Guild Wars 2

I have to be honest, I took a gamble and bought GW2 based on hearing good things about WvW. I’ve played a lot of MMOs, and the only ones I’ve truly enjoyed have been DAOC and WAR. The reason: realm vs realm; big open places to fight over objectives in in which anything (well, many things) are possible.

So, I spent the last week or so getting the hang of the game in PvE, learning the basics of a couple of classes. Then, today, I tried WvW.

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

As for actual keep defence, it was over in a matter of seconds on the several occasions I encountered one. Going near the wall was death for me, a warrior.

I have to admit I was surprised to be thrown in with level 80s – I thought that WvW was going to be tiered so that everyone could enjoy it, and also so that lowbies could learn the mechanics as they levelled without burdening the high level players (e.g, Warhammer Online).

Instead I was given the option of a tutorial which explained very little, and managed to join a group somehow, although the very basic UI didn’t allow me to see my party/warband.

After an hour or so of getting destroyed by either zergs, or one engineer that killed three of us without losing any health, I wasn’t having much fun.

Then I realised my armour was broken. That you actually have to repair your gear in WvW, and, given the speed it takes to a) break and b) for you to die, this is a gamebreaker for me. The reason I play these games is to kill players and get immersed in big battles, not to be FORCED to farm money just so I can constantly repair my gear from brief forays into an attempt at RvR.

There were lots of other things too: siege weapon control was clunky and annoying, the map wasn’t particularly accurate, keeps seemed quite poorly designed (unless the intention is to make them impossible to defend successfully).

I understand that this is what some people want from an MMO, but it’s not at all what I was expecting or hoping for. Yes, I should have done more research, but I took a risk. Tbh, I’m fed up of the way MMOs are heading at the moment. I feel like this will be my last one, unless there are plans in the pipeline to remove the equipment damage from WvW. And before someone accuses me of being a carebear unable to handle PvP with actual stakes – well, in the old days of MMO PvP where every man was for himself unless guilded… back then, you died a LOT less. The whole POINT of RvR is that it’s a team battle system in which you can expect to die a LOT if you’re even remotely trying to help your side win, unless you have the numerical advantage (which they seem to have failed to address completely).

Anyway, thanks for taking the time to read my rant. Hopefully some things will change.

A lot of what you do in WvW makes you money, even if the objective fails (like a keep you’re defending gets taken) so repair costs aren’t something you have to farm separately for.

Everyone who isn’t 80 is bumped up to 80. As long as your gear is concurrent with your level, I’d guess it’s about 20-30% difference between you and someone that’s level 80 in full exotic gear.

Often we’ve invited new WvW players in our guild TS and parties to kind of help them get the feel for WvW and what goes on. I mean, I could tell why I think it’s fun but maybe look for an organized group and see if you can’t join them (you don’t have to join their guild or anything) for a bit. That’s my recommendation if you want to see what WvW is like because right now you seem sort of lost about what is happening.

Lots of valid points here to be honest. Especially this:
dull, uninspired locations
The worlds are little more than static maps with paintable buildings.

I think you may need to understand WvW a bit more.

I’ll try and help you with some of your points, and will likely miss some points, but you should understand that this is not the same as in other games.

- Mounts: There are none, will not be any, atleast not in the near future and I’m pretty sure Anet is against them. What there is though, are movement skills which will give increase movement speed, and waypoints. Waypoints need to be purchases as upgrades at keeps, so they need to be worked towards as a server.

-Keep Defence: There’s defensive siege for a reason, and in your case, switching to a ranged weapon like the rifle is likely a must for both Keep Defence and Offense. There’s a reason as to why weapon swapping exists. You shouldn’t expect to run to a wall with a sword and expect to survive, and you should not expect to do so alone.

- Lvl 80: you get uplevelled to 80 in WvW. Everyone does by default. This eliminates the need for tiered system, and allows for a maximum amount of players for WvW as it does rely on large server populations. You will get the stats of a level 80 character, just not the skills. I’ve leveled my alt exclusively in WvW (with some assistance from crafting) so you shouldn’t be having issues with your Warrior (which may I add is incredibly useful in WVW and easy to play) Don’t worry about being a burden, the experienced players will help you learn usually, and if you don’t know what to do, learn by assisting a commander.

-Repairs: yes, they exist, so do rewards. Capping keeps, killing, taking sentries, escorting Yaks or killing them. All these reward players with coin, loot, karma and experience. They offset the repairs, which are fairly cheap. By playing, you should technically be able to offset your costs, and still walk away with a profit. Just take objectives with a group, and you’re good to go. You don’t even need to party up, you can just follow a commander, or a group of strangers, and still benefit. Don’t expect it to be removed, and it really shouldnt. I’ve made 7 gold on my alt from WvW (I play a Necro, and I only repair once my first piece of armour hits red, other wise I don’t bother). You won’t need to Farm. Best bet is to follow the Commanders (blue arrow Icon) and you should be fine.

-Siege: There are different types of siege, and yes they take some getting used to. I believe you can practice with them in the heart of the mists (feel free to correct me if I’m wrong) but they each serve a purpose. They just require some practice. Just use the Balista which is target based, and the arrow cart which is ground targeted and you should be fine.

- Maps: They are intended to be balanced. You should not be able to defend everything indefinitely. Objectives should be able to be taken back and forth between opposing servers, and the challenge is to defend them effectively aswell as sieging them. They are generally balanced to give the home server a slight advantage based on the borderland location. In the case of EB, the leading server (green) is supposed to have a disadvantage and the 3rd place server (red) has the easiest defense (Highground)

Really, you just need to learn the mechanics of WvW. Much of what you learned in PVE doesn’t always apply to WvW. Get used to the game mode before discounting it’s merits.

I’ve only WvW’d and I’ve never had a gold problem for repairs and siege. I suggest you try to join a guild to help you learn the ropes for WvW. I can see how it looks chaotic and pointless if you are new. Unless you are level 80 and familiar with WvW strategy and the maps, running solo out there is typically a death sentence.

Also, even though you are upleveled if you aren’t level 80 yet, your damage is minuscule compared to real 80’s so they can mow you down pretty easily, which may be lending to the frustration. Leveling is pretty fast though so I’d recommend trying as level 80 before making any final decision.

Regarding defense, there are good places for siege and bad places. Placement can make or break your defense. You can’t be expected to know these things though until you get a little more experience under your belt. A guild would be very helpful here as well.

Hope it gets better. What server are you on? I guarantee there’s a guild that would love to work with you if you are interested.

Keep your gear current to your level; the stats on your gear will scale based on this. Focus on Vitality/toughness as a warrior and you should be a lot more durable.

Since you have trouble getting around I’d suggest one weapon set sword/warhorn.

No you didn’t, you didn’t try WvW. Sounds like you leveled your character and went solo into WvW, started chasing crossed swords, got ganked on the way, or by the time you got there the battle was gone. You ran into a keep and jumped on the wall thinking the thirty guys below you would just let you shoot at them. You didn’t even come close to playing WvW.

So you really need to join a guild that knows how to play WvW and you will have fun. They will teach you how to play.

Few technical comments:

1. Everybody is bolstered to the equivalent of level 80 when they enter WvW. I have several actual level 80 players, a guardian, an engineer and an elementalist, who all started at level 30 in WvW and that is all they have played. They all did quite well from the get go.

2.Your character’s PVE or even PVP build will not work well in WvW. You need to learn how to build a character that will survive in a group vs group environment. Trust me on this, what will work in a single Player vs single Player game will not work as well in group vs group encounters.

3. Any character who can take out 3 other players is 1—designed to to do that (you can too). 2—very skilled (takes practice), and/or 3—playing against people who really don’t know what they are doing yet (most players who have only recently entered WvW)

4. As far as I can tell armor only gets damaged when you are killed by an enemy, it doesn’t wear down from use. Everyone in WvW dies a lot, and has to pay the cost. It is part of the game.

5. Some siege weapons are clunky because of their nature, trebs and catapults, are unwieldy things to turn by their nature. They take skill to fire at distance. Other siege—balistas and arrow carts—are quite fast and easy to use. You’re wasting money on golems unless you are in a group that knows how to deploy them and protect them.

I have played many MMOs just like you. I particularly liked Warhammer. The RvR or WvW is good in GW2 but it not something you can just drop into a few times and think you understand. WvW is quite varied and complex if you are on the right server and with the right group.

I think you should try it again.

My two level 80 characters (Warrior first, Mesmer second) were leveled from 2 to 80 almost exclusively in WvW. I’ve given ~200 hours to my Warrior and nearly 900 to my Mesmer.

I have always, without exception, profited monetarily from entering WvW, and I average 1 to 2 gold per session, without trying to do it.

Hello,

The moment I joined our community TS was the moment I truly started loving WvW.

Find a guild/party, get on TS, work as a group and you’ll have a lot of fun!

Realise not everyone wants to play this way but for some it makes a difference. Give it a try!

Thanks for the comments.

I know I was bolstered, obviously – but I had hoped for a tier system, particularly after hearing about tiered gear (I guess they meant tiers like in WoW rather than WAR).

I also know it’s harsh to judge it on a few hours, but the armour repair thing is really a problem for me. Let me explain why.

Firstly, even if I make the money back, it’s a hassle I can do without (and have done without in the last two MMOs I played, WAR and SWToR). It feels like a step backwards, and utterly needless – although in a game in which you can legally buy gold with real money I can see why they did it.

Secondly, it will make me play more cowardly. I already tend to play in quite a reserved manner in these games, as I dislike dying (well, it’s no fun for me if I don’t get into it…) but if I know I’ll be losing money each time, I will be much more likely to surf the zerg and stay out of harm’s way, instead of using my class to its potential. I imagine there will be others who think like this too.

Thirdly, it puts off non-RvR players who may venture into the frontier lands. Most PvErs I know who don’t like PvP hate it because of griefing. In a game where being killed means losing money, griefers WILL be more prolific. Actually, every time I got wiped/saw a zerg wipe someone, I witnessed corpse humping of some variety, usually from players with names like Xruinyoox or something similar. That I can handle – hell, I’ve played DAOC’s PvP server guildless, that’s an exercise in being griefed, but it WILL put off casual players, which weakens the whole experience in a game type based on numbers.

I know that some people are going to/have already assumed that I’m some noob who wandered into WvW, didn’t know what was happening and ran crying to the forums, but I have played this sort of thing for many years. This is just the weakest example of RvR I’ve seen so far. I’d almost prefer SWToR’s open world “anything goes but it’s entirely meaningless” style of PvP.

Anyway, I’ll give it a few more chances, but I’m not feeling good about it, which is a shame because I thought this could finally be the successor to DAOC (which was by far the best example of RvR, more so than WAR).

This might sound incredibly silly advice, but the solution really is just to not die. I play WvW for hours most days and tend to average 1 death an hour, if that. And I don’t play conservatively, I charge into groups and fight hard!

Yes I’m level 80 in full exotics/ascended (which helps) but the key skills here are a) knowing how and when to take a fight, and b) knowing how to escape once you’ve determined you need to. Jumping into a larger group, getting a quick kill, jumping out, repeating.

If I die it’s almost always my own fault for taking a fight I shouldn’t, or for failing to scout.

So repair costs are maybe a few silver an hour, while in that time I’ve probably made a gold or more from event completion, kills, loot, etc. I seriously doubt anet are hoping people will buy gems to cover their WvW repair costs!

As for griefing, I almost never see griefing of any variety, so I don’t know what server you’re on, but in the mid-EU tiers it’s a pretty friendly environment. Especially given it’s almost impossible to actually grief someone from an opposing server as you rarely get to talk to them and standing on someone’s corpse or even jumping on it is barely fun so hardly anyone does it.

The real joy of WvW is the constantly shifting battle lines – the moment when you finally take a tower that’s been a thorn in your side by constantly trebbing your keep or castle. Pushing an enemy back to defend a new location, or getting pushed back yourself and having to quickly put up siege to defend as they try and establish a proper attack on you.

This requires familiarity with the maps, with the way enemies tend to go, a feel for when a tower defence is going to work and when it’s a lost cause – or nearly one! As people have said if you just rush right in and expect it all to be laid out for you you probably won’t have much fun.

If you fancy a reference that hardly anyone will get, you could think of it like cricket – if you turn up on day 1 of the Ashes vs Australia without knowing how the game works you’re not going to have a lot of fun. But by day 5 if you’ve followed the ebb and flow of the match you’ll be hanging on every ball even though before you saw them all as pointless and inconsequential.

mathras.2450:

Anyway, I’ll give it a few more chances, but I’m not feeling good about it, which is a shame because I thought this could finally be the successor to DAOC (which was by far the best example of RvR, more so than WAR).

Based on things other form DAOC players have said in this forum, I’ve got to say this… If you are looking for a DAOC successor, I think you are likely to continue to be disappointed by WvWvW. WvWvW is not mass PvP. If repair costs make you more cautious, that’s a good thing. Avoiding fights is as important in WvWvW as engaging in fights.

Part of the strategy in WvWvW comes from picking your battles and picking your locations. It comes from misdirecting your enemy (the enemy worlds, not a single enemy player) to a location where you won’t be, so that you can more easily achieve your objective. It comes from playing support roles whenever you’re needed to, even if your only job is to run supply from a camp to a siege weapon going up, even if you’re a really, really 1337 PK. It comes from convincing your enemy to waste resources and then preventing them from receiving any more.

If these things don’t appeal to you, and all you really want to do is go out and fight the enemy, then you will likely find yourself frustrated. But, I believe, if you can adjust your perspective, there is a lot of room for fun.

^ this (Hyungs post). If you cant push through the learning curve, then WvW is probably not for you. You will die a lot. You will spend a ton of money on repairs, seige, upgrades. You will run a lot. You will yell at your monitor when you get killed by thieves. And many more frustrations. If you cant get over that, and enjoy the battles you win, then you wont have fun.

mathras.2450:

Firstly, even if I make the money back, it’s a hassle I can do without (and have done without in the last two MMOs I played, WAR and SWToR). It feels like a step backwards, and utterly needless – although in a game in which you can legally buy gold with real money I can see why they did it.

Secondly, it will make me play more cowardly. I already tend to play in quite a reserved manner in these games, as I dislike dying (well, it’s no fun for me if I don’t get into it…) but if I know I’ll be losing money each time, I will be much more likely to surf the zerg and stay out of harm’s way, instead of using my class to its potential. I imagine there will be others who think like this too.

I agree, it is a step backwards to have to pay to fix gear. I don’t play my warrior as much because anytime I try and be the front line as I thought we would be in groups, we get stunned and immobilized to death(yes I have Knights exotic armor, and soldiers runes for shout healing). Its not rewarding in the least bit, you do better with a rifle from the back, which makes no sense as to why someone with heavy armor is in the back of the scout and cloth classes. Also fear of death (having to run back to join the fight later on and paying for repairs) leads me to abandon my comrades mid-fight to run from the enemy.
Also if a map in WvW is failing I am less reluctant to join the fights that really need me because I know I will not make up for the money wasted in trying to help. It does seem like it punishes you for helping in losing fights.

I appreciate the replies but as for not dying, in a server in which my world appears to lose all the time (Tarnished Coast) an impression which I received not just from participating in being facerolled but also from talking to veterans of WvW on that server, death isn’t just inevitable, it’s about as easy to avoid as a sackful of rattlesnakes.

This is precisely why I think they should remove the need to repair gear in WvW. I imagine most people wouldn’t care about losing as much if they didn’t have to pay for it with gold too.

As for the “part of WvW is avoiding fights” argument I think that’s kinda weak. Sure, I’ve played games in which teams would spend time trying to avoid the zerg or draw it elsewhere – that’s all well and good, but they only did it because they were horribly outnumbered and lacked the capabilities to do anything else. This is a game mechanics flaw, and it’s nothing new either – WAR was doing empty zone flips long before this game.

One thing I forgot to mention is that I was under the impression WvW was a three-way fight between 3 realms, and yet all I’ve seen is my realm (the losers) and another world (the zergers). Have I misunderstood something? I was hoping for a 1v1v1 situation like in DAOC, where the outnumbered side could screw the other two up merrily by wiping out the survivors of a battle or stealing a keep while the other two fought each other.

Look at the names, You will see Sanctum of Rall invader or Storm Bluff Isle Invader.

We all come up with red names, but there are 2 other servers out there.

Not sure how you can class any server in T2 as “always losing”. Just being there in T2 is testimony enough to each participating server winning plenty along that ol’ road.

WvW isn’t for everyone.

mathras.2450:

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

I stopped here to comment. You say you really enjoyed DAOC? Do you remember the time it took to get back to the fight? 10 minute portal waits, long runs through the borderlands… At least here if you take a keep, it’s possible to get a waypoint built there for fast travel.

Edit: got to gear repair QQ. DAOC gear slowly broke down to useless and you had to make an entire new set!

The money stuff, daoc gave zero cash reward for player kills until NF. Here you can make a profit in WvW. You can’t judge it by going as an up-level. In daoc, do you remember trying to fight a purple? A red even? Yea.. can’t even hit them, at least here you can contribute as an uplevel. Seriously did we play the same game?

You got to remember a couple of things. First of all, DAOC wasn’t all that. You are remembering mostly the good because it was probably your first MMO and you had tons of fun because you didn’t know anything else. If DAOC got released now days, it would have flopped with all the balance issues, CC issues it had a release, xp loss for dying, and repair costs it had at release. I mean it had 1 minute 45 second mezz and 26 second stuns that could be chained. You imagine that now days? No way anyone would put of with that. I think they eventually added a purge skills but if the timer was up, you were screwed. It came down to who could get off their mez first.

Like others have said, you need to learn WvW more. What if it was easy when you first started playing? You wouldn’t be playing it a week from now. Also consider all the servers and match-ups aren’t the same. You might be in one where the enemy is blowing everyone away and your side isn’t even playing WvW. I would try to find an even match tier. When you have 3 evenly matched servers fighting each other, it is fun as heck.

You must be on our (TC) off-hours. Unfortunately our off-hours are weak as **** for tier 2. You will be outnumbered most of the time and the first thing you learn in WvWvW is that numbers win 90% of the time. The way we handle ourselves between our prime-time (NA night time) and our off hours are utterly different. My personal experience is that our off hour crew are so used to being overran in tier 2 that they melt away at the sight of enemies. 5v5? Nope, actually 5v2 because 3 of the TC guys are already running away.

Does TC suck? No, there is a reason why a PvE RP dominant server got up to tier 2. We actually do have people that will fight and know how to go about it. We fought tooth and nail against a lot of very good servers to climb up into this tier. See http://mos.millenium.org/matchups#na for reference.

I have only 1 suggestion that might make your stay in WvWvW a bit better. You need to join one of our bigger guilds like PiNK, TSL, or whoever you see during the hours you play. You need people that will show you the ropes because you won’t pick anything up if you just solo and hang around the PuGs we have during the off hours. We will likely be concentrated in only 1 map so you need to be on that map where we actually have any sort of organization going.

Oh and that 1v1v1 thing? It doesn’t really work because the scoring system encourages you to grab the easiest points (off the weakest low-population side) before your opponent does. 1v1v1 only happens when all 3 sides are fairly equal in fighting strength.

WvW is meant to be played in groups. Being successful at soloing in WvW is rare.

That said, play WvW for a month then come back and comment. I bet you will have changed your opinion on some (but not all) of your comments.

Also, have the fun is playing with others so get into a WvW orientated guild. This really helps when there are 10-20+ of you having similar objectives.

Come back in a month and let’s see what you think. WvW isn’t perfect by any means but there are changes coming soon that will hopefully add some more depth to WvW.

Stiv.1820:

mathras.2450:

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

I stopped here to comment. You say you really enjoyed DAOC? Do you remember the time it took to get back to the fight? 10 minute portal waits, long runs through the borderlands… At least here if you take a keep, it’s possible to get a waypoint built there for fast travel.

Edit: got to gear repair QQ. DAOC gear slowly broke down to useless and you had to make an entire new set!

The money stuff, daoc gave zero cash reward for player kills until NF. Here you can make a profit in WvW. You can’t judge it by going as an up-level. In daoc, do you remember trying to fight a purple? A red even? Yea.. can’t even hit them, at least here you can contribute as an uplevel. Seriously did we play the same game?

I’m sorry, but I don’t see how you can suggest this is better than DAOC in any way…? Sure, you had to wait for portals… but only to invade, you could run straight out into your own frontier with no loading screens because it was (before NF) one zone. Running through the borderlands was actually fun, I remember going there in the early days of the game as a level 30something Warrior with a Skald friend… skirmishing outside the Hib frontier keep and killing 5 equal level opponents through a combination of tactics and luck.

I have a lot of fond memories of that game, and most of the “negative” things about it I see as positive. Stuns, mez? That was half the fun, if you knew what you were doing you could wipe a badly-organised army with a group of 8. Balance was a mess, sure, but that’s the same for most MMOs… and don’t forget the sheer number of classes DAOC had… 44 classes. That’s right. Each class felt different. How many does GW2 have? Or WoW, or SWToR?

As for gear degrading, sure, but it took FOREVER compared to this game. And they changed it so that artifacts didn’t degrade permanently. I rarely had problems with gear breaking, and I played the game for years. Still, that was a different time when gamers demanded more complex games with an incredibly complicated array of stats to balance (weapon types and armour types matching up, for example). Since WoW this genre has gone mainstream and quality has suffered, inevitably.

That’s not to say I don’t like some things about this game. Combat feels more dynamic, although with any lag the dodge mechanic is often hilarious/frustrating. I also like weapon swapping and… erm, well I’m sure there’s other things.

Anyway, like I said, I’ll be trying WvW a little bit more before I make a final decision on it. But I’ve yet to see anything approaching a convincing argument for items degrading in WvW.

Donedusted.9846:

Hello,

The moment I joined our community TS was the moment I truly started loving WvW.

Find a guild/party, get on TS, work as a group and you’ll have a lot of fun!

I couldn’t agree with this more. It makes a huge difference to be on voice comms for WvW even if you’re just listening.

I do have to say one thing, the OP is spot on with the keep defense complaint. It’s silly that you can’t stand on your own battlements to defend a keep. It completely defies the logic of having a “fortification”. So what do you do to defend your keep? Why you build a catapult in your courtyard and fire it at your own keep doors. Yeah that makes sense.

You should visit the Tarnished Coast Community website and try to be a bigger part in the bigger picture. WvW is as big or as small as you want it to be, but if your complaints are quite simply the system, well there’s nothing I or we can do to change that, only Anet can. Most of us play the game as it, not the game we want it to be inside our heads, and if you don’t enjoy that, then nothing we can say or inform you of will change your mind. Its just possible that you will be happier after the February patch, or would prefer to just spend your time playing a different game. Either way, TC will be there for you when you decide!

Ljiona.9142:

You got to remember a couple of things. First of all, DAOC wasn’t all that. You are remembering mostly the good because it was probably your first MMO and you had tons of fun because you didn’t know anything else. If DAOC got released now days, it would have flopped with all the balance issues, CC issues it had a release, xp loss for dying, and repair costs it had at release. I mean it had 1 minute 45 second mezz and 26 second stuns that could be chained. You imagine that now days? No way anyone would put of with that. I think they eventually added a purge skills but if the timer was up, you were screwed. It came down to who could get off their mez first.

Like others have said, you need to learn WvW more. What if it was easy when you first started playing? You wouldn’t be playing it a week from now. Also consider all the servers and match-ups aren’t the same. You might be in one where the enemy is blowing everyone away and your side isn’t even playing WvW. I would try to find an even match tier. When you have 3 evenly matched servers fighting each other, it is fun as heck.

It probably would flop today, but gamers expect a spoon feeding more today than they were then. People no longer view games as a “challenge” to be overcome. They simply view them as a “passtime” where they feel they should not have to work to earn any meaningful progress.

This is mostly due to game no longer being strictly for the hardcore gamer but are targeted now at a much more general populace. My advice is to keep your DAoC account open for when you get tired of dealing with carebearness and play this on the side when you don’t want to be truly engaged in anything atm.

As someone who played DAoC and War, here’s a few thing that may make more sence.

Mounts, won’t happen, however most classes have speed boosts (ala Bard, Minst, Skald) being a warrior anyone of your banners will give you this.

Keep Defence, I’ll give you DAoC keep defences seemed alot more enjoyable, but warhammer … common who you kidding. Arrow Carts, Ballista, Catapults all can be used to defend, also as someone else mentioned, Pick yourself up a rifle or long bow for the walls.

Dull uninspired locations, I fully agree, 3 cloned maps is blah, and each zone is half the size of any frontier zone, but again its much better then Warhammer.

Repairs, although your armor does break to quickly it is the norm to have to fix it even in DAoC, the difference is your legendary won’t just break beyond repairs one day. Artifacts anyone ?

The siege, I actually quite like, its a good concept they came up with. Blue prints and supplies, it prevents people from just zerging around with a ton of siege with the fire and forget mentallity, you throw down a ram with no supplies around … well you just wasted 6 silver & a ram.

I would suggest giving it some time, once you get the hang of it, its actually quite fun. Your lumped in with 80’s and bolstered true, but its better then being lumped in with fully templated 50’s at a lower level like DAoC yes they had BG’s but there was only 2 active BG’s, or running around a with no one to fight like Warhammer low level RvR.

Once keeps upgrade enough there will be way points available to you if you control those keeps. At first before I understood how the waypoints & general WvW worked I wasn’t sure myself if I would enjoy it, but after learning more about it, and the way everything works, I love it. Theres always going to be things from DAoC that I think were better but this is not DAoC its GW2 and as far as Warhammer, I really can’t think of anything that was better in Warhammer.

Actually, they are easier on you for repairs here. In DAoC, items took damage from simple use, here you actually have to die to damage them.

Adaneshade.2409:

Actually, they are easier on you for repairs here. In DAoC, items took damage from simple use, here you actually have to die to damage them.

I’ll admit its been a couple years and I was strugling to remember the DAoC repair procedure, all I could remember was how kitten I was when I destroyed my first Artifact.

Okay, not going to be popular for my stance … but THANK YOU for posting this. this type of initial feedback and posting can help a developer. It gives a ‘new player’ perspective.

EDIT … I’m going to go a step further and say ‘guilds’ can benefit from this kinda perspective too, if they have people who are willing to train. This input helps defining some base training. Helping players ‘cross that bridge’

While everyone’s response reigns true, and yes… I felt much the same when I started WvW (beta)… after getting the hang of it, and playing with a guild, working together on objectives, I was addicted. Before that point, I was much the same where you were.

The best advice, even though it’s ‘general’ … is to find a large wvw guild and join them, you’ll ‘experience’ the difference. In fact, this thread alone has multiple servers on it.

If your open to the idea, you can post your server, and I’m sure one of the guilds might be able to help.

When you run together in an organized manner, you get to experience multiple things you cannot ‘feel’ alone. (yes, after your experienced, you can… ) but as a new player, you won’t ‘get it’ (not in a condescending way), there’s actually quite a bit to pick up on. Many people are willing to help.

Written words do very little to help you in your situation. But if the reigns of battle ring true in your ear, then you need to be willing to go out and actively find a wvw focused guild on your server, and (best idea) is to get on a voice communication with them. While not mandatory, the sheer volume of data you’ll be learning and data you’ll interpret over voice comm always helps.

When you hit 80 armor repairs won’t be a problem. I make money in wvw.

Just on the level 80 thing, when you enter wvw you get scaled to 80 from whatever level you were. However, you will likely be no match for an actual level 80 with exotic gear. Get your guy up to 80, gear him out and come back into wvw. The difference will be night and day.

transtemporal.2158:

Just on the level 80 thing, when you enter wvw you get scaled to 80 from whatever level you were. However, you will likely be no match for an actual level 80 with exotic gear. Get your guy up to 80, gear him out and come back into wvw. The difference will be night and day.

Funny thing is because of the way they do upscaling you’re better off being below 80 if you’re still in greens. Look to have your exotic set ready by the time you hit 80.

morrolan.9608:

transtemporal.2158:

Just on the level 80 thing, when you enter wvw you get scaled to 80 from whatever level you were. However, you will likely be no match for an actual level 80 with exotic gear. Get your guy up to 80, gear him out and come back into wvw. The difference will be night and day.

Funny thing is because of the way they do upscaling you’re better off being below 80 if you’re still in greens. Look to have your exotic set ready by the time you hit 80.

Sry… piggybacking these ideas …invest your pve money into crafting (armor class of character), and save your karma until 80. You’ll be able to gear yourself the minute you hit 80.

Well, WvW all depends on what server your on. For example, I am on a decently good server in WvW, and we were trying to take a castle. It took about an hour to take down the first gate. Then, we moved in and took the second gate and keep in about another hour and a half. When your defending a tower, I’ve never heard of such a situation where it ends in a matter of minutes. You must be on a server where everyone is PvE and doesn’t play WvW. It is really intense and exciting if you are on an active WvW server. HOWEVER, I definitely agree with you on the walking part. However, it’s worth it once you get to the fight. They definitely should get mounts in the near future for WvW because most waypoints are unavailable in WvW.

mathras.2450:

I was really disappointed. Okay, I expected a lagfest (I’m currently playing on a creaky old laptop) but I wasn’t expecting dull, uninspired locations that I’d have to run between (with no mounts, of course) in order to reach a fight. I’m sure I’m missing something here…

What you’re missing is that when you die and don’t get ressurected, you’re out of the battle for a bit and the other side gets a numbers advantage, as well as if your side is victorious in a battle, you don’t have the other side just respawning over and over making individual deaths meaningless. This isn’t call of duty, you don’t respawn back into battle 5 seconds later after dying. Stay alive and work together and you won’t die. And capture say Stonemist Castle in EB, and hold it, and you can place a waypoint inside of it and get to every battle in half the time. Your best bet before you’re 80 is to follow the blue commander insignia and listen and learn.

Causic.3798:

…which makes no sense as to why someone with heavy armor is in the back of the scout and cloth classes.

Throughout most of military history, armies sent in their light armoured and mobile forces to harry the enemy and probe for weak points before the heavies went in. So just wait for your auxiliaries to do their job before diving into the fray

Repairing costs are something that are often in mind when engaging, especially for casual players. I think without them, however, WvW would just be a mess because there would be no reason for most players to consider their actions. People complain about zergs enough already, but imagine what zergs would be like if they knew there were no consequences for careless play.

I make enough in solo roaming to purchase food + oil that cost me 6s every 30 minutes, cover repairs and still turn a decent profit. It’s perfectly fine how it is.

Ok, sorry but my original post was apparently too long. So I will post it in sections:

I have to agree 100% with the repair aspect. I have been playing since beta, and in beta only played some PvE. Then I eventually wondered into PvP (sPvP), and had tons of fun there. Post official launch I had a friend (real life friend) / guildee become addicted to WvW so I went in to check it out. I got addicted pretty quickly. Then the first time I died and saw my gear needed to be repaired from that death, I thought for sure it was a glitch! I agree that ANet NEEDS to REMOVE gear damage/repair from WvW as that is probably one of the two biggest WvW BREAKING aspects! I would MUCH rather be spending my money on stuff that you’re ‘supposed’ to spend money on in WvW like siege and fortification upgrades… NOT having to deal with repairs TOO. So you have my full sympathy on that page! It also just adds even more to the entire ‘zerg’ mentality, because of course you’re less likely to die while running with 75 other people, opposed to by yourself or in small groups of 5~10. I know because that’s the mindset I’m in myself right now. I will admit, there was a way to avoid repairs, and I used to be one to use it. When I was able to do that I was having 100% fun because even if I was out wondering by myself and saw a ‘zerg’ of 100 people I could charge in full well knowing I was gonna die, but felt good if I could even kill just one of them! Well now, they’ve since taken away this “backdoor” method of avoiding getting your gear damaged (it was switching to your town clothes while downed), so now I have to be reserved about how I play. Therefore, NOT having 100% fun, maybe only 50% now. Because when I see a group that heavily outnumbers me, to me, it wont pay to incur damages when hands down they’re going to walk all over me. So, it’s time to RUN RUN RUN, or waypoint, or do whatever else can be done to avoid repeated repairs… So yea, I would prefer running with as many people possible now opposed to just wondering about on my own, or even in the small groups I used to like to run in (more covert)… Of course there’s still another option, which really blows if you ask me! Something I’ve had to resort to for this weeks match-up my server is in (because we’re getting annihilated!) running around with no armor on… Which is also quite pathetic if you ask me, because again, you will NOT have 100% fun that way. Of course you wont get gear damage/repair any longer. But it’s almost to the point of “why even play at all” because if you’re running around with no armor at all, your defense and attack is almost useless. So now, at least for this week, I’d say my level of “fun” is down to 25%, I am almost wondering why I’m bothering to play at all right now myself…! Sure now I can charge into large groups (“zergs”) head on again, but chances of me actually killing, hell even downing, just one of them – pretty slim to nil with no gears on (except my weapon of course)… Though of course I am pretty content knowing that when I die, I am not going to incur a repair fee. I know I’ve also heard the rebuttal that “all people incur these repair fees, it’s not just you or your server”. Okay, fair enough, this is true. However, let me reiterate how much this just adds to the catch 22 circle of supporting the ZERG mentality. If you’re on, in, or with a higher populated server/team/guild/squad/party/etc… you will die less, therefore you actually wont have any repair fees (basically). While if you’re on, in or with a lower populated server/team/guild/squad/party/etc… you will die more, therefore there’s no balance to this, and no, not ‘everyone’ incurs these fees in the reality of it.

Which leads me to the second most broken aspect of WvW. Bear in mind I am not placing either one in higher priority than the other, as I think they BOTH NEED to be resolved, and soon! FREE SERVER TRANSFERS, that’s right, ANet is STILL allowing free and unlimited server transfers. As long as this continues WvW will be lopsided, and broken. Also just further adding to the ‘zerg’ mentality (or your ‘weekend warrior’ or ‘fair weather player’ mentalities as well), because what’s to stop people from transferring to the “winning” server. That’s the thing, there’s NOTHING stopping them, and it happens every week. Doesn’t take long, I’m sure most server wars, all 3 servers actually have a GOOD idea of who’s gonna win for that week within a few hours into it. So there’s nothing stopping someone from transferring to Server X on saturday morning, just so that they could be on the “winning” server. Therefore accomplish possibly a few things. Map completion is one of the most popular EXCUSES I’ve heard. I am pretty sure it also has something to do with ‘population’ or ‘winning’, which therefore just points right back to the gear damage/repair system. Like I had discussed prior in this post, this weeks match up that I’m in is AR v NS v K or Anvil Rock v Northern Shiverpeaks v Kaineng. Well Kaineng is totally annihilating with like +324k points over us (AR and NS are pretty close around 50 and 40k respectively)…!!! So what’s stopping ME from transferring to Kaineng just so I can “win” and “avoid gear repairs”, the fact that it’s against my principle and I REALLY want ANet to put an END to the transfers! Also, what would switching accomplish? So now I am going to move my entire guild and myself to a new server for a week, just to “win” ??? Wait, sure I COULD do that because right now ANet is allowing it. Though like I said, it’s against my principle. Not only that, I think AR and NS are getting their rears handed to them enough as it is, why should I be a little kitten and run to Kaineng just to FURTHER annihilate them! Well, sadly it’s quite obvious not all players have the type of integrity that I do, because transfers are still happening, ALL THE TIME. I would NOT doubt for a second that AR and NS have had people transfer to Kaineng for the week, just further ADDING to the annihilation that we’re experiencing… So this to me is one of the saddest aspects of WvW right now (and why personally the entire WvW “rankings” doesn’t mean kitten to me)! Personally, I rolled AR when the game launched, and I will die on AR…

So putting an end to free and unlimited server transfers should be blatantly obvious to not only ANet, but the playerbase as well. I personally think they should come down REAL harsh on the server transfer subject. Personally, I think server transfers should cost real life money. You should NOT be able to use “gold” OR “gems” (either one because they can be traded with each other [ie you can use gold to get gems or visa versa]) to accomplish a server transfer. Furthermore I think each account should be limited to a LIFETIME limitation of 5 transfers… That and / or I think they should make it really expensive, like $30! If they were to implement those rules (with a fair warning to the players of course), I bet we’d see WvW become a MUCH better place! Also, not to dismiss eliminating the gear damage/repair system for WvW. Like I said, the first time I died in WvW and noticed a piece of gear had become damaged I thought it was a glitch. I was used to PvP not having repair, and when I first learned that I thought to myself “well that makes sense, you’re bound to die a LOT in PvP”… I thought it was absolutely absurd that gear becomes damaged and necessitates repair in WvW (still a “form” of PvP technically) where you’re bound to die just as much if not more than ‘normal’ PvP… Which also technically makes me want to call ANet out (and blatantly call them liars), because I remember watching pre-launch videos where they boasted about “wanting players to just get in the game and have fun” ~ in regard to how they “eliminated the whole ‘holy trinity’”… I’m calling BS, because as I have already explained, when there was a way to avoid damage/repair I was having full fledged 100% fun. Now that I’m constantly worried about death and incurring gear damage/repair my “level of fun” has been reduced to about 50%! I understand the game needs certain ‘cash sinks’, but this should NOT be one of them. Leave the gear damage/repair to PvE, there it makes sense. REMOVE it from WvW (or technically to remain fair ~ ADD gear damage/repair to PvP)… I would much rather be blowing my money on what WvW is SUPPOSED to be all about: siege and upgrades!

In all, those are the MAJOR two things that I think are WvW BREAKING, and NEED to be FIXED/RESOLVED… Once they finally put an end to free and unlimited server transfers and remove the gear damage/repair system from WvW there are a few other “fine tweaking” things I personally think it could use, but they’re no where near as game BREAKING as the free and unlimited transfers, and having the gear damage/repair system a part of WvW… Small list without going into too much detail:

(we’ll start with probably the most important one, and try to keep in order of priority)

¤ Scaling ~ PvE has scaling events, such as how many mobs are generated per how many participants the server ‘detects’ (this one would also further discourage the ‘zerg’ mentality) ~ well I say make ‘points’ in WvW “scale” too. IE: say you have a group of 20 people to capture a tower. The door (walls, claimer, etc…) would be (scale to) 10,000 HP. So it should take 5 minutes to take down (undefended). IE: say you have a group of 100 people to capture a tower. The door would be (scale to) 50,000 HP. So it should take 5 minutes to take down (undefended). {numbers are purely for example} In the end ANet should decide roughly how long “something should take to do” and make everything scale to take roughly a ‘set’ “par time” no matter what the size of the group doing it! IE: if they decided it should take a group of 20 to take a tower, and it should take 10 minutes to breech the door, then it should also take 10 minutes to breech the door for a group of 100. (Whatever they have to do to make it happen!) Likewise if a group of 10 tried something rated for a group of 20, it too would ‘scale’ and likely take a group of 10 people, 15-20 minutes to breech the door.

¤ Player downed state is fine, but make it so that players CANNOT heal(downed)/resurrect others while in combat mode or within X distance to another player that is in ‘combat’ mode

¤ Modify it so that NO damage passes through gates (very annoying that you cannot repair gates even though the option is ‘there’ once an attack has been initiated since damage of almost any sort (AOE) passes through the gates (along with mesmer clones))! This would also eliminate the idiocy of placing arrow carts and catapults behind your own doors – TO DEFEND THEM .

¤ Eliminate siege caps/timers – I can’t see a real good reason either should exist, besides any physical programming/server constraints (IE 65,535 or 2,147,483,648 or 9,223,372,036,854,775,807 [Don’t worry about these numbers, you’ll only understand them if you’re a ‘super geek’]). Battles only last a week, and if you can put it up it should stay up (and you should be able to put up “as much as you want” [it’s not like it’s gonna operate itself, you need a set of hands to operate it, so it really wouldn’t matter if you had a tower with ONE player in it that had 100 pieces of siege because that one player can only operate 1 thing at a time]) until it is destroyed… {see below: by other siege.}

¤ Siege should not be capable of being destroyed by players. Only siege should be able to take out other siege (prime example: The pots of oil are good in theory but soo easily taken out by characters, that’s NOT right)

¤ Modify “commander” to cost badges instead of gold (any moron could charge gems and change gems for gold to ‘buy’ commander, hence having a boat load of DUMB commanders all over the place) – I think commander should cost 10,000 badges (surely if a person has collected 10,000 badges they should “know what they’re doing in WvW”)
-additionally commander should be ACCOUNT based NOT character based!

(and the stuff they’ve actually already fixed)

? Eliminate orbs

? Make it so that anyone in ‘stealth’ cannot prohibit/prevent point captures

To summarize for those who I know wont read my wall of text. I am with the OP 100% about removing gear repairs for WvW. The 2 biggest broken things about WvW are free and unlimited server transfers, and gear damage/repair… Sure there are other things I think could use a “fine tuning” but aren’t necessarily game breaking like those two things. Well, besides figuring out what to do (maybe my ‘scaling’ recommendation above) to eliminate/reduce the “ZERG” mentality that so many people seem to have! In the end, nothing is perfect, surely not any one specific video game. So in the meantime play to have fun, if you can. If not, you wouldn’t play at all.

Also, check your PM’s “mathras.2450”

Free transfers end the 28th, it was because they hadn’t implemented guesting, a feature that lets anyone PVE with any player in north america. WVW obviously wont work because that would defeat the purpose of removing free transfers.

Well then, come the 28th we can check off another thing fixed

Many complaints about things that were worse in both games you played. The maps in this game are a bit on the meh side because they’re copied and there are some imbalances in both the borderland maps and EB(bay getting trebbed from garrison, and red’s overlook keep being trebbed from SMC), but other than that it’s a great START.

I’d kill for raid frames though.

Also you can’t say if you went out alone without a skald/bard/speed buff in daoc, you got around in battle quickly, and you got shot back to a port that you had to wait for. It’s the same kind of system in that you can’t come back immediately to battle because you died, you’re done with that battle, time to regroup.

Ordibble.3092:

Causic.3798:

…which makes no sense as to why someone with heavy armor is in the back of the scout and cloth classes.

Throughout most of military history, armies sent in their light armoured and mobile forces to harry the enemy and probe for weak points before the heavies went in. So just wait for your auxiliaries to do their job before diving into the fray

This is enlightening
Then their logic pans out then :P

Hi OP, above suggestions on surviving WvW are great. Just add on a couple based on my humble experience (playing on a 2 years-old non-gaming laptop):

1) Be mobile, especially during sieges – strafing while attacking can be your best friend, & when you are downed, try to teleport yourself away from the spot where you are hit so as to allow others to heal you. As a SB thief I can get 50 kills for Dailies from one or two 10+ mins sieges, just by taking out stationary players.

2) Be wary of your environment – the objectives – keeps, towers, camps, etc, have multiple access points. Do quick scans on your blind spots at short intervals (i.e. your rear, nearby higher grounds) even while you are attacking, to minimise chances of being sneaked up on by enemies.

Hope the above can help you out enough to start enjoying WvW

Sixpax.8360:

I do have to say one thing, the OP is spot on with the keep defense complaint. It’s silly that you can’t stand on your own battlements to defend a keep. It completely defies the logic of having a “fortification”. So what do you do to defend your keep? Why you build a catapult in your courtyard and fire it at your own keep doors. Yeah that makes sense.

I stand on the battlements and defend the keep. Switch to bow or rifle, fire down at the enemy. Jump on an arrow cart, ballista, catapult, treb, oil, mortar and fire down at the enemy. Jump down and stab them when they linger to long.

They do need to fix aoe through walls though.

I am always making a profit even dying all the time, its not as big a bill as you think.

Also listen to the commander (blue icon on the map), follow orders, do what needs to be done. This is not (in most cases) a wander about with 1-2 other people and wipe a zerg solo. If that is what you are looking for that is not really usually possible in this game.

Its about being part of a bigger picture, doing things that need to be done to win for the server.

I played WAR, the zerg vs zerg is EXACTLY (imo) like WAR, in fact this is the closest RvR system that I have played to WAR.

I am glad you are going to give it some more time, I think you will enjoy it, its not perfect but its pretty fun. I like it now way more then I like WAR (especially when they started adding in the city takes in WAR…bah).

They need to fix LoS from ontop of walls.
I could understand Asura’s not being able to fight with LoS due to how short most make them, but norns?humans? ect?