Guild Wars 2

Well I’m not giving up. I will be in WvW in a few hours and will do everything I can for Isle of Janthir!

Joey.3928:

buzzkapow.8465:

The situation on SoS/IoJ/ET is getting worse and worse. I’ve never seen a map this empty of allies, and so full of enemies. What the heck is ET doing with nobody to attack? It would explain why i just got zerged at our supply camp and stomped by 15+ guys.

I’m currently at work, but just wait ’till I get home. We will send ET runnin :P

No we won’t. The first night we still had morale and would get to at least +150. Now no one even logs on anymore and the best we do is maybe +80. This is during Aussie primetime as well and SoS is the designated aussie server. I don’t even see why ppl still que up on Eredon Terrace anymore.[/quote]

Well I’m not giving up. I will be in WvW in a few hours and will do everything I can for Isle of Janthir![/quote]

I mean I still log on and play in WvW ( I am on SoS) But not nearly as much as I was a week ago. I like fighitng the good fight and all but at some point I am just losing way to much gold on repairs and such. ET owned all of Eternal battlegrounds last night and were just spawn camping us into oblivion. We did a bit better on the borderlands but I don’t see any organization anymore really. Just a few zergs doing their thang.

Well I will probably be in a borderland tonight and I will advise my server (as best I can) to NOT kill red invaders. We need to work together to push back this green monster.

Sir William PD.9615:

Yak’s Bend is flat out crushing Darkhaven and Anvil Rock. We (Darkhaven) have been pushing back, regaining our losses, only to wake up in the morning and find everything gone. Yak’s bend apparently doesn’t lack for overnight support. Not whining about it at all, Darkhaven just doesn’t match up well with Yak’s.

As for the people transferring off the server because the battle isn’t going your way, don’t let the door hit you where the good Lord split you.

Yak’s Bend(~130k) has a night crew. I am on Darkheaven (~30k). During the weekend it even looked like AnvilRock (27k) was working WITH Yak’s Bend, attacking Darkheaven’s towers. Why? Why? Are you being promised a cut off the winning spoils?

This attachment makes it look better than it actually is. We can push back but there’s a general discrepancy in what Mag and Coast is able to do compared to Dragon. They’re running a really frighteningly tight set up that only will close tighter as the night goes on. It’s not as terrible as over servers to be sure but there’s not much reason we should have been matched against Dragonbrand.

Now, granted…I woke up this morning and we (Coast) had…three supply camps and maybe one tower so there’s been progress. So..not terrible but there’s some fundamental flaws in the game design that sort of means that if a train gets running, you can only do so much to stop it.

To be fair, I played on TC all weekend and the point split was really close all weekend afte the initial lead that Dragon got. Several times TC even held the lead in points for a while. It’s only after Sunday night that we lost everything and woke up to like 2 camps and 1 keep (not tower).

Dragon is clearly superior, but it’s not a blowout or to any degree that makes it not fun. So far Maguuma and TC both seem like “we don’t quit” servers.

I’ll definitely give it Mag and TC. And, like I said, this is far from the worst matchup we’ve seen. But there’s certainly weighting of the scales, as it were. Some of that’s organization, which is fine but some of it is something “more” for lack of a term.

I’ll be curious to see the next few days.

Guess which of these EU servers has the Canadians:

http://i.imgur.com/Z2G0M.jpg

@Zumbaro

#2. There are 3 exits to each Spawn point (non-home maps) and all three entrances come out quite far and not easily linked up from the main.

inbetween.5623:

The Blackgate V Crystal Desert V Gates of Madness matchup is going to be like the other matchups soon. CD has a dedicated night crew that can trump the rest.
BG and GoM do not have strong night WvW populations, both receive “outmanned” buffs for several hours. We werent even ‘demoralized,’ here on Blackgate, just did not have the numbers to defend.

Odd, Blackgate seemed to have the numbers Friday night when you took everything and we almsot had the unmanned buff.

Getting your butt handed to you though people lost the will to fight and stopped queueing, you have the numbers on the server they just are not in WvWvW anymore.

Perhaps if Blackgates oragnized guilds started going after towers instead of running around the map zerging supply camps and leaving them undefended for the karma you would do better.

Also to see GoM complaining is satisfying, you guys have been losing since day 1 because o your inflated ranking due to your resident hacker to get you orbs during the 1 day WvW’s. You guys would also be doing a lot better if you didn’t camp the EB jumping puzzle with 10-20 at all hours, the random CS will go tho the jumping puzzle and complain and everybody in team chat will laugh and tell them good if you are in their your not defending while we take another tower.

This morning when CD took all of GoM’s stuff to set-up that little screenshot, GoM did not even have the unmanned buff.

Igolbug

http://imgur.com/o4WG5
Now tell me: are you a troll, akitten or a trollkitten

PS sorry dude, the only time you guys win something is at “night” and do use of what the night squad win. In prime times CD is bashed HARD.

And once again, a wonderful match Borlis Pass vs. Ferguson’s Crossigs vs. Ehmry Bay
Fist screenshot was taken at 3AM, the last one just now.

I have no Idea how it’s possible for us to overtake pure evil of green. 212k difference, yay!

On Sorrow’s Furnace we actually have a really good match-up this week. It’s clear we’re losing, but every evening when I play the split has been something like 60-20-20 all week, with one group or the other nudging the lines around. Hopefully we keep that kind of healthy balance where no one side owns 98% of the map and is farming spawn points.

I have to imagine that what we’re experiencing is close to what they envisioned for WvW.

The only thing I can think here is that they need to add increased resistance the further you capture points into what is initially enemy territory. Whether that’s a tactical factor like terrain, NPCs, or supply is increasingly weighted against you, or a strategic factor such as a buff when attacking/debuff when defending further into someone else’s ‘home’ territory. I know the spawn locations do give some advantage, but clearly it isn’t enough at this point.

I wonder if ANet’s intentions behind this week’s match-ups were to place one marginally stronger server with two slightly weaker servers so inspire a makeshift alliance between the weaker servers, or if we just got (un)lucky with the server WvW scores on Friday and wound up with some bogus matchmaking where the stronger servers out of three got bumped up a rank while the weaker servers got bumped down a rank, putting them into the wrong brackets.

It’s a good observation that WvW is about PvP, but bear in mind that meaningless slaughter at the exit of your starting waypoint is pretty unsatisfying. If the underdog in a match-up could, with enough effort, at least have a prayer of holding a single tower and a trading a couple of nearby supply camps it would give a lot more purpose and tactical options to that PvP.

One should expect some sort of balance after 24 hour matches for 20 days + beta days.
But nothing even come close to it, when you check the WvW section there are very loud voices screaming for some more balance (me included).

Our main problem is that we fight a server that plays when evry1 else is asleep and gaining 50/60k points in 1 night.
Our diffrence versus # 3 is 30k points take or give.

Hope Anet is aware of the many mis matches that are going on and do not put us versus the same server for another week.

Its very hard to set up servers within perfect balance, but some servers are in another league compared to the rest.

Lets pray Anet has their fingers on it and change it for the good next week :P

The SF/SoR/AF contest has been a lot of fun during peak hours and want to tip my hat to our opponents on AF and SoR. Well fought, intense back and forth and both servers have earned my respect for what that is worth. I’m concerned about the night capping issue and the clear advantage goes to AF on that front but it’s not their fault that that imbalance exists. Look forward to battling it out the rest of the week!

Halo.8976:

And once again, a wonderful match Borlis Pass vs. Ferguson’s Crossigs vs. Ehmry Bay
Fist screenshot was taken at 3AM, the last one just now.

I have no Idea how it’s possible for us to overtake pure evil of green. 212k difference, yay!

Ferguson took a keep! GOOO FERG! Someone should get their Borlis teammates to stop attacking ferg. Last night we had to fight off roving bands of Borlis guys hitting out spawn supply while we had all of Ehmry distracted. This was our borderlands btw. Borlis was doing quite well in eternal.

Path of Least Resistance and Positive Feedback Loops.

The first is revealed when the weaker of two worlds will attack each other even though it would be ultimately in their best interest to work together to oppose the stronger of the three. Rewards for capturing should be balanced on the strength of the opponent.

The rewards for teaming up against the winning side should be a bit more organic and palpable to the basic zerglings. Maybe these guys will eventually get that fighting over the gates at the ogre camp (against the losing side) instead of defending Mendon’s while the dominating server is at your keep doorstep isn’t the best move. Of course the guys on the other side of the ogre gate know that this is an easier target than pushing/angering green. Perhaps if they knew that they would get double or triple the points for capturing the winning teams locations they wouldn’t be spending as much time fighting the weaker server.

The second (positive feedback) is typically a bad situation in complex engineered systems when the goal is relative balance. The rewards for dominating in wvw should typically not be in the form of positive feedback (orbs are probably too strong). Most of the servers that end up getting rolled in wvw have plenty of players – there is just a tendency to give up and bounce to pve (or a winning server as I’m sure is quite common) – the rewards for trying to overcome are just not obvious enough for the server to achieve a critical mass of bodies to compete. The stronger server gets stronger and the weaker servers get weaker. This doesn’t create a welcome environment for game-play for either side. Everyone loses.

This is not going to be an easy solution. But the problem is extremely obvious. Almost every matchup is just a blowout – sure there are a few than can maintain some balance, and I’m sure that experience is about as good as it gets for this game (and probably something that most players interested in wvw are looking for).

From a designer’s perspective, they should be interested in getting everyone to have fun (even when their side is losing). Right now that’s just not happening enough.

Lately I’ve been just skipping around servers seeing what it’s like (almost always on the losing side as I just move on to another server if I get a queue longer than a few minutes) – It’s just rough at times really (try rolling on Kaineg for example).

The game is still new, but I can see a lot of people just giving up on wvw because of this issue. The top servers won’t have an issue with this (except for the heinous queues), but there should be some interest in keeping the wvw populations healthy and competitive all through the ranks.

Ynot.8397:

Halo.8976:

And once again, a wonderful match Borlis Pass vs. Ferguson’s Crossigs vs. Ehmry Bay
Fist screenshot was taken at 3AM, the last one just now.

I have no Idea how it’s possible for us to overtake pure evil of green. 212k difference, yay!

Ferguson took a keep! GOOO FERG! Someone should get their Borlis teammates to stop attacking ferg. Last night we had to fight off roving bands of Borlis guys hitting out spawn supply while we had all of Ehmry distracted. This was our borderlands btw. Borlis was doing quite well in eternal.

We on Borlis Pass were only doing well because my 450 player guild, Shaboozey, got about 50 people together on Teamspeak and did some WvW. We got absolutely stomped by Ehmry Bay in our own borderlands, so we gave up and took our group to the eternal battlegrounds, where we managed to take a keep, a couple towers, and a few supply camps. That was, of course, until Ehmry Bay realized that we had switched, and came to the eternal battlegrounds to continue stomping us. The Shaboozey WvW group is literally the only large, organized WvW team on Borlis Pass, and as soon as we quit with WvW for the night, the map looks like this:

killerkerara.5621:

Ynot.8397:

Halo.8976:

And once again, a wonderful match Borlis Pass vs. Ferguson’s Crossigs vs. Ehmry Bay
Fist screenshot was taken at 3AM, the last one just now.

I have no Idea how it’s possible for us to overtake pure evil of green. 212k difference, yay!

Ferguson took a keep! GOOO FERG! Someone should get their Borlis teammates to stop attacking ferg. Last night we had to fight off roving bands of Borlis guys hitting out spawn supply while we had all of Ehmry distracted. This was our borderlands btw. Borlis was doing quite well in eternal.

We on Borlis Pass were only doing well because my 450 player guild, Shaboozey, got about 50 people together on Teamspeak and did some WvW. We got absolutely stomped by Ehmry Bay in our own borderlands, so we gave up and took our group to the eternal battlegrounds, where we managed to take a keep, a couple towers, and a few supply camps. That was, of course, until Ehmry Bay realized that we had switched, and came to the eternal battlegrounds to continue stomping us. The Shaboozey WvW group is literally the only large, organized WvW team on Borlis Pass, and as soon as we quit with WvW for the night, the map looks like this:

It is a bit rough against Ehmry, especially without coordination.

Borlis Pass vs. Ferguson’s Crossigs vs. Ehmry Bay
328k difference, oh boy!

And yes, Shaboozey currently is the only one guild who are doing some kind of coordinated WvW at all.
In my guild we have about 80 active players, but most of them focused on PvE. Well, it’s better than hundreds and hundreds 10-man guilds what we have on our server.

The following is where the problem lies in my opinion.

Quite simply it can be referred to as “The SNOWBALL effect”.

Currently, WvW is setup to severely favour the winning team.

I’m all about momentum, I love watching Rugby League, which is a game based on momentum,
but in a video game, it just doesn’t work like it should.

1. The winning team captures all the objectives on the map, Orbs of Power etc.
2. They gain massive stat bonuses and HP bonuses from doing so.
3. They then setup huge amounts of defenses at the said captured objectives.
4. Losing server logs in, tries to take something back, but with the stat bonuses combined with the massive amount of defenses that have been set up, they say screw it.
5. Losing server transfers over to the winning server.
6. Winning server continues to gain supplies, and proceed in setting up even more defenses.
7. Winning server starts to spawn camp the losing servers.
8. Losing servers say, “well – even tho I dislike PvE, at least I can play my character.”
9. Losing server gets bored, logs out and watches a movie.
10. Winning server complains they have no one to play against.

2 fundamental problems can be seen above. The winning server SHOULD not gain such an advantage over the losing servers, and additionally it seems clear ArenaNet severely mis-understood the nature of this generation of gamers. The majority want to win at any cost, and don’t mind sitting in massively long queues to do so. STOP the free transfers to high population servers, then start making changes.

the 2 lower teams should be allied if the winning team has higher then 3x the score =P

WvW just needs a better rubber-band mechanic. The intention is for the 2 weaker servers to gang-up on the leading server so they can come back, except that in practice the two weaker servers are unable to challenge the stronger server and so just cannibalize each other while the stronger one mops them up. The orbs are making it worse by making it easier for the side that’s ahead to just get more ahead. I don’t mean to say that a bad rubber-band mechanic should be implemented, but blow-out matches are not desirable or fun for any of the participants.

Even taking a supply camp will result in a zerg of NSP players taking the map…pretty aggravating at times.