Guild Wars 2

If they made the movement control server side instead of local side, it wouldn’t be so much a problem. Of course, the issue would be then performance.

Why not have the orbs worth the same as the outman’d buff?

Very interesting… Will change the Borderlands role a bit but should remove some of the headache..

As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back.

This is something that has been bugging me right from the start – if a team takes the orb, it’s already strong, so the buff was excessive. Bonus rare loot or something, sure, but stat boost can be deadly.

Seriously…if orbs provided a buff to REWARDS (but not stats), they would still be worth fighting over in evenly matched games (if they gave, say a buff to magic find and other goodies) but wouldn’t completely unbalance a game if one server owned them all (they would have better rewards, but would be no stronger in battle).

Leave the “buffing” players to the out-manned buff. Honestly, this has been suggested so many times it’s not funny. Does anyone have a reason why the orb and out-manned bonuses shouldn’t just be swapped? It honestly seems like that was the intention in both mechanics, but someone accidentally mixed them up. They just make sense if they are swapped. A team is out-manned, so you give them a little extra strength. A team gets an “Orb” and they get better rewards as a congratulations.

On a more humorous side, I bet the next announcement we see is this:

“Due to hackers taking advantage of the rendering bug in WvWvW, we have decided to remove all players from the game until such time as we are able to actually fix the bug. Enjoy.”

A lot of you guys aren’t thinking of the positive game aspects that will be removed with this, but only the negative ones.

- No sense of accomplishment for taking ot defending orbs.
- Less reason to care about a keep, all keeps are now just generic point generators.
- Cross-map communication for orb defense will be a thing of the past. People would rather just keep potential points per 15 mins high, for which they often don’t need to map-travel.
- Those moments where you defend an orb keep against impossible odds at off-peak hours, their sence of accomplishment and importance will be gone.
- Ect.

Great move Anet I applaud the recognition that a fix needs to be made and understand that you will be working to potentially bring them back in future builds. I also want to give many harrumphs to all the players still COMPLAINING. The game has been out for two months and they are working on improving the game as shown here. To say there are no more goals in WvWvW is hilarious and to state this removal of orbs is the death of WvWvW is redunkulous. Mother of pearl please Anet add a Beaver into WvWvW that just runs around one shotting people so they actually have a legitimate gripe about something. I DIDN’T GET A HARRUMPH OUTTA THAT GUY…….

I’m glad that they’ve listened to the community, Habib’s post shows that. Thank you Habib.

It is very reasonable for them to decide to remove rather than “fix” the orb. Nothing is ever irreversible, happy to see that they are at least willing to try.

TheBob.9863:

Excuse me Habib but if you are removing them due to cheaters/exploiters does that mean there is nothing you can do about those cheaters? What about the remaining exploits like mesmers teleporting through walls then portaling in their whole zerg and other 3rd party software that allow people to teleport from a tower to a supply camp and back in less than 10 seconds allowing them to build anything in a matter of seconds?

If you are unable to do something about orb exploiters does that mean you aren’t able to do anything about the exploits I listed either?

This is what I got from ANet’s announcement. If they’re taking the orbs out due to partly hackers and cheaters, could it mean they couldn’t do anything about it? I don’t know just saying what I perceived from that statement.

Why remove the orb bonusses? There where a few good suggestions in forum which are better.
for example:
The 1st get just for each orb a 1/3 bonus ==> 3 orbs = 1 orb bonus

The 2nd get for each orb a bonus of 2/3 ==> 3 orbs = just 2 orb bonusses

And the 3rd for each orb one bonus.

That give it at least for the 3rd in the ranking a chance to win against dominating servers.
Anet…in my opinion you haven’t thought much about it. sry. please don’t start hating and make better suggestions ^^,

Sotaudi.1265:

Xsorus.2507:

Strangely a system that worked fine in DAOC for 10+ years is unbalanced in this game

hmmmm

Giving a team that already has the numbers to take all three orbs more health and other stat bonuses is, by definition, unbalanced.

This right here. Not only that but in DAoC they were MORE oped then here. Much more. DMG cap increase right off the top. Amazing that its not really balance but their inability to handle simple to stop hacks (no clip? really? z axis flying?).

Like I said, they better be adding more reasons to W3 or its going to be a ghost town. As it is how many servers are full now compared to a month ago?

Happy to read some people are really upset at this, a majority of honest players were upset with the negativity you brought to wvw too!

Great stuff Anet!!

“You have enemies? Good. That means you’ve stood up for something, sometime in your life.” – Winston Churchill

“Get mad, then get over it.” – Colin Powell

Retrobond.4798:

TheBob.9863:

Excuse me Habib but if you are removing them due to cheaters/exploiters does that mean there is nothing you can do about those cheaters? What about the remaining exploits like mesmers teleporting through walls then portaling in their whole zerg and other 3rd party software that allow people to teleport from a tower to a supply camp and back in less than 10 seconds allowing them to build anything in a matter of seconds?

If you are unable to do something about orb exploiters does that mean you aren’t able to do anything about the exploits I listed either?

This is what I got from ANet’s announcement. If they’re taking the orbs out due to partly hackers and cheaters, could it mean they couldn’t do anything about it? I don’t know just saying what I perceived from that statement.

Ya I agree it does send an…odd message. Basically saying “Well we can’t actually fix the problem, so we are just going to remove the entire mechanic”. While I guess that is better than just continuing with the hacks/exploits, it doesn’t bode well for the future. What else will they just remove because they can’t fix an exploit? I’ve seen at least a handful of decent suggestions on these forums regarding changes to orbs that prevent/limit hacking without completely removing the system altogether. The fact that the entire development team is so “stumped” that they have to just get rid of the entire thing is kind of scary.

add orb bonus to outmanned bonus….

I dunno if the devs will be reading this.

An interesting mechanic that would help outnumbered servers is if that when you are losing badly your current keeps would start having some upgrades so what you have is easier to defend. Like if you own nothing and capture a tower it would start as fortified. That way when a smaller group takes a point the 100 man zerg doesn’t take it back immediately.

This was well needed, and will solve a lot of short term problems.

Thank You!

and the peasants rejoice

I am very glad they are doing this and I hope they do come back in some way in the future, but as they are they are bad.
So bravo for the decision and I thank you very much for the update as well
We customers like improvements and we like info so thanks for both

Afaic with the change from 1 day to 1 week on xfers and this, I feel they are taking from very nice steps to making WvW better

The orb game is awesome, it is definitely alot of fun watching the server erupt with excitement when a orb is being shifted from altar to altar and everything else that goes along with it.

It isn’t gone, read the post carefully people. They’re dead right when they say that in current circumstance, it just needs to be switched off. It’s impacting too much on the underdog server.

Most recently people have figured out how to make the orb icon disappear off the map so it can’t be seen moving from keep to keep. Between things like this and the hackers, the orbs need a big workover, design and code.

tarnin.1690:

Sotaudi.1265:

Xsorus.2507:

Strangely a system that worked fine in DAOC for 10+ years is unbalanced in this game

hmmmm

Giving a team that already has the numbers to take all three orbs more health and other stat bonuses is, by definition, unbalanced.

This right here. Not only that but in DAoC they were MORE oped then here. Much more. DMG cap increase right off the top. Amazing that its not really balance but their inability to handle simple to stop hacks (no clip? really? z axis flying?).

Like I said, they better be adding more reasons to W3 or its going to be a ghost town. As it is how many servers are full now compared to a month ago?

They were perfectly fine in DAOC….

The biggest complaint about them is Hackers stealing them..Not the orbs themselves.

Though if you’re going to have complaints about the Orbs themselves, why not leave them in and scale them based on what place your team is in.

For example

3 Orbs

1st place team
1 Orb – 1% Health Bonus/2nd Orb -2% Health Bonus/3rd orb -3% health bonus
2nd place team
1 orb – 3% health Bonus/2nd Orb – 6% Health Bonus/3rd orb – 9% Health Bonus
3rd place team
1 orb – 5% Health Bonus/2nd Orb – 10% health Bonus/3rd Orb – 15% Health Bonus

This would give the Strongest Team a Reason for Holding onto the orbs despite a small bonus to themselves while giving the lesser teams a large incentive to get control of the Orbs themselves.

This would also keep the system in check, The only thing you’d need to fix is the bloody hackers taking the orb, Which is simple, Just don’t allow them to be moved by the realm unless they capture the keep.

Raap.9065:

A lot of you guys aren’t thinking of the positive game aspects that will be removed with this, but only the negative ones.

- No sense of accomplishment for taking ot defending orbs.
- Less reason to care about a keep, all keeps are now just generic point generators.
- Cross-map communication for orb defense will be a thing of the past. People would rather just keep potential points per 15 mins high, for which they often don’t need to map-travel.
- Those moments where you defend an orb keep against impossible odds at off-peak hours, their sence of accomplishment and importance will be gone.
- Ect.

None of those outweigh having balanced match ups, and orbs and balanced match ups are mutually exclusive.

In any case, the orbs were extremely amateurish game design, I’m surprised they even made it into the game that way. Any novice game designer can tell you that handing massive stat bonuses to the winning team is a horribly stupid idea and lazy amateur design.

Good riddance to one of the worst parts of the game, it’s a shame it took so long to get rid of this garbage.

If it is specifically due to people hacking, why not just make the Borderland Garrison the “orb”. It’s far more difficult to steal a whole building and fly off the map with it.

If you swapped the orb and outmanned bonuses, it wouldn’t really matter if hackers took all the orbs.

That said, if orbs are to retain their current ‘winning team wins harder’ bonuses, then yes, I definitely approve their removal until a more balanced bonus can be worked out and hacking issues dealt with.

Ouch….. guys, please don’t do this. Change the bonuses or something instead of removing them entirely. Please don’t let this become ANet’s Illum(Swtor)

Xsorus.2507:

tarnin.1690:

Sotaudi.1265:

Xsorus.2507:

Strangely a system that worked fine in DAOC for 10+ years is unbalanced in this game

hmmmm

Giving a team that already has the numbers to take all three orbs more health and other stat bonuses is, by definition, unbalanced.

This right here. Not only that but in DAoC they were MORE oped then here. Much more. DMG cap increase right off the top. Amazing that its not really balance but their inability to handle simple to stop hacks (no clip? really? z axis flying?).

Like I said, they better be adding more reasons to W3 or its going to be a ghost town. As it is how many servers are full now compared to a month ago?

They were perfectly fine in DAOC….

The biggest complaint about them is Hackers stealing them..Not the orbs themselves.

Though if you’re going to have complaints about the Orbs themselves, why not leave them in and scale them based on what place your team is in.

For example

3 Orbs

1st place team
1 Orb – 1% Health Bonus/2nd Orb -2% Health Bonus/3rd orb -3% health bonus
2nd place team
1 orb – 3% health Bonus/2nd Orb – 6% Health Bonus/3rd orb – 9% Health Bonus
3rd place team
1 orb – 5% Health Bonus/2nd Orb – 10% health Bonus/3rd Orb – 15% Health Bonus

This would give the Strongest Team a Reason for Holding onto the orbs despite a small bonus to themselves while giving the lesser teams a large incentive to get control of the Orbs themselves.

This would also keep the system in check, The only thing you’d need to fix is the bloody hackers taking the orb, Which is simple, Just don’t allow them to be moved by the realm unless they capture the keep.

Or why not just change the rewards for holding Orbs so that they don’t make your team stronger, they just increase the rewards of your team (add magic find, gold drop, xp, karma, badge drop rate etc…). Having 3 orbs would still be awesome (Say if 3 orbs provided like a 30% increased badge drop rate) but it would actually make that team a powerhouse compared to the others.

Oh and then they could give the stat bonuses to the out-manned buff…so you know…the buff actually helps the team that is out-manned instead of taunting them like it does now.

Thank you for this move A-net. I applaud you for taking this action. Hopefully this will boost participation in WvWvW on my server.

Dovgan.8605:

If it is specifically due to people hacking, why not just make the Borderland Garrison the “orb”. It’s far more difficult to steal a whole building and fly off the map with it.

Hackers and exploiters would find a way…

So i’m very worried by this post. And while I 100% agree that removing orbs is the right move, the logic behind your removal is what terrifies me. Before we get there though, my thoughts on this line…

As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back.

The notion of controlling orbs is a major drive to participating in borderlands combat. Several of my guildmates have repeatedly told me it feels MORE valuable participating in borderlands due to the buff you can earn from controlling the orbs. This relegates the borderlands to more insignificant point holdings. Not an entirely bad thing but hopefully you do come up with something to place increased emphasis on participating in borderlands.

Now onto the most worrisome comment in the post.

In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game.

Irresistible to hackers/cheaters? Really? You sure you want to use this phrasing? Irresistible means you lack the capabilities to stop people from penetrating your codes security. It means your incapable of stopping players from cheating. I’ve been on Stormbluff Isle since day one, and our most recent matchup has caused more thread closings then probably any server since. I won’t repeat the charges and/or against whom, mostly because I personally can’t substantiate them (nor do I wish to sink to the level of accusing our opponents of cheating).

If your telling us that the ONLY option remaining to the creators of the game is to concede that they cannot stop hackers from ruining our gameplay, how can we have faith that ANY part of your game is secure? What about credit card and billing information?

Your statement is both terrifying and really inspires a lack of confidence that you’ll be able to restore balance and fair play to a game that i’ve grown to love over the last two months.

If you can’t stop the hackers, try a different route. Implement code that logs every single person who touches the orb. Track its progress. Track everything about it. Once you detect an anomaly, ban the person who last touched it. IF you can’t implement code to stop them, at the very least implement code to track who did it. Attack the source of the problem, the players who are hacking. Saying you can’t do anything about hackers is a in my opinion the worst thing you could say to a community frustrated by these players.

EDIT: I noticed you threw in at the end there that you COULD stop them, but it would require significant modification to do so. So sorry… its not that you CANT stop them, your just choosing not to do the work to make the problem go away. MY BAD!

Please change the developers mind about your approach to dealing with cheaters, and more specifically how you address them publicly to your community who loves this game.

Please. Please. Please.

Would be an amazing sight, the Borderland Garrison flying away.

drwookie.6391:

Xsorus.2507:

tarnin.1690:

Sotaudi.1265:

Xsorus.2507:

Strangely a system that worked fine in DAOC for 10+ years is unbalanced in this game

hmmmm

Giving a team that already has the numbers to take all three orbs more health and other stat bonuses is, by definition, unbalanced.

This right here. Not only that but in DAoC they were MORE oped then here. Much more. DMG cap increase right off the top. Amazing that its not really balance but their inability to handle simple to stop hacks (no clip? really? z axis flying?).

Like I said, they better be adding more reasons to W3 or its going to be a ghost town. As it is how many servers are full now compared to a month ago?

They were perfectly fine in DAOC….

The biggest complaint about them is Hackers stealing them..Not the orbs themselves.

Though if you’re going to have complaints about the Orbs themselves, why not leave them in and scale them based on what place your team is in.

For example

3 Orbs

1st place team
1 Orb – 1% Health Bonus/2nd Orb -2% Health Bonus/3rd orb -3% health bonus
2nd place team
1 orb – 3% health Bonus/2nd Orb – 6% Health Bonus/3rd orb – 9% Health Bonus
3rd place team
1 orb – 5% Health Bonus/2nd Orb – 10% health Bonus/3rd Orb – 15% Health Bonus

This would give the Strongest Team a Reason for Holding onto the orbs despite a small bonus to themselves while giving the lesser teams a large incentive to get control of the Orbs themselves.

This would also keep the system in check, The only thing you’d need to fix is the bloody hackers taking the orb, Which is simple, Just don’t allow them to be moved by the realm unless they capture the keep.

Or why not just change the rewards for holding Orbs so that they don’t make your team stronger, they just increase the rewards of your team (add magic find, gold drop, xp, karma, badge drop rate etc…). Having 3 orbs would still be awesome (Say if 3 orbs provided like a 30% increased badge drop rate) but it would actually make that team a powerhouse compared to the others.

Oh and then they could give the stat bonuses to the out-manned buff…so you know…the buff actually helps the team that is out-manned instead of taunting them like it does now.

The outmanned buff is largely considered a load of crap by most of the population.

Having the buffs switched would be the same as removing them entirely…No one would give two craps about the Orbs.

For the Orbs to be effective in this game, You have to have a benefit to owning them, and you have to have a problem in not owning them…..If you have no reason to defend or take them, then they’re useless.

I agree with Scree in this regards. The wording has a lot of people thinking Anet is giving in to terrorists… well, not as dramatic, but about equal in the gaming world.

WOHOOOOO!!!! Say goodbye to unfair orb boons and exploited orbs. This will change things quite a bit I think.

The best. I give two thumbs up.

You remove a feature instead of fixing the exploit? Sorry, no comment.

However, the Orb buff was definitely bad gameplay-wise, but what should have happened is keep the exciting Orb mechanics and just make the buff magic-find or something similar.

I agree with the multitude of people here that think the orb bonus and the outmanned bonus should simply be switched, problem solved. Why isn’t this being done?

Antiriad.7160:

You remove a feature instead of fixing the exploit? Sorry, no comment.

However, the Orb buff was definitely bad gameplay-wise, but what should have happened is keep the exciting Orb mechanics and just make the buff magic-find or something similar.

They stated in the original post that it’s coming back eventually, they just need a solution now as its effect is too grandiose on the matches. Removing them altogether is the best and fastest solution for the now. Give them time.

cerulean moth.2743:

Antiriad.7160:

You remove a feature instead of fixing the exploit? Sorry, no comment.

However, the Orb buff was definitely bad gameplay-wise, but what should have happened is keep the exciting Orb mechanics and just make the buff magic-find or something similar.

They stated in the original post that it’s coming back eventually, they just need a solution now as its effect is too grandiose on the matches. Removing them altogether is the best and fastest solution for the now. Give them time.

^ 100% THIS.

TY so much ANET for listening to us this is great news but will definitely look forward to when they come back and not add to imbalance… some do have points about not motivated enough on assaulting a keeps or such because of no orb but just for ppt/score… all in all ty again for this temporary solution

3 words, About freakin time

You could put the orbs back but give them the Outmanned Buff instead. Makes more sense.

How about adjusting the orb mechanic where if a team controls 2 of the 3 orbs, a lucrative dungeon portal is open for the team that controls it. This will attract the PvE crowd to jump into WvW and it will also force the winning team to decide whether to field numbers to defend the orbs or farm the lucrative dungeon before it closes off.

This mechanic is like Darkness Falls in DAOC and I think it did wonders for motivating PvE and PvP people to partake in RvR.

Usually orb is only thing which motivate stay in keep and defend.

Sorry to say, but the flaw in design is pretty obvious – I am not sure why orbs were ever considered.

It’s the same with GW2’s DP mechanic making the game even harder for an already failing player (the only result is frustration, not teaching players how to play better).

Thank you Anet, <3 you!

Thanks Habib! Awesome to hear this from Anet. When it comes to responding to community concerns – you guys deliver in spades.

Good Job Anet,now hackers got jobless !

When this mythical build will come up ? it’s already 20:00 GMT.

Hackers will still ninja keeps and towers.

Scryar.2954:

I dont like it. While I understand and agree with the reasons why you did it, it was always a thrilling and exciting moment to secure the orb for your server. I will miss them. You should have changed the orb bonus to something like the outmanned buff (more magic find, exp, more loot, more silver and so on) So even hacking them wouldnt have a big effect on the current matchup.

Yeah I agree with this. Pretty simple solution instead of removing them completely.

I understand the hacker problem but what we do with garnison and bay/hills now? just for points? :P

spiritus.7983:

I understand the hacker problem but what we do with garnison and bay/hills now? just for points? :P

Points don’t really matter when other servers night and morning cap.

Yes, finally. ’bout time something happened to address the issues.

Hopefully they can be fixed and implemented again.