective – 10 minutes
• Capturing a Ruin or Shrine – 2 minutes
• Capturing a Sentry – 5 minutes

It is still possible that we will tweak these numbers going forward.

After playing a fair while tonight and looking over this list, I’ve come to one conclusion:

Non-Zerg WvW play by necessity involves repeatedly flipping camps.

Basically nothing else can be realistically done that grants an acceptable amount of participation time. Tower or keeps both take far too long to capture in a small group, if it’s even possible, so camps are effectively the only way to get that nice “Capturing an Objective” bonus.

Killing a player, the only other accessible 10-minute “objective” is heavily dependent on, well… finding another player, then not only being able to beat that player but having them not be an evasive build that can just slink off unkilled.

Scouting and defending are right out unless you’re getting shared participation from a squad, with defense being particularly egregious: you only get meaningful participation for defending an objective if you repair a wall/gate (which is often a tactically poor decision that just wastes supply) or if you kill a player. If you drive them off without killing anyone, you do not get rewarded. This is particularly problematic for camps, where roamers often have very escape heavy builds. They leave, you spent a long time defending, but you get no credit and your participation is shot.

After that, you’ve got the 5-minute objectives. 5 minutes doesn’t give you a lot of time to find something else, but it’s better than nothing. You can usually make it across the map to find something else in that time, assuming you don’t get ganked. However, two of those 5-minute bonuses are sub-objectives of capturing an objective (destroying a fortification/killing a Lord) that are basically meaningless as well as hard to pull off in small groups. Repairing and destroying seige are reliant on your enemy to provide them to you, which is unreliable at best. So the most plausible 5-minute objectives are vet creatures, with only a few existing, all with long respawn times and no strategic value, and sentries.

Finally, you have the 1-2 minute nothings. They’ll stop you from decaying, but only while you are currently engaged in that activity. As soon as it finishes, you have to go find a camp to flip so your participation doesn’t plummet. Killing caravans, guards, shrines… basically all meaningless. You have to go on a constant chain of these to keep your participation up while you make your way to a “real” objective.

Oh, and don’t forget escorting yaks. A yak on a long route can take longer than participation decay to escort. If you’re watching yaks on their way to a distant objective you’ll be bleeding out participation the entire time.

It is possible to keep your participation up while roaming, but it just feels stressful the whole time. Try to find the nearest thing you can take because the clock is already ticking, desperately trying to make your way to the nearest enemy camp so you can have a few minutes of blessed relief, praying you don’t get ganked and watch your points drop because you have to run back past objectives you already own. Having that constant worry about participation just isn’t as fun.

There was nothing wrong with how participation could be earned/kept. There’s surely a better way to prevent pip farmers (rewards wont apply if you’ve been ‘Determined’ buffed for 1 minute?)

This is precisely the chaos you get when tying pips, to a previous reward system. It will not work as long as pips are rewarded per tick, but by real activity, this would also eliminate afk pip farmers.

The truth? Do you want the real actual truth?

I mean no personal offense and I don’t put this out to be derogatory, but the truth is that McKenna most likely doesn’t really care about Guild Wars 2, much less WvW.

To her, this is very likely just a job where she has deadlines and does the least possible amount of work to keep her superiors happy about the fact that she’s actually “doing stuff”, whatever the hell this entails in their minds.

There’s no passion, no motivation, no concern, to her this is probably just a boring job where she has to deal with annoyingly irrelevant people – the players – and just learn to ignore them. Well, ignore until any current outrage gets to her superiors and she’s forced to deal with for a little bit and make some minimal changes we often see a handful times a year.

It’s all about doing the absolute minimum so at the end of the day she can write it in on some report to her boss, punch out and forget about the game for a few hours, lingering with the dreadful thought of having to restart that hellish routine the next day.

BloodyPanda.6789:

killing a player is 10 mins. WOW! Really should consider spawn camping now. As for the the players who dies and respawn, good luck getting through to an objective to hold your participation without being jumped by few thieves.

It’s a multiplayer game. Group with friends and push out, or build thief hunters and push out.

There are cases where this rate is just too high to keep up. The numbers are certainly up to debate. However, I have to wonder wether this isn’t just us complaining because we can no longer “semi-afk” even as supposedly active roamers.
There is more to roaming than just sitting at the ruins in case a player struggling to get back to the blobs tries to run by.
The new decay rate is much less of an issue if you keep busy and do everything one would except to be your job. You know – flip camps, spawn kill dollies, move around, take down guards to tap the enemy garrison, etc. Kind of why I didn’t seem to have such an issue with the rate when I tried it myself.

I have to say the new participation system didn’t really have much of an affect on my playing tonight. I played for hours out manned, but not getting the out manned bonus until after midnight. I am silver and we were in last place all night because anywhere you went there where at least four to five times more blue and green (in my case) an yet no bonus. I wish it was made clear how that worked because I don’t think I saw a fair fight all night.

I ended up getting 36 pips standing there doing nothing cooling down, almost more than I got for the first hour of play. I really wish I could have cashed out and went to bed but this is the way the game forces me to get my tickets.

Henry.5713:

I have to wonder wether this isn’t just us complaining because we can no longer “semi-afk” even as supposedly active roamers.

I played 4 hours of WvW tonight with a 50-men squad.

Twice my participation bar started decaying. A few other times it got orange and the timer started. This is the first time this has ever happened.

So no.

Well, humm…since I roam a lot and most of the stuff I do only gives one or two minutes before decay, I’m hosed. It takes more than a minute to get between things, if they’re even available and not on cooldown. And then it takes me at least a minute to take whatever I’m against, say a shrine. Less if it’s a guard or yak. But the point is, I’m on decay most of the time. I can barely keep the timer at level 3 or whatever that’s called. And that’s only if I don’t stop for anything…like trying to hide or fight another group.

It’s a waste trying to actually roam. I might as well go back to zerging the first part of the week to get my ‘pips’…yeah, whatever.

marelooke.9708:

Balthazzarr.1349:

Agreed that it’s too aggressive… BUT… Perhaps that will filter out the big amount of people that seem to hang around spawn for 10-15 minutes gathering their pips before logging out of WvW.

Just calculate the rewards left based on the current state of the map and pay them out, give debuff that makes one ineligible for WvW rewards for the time it’d have taken for the participation to run out (to avoid hopping in and out of WvW) and be done with it.

Like, fix the problem instead of tossing in a half baked “fix” and breaking everything else…

^^^^ This. ^^^^

I, for one, would prefer not to feel like there’s pressure to wait for participation to run out before logging out because I’m losing rewards. Just pay it out and be done with it. Other than this, the decay timer wasn’t broken before and shouldn’t have been “fixed.”

ETA: Basically, this “fix” is punishing everyone for sins only some people commit.

I’d rather let a few people stand around in spawn that have to work this game like it’s a job.

Aitch

The truth? Do you want the real actual truth?

I mean no personal offense and I don’t put this out to be derogatory, but the truth is that McKenna most likely doesn’t really care about Guild Wars 2, much less WvW.

To her, this is very likely just a job where she has deadlines and does the least possible amount of work to keep her superiors happy about the fact that she’s actually “doing stuff”, whatever the hell this entails in their minds.

There’s no passion, no motivation, no concern, to her this is probably just a boring job where she has to deal with annoyingly irrelevant people – the players – and just learn to ignore them. Well, ignore until any current outrage gets to her superiors and she’s forced to deal with for a little bit and make some minimal changes we often see a handful times a year.

It’s all about doing the absolute minimum so at the end of the day she can write it in on some report to her boss, punch out and forget about the game for a few hours, lingering with the dreadful thought of having to restart that hellish routine the next day.

I personally don’t think that at all, if you’ve been following wvw development it feels more like the wvw section is understaffed and has been for a long time, even before McKenna’s time at the helm.

Which btw may not seem like much has been done to you, but if you look the work they’ve done in the last year, it’s greater than all the work put together in the previous 4 years for wvw. Rewards tracks, skirmish mode, server links, various ui upgrades like structure tooltips and warscore, simple nameplates, team chat, skirmish rewards of ascended gear, wvw earned skins, legendary back piece, more HoT rewards in wvw, 5min ticks for faster rewards, beta test of repair hammers and mobile cannons, 2abl 1dbl, fixes/improvements to all maps, new commander tag colors, improvements to population calculations, changes to outnumbered buff like war score, changes to down state rallies, bankers added, structure capture warscore, mass superior siege recipes, conditions affecting siege, switching supply and magic find guild objective auras, the one villager that flees from their home being destroyed in red ebg side, etc.

I don’t agree with every change, and they may not all be the best solutions, I’ll give anet a ton of kitten like the next person for their neglect. But if you want to kitten in someone’s cereal for the wvw mess, then blame Mike O’Brien for not giving two kittens about wvw and not putting the proper resources behind it for 5 years. WvW probably has no major direction for change right now, and that rests squarely on the head huncho, who’s currently holding the top two positions for development and direction of the game. It’s a miracle McKenna and team got that much done in the last year.

Crazy.6029:

This is bad Anet, probably looked good in theory, but its bad in practical setting. Pls fix Rip roaming til fixed.

If it were only roaming, honestly I’d say find another way to reward that. But the thing is, this also flat-out ruined Siege / Defense / Scouting, unless you have a zerg sharing you participation.

Which is all nice and fine but they only have 9 slots.

So what I would say should happen is any of these;

• Revert the entire change. Ideally now, until a better change has been found.
• Find a way to ""tag" participation for something such as refreshing siege or scouting, maybe figure out “amount of inputs vs time spent” in such a setting.
• Make the timer be additive, with a maximum of ~15 minutes.

Increase the timer as follows or make the timer be additive with a maximum cap.

• Killing a Caravan – 3 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 7 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 3 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 7 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 2 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 2 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 3 minutes
These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 3 minutes

And while you’re at it increase the pip overall acquisition for people who have a low WvW level/can’t play that much. The experience should be rewarding for everyone and should incentivise people to play the mode.

animalmother.5940:

Henry.5713:

I have to wonder wether this isn’t just us complaining because we can no longer “semi-afk” even as supposedly active roamers.

I played 4 hours of WvW tonight with a 50-men squad.

Twice my participation bar started decaying. A few other times it got orange and the timer started. This is the first time this has ever happened.

So no.

Lol, you must be joking — you were in a 50 man squad and you didn’t kill an enemy player or take an objective every 10 mins? You are flat out being dishonest.

borceskorce.8427:

Increase the timer as follows or make the timer be additive with a maximum cap.

• Killing a Caravan – 3 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 7 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 3 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 7 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 2 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 2 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 3 minutes
These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 3 minutes

And while you’re at it increase the pip overall acquisition for people who have a low WvW level/can’t play that much. The experience should be rewarding for everyone and should incentivise people to play the mode.

This seems fairly reasonable and I think is the right direction to go — tweaks to the decay timers on some of the events that trigger the decay timer. Increase the “small” event decay timer for things like guards and caravans by one minute to help out roamers and scouts that have to run a fair distance to other objectives at slow times. Otherwise I think it’s ok. If you’re just sitting in a tower or keep and scouting, it’s really no different than before — you either get in a squad and get participation, or you need to be more active and take sentries/camps/shrines, etc.

just jump a treb or repair a wall and you will be allright

Vegeta.2563:

Now it’s going to be near impossible to earn pips at non-peak hours.

L2p issue.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

I think some people are confused and think that whenever you do something that gives participation it adds to the decay, which has not been and is not the case. For example when you take an objective, it gives you 10 minutes before your participation will start to decay; then if you kill a guard it will only reset to 2 minutes if you have less than 2 minutes left otherwise it won’t affect the timer. This is how it has always worked; the only thing we have changed is the reset time for each action.

The reset times are as follows:
• Killing a Player – 10 minutes
• Killing a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Destroying a fortification – 5 minutes
• Killing a Guard – 2 minutes
• Killing a Lord – 5 minutes
• Killing or reviving a merc npc – 1 minute
• Repairing – 5 minutes
• Siege Damage Wall/Gate/Player – 1 minute
• Destroying Siege – 5 minute
• Killing a Veteran Creature – 5 minutes

These happen on event completion:
• Defending a Caravan – 2 minutes
• Completing a Merc Event – 5 minutes
• Completing a Defend Event – 10 minutes
• Capturing an objective – 10 minutes
• Capturing a Ruin or Shrine – 2 minutes
• Capturing a Sentry – 5 minutes

It is still possible that we will tweak these numbers going forward.

Yak event reward timer should be at least doubled, otherwise reward will be less than time that you are going to spend on that escort.
And please, consider to change decay timer from overwriting to piling up, like up to 10m total, so killing sentry+killing yak+capturing sentry will be 5+2+2=9m total, not just 5. That will solve a lot of issues and will stimulate players to do various objectives again, instead of pursuing only high-rewarding ones.

At the very least they need to add something for trying to cap something, or almost capping something. I shouldn’t be getting a timer while fighting a lord in a tower after destroying wall… that’s participating.

I was experiencing the connection issue earlier tonight so I spent some time reading this before I was able to log in and I must say as a solo roamer y’all had me petrified that wvw was going to become essentially unplayable . . .

Happily, that is not the case at all. Playing solo and only in home bl, the decay timer wasn’t much of an issue for most of the night. The one exception was when I started trying to tier hills. I was running yaks from sec — one of the shortest runs from a camp to any objective — and I was still bumping up against decay. I wasn’t really losing much bc the escort gives some participation and I would only lose participation for a few seconds at the end, but on a longer run it would have been game breaking. I actually started breaking off to kill harpy every once in a while just to get a breather . . .

Stop and think about that. I stopped doing a behavior that helped my server to start doing a behavior that doesn’t help my server bc I was worried about the decay timer. That should never happen . . .

The other concern that I have is one that I don’t think I’ve seen mentioned yet. As an older person, I’m aware that maybe it isn’t super healthy to sit in front of the computer for hours on end without a break, so I like to get up once or twice an hour just to walk around a little. If the decay timer is going to interfere with that it is actually encouraging unhealthy play, which is unwise . . .

But I think in general this is a positive move, it just needs to be tweaked a little. Running a yak should give at least as much time as it takes to run a yak. Activities that encourage alt-tabbing like killing a vet or repairing a wall should give little enough time that it’s not worth alt-tabbing. But I’m confident they’ll work it out, this was just a first pass . . .

Vavume.8065:

L2p issue.

Literally I guess, “learn to play at peak hours”? :P

Are you serious decay timer? I understand you want everyone to be active so you dont have afkers getting pips. What about defending a tower or a keep and im alone not getting participation, It will start to decay? What about the guild raiding for 2 hours and decides to take a medium break to give players a chance to go to the bathroom, get something to eat the participation starts to decay? Seriously Anet just keep destroying WvW.

kathy.8291:

Are you serious decay timer? I understand you want everyone to be active so you dont have afkers getting pips. What about defending a tower or a keep and im alone not getting participation, It will start to decay? What about the guild raiding for 2 hours and decides to take a medium break to give players a chance to go to the bathroom, get something to eat the participation starts to decay? Seriously Anet just keep destroying WvW.

You get 10 min for a defense event.

Decay always started after 10 min (AFAIK). So nothing changed there.

Rhiannon.1726:

kathy.8291:

Are you serious decay timer? I understand you want everyone to be active so you dont have afkers getting pips. What about defending a tower or a keep and im alone not getting participation, It will start to decay? What about the guild raiding for 2 hours and decides to take a medium break to give players a chance to go to the bathroom, get something to eat the participation starts to decay? Seriously Anet just keep destroying WvW.

You get 10 min for a defense event.

Decay always started after 10 min (AFAIK). So nothing changed there.

Getting credit for defence events is pretty hit and miss. I’ve had a few times when I’ve participated in a defence and not received credit, and that’s without even considering times when the defence you provide is in the form of providing a deterrent and the enemy doesn’t engage.

draxynnic.3719:

Rhiannon.1726:

kathy.8291:

Are you serious decay timer? I understand you want everyone to be active so you dont have afkers getting pips. What about defending a tower or a keep and im alone not getting participation, It will start to decay? What about the guild raiding for 2 hours and decides to take a medium break to give players a chance to go to the bathroom, get something to eat the participation starts to decay? Seriously Anet just keep destroying WvW.

You get 10 min for a defense event.

Decay always started after 10 min (AFAIK). So nothing changed there.

Getting credit for defence events is pretty hit and miss. I’ve had a few times when I’ve participated in a defence and not received credit, and that’s without even considering times when the defence you provide is in the form of providing a deterrent and the enemy doesn’t engage.

That wasn’t different before the patch. When you didn’t get it, decay didn’t reset.