Guild Wars 2

The issues raised by the devs are spot on. Im glad that all the nerfing crys about class x or class y are being left alone as these are not the issue. Not in WvW, not in PvE and not in sPvP now that everyone has worked out the meta and counter builds. I am a stealth thief and some ranger traps (and necro marks and guardian defenses) have been completley shutting me down which means people are starting to adapt and play smart

Two big things that I hope get updated…
1. The Vault doors in the jump puzzles
2. Whatever in the game engine allows people to hack the orbs

You know what would really help players to be able to push back from their spawn locations:

Arrowcarts and cannons (official, permanent ones, not the kind that disappear), placed inside the invulnerable zone. That way, even though we can’t set up an untouchable trebuchet to capture the nearest tower, we can at least just wipe whoever is harassing the spawn zone

I just don’t see server transfers as a problem. Maybe it’s too short a relative time (1 day transfer with a 1 week match).

But ultimately the zerg of PUGs wants to transfer to the winning side (where there are smart commanders who know what they’re doing) and the organized guilds want to transfer to the losing sides (there’s lots of stuff to take, shorter queues to get everyone in, etc.) This isn’t just GW2, basically every faction vs. faction PvP game has players wanting to move in opposite directions.

Don’t make it bug free. Just make it so they cannot transfer then work on the details of making it pretty later.

Free transfers will stay open until the guesting system is implemented, and will continue to mess up the balance of WvW as well. A one week cooldown on entering WvW would go a long way toward fixing the issue and might be easier to implement.

Overall I’m encouraged by this thread, and glad for the update. Culling and all-capping are definitely the biggest mechanical issues.

I would add bots and cooldowns on entering WvW after transferring to that list as top priorities. Twenty or more bots taking up player slots also skews the game toward the side with less bots (assuming full map populations on all sides).

NatashaK.9418:

I just don’t see server transfers as a problem. Maybe it’s too short a relative time (1 day transfer with a 1 week match).

But ultimately the zerg of PUGs wants to transfer to the winning side (where there are smart commanders who know what they’re doing) and the organized guilds want to transfer to the losing sides (there’s lots of stuff to take, shorter queues to get everyone in, etc.) This isn’t just GW2, basically every faction vs. faction PvP game has players wanting to move in opposite directions.

Sure that sounds good theoretically.

So why is it that my server, Aurora Glade, which used to have very long queues during primetime, now has no queues at all!

And why is it that my server, Aurora Glade, which used to put up a fight, now cowers in the corner beaten!

And why is it that we used to have smart commanders, but now have no commanders at all!

There is only one direction of movement here.
Everyone is leaving, and no one is coming!

How the hell is it “complicated” to not allow transfers every 24 hours ? How “complicated” is it to make it a higher time limit ? How “complicated” is it to see there’s ZERO reason anyone needs the ability to transfer every single day for free ?

Setsunayaki.4907:

My greatest concern for WvW is the aggressive stance the system takes against Support Roles in general.

I play on my Elementalist anything from Glass-Cannon Builds to Full Support Build and its amazing how WvW is extremely damage oriented that the very little support builds out there are changing over to damage builds since the system does not reward anyone who tries to actually support, but only rewards those who damage enough or kill.

I play a decent support build and sometimes I run with a friend who runs a second support build. Together we heal and maintain zergs decently, but the zergs are the ones who get most of the rewards while the Support Builds are extremely hard to receive anything.

The focus on support builds is for the players who are with us. We constantly are monitoring our own fighting force, trying to heal groups, resurrect fallen players, defending keeps and trying to make good of everything we have at our disposal.

Yes, there are many I’ve spoken to who wish to play support, but refuse to do so until a system is placed where support players are rewarded for their actions.

I agree. I tried out PvP for the first time, and needless to say I was VERY pleasantly surprised when the voice over called out “Team member revived!” and it was added to my score break down, AND I got extra glory for it. It’d be nice if WvW did something similar.

It can get extremely frustrating when you are reminding the team to res people when taking important areas, such as a castle – but all people care about is cramming into the Control Point circle and those that HAD contributed to the fight and died miss out because people are too lazy to bother res’ing them.

dahkot.3579:

How the hell is it “complicated” to not allow transfers every 24 hours ? How “complicated” is it to make it a higher time limit ? How “complicated” is it to see there’s ZERO reason anyone needs the ability to transfer every single day for free ?

Become a game developer and find out for yourself. It’s not just about code, but balancing game mechanics as well. What effect will limited transfers have on servers? What effect will it have on players? How often is too often? etc. There are many things that ANet have to put into consideration when making these changes.

As others have stated, there are many reasons for transferring – queue times can be a big one. It’s not always people transferring to the winning server, but they may never get a chance to go to WvW because of long queues, or they wish to party with friends in dungeons on other servers (no guesting).

Good news.

Being free to play will be a big plus for GW2 in convincing people that already left the game with future fixes and some WvW content updates. Until then it’s dying rapidly.

My guild’s prime-time population dropped from 60-70 to 20 already and it continues to drop. As management we stopped fighting against that and looking for other options (games) to keep community entertained and intact as GW2 unfortunately is far from sustaining that. I can always hope we can return to GW2 with a solid presence in future.

Thanks for the update Matt.

Can I respectfully underline than server transfers aren’t just a massive issue but that also you have a limited amount of time to make changes. People are pretty much at the tipping point of having had enough of the numerous effects of this issue.

On launch GW2 had the best sense of community I’ve come across in an MMO in a decade. Transfers have destroyed that.

If changes aren’t made in the immediate future you could see a significant fall off in player numbers. I’ve seen it in numerous MMOs. And if people leave most of them won’t come back.

Kudos to you for being so perceptive about the issues that need addressing.

Regardless of what new content you have planned ArenaNet, you have been incredibly sluggish in your response to widely reported and highly abused terrain exploits which are becoming more prevalent in WvW every passing day. In my opinion, this is completely unacceptable. You need to fix the exploits as quickly as possible, stomping them out as soon as you are made aware of them, otherwise the experience and integrity of WvW as a whole becomes exponentially worse.

Alisana.9451:

dahkot.3579:

How the hell is it “complicated” to not allow transfers every 24 hours ? How “complicated” is it to make it a higher time limit ? How “complicated” is it to see there’s ZERO reason anyone needs the ability to transfer every single day for free ?

Become a game developer and find out for yourself. It’s not just about code, but balancing game mechanics as well. What effect will limited transfers have on servers? What effect will it have on players? How often is too often? etc. There are many things that ANet have to put into consideration when making these changes.

As others have stated, there are many reasons for transferring – queue times can be a big one. It’s not always people transferring to the winning server, but they may never get a chance to go to WvW because of long queues, or they wish to party with friends in dungeons on other servers (no guesting).

You fail to anywhere show me why people NEED to be able to transfer for FREE , EVERY DAY.

Again , it’s not rocket science to see that allowing CONSTANT DAILY SERVER HOPPING causes far more problems than it helps.

People can avoid queues by transferring to a less populated server , they then DONT NEED TO DAILY KEEP TRANSFERRING.

Sorry , but you , nor any AN dev or other poster , has given a valid reason that the timer is set to allow you to transfer every single day for a good reason.

The queues excuse doesnt hold up , the play with friends one doesnt etc ,

Sorry , its a blatantly poor decision to allow constant free server transfers.

leave it at every 24 hours. but a week ban on doing wvw. DONE.

Thanks for the update.

Probably won’t be answered, but is it intended that altars in keeps stay broken unless ownership of the keep flips sides?

I find it rather ridiculous that the altar does not repair itself (or become repairable at least) after the orb resets up north.

why is there absolutely NOTHING in this thread about free transfers?

until free transfers are turned off, wvwvw in this game can not be taken seriously. just look at the sos/sor/cd matchup. it was even across all three until two huge guilds moved on a whim to sor. now it’s a blowout.

is this what you want anet? blowouts on random servers every week?

this completely negates any ladder system you have in place. it negates any attempt at building a server community and negates ANY attempt by your company to recapture or exceed the glory days of DAOC RvR

get it together and turn this off, even if guesting isn’t working yet.

With regards to the transfers, I happen to like the fact that they’re free. I understand that you’re a business, and going to a pay transfer system will probably bring in the money by the bucket.

I think though, that instead of just saying “On this date, you will no longer be able to transfer for free.” You should allow people a set number of transfers before they go to a pay to transfer system.

See, I haven’t used the transfer. If trends continue though, and my server fills with Frappucino sipping vegetarians who want to blog in the chat channel and link gear so they can compare the looks! I don’t think I’ll want to stay on my server.

If we catapult to the top on the back of my greatness alone, I won’t want to stay there either. I like to be the underdog. The mistake you made with the transfer system was to allow a transfer free for all thinking that these impatient brats would work it out for themselves instead of take advantage of it to clog up the winningest servers, and abandon the servers that lose the most.

Evidently that’s what’s happened, though I haven’t seen it on the smallest US-or the EX smallest US server.

3 transfers, then you pay.

Nucleotides.6928:

leave it at every 24 hours. but a week ban on doing wvw. DONE.

week+2 please (9 days)

Reasoning:
So that transfers can’t directly influence a match up.

We know what this week’s match up. We can pretty easily figure out next week’s match up.

The weeks after that become increasingly harder to predict, especially with the 9day lock out factor.

Plus 2 days instead of +1 day to cover the start(the two busy weekend days) of the new match up.

Give them a 2 weeks cooldown

If (requestedTransferServerPopulation > currentServerPopulation) {
transferStatus = “Denied”;
} else {
transferStatus = “Approved”;
}

There I fixed it.

Elderan, do you Reddit?

Nope why? /15char

Just seems like an answer someone from that chat where the ANET programmers went might have given. lol

wish they added scenarios,warzones, whatever you want to call it as a way to help the server win points for the server if the servers are being zerged. i mean if all i have to do is go out and make no points spend money on repairs and such, how long is that going to last. alternate ways to make the servers wvw points go up besides just wvw would be nice.

Dixa.6017:

why is there absolutely NOTHING in this thread about free transfers?

Um, an Anet game director posted feedback about free transfers on the second page of this thread.

dahkot.3579:

Alisana.9451:

dahkot.3579:

How the hell is it “complicated” to not allow transfers every 24 hours ? How “complicated” is it to make it a higher time limit ? How “complicated” is it to see there’s ZERO reason anyone needs the ability to transfer every single day for free ?

Become a game developer and find out for yourself. It’s not just about code, but balancing game mechanics as well. What effect will limited transfers have on servers? What effect will it have on players? How often is too often? etc. There are many things that ANet have to put into consideration when making these changes.

As others have stated, there are many reasons for transferring – queue times can be a big one. It’s not always people transferring to the winning server, but they may never get a chance to go to WvW because of long queues, or they wish to party with friends in dungeons on other servers (no guesting).

You fail to anywhere show me why people NEED to be able to transfer for FREE , EVERY DAY.

Again , it’s not rocket science to see that allowing CONSTANT DAILY SERVER HOPPING causes far more problems than it helps.

People can avoid queues by transferring to a less populated server , they then DONT NEED TO DAILY KEEP TRANSFERRING.

Sorry , but you , nor any AN dev or other poster , has given a valid reason that the timer is set to allow you to transfer every single day for a good reason.

The queues excuse doesnt hold up , the play with friends one doesnt etc ,

Sorry , its a blatantly poor decision to allow constant free server transfers.

Sigh. If you are going to respond to a post, at least a) read the post, and b) there is no need for “yelling”/caps. I simply offered a perspective where people genuinely transfer. The purpose of my post was to point out why people transfer, not why people transfer every 24 hours. Calm down. Sitting here and venting your frustration, while may help you mentally, it doesn’t help the situation here. Rather, take a step back and look at what suggestions can be made for ANet, suggest some alternatives that they can take on board rather than throwing a tantrum about it. Attacking ANet and other players isn’t going to rectify the transfer situation.

Some people will do this every 24 hours though BECAUSE there is no guesting option. We don’t have a choice when there is no guesting – if friend A is on server A, and friend B is on server B and Guild C is on Server C and your player is on server D, and they want to party with different people across different servers, you’re punishing them by not allowing them that option.

Yes, people WILL abuse the system, but that can’t be helped.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just wanted to quickly add we’ve got people working on fixing issues with free server transfers as well, its proven far more complicated than we originally intended/expected to get done but is absolutely being built and is coming as soon as we can possibly get it in and bug-free.
We’ll also be working on a number of other WvW features we’ll talk more about in the coming months once they’re closer to being implemented!

¹

Until ANet get’s the guesting option up and running, free transfers will be here to stay. You cannot remove a feature without offering an alternative to players.

For reference, this is a blog post when they first explained guesting:
http://www.arena.net/blog/choosing-and-transferring-worlds-in-guild-wars-2

While you can change your home world, there is a limit of one world transfer every seven days per account and a charge of 1,800 gems for each transfer. A world transfer moves all of your existing characters to your new home world. Any subsequent characters you create will also play in this new home world.

When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature. With guesting, your characters can play on any world where you have friends—with certain restrictions. For instance, you will not be able to participate in WvW while guesting.

I recall reading somewhere as well that when you are guesting, you don’t get your home world bonuses, or the other world’s bonuses. The idea was to allow for cross-server assistance without the need to change your home server.

¹ Side note: an ANet member mentioned that they won’t “confirm” updates/features, etc until they’re near the final development stage as if they say “we promise you x” but then release “option y”, players can get upset and frustrated. Case and point, the promise of guesting at launch, but we don’t have it.

I dont think they promised guesting at launch. They did promise guesting as a feature. They did not say when.

Draygo.9473:

I dont think they promised guesting at launch. They did promise guesting as a feature. They did not say when.

I would assume it was a promised feature on the basis of how this was written:

When Guild Wars 2 launches, you will also have the option to play with your friends on another world with our free “guesting” feature.

I interpret that as “when the game launches, guesting will be up and running”. However, games being the way they are, and MMOs even more so, it’s understandable to see why it’s not working. There would be a multitude of issues that can be faced – such as disabling the World/Realm bonuses, but there is even the issue of Overflow.

I am seeing the overflow message probably about 3 times a week now? Not as bad as launch, but it’s still there – and I suspect that the same thing might happen with Guesting. Where do they put the guests in the party? If they’re in overflow, it’s like being on a different server, you can’t see your party members in game. So do they move the whole party to overflow? Or do they push priority for the ‘guest’ to be on the main server, and sever inhabitants to be pushed to overflow? (Which would be unfair on home-ground players)

The good news is that they are working on fixing the free transfers issue. But also understandable that they can’t promise when it will be released – between bugs, exploits, botters, gold sellers, special content, game updates, etc, there is still a lot of development in GW2 that they need to do. I personally would love to hear an update of when it will be fixed, but I doubt that we will hear it, until it’s about to be launched, or HAS launched.

This kitten needs sorting, fast!
:

Aurora Glade 29 660
Miller’s Sound 148 502 (3orbs)
Ring of Fire 35 007

As if the EU matches weren’t bad enough, just check the current NA tier 2 match. It’s the poster child for how transfers have completely ruined WvW match making:

Blackgate 204,289
Henge of Denravi 9,332
Eredon Terrace 8,711

2 days in and one team already has 20x the score of the other teams. Yep gg!

It’s not that complicated.

IIRC when server transfers were first offered you could transfer more than once per day. Return it to that, but do not allow entry into WvW unless you were already on that server BEFORE the new match begins. If you go back to your “home server” you can enter WvW during the current match. Whatever server you’re on when WvW resets on Friday becomes your new “home server.”

PVE is unaffected by this, in fact, this helps it! Bandwagoners disrupting the current matches will be eliminated. Guilds can still exodus in preparation for next match so volatility will unfortunately still exist. If there was a mass migration to your server, then you’ll be stuck with possible queues for a week. Can’t make everyone happy.

wombat.6123:

Dixa.6017:

why is there absolutely NOTHING in this thread about free transfers?

Um, an Anet game director posted feedback about free transfers on the second page of this thread.

Well the way he put it, it was like transfers are a bug. “Fix”, “challenging”? Just disable it, nothing challenging about that.

elderan.2638:

If (requestedTransferServerPopulation > currentServerPopulation) {
transferStatus = “Denied”;
} else {
transferStatus = “Approved”;
}

There I fixed it.

…and this is countered by a player simply transferring to Kaineng and then from Kaineng transferring to a Tier-1 Server.

You know, I said giving these kids free reign to transfer was a mistake because they all transferred over to the winningest server to hop on the bandwagon. I thought of something since then, though.

You never allow for people to see numbers. You give people numbers, they can think more critically about what they’re doing when they transfer from one server to another.

If the numbers say that it’s a winning server, but their wait time will probably be 45 minutes to get into any zone, they probably wouldn’t go there if they were in their right mind, would they?

These are MMO players here. They’re not your standard mouthbreather drooling on the keyboard. They’re used to figuring numbers! Give em some numbers! Let them see population figures. Figures for how many people queue up for WvW. Figures for how many people are transferring in.

What you got now is everybody making a mad rush to plant their flag in the “choice” lands. Well they don’t know it’s already been claimed by the PUPPY Sooners, that’s why!

Thank you for the communication and update, Matt.

Happy to know the culling issue has a priority.

Small little posts like this is what could of saved SWTOR.

I was wondering if you guys had considered a move for your guild?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Project-Blacktide-Pan-Continental-Alliance-Looking-for-US-and-EU-Guilds/first#post502738

Matt Witter
Game Designer

We are also looking at ways to better support players that are getting shut down on maps. Again this is something very new, so we are not able to say anything on how this will work. However, the goal is to make players able to leave the spawn areas with ease, as well as provide assistance on capturing objectives when you are being completely shut down on a map.

I wonder whether you should be looking at making it more difficult to keep hold of the whole map as opposed to making it easier for the losing side to leave the spawn (honestly, that’s not an issue: people can just go via one of the not well flagposted side exits instead).

Setsunayaki.4907:

elderan.2638:

If (requestedTransferServerPopulation > currentServerPopulation) {
transferStatus = “Denied”;
} else {
transferStatus = “Approved”;
}

There I fixed it.

…and this is countered by a player simply transferring to Kaineng and then from Kaineng transferring to a Tier-1 Server.

Huh? That makes no sense. The person would be able to transfer to Kaineng (high population —> low population) but they wouldn’t be able to then transfer from Kaineng to a Tier-1 server (or any server for that matter if Kaineng is the lowest population).

elderan.2638:

Setsunayaki.4907:

elderan.2638:

If (requestedTransferServerPopulation > currentServerPopulation) {
transferStatus = “Denied”;
} else {
transferStatus = “Approved”;
}

There I fixed it.

…and this is countered by a player simply transferring to Kaineng and then from Kaineng transferring to a Tier-1 Server.

Huh? That makes no sense. The person would be able to transfer to Kaineng (high population —> low population) but they wouldn’t be able to then transfer from Kaineng to a Tier-1 server (or any server for that matter if Kaineng is the lowest population).

’

looks like you cant read code

what he is saying the game servers will balance them selfs out !!!

Matt Witter.6982:

These are just a few things that we are actively pursuing. We are constantly reviewing the state of WvW. If you see a lack of developer presence on the forums, it is simply due to us working on making WvW an even better experience then it is now.

One bullet point for WvW on the November 15th update.

Quit lying it just makes you look worse.

zastari.1730:

Matt Witter.6982:

These are just a few things that we are actively pursuing. We are constantly reviewing the state of WvW. If you see a lack of developer presence on the forums, it is simply due to us working on making WvW an even better experience then it is now.

One bullet point for WvW on the November 15th update.

Quit lying it just makes you look worse.

It’s not always easy to come up with good content, though I’m sure you have the necessary skills and talent in order to make WvW changes happen. Please apply to work for ANet a.s.a.p.

As long as most people without high-end pcs kitten around with 10fps at lowest details in wvw, its useless for Anet to change any WvW gameplay.

Culling makes it even worth. Cannot count times when I ran into an enemy zerg and first seeing them when I’m already dead.

In PVE Im running around at around @ 50 fps with decent details. lol

Regizer.1763:

zastari.1730:

Matt Witter.6982:

These are just a few things that we are actively pursuing. We are constantly reviewing the state of WvW. If you see a lack of developer presence on the forums, it is simply due to us working on making WvW an even better experience then it is now.

One bullet point for WvW on the November 15th update.

Quit lying it just makes you look worse.

It’s not always easy to come up with good content, though I’m sure you have the necessary skills and talent in order to make WvW changes happen. Please apply to work for ANet a.s.a.p.

I’d be glad to give them my consulting rates if they ever need someone to unkitten their databases.

Edit: I bet I’d be able to do whatever one-line change it makes to not have superior siege despawn on event resets! Also ran into an enemy veteran archer in my tower at Durios yesterday. Must be really, really hard to get those things to spawn for the right team. This codebase has the consistency of a PHP app.

You guys have to understand too that this game is not pay to play, they need to put foods on the tables too it’s not like they can just summon someone that will do those techy stuff for free in an instant.

If you played Guildwars 1 it really takes a lot of time to get an updates.

zastari.1730:

Regizer.1763:

zastari.1730:

Matt Witter.6982:

These are just a few things that we are actively pursuing. We are constantly reviewing the state of WvW. If you see a lack of developer presence on the forums, it is simply due to us working on making WvW an even better experience then it is now.

One bullet point for WvW on the November 15th update.

Quit lying it just makes you look worse.

It’s not always easy to come up with good content, though I’m sure you have the necessary skills and talent in order to make WvW changes happen. Please apply to work for ANet a.s.a.p.

I’d be glad to give them my consulting rates if they ever need someone to unkitten their databases.

Edit: I bet I’d be able to do whatever one-line change it makes to not have superior siege despawn on event resets! Also ran into an enemy veteran archer in my tower at Durios yesterday. Must be really, really hard to get those things to spawn for the right team. This codebase has the consistency of a PHP app.

Well good luck, I’ll vouch for you if they ask for references

So cruel so true.
R.I.P wvwvw. I guess we will have an update for wvw 2 years later?

elderan.2638:

If (requestedTransferServerPopulation > currentServerPopulation) {
transferStatus = “Denied”;
} else {
transferStatus = “Approved”;
}

There I fixed it.

The best part about this post is that I bet you think it’s actually that easy.