Guild Wars 2

Habib Loew.6239:

Good afternoon! It’s a lovely day here in Seattle, but a bit cold, so I figure this is a good time to answer some questions

Dynnen.6405:

I was going to wait to ask this until after the Feb update. However I was wondering if there will be any changes going into forced respawn after being stomped for…30 seconds (something like that)

We haven’t settled all the details yet but we’re working on a forced respawn timer. It’s a good thing that your allies can revive you but I think the game will be better off without corpse scouts, etc.

Please no.

Habib Loew.6239:

wintermute.4096:

Any chance we might get a chance to the slightly awkward badges system we have right now? Moving the bags to the feet of the player is nice and all, but it doesn’t help much in a thick battle, and I’m sure most of the players actively engaged in wvw have had their share of lost bags. AFAIK, there once was an answer among the lines of “we don’t have the tech for that now”, but I can’t really see how this should prove to be unsolvable…

As a suggestion: Couldn’t we just get rewards based on a slightly modified monthly tracker? You know, the one that says “players killed in wvw” – just add an npc that hands out as many bags as the counter says and resets it back to zero.

In the beginning players killed NPCs and found loot on the NPC corpses. That setup is nice because it makes sense (gruesome sense, but still sense). If you kill a dude where is his stuff? In his pockets of course (see also: The Hobbit). If the corpse decayed then a bag was left behind so players would have one last chance to pick it up (it doesn’t hurt that rendering a bag is cheaper than rendering a high-poly character model.

Then WvW was born and players started killing players. At first we left the loot on the corpses as before but then a thousand player voices rang out and said “WTF man? I can’t jump down off this wall to get my loot because there’s like a hojillion enemy guys down there waiting to plant me like a tulip bulb!” or “WTF man? I can’t get up on top of that wall to get my loot because the whole point of a castle is that people can’t do that stuff!” We heard those pleas and, after some internal arguments (er, design discussions) we decided that realism could go suck it because getting loot is awesome.

So why did we put the bags at your feet rather than just dumping the items into your inventory? Part of the answer is that it was the smallest possible change that could work (programmers like stuff like that). We already had the bag spawning system so we could just reuse it. Another part of the answer is that picking up loot can be a bit like unwrapping a present and we didn’t want to ruin the unwrapping for everybody. Finally, if we just start putting loot into player inventory then we need to deal with a bunch of edge cases and at the time we had more pressing issues to work on. For example, when your inventory fills up items you receive go into inventory overflow and your character becomes encumbered. That makes you move really slowly and that didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to people in the middle of a fight. There were some others that I don’t recall off the top of my head, but suffice it to say there were some thorny design questions about the best way to handle it.

We have tossed around some ideas for ways to improve the system but it’s relatively low priority so nobody is actively working on it right now.

how about using the mechanic of the daily chests instead of loot bags when it is such a problem to put the loot directly into the inventory

FIRST OF ALL

TYTYTY

This type of interaction is SO very priceless, and I am happy this has turned into, what I feel is a meritorious thread. Just a reminder to Fergy and the CREW, we, us, the WvW3 community at large, LOVE your work. I know you have a ton of stuff on your plates, I mean some of you are working on Sunday, kudos, please keep up the good fight. We really do appreciate it. Some solid points have come up since my first post in this thread, which I re-quoted at the end of this waypnt discussion. I feel the siege issue has been addressed, but we still lack an answer on the gear issue and the list of your teams goals. Could you read again and maybe drop a priority list to us? I think if we had an idea of your bullet list, a bunch of us would be quelled even further with some of our frustrations.

Matt Witter.6982:

Draygo.9473:

Waypoints are currently the most powerful upgrade in the game but there are a few issues.

They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?

For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.

This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.

This would be an interesting fix. It would render waypoints utterly useless. People would not bother upgrading keeps, it will become even more of a circle zerg play style. Please do not fix this. I believe we have spoken to more pressing issues for your team to be addressing in regards to WvW3.

Tala.7638:

Mike,
Thank you for keeping this thread going, and continuing to reply. This means more than you know to someone like me, for one of my biggest pet pevs is to call a customer service line, or send out an email for a product I use, and get NO RESPONSE. So kudos, on at least dropping some crumbs.
My question for you is this, and I understand you can not be too specific, but I do think the more transparent ANET is, the more success you will have. What are your current goals for WvW3? Please share with us your current bullet list, say 5 goals, that you and your team consider to be priority. I do believe, if we can all get together about where this is going, and try to understand where you think the tweaks that need to be made, then a productive dialogue between OUR community can begin about what actually should get done. I personally, am not to concerned about siege despawn rate. If your team has scouts, and they understand how to read a clock in order to cycle back around certain towers or keeps, siege will be tended to, that is part of the game. Our alliance has always used 15 minutes, but now we can use 30, based on what was said earlier in this thread. I can accept that.
Stat weights however are a personal priority. Ascended gear should be attainable through WvW3. I burnt out of instance dungeons somewhere around 2005 in WotLK. I can’t stand them. I am sure Fractals are wonderful, but I came to this game for WvW3. I love it, can’t get enough it. However, I do feel a little slighted by the fact that my stats are not maxed because I stubbornly REFUSE to “fractal.”
In closing, my questions remains this, what are top 5 goals for OUR WvW3 community? From what I understand, you play, and it isn’t just because you work for ANET, you enjoy the meta of WvW3, so what are OUR plans???
Thanks again for your time, we do appreciate your efforts.

EDIT:
P.S. culling issue aside…that isn’t allowed to be one of your 5 goals. thanks again!!!

This stuff is great, keep it rolling guys, all of us.

Matt Witter.6982:

Draygo.9473:

Waypoints are currently the most powerful upgrade in the game but there are a few issues.

They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?

For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.

This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.

I’m not sure ‘fixing’ this would be such a good idea since its tiny uncontested teleport window is a at least a small chance for a better defense of the keep in question and even now it is easy to miss the uncontested phase to teleport into the contested keep.
Waypoints wouldn’t be a defense option anymore, but just be a travel option for the lazy. And since it doesn’t take much for a keep to be contested, people would start permacontesting keeps to disable the waypoint completely.
So the deactivation you propose would backfire and render the waypoint upgrade completely useless in my opinion.

But I think in the end this isn’t open for discussion.
If you see it as a bug, then it is a bug and you fix it until things work as intended.

Pannonica.5378:

And since it doesn’t take much for a keep to be contested, people would start permacontesting keeps to disable the waypoint completely.
So the deactivation you propose would backfire and render the waypoint upgrade completely useless in my opinion.

But perma-contesting keeps is an excellent game mechanic that (at least in my tier) is horribly underused. It adds a much more interesting element to the siege and defense of keeps. Waypointing into a keep in that split second it’s uncontested isn’t an interesting mechanic. It’s a poor gimmick that doesn’t (as the dev’s like to say all the time) “make the game more enjoyable for all three servers.”

Remember, the fix he’s proposing is just a few seconds delay. Opposing servers can’t see the countdown to know when to hit it efficiently. A keep that’s not under direct, constant assault will still have uptime on the waypoint.

Frankly, the open waypoint gimmick greatly increases the incentive for “circle zerg” behavior that some people are trying to claim removing it would cause. Making assaults on keeps very slightly easier (because those jumping out to jump siege or the suicide cap preventers in lord room can’t just hop back directly into the keep) means that it can be done with fewer attackers (reducing the need for massive zerg attacks) unless the defenders actually bother to attempt to defend it (reducing the people involved in circle zerg attacks).

It’s a very small window to port in reinforcements on sieging. Disabling that window altogether would make the game less enjoyable for many defenders. Take into account that there are trebs that cannot be taken out without breaking into the structure first.

Syeria.4812:

Pannonica.5378:

And since it doesn’t take much for a keep to be contested, people would start permacontesting keeps to disable the waypoint completely.
So the deactivation you propose would backfire and render the waypoint upgrade completely useless in my opinion.

But perma-contesting keeps is an excellent game mechanic that (at least in my tier) is horribly underused. It adds a much more interesting element to the siege and defense of keeps. Waypointing into a keep in that split second it’s uncontested isn’t an interesting mechanic. It’s a poor gimmick that doesn’t (as the dev’s like to say all the time) “make the game more enjoyable for all three servers.”

Remember, the fix he’s proposing is just a few seconds delay. Opposing servers can’t see the countdown to know when to hit it efficiently. A keep that’s not under direct, constant assault will still have uptime on the waypoint.

Frankly, the open waypoint gimmick greatly increases the incentive for “circle zerg” behavior that some people are trying to claim removing it would cause. Making assaults on keeps very slightly easier (because those jumping out to jump siege or the suicide cap preventers in lord room can’t just hop back directly into the keep) means that it can be done with fewer attackers (reducing the need for massive zerg attacks) unless the defenders actually bother to attempt to defend it (reducing the people involved in circle zerg attacks).

Yeah, its more interesting to run all the way back to the keep to find it is either being taken or being broken into the moment you finally manage to enter. ._.
I for one find it more interesting to have the chance to get (back) to the fight as soon as possible. But ymmv.

For what reason would one upgrade the keep to have a waypoint then, except for a small reduction in running time during uncontested periods?

Matt Witter.6982:

Draygo.9473:

Waypoints are currently the most powerful upgrade in the game but there are a few issues.

They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?

For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.

This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.

I’d advise to be very carefull with this, as higher tiers rely heavily on those waypoints during their competition. Should you do what you say you are going to do, without consulting the commanders of higher tiers and denser populated servers, then that really is a sad day for Wv3

Pannonica.5378:

Syeria.4812:

Pannonica.5378:

And since it doesn’t take much for a keep to be contested, people would start permacontesting keeps to disable the waypoint completely.
So the deactivation you propose would backfire and render the waypoint upgrade completely useless in my opinion.

But perma-contesting keeps is an excellent game mechanic that (at least in my tier) is horribly underused. It adds a much more interesting element to the siege and defense of keeps. Waypointing into a keep in that split second it’s uncontested isn’t an interesting mechanic. It’s a poor gimmick that doesn’t (as the dev’s like to say all the time) “make the game more enjoyable for all three servers.”

Remember, the fix he’s proposing is just a few seconds delay. Opposing servers can’t see the countdown to know when to hit it efficiently. A keep that’s not under direct, constant assault will still have uptime on the waypoint.

Frankly, the open waypoint gimmick greatly increases the incentive for “circle zerg” behavior that some people are trying to claim removing it would cause. Making assaults on keeps very slightly easier (because those jumping out to jump siege or the suicide cap preventers in lord room can’t just hop back directly into the keep) means that it can be done with fewer attackers (reducing the need for massive zerg attacks) unless the defenders actually bother to attempt to defend it (reducing the people involved in circle zerg attacks).

Yeah, its more interesting to run all the way back to the keep to find it is either being taken or being broken into the moment you finally manage to enter. ._.
I for one find it more interesting to have the chance to get (back) to the fight as soon as possible. But ymmv.

For what reason would one upgrade the keep to have a waypoint then, except for a small reduction in running time during uncontested periods?

It’s a gimmick that greatly decreases the enjoyment of the attackers (oh those guys you managed to kill? Yeah, they’re all back up on their feet hitting you again because this siege took over 3 minutes) and encourages players to lie on the ground dead, doing absolutely nothing except staring blankly at the map screen, waiting for someone to say “3-2-1 up.”

Yeah, there’s nothing better in WvW than lying around dead, unable to do anything for minutes on end. So exciting!

The point that you’re missing is keeps are supposed to be very very hard to capture from an opposing team. As far as I’m concerned its already ridiculously easy to capture large structures like keeps and stonemist, since all you need is just a big enough zerg to do it.

If you take away the small small window for defenders to waypoint back in you will just make it even MORE easy for attackers to just zerg their way in. this would be a terrible change to the waypoints.

LazyCanuck.4157:

The point that you’re missing is keeps are supposed to be very very hard to capture from an opposing team. As far as I’m concerned its already ridiculously easy to capture large structures like keeps and stonemist, since all you need is just a big enough zerg to do it.

If you take away the small small window for defenders to waypoint back in you will just make it even MORE easy for attackers to just zerg their way in. this would be a terrible change to the waypoints.

The point that you’re missing is that the waypoint method of defense is a lame, unfun gimmick that happens to improve the ability to defend a keep. If keeps are too easy to capture, then buff keep defenses. Add better spots to place siege, or increase wall health. If you want to adjust the ease or difficult in capturing something, you should adjust the layout, positioning, and siege placement options for that thing. The waypoint glitch doesn’t add anything to the experience. In fact, it can be argued that it greatly takes away from it because it encourages players to sit around dead, doing absolutely nothing (not even running from point A to point for extended periods of time.

Matt Witter.6982:

There are no plans currently. However, this is something that is not off the table for the future and is often day dreamed about. I’m sure everyone would love to see a large size event start and destroy something. as long as they didn’t own it.
The question we ask when building content is “can this be fun for all three teams involved?” This question is a large part of the design process, and often leads to changes or cancellation of content.

Very interesting. Well my thoughts on having something weird in WvW like a dragon are of course it would need to not really ruin the game but just give people a change of pace.

Sort of like how the Karka event worked when you go to the shores… something could “invade” WvW, points could be shut off, and all teams would really be focusing on finishing the event.

I guess it might be technically too hard but it seems odd to not go there ever. One thing I think WvW lacks is cool stories. It’s a bit binary even just in gameplay. That yak is always on the same route, that Y tower is always the one to get after tower X, even knowing exactly where to place trebs. So yeah I’m in favor of something that jostles things more whether that’s an event or gameplay or what have you. Don’t get me wrong I think WvW good but just too predictable.

Kazhiel.8194:

Matt Witter.6982:

Draygo.9473:

Waypoints are currently the most powerful upgrade in the game but there are a few issues.

They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?

For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.

This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.

elderan.2638:

I would be very careful with this, since it would be a dramatic change if this is “fixed.” I don’t know about other tiers, but in tier 1 waiting for the timer is basically the only way to get into most keeps, since they are perma-contested. If you change this, waypoints instantly become worthless, unless you also make it so that a single thief can’t simply tap a keep to make it contested forever.

That would be sad

Blue.7256:

Don’t do it! We like that! It rewards better cooperation!

LazyCanuck.4157:

Please dont do this, its already hard enough sometimes to defend keeps against huge zergs, if we cant even get our reinforcements in to help defend, than the waypoint might as well be removed entirely.

I wanted to add my weight to the “don’t fix this bug” brigade, but if it’ll be the same for everybody, then who cares?

Ultimately, though, it’s punishing defenders. But then defending was barely ever worthwhile.

Habib Loew.6239:

wintermute.4096:

Any chance we might get a chance to the slightly awkward badges system we have right now? Moving the bags to the feet of the player is nice and all, but it doesn’t help much in a thick battle, and I’m sure most of the players actively engaged in wvw have had their share of lost bags. AFAIK, there once was an answer among the lines of “we don’t have the tech for that now”, but I can’t really see how this should prove to be unsolvable…

As a suggestion: Couldn’t we just get rewards based on a slightly modified monthly tracker? You know, the one that says “players killed in wvw” – just add an npc that hands out as many bags as the counter says and resets it back to zero.

In the beginning players killed NPCs and found loot on the NPC corpses. That setup is nice because it makes sense (gruesome sense, but still sense). If you kill a dude where is his stuff? In his pockets of course (see also: The Hobbit). If the corpse decayed then a bag was left behind so players would have one last chance to pick it up (it doesn’t hurt that rendering a bag is cheaper than rendering a high-poly character model.

Then WvW was born and players started killing players. At first we left the loot on the corpses as before but then a thousand player voices rang out and said “WTF man? I can’t jump down off this wall to get my loot because there’s like a hojillion enemy guys down there waiting to plant me like a tulip bulb!” or “WTF man? I can’t get up on top of that wall to get my loot because the whole point of a castle is that people can’t do that stuff!” We heard those pleas and, after some internal arguments (er, design discussions) we decided that realism could go suck it because getting loot is awesome.

So why did we put the bags at your feet rather than just dumping the items into your inventory? Part of the answer is that it was the smallest possible change that could work (programmers like stuff like that). We already had the bag spawning system so we could just reuse it. Another part of the answer is that picking up loot can be a bit like unwrapping a present and we didn’t want to ruin the unwrapping for everybody. Finally, if we just start putting loot into player inventory then we need to deal with a bunch of edge cases and at the time we had more pressing issues to work on. For example, when your inventory fills up items you receive go into inventory overflow and your character becomes encumbered. That makes you move really slowly and that didn’t seem like a nice thing to do to people in the middle of a fight. There were some others that I don’t recall off the top of my head, but suffice it to say there were some thorny design questions about the best way to handle it.

We have tossed around some ideas for ways to improve the system but it’s relatively low priority so nobody is actively working on it right now.

This type of communication is great. I truly appreciate it.

Would increasing the radius of loot bags be a viable option if you guys don’t want an auto-loot system? I feel the radius to actually search the bag of loot is very small at the moment.

Yeah, defending already feels pretty futile against a significantly larger Zerg.

While I understand wanting to fix the waypoint “exploit” as it’s clearly not used as intended I think they really need to consider some “anti-zerg” mechanics.

Removing resurrections in combat would help at least a little.

Defending feels futile because i feel that the rewards for defending are laughable.

If they gave out defense quest progress on downing enemies (not defeating them) and increased the total exp, karma, and gold gains for defending we will see the meta shift from attacking.

In actuality defending isnt that much harder than attacking, generally you can stall larger attacking forces with a squad or two of people as long as they are placing and using siege effectively and have a stockpile of supply.

The waypoint exploit really doesnt seem intended and on top of that it awards lazy play.

Its not interesting play for the attackers who finally after hours of attempting to get into a keep breech inner rush the lord and then have 80+ enemies respawn in on them and wipe them. And as noted earlier that this bug also makes flagging keeps less worthwhile, by making it more worthwhile you are encouraging counterplay to that tactic, servers that watch for it and try to engage people attempting it will be rewarded with working waypoints for longer periods of time.

The reality is if defense rewards were worthwhile servers may dedicate as many to defense as attack, and if there are equal forces on both sides the attackers lose.

If they do decide to make waypoints contestable 100% of the time I’d hope they add a new way to make them useful to compensate. What about allowing people to res at a contested waypoint at the cost of the keep’s supply (2-5 per person)? Or being able to make the waypoint uncontested for the next defense event for a larger amount of supply (100-200)? This would give defenders an advantage as long as the keep still had supplies and not make waypoints useless, even if they can be contested most of the time.

i agree with Draygo. very good points about waypoint defense. however, lets try to keep this thread from getting further hiGHjacked into several different conversations. I really want more developer feedback about their BIGGER picture. Stuff they are actually working on and stuff they actually WANT to do.

Enenion.8127:

If they do decide to make waypoints contestable 100% of the time I’d hope they add a new way to make them useful to compensate. What about allowing people to res at a contested waypoint at the cost of the keep’s supply (2-5 per person)? Or being able to make the waypoint uncontested for the next defense event for a larger amount of supply (100-200)? This would give defenders an advantage as long as the keep still had supplies and not make waypoints useless, even if they can be contested most of the time.

That would make griefers very veryhappy it would be worst than orb flyhacking

To all those asking the change to WP not happen: How do you guys manage to defend anything that never gets a WP? Makes it sound like you are all of the ’don’t worry we’ll zerg it back later’ mentality.

Predator.7321:

Enenion.8127:

If they do decide to make waypoints contestable 100% of the time I’d hope they add a new way to make them useful to compensate. What about allowing people to res at a contested waypoint at the cost of the keep’s supply (2-5 per person)? Or being able to make the waypoint uncontested for the next defense event for a larger amount of supply (100-200)? This would give defenders an advantage as long as the keep still had supplies and not make waypoints useless, even if they can be contested most of the time.

That would make griefers very veryhappy it would be worst than orb flyhacking

Griefers can already use up a keep’s supply by building useless siege weapons, which they can get for free from jumping puzzles. But I agree that there should be countermeasures put in place to stop giefers from emptying the supply this way. If waypointing to a contested keep costs supply then there needs to be a maximum number of times you can waypoint to it in a certain amount of time. If removing the contested status of a waypoint costs supply it needs to only be allowed every other defense event or only be doable by a member of the guild who owns the keep.

Now were getting to far into the suggestions territory instead of the questions territory.

Time to come back!

I find the response about projectile destruction skills vs siege interesting, have there been any creative use of mechanics that have suprised you? (side note, i’m not talking about exploits here, but things working as intended but resulting in unexpected tactics or results).

Here’s another question I can give.
During interviews and when talking about WvW the lord of the rings ‘Helms Deep’ battle is referenced a lot as inspiration for the game. Those large scale fights that last a long time seem to be well executed with keeps. TOWERS on the other hand become this thing that when upgraded or defended by a few can really counter the small groups its intended for (often towers are mentioned at being able to be taken by 5-10 players).
With a small exception the majority of towers have a single point of contention (the wall or gate). Once that is breached the attackers usually outnumber the defenders and just roll through.
My question is this, is ANet happy with the current design of towers in relation the time taken vs the numbers used? Would you like to see them redesigned to be easier to take initially but have the potential for choke point battles to make a last stand.

Basically I’m asking to remove the option to fortify towers but have fallback points like ‘balis on the mendon bridge’ or the choke at ogrewatch tower more common in tower design.

To all the folks who may respond yes I’ve taken a tower with 5-10 but thats when no one was IN it or aware.

Any chance we will be seeing a lifting of the 5 target AOE cap? Once of the worst aspects of WVW IMO is how much the game mechanics promote mindless zerging. AOEing attackers as a defender from a keep wall ought to be far more effective than it currently is.

Anet, thank you for taking questions!! While you are at it, some changes you might consider.

Guild Commander Tags – These are tags only guild members can see. Make them show as a gold icon on the map.

Camp upgrades – Allow for more, better upgrades for smaller guilds to defend camps, those guilds who can’t really afford to upgrade towers/keeps. Something like putting up easy to break walls, set up traps, or any number of things.

Character travel time – I thought you had the right idea giving the Ranger, Necro, and Elementalist a full time 25% run speed, even though I didn’t think the Elementalist needed it. But you forgot the two slowest classes in the game, the Guardian, and the Mesmer. Please consider adding a more reliable movement speed for these two classes.

Orbs – These should be keep specific items that are captured, and moved to a keep to strengthen those who fight “inside the keeps”.

Guild buffs placed on claimed keeps – These should be zone wide for the guild only.

World vs world should be a FOUR SERVER MATCH UP.

Reward system: Defense reward system kind of sucks because you constantly see the timer tick to zero, while the enemy is still beating on the gate, and you do not get rewarded. This is the best place to reward PUGs, or give PvE players a reason to leave PvE, and defend keeps/towers thier server owns. To encourage more participation in a defense, a person should be rewarded every single time the defense timer ticks to “zero”, even if the enemy is still beating on the wall/gates.

UI Changes: I think the most important UI change should be putting a place where we store our consumables so we don’t have to open our bags to use them. Better yet, if you didn’t want to apply this UI change, allow for us to apply an “auto consume” feature on our foods so that once the duration has run its course, our toons automatically use the consumable again. We had the auto consume feature in Everquest II, and it worked extremely well.

Supplies, more importantly supply runs: The 15 supply buff from guilds should be a 20 supply buff “AT” supply camps, and players should be allowed to assist keep/tower workers in thier upgrades, allowing them to run to a supply camp, pick up supplies, and go click on the “structure” being upgraded inside the keep/tower. That alone would solve a lot of problems for guilds trying to do upgrades.

Road Marker “Banners”: These should emit a pulsing buff (600 radius) for 10 seconds of swiftness, instead of the need to click on them for a buff for 20 seconds of swiftness. This would require more to be used, and allow for a better synergy, with use. Also there is a major bug with these that makes them disappear too early.

A major class change I’d like to see;

Warrior I’m seeing fewer, and fewer banners in WvW, probably because they’re tedious. To assist Warriors out, I thik once they pick up a banner, it should put the banner on thier back, or the back of the person carrying the banner. Allowing for them to carry the banner, and utilize their weapon skill set. This is a UI change, basically making “F8” the banners special buff, like Banner of Disc’s “Fury Buff”, and making “F9” the Banners Swiftness buff. This would allow for one Warrior to provide multiple banners to be moved by multiple people in a large scale fight, without losing the weapons they’ve traited for. It would also be cool if the banners represented the guild the Warrior belongs to.

All I have to say is it’s great to see you guys respond to and engage the user community like this. This game rocks and is such a great value given the constant stream of updates and new content being delivered for it.

THANK YOU

Loot in WvW does need to be Updated a bit. Income is a bit low but not much.

I feel there just needs to be a few other changes. For example:
tower/keep upgrades should be mini quests. Prehaps have a new npc called “tower Upgrade quartermaster”at a supply camp that can be triggered and then defend. when you talk to the npc you can pick where to send him. then when he gets to the tower he drops a bundle of upgrade supplies then have to be pick up and applied to the tower. upgrade complete.

i would like to see dolyak armor/ gear that is lootable or can be picked up and applied to dolyak. as part of defending a caravan.

Syeria.4812:

The point that you’re missing is that the waypoint method of defense is a lame, unfun gimmick that happens to improve the ability to defend a keep.

So thats a gimmick but presumably you feel that knocking on a keep/tower door to contest it then leave when you’re not actually sieging it yet isn’t a gimmick.

To Mike Ferguson if you’re still monitoring this thread what do you feel about those sort of actions from attackers?

Talewin.3820:

Loot in WvW does need to be Updated a bit. Income is a bit low but not much.

I heard that one of the commanders on my server got a precursor drop in WvW this weekend.

If you want to make an easy loot fix, why not create a new bag item called “spoils of war” and have this auto deposited into inventory on kill. The item would function like other loot bags in the game, except it would use your wvwvw loot table for that character. Of course, the bags would be soulbound.

Seems like that would fix the issue of picking up bags mid combat, as well as inventory space issues while you are fighting since the bags would be stackable. Maybe less rendering resources too

All capture/defend/yak events should really reward tokens IMO, and tokens should be the sole currency of siege blueprints.

Also, I’m curious what the arenanet opinion is of the WvW jumping puzzles? Many players feel that while the free random siege is beneficial, they draw too much “dead weight” in high population worlds.

Personally, I like the JPS, I like the small fights in interesting terrain, and I like the challenge of completing them versus an unknown potential enemy force, but I wish they had more utility to actual WvW to end the “dead weight” argument, and to give me a reason to spend even more time in them.

Maybe add extra exit-only mystic gates that allow “backdoor” access to different part of the map, award points for a control point/keep inside, or even add a worldboss style monster fight to “tame” a nice big dragon or giant or something that will help your world, giving the puzzles similar utility to the jungle and bosses found in Moba games: a hard to cover backdoor with a tough NPC encounter that’s worth persuing because completing it gives a nice overall benefit to your team that may cinch a crucial push or defense.

MikeFerguson.8921:

DonRobeez.3560:

- How many players can one map contain?

As many as we can fit without causing too much stress on the servers. We can’t be more specific than that, but I can assure everyone that the cap is definitely split equally between all three worlds.

We have heard multiple reports for months about people being queued for a map and entering it only to have the outmanned buff, but unfortunately we’ve never been able to verify ways that could be occurring. I’m not saying it isn’t happening, but we haven’t ever been able to reproduce the problem, and if we can’t reproduce the core problem, it makes it basically impossible for us to find and fix the bug

No really, there was all the entire Blacktide Alliance that has leterally flood GW2 Support to get an official answer about this with tons of e-mails, complaints and so on and finally we get an official answer lost in middle of posts? LoL
Ok I’ll copy paste it, there are something about +250 players that was waiting for this, someone should also tell it to customer support.
By the way me and all this person, we can confirm you not only the buff the fact that for real we was outmanned.

Static.9841:

It also makes buying a waypoint utterly pointless when a single person has the ability to keep it under permanent lockdown.

I think the better way to lockdown waypoints is when certain amount of damage per time is sustained on walls/doors defenses.

Is there any way to know how are we going to acquire Ascended gear in WvW? It is coming in February but can we have a “hint” for the process? I hope it’s not with Badges of Honnor, that would be terrible…

Matt Witter.6982:

Kintari.4172:

Has there ever been an official reason given for why enemies appear as ‘Server-name Invader’? Does this reflect a deliberate gameplay design decision, or a technical constraint?

Some of the reasons behind enemies appearing as ‘Server-name Invader’ where to avoid harassment issues, let other servers identify what server you are from, and to help establish server rivalry. The way your server name reads is something we would love to adjust, and I am hopeful that we will!

This is interesting as I can go play hot-join sPvP and hear about every insult and curse word I know of thrown at me. But maybe the rage would be worse in WvW with the JP camping and all.

Matt Witter.6982:

Kintari.4172:

Has there ever been an official reason given for why enemies appear as ‘Server-name Invader’? Does this reflect a deliberate gameplay design decision, or a technical constraint?

Some of the reasons behind enemies appearing as ‘Server-name Invader’ where to avoid harassment issues, let other servers identify what server you are from, and to help establish server rivalry. The way your server name reads is something we would love to adjust, and I am hopeful that we will!

Is inviting invaders into a group, a bug or a feature? If you invite them and they accept (for whatever reason) you can see names and chat with them

Wenissa.2967:

Habib Loew.6239:

So why did we put the bags at your feet rather than just dumping the items into your inventory? Part of the answer is that it was the smallest possible change that could work (programmers like stuff like that). We already had the bag spawning system so we could just reuse it. Another part of the answer is that picking up loot can be a bit like unwrapping a present and we didn’t want to ruin the unwrapping for everybody. Finally, if we just start putting loot into player inventory then we need to deal with a bunch of edge cases and at the time we had more pressing issues to work on. For example, when your inventory fills up items you receive go into inventory overflow and your character becomes encumbered.

We have tossed around some ideas for ways to improve the system but it’s relatively low priority so nobody is actively working on it right now.

You could always auto put a WVW Bag (aka a modified Miner’s Bag or other such loot bag) into the players inventory. They could/should stack to 250 and can then be opened at leisure. Thus only needing lets say four slots of inv space for a 1000 loot bags to be stored for a long war session.

This provides auto-loot without losing the “like unwrapping a present” feeling.

For extreme cases keep the loot bag on the floor system you have at present as backup for a filled inventory.

If there is a problem of loot level for killing low level players in the wvw then have WVW8 Bag for 80’s, WVW7 Bag for 70-79 and so on. Thus requiring a few more open spots in inventory but at present you need a ton of space and a fast as lightning ‘F’ key anyway, so 7 or 8 slots open instead of 30+ to me seems like a good compromise.

From a programming perspective, each player is allocated a certain amount of memory on the server to track the number of bags they have, their location, and their content. It seems to me that once a player is killed, a roll occurs, declares the loot and places that content into some queue. A despawn routine probably runs and removes each of bags that are past their TTL. Adding loot directly to your inventory, you now have to check each players inventory and in the end, for the edge cases, you still have to have the memory allocated to for each player’s loot bags as well as the overhead from having that system running on the server. The more players involved in fighting, the more taxing it becomes on the server.

Then there’s the question of rolling. The tagging system gives better loot for doing more damage (this needs to be addressed more than looting). So what do you do then? You either have to have predetermined bags in inventory or just roll for rewards when opening the bags. Now you have to rework the rolls to adjust for this change. Either players who do less damage get a better shot at loot inflating the system and everybody loses if you level adjust the drop rates to account for this. That’s a lot of research and testing that affects everyone from badge drops to economy.

Finally, if you didn’t have to worry about bag space, then there would be a lot less pressure to not only spend gold on higher level bags or to purchase additional bag slots with gems. Remember, you don’t pay a subscription and bag space is not a game breaking experience. Right now it seems like Anet is focuses on pumping out content to maintain a player base and in turn give them more flexibility in hiring people later. Personally, I’d rather have more content than an auto loot bag system.

Matt Witter.6982:

Draygo.9473:

Waypoints are currently the most powerful upgrade in the game but there are a few issues.

They are only inactive when the defense quest is active, are you guys planning on disabling them slightly longer than the defense quest to allow attackers to keep the defenders from spawning there just as the defense quest lapses?

For example under the current system I can count down on voip the defense quest and spawn in everyone right as it hits zero and before attackers can reflag the keep.

This is definitely a bug. I’ll see about leaving the rally points disabled for a few extra seconds after the event has completed. That way it just stays disabled if the event starts back up.

No no no, shyyy it is good that you can get your defenders to Hills or Bay or Garrison when it get attacked throw WP for ~3sec. =)

Can`t you award WvW loot like you do with monthly/daily/map completion rewards? Some chest that hangs in the right corner above mini-map till a player clicks on it? It is an already implemented system, maybe you could use it instead of bags.

PS I`ve never had more than one chest at once, so I do not know if they will stack like say event medal achievements (you click on one, it goes away, there is a next one underneath it) and if you have multiple chests at once at all.

Matt Witter.6982:

Some of the reasons behind enemies appearing as ‘Server-name Invader’ where to avoid harassment issues, let other servers identify what server you are from, and to help establish server rivalry.

Would it be possible to opt-out of the anonymization? For example, an option in the settings where I can uncheck the “WvW anonymity” box. I’m sure you’re aware of the bug whereby people can already message enemy players (without their consent!). The few times I’ve gotten messages from the enemy, I’ve quite liked it. One time an UW player and I (FSP) spent a good hour refining our play and trying stuff. It was probably the most fun I’ve had in WvW to date.

I understand that by default players should be protected from abuse. I just want the option to (potentially) receive abuse, or (more in line with my experience) just be able to receive friendly chat from my opponents. After all, I can always ignore anyone who abuses knowing my name.

If anonymization is on, I am displayed as “FSP Mercenary [RtR]” (we’re not invaders!) and if it’s off then I am “FSP Samtastic [RtR]” (and right-click works on me).

I think rivalry only stands to benefit when you put a face/name to your enemies. ATM this already happens on the guild level.

As an aside regarding server identification: I don’t think the nameplate is really enough. When there’s a three-way fight going on it’s very difficult to keep an overview of the relative numbers. I can understand, though, if it is an intentional fog-of-war-like design choice.

Displaying names can potentially lead to people griefing their own team, not everyone is noble. Just find an invader with a displayed nickname and provide him some vital info.

MikeFerguson.8921:

We do need to make sure ascended gear is obtainable in WvW, but other than that I think we’ve mostly made it so you never have to leave WvW if you just want to play there forever. Feel free to point out why I’m wrong about that

There’s 2 things I feel somewhat prevent me from staying in WvW only.
1. There’s only very few skill points to be obtained in WvW outside gaining levels. If I level a character through WvW only I have my utility and elite skills unlocked much later than in PvE where there’s several skillpoint challenges on every map.
For example my lvl31 mesmer only has 2 utility skills unlocked yet in the row that costs 6 SP each (and that only because I went out to PvE to collect some to be able to unlock portal earlier), and only has the mistfire wolf elite from the DDE of the game.
2. Monetary gain and/or crafting materials. One could argue that if you only stay in WvW you only need money for repairs and upgrades and I’m currently able to afford that through WvW only. But food buffs is something I feel somewhat are required these days as well, especially if not in full exotics yet. Buying them from TP I can’t afford at the rate I consume them and collecting crafting materials (omnomberries) I have to go to Tyria because there aren’t enough available on the WvW maps and I feel I’m a liability if I go around gathering crafting mats instead of contributing to the fight.

Habib Loew.6239:

Good afternoon! It’s a lovely day here in Seattle, but a bit cold, so I figure this is a good time to answer some questions

Dynnen.6405:

I was going to wait to ask this until after the Feb update. However I was wondering if there will be any changes going into forced respawn after being stomped for…30 seconds (something like that)

We haven’t settled all the details yet but we’re working on a forced respawn timer. It’s a good thing that your allies can revive you but I think the game will be better off without corpse scouts, etc.

What are your thoughts on the Down System in general in World vs World? Do you view it as something that needs to be changed, Or do you find it completely acceptable in its current state?

Aelaren.3784:

Displaying names can potentially lead to people griefing their own team, not everyone is noble. Just find an invader with a displayed nickname and provide him some vital info.

If I wanted to do this, I could do it already, without using in-game chat. This kind of thing would be best done with three people on voice chat, one on the “same-side” and two on the opposing side.

I doubt a random person on the other team will grief someone just because you asked them to. So nothing is made worse by the option to remove your own anonymity. You still need to know a collaborator on the other team before you begin.

Come on Development team, i hope we didnt troll this thread to death…we were all doing so well here. Still some good stuff in here. Lets keep it BUMPED up!!!

Habib and Mike, TY!!!

warning wall of text commencing :-)
I’ve been suggesting this and seeing your post Habib “One thing I’d like to see, for example, is a visible indicator of how much time is left before the siege despawns.” made my day! For me in W3, I find myself feeling information handicapped all the time. So this update would be a blessing. Just place a 2nd bar below the health bar that scrolls down in step with the despawn timer. If it changed color in 3 zones Green, Yellow, and Red that would be awesomererer ;-)

In additional to the manual refreshing, how about a Quarter Master refresh purchase option? Where you run up and pay like 10s to refresh all siege within the boundary of a keep/tower? Kind of like a parking meter. Run over a pop another dime in the meter every half hour.

Wenissa.2967 had an awesome idea for loot bag’s above. Have W3 loot bags acts like other bags. This way at the end of the night we can open a stack of them. Just like the Winter’s day gifts were. Doooo…. it!!!! please

For the forced despawn, I recently rolled an Ele and love…love…love.. lava pooling corpses!!! It’s just so EVIL and fun!!! Also, a great way to damage those foolishly attempting to revive their comrade during a siege. Please don’t remove my joy???? As Coltz said above, if I could force a respawn by this, that could be awesome too.

For queue caps, I’d simply love to know how people are actively on our World in W3 in real time. How about in map view, hitting “alt” would reveal all player dots on the map I’m on? Even better, all of W3 maps when zoomed out but, I imagine that would be an undertaking to implement. This information is sorely needed to effectively build strategy.

For the contested WP, I’ve never spammed a WP while defending a keep. I always ran back after dying or simply waited to be rezzed. I didn’t even know it was possible to spam the WP like this until this past weekend. For everyone who’s done it, this is what I’d consider an exploit.

Lastly, and this ones a big request, how about a new map that’s a “Boot Camp” zone! PvP has the mist, why not one in W3 for each world? Either that or please start including W3 into the Mist. Or just add the PvE gear we use into the mist.

Thanks again!!

Draygo.9473:

Can they become account bound anytime soon?

This please! I play on all 8 of my characters and my bank is full of blueprints. It’s hard to organize. Making them account bound would fix so much for me.

I want more Matt. Not just crumbs bro…feed me!!!

Can we hear about the February updates soon? There must be SOMETHING in there that’s all done and settled and can be talked about.

All I’m really getting out of these dev postings is an ever growing list of things that I should “not expect to see soon” and “would be nice but nobody is working on”.