Guild Wars 2

Some questions and suggestions about current match-up system:

I have been reading a lot about this issue with match up system for a long time and I would like to share a solution which is less likely hard for Dev Team to fix and I believe they can make most of these changes easily.

1-Game should encourage players to transfer to low populated servers and forbid to transfer high populated servers. Server transfers should be available every 3 months for each account for free and in all other times with a small fee and huge handicap in WvW after transfer for a certain amount of time.

2-Outmanned buff should have priority in Dev teams schedule to reward people playing outmanned and it has to have different levels. Harder you are outmanned better the buff gets.

3-Legendary weapon requirements has to get revised to stop transfers for WvW map completion and badge farming.

4-Jumping puzzle should be removed from WvW and work on its own.

5-There should be a system like guild influence which will work as server influence encouraging players to stay and build it in one server.

6-Guilds should be server only which means if you leave your server you can not be in that servers guild any more.

Extra: Players from different servers can instance(PvE dungeon) together. Which will prevent players from switiching servers to PvE with their friends and will encourage people to transfer only to play WvW together with their friends. This will help preventing certain servers to turn into PvE only servers and stay competitive in WvW.

Glicko2 system will work as intended if all these changes are made I guarantee.

If players are changing servers every week how do you expect glicko2 system to define a servers rating correctly in a weekly match up system. That is the main question should be asked.

I have plenty of questions and ideas here. I would be really glad if you let me know what you think about them.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/WvW-Problems-Bugs-Abuses-Glitches/first#post1207224

Waffler.1257:

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.

There are plenty of MMO’s with large scale PVP like Perfect World where you can see the name and guild of each combatant.

Trash talking exists, but that is part of the dynamic and part of the fun.

Getting rid of anonymity is the best way to get rid of griefing. If you know who it was who did you or a friend wrong, you can track them down with friends for payback. Or you can report them. It actually adds to the whole war experience.

Same thing with K/D ratios. Knowing them allows the elite to seek their opposite number out for the best challenges. Again, I don’t see the kind of bad K/D behavior mentioned here taking place in Perfect World. If anything it handicaps those with a high ratio, as every new hot shot wanna be is going to be gunning for them.

I am almost tempted to resort to trotting out Ayn Rand show how silly and infantile these unfounded fears are of recognizing individual performance.

All the flimsy excuses thrown out for why it is the way it is, seems to be a cop out, to gloss over the fact that perhaps it was:

1- A mistake and
2- That it is hard coded deep in the code and would be expensive to revise.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

Waffler.1257:

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.

There are plenty of MMO’s with large scale PVP like Perfect World where you can see the name and guild of each combatant.

Trash talking exists, but that is part of the dynamic and part of the fun.

Getting rid of anonymity is the best way to get rid of griefing. If you know who it was who did you or a friend wrong, you can track them down with friends for payback. Or you can report them. It actually adds to the whole war experience.

Same thing with K/D ratios. Knowing them allows the elite to seek their opposite number out for the best challenges. Again, I don’t see the kind of bad K/D behavior mentioned here taking place in Perfect World.

I am almost tempted to resort to trotting out Ayn Rand show how silly and infantile these unfounded fears are of recognizing individual performance.

All the flimsy excuses thrown out for why it is the way it is, seems to be a cop out, to gloss over the fact that perhaps it was:

1- A mistake and
2- That it is hard coded deep in the code and would be expensive to revise.

Few things here I want to comment on:

As the poster you quoted stated in Spvp there is no anonymity and the trash talk can be rather extreme. So the idea of removing anonymity fixing grief-ing is pretty much wrong. For the most part I don’t have a problem with trash talk tho it can be fun sometimes. But in WvW I assume that’s what people use the forums for.

Considering the focus of WvW is server wide play/grouping/zerging I’m pretty sure things like individual k/d ratio’s are rather irrelevant. Especially when k/d ratio’s could be easily inflated by just running with a guild zerg and stomping pugs. You’ll always have people being carried by groups.

And then you have specific builds/professions lean much more towards group play than solo pvp. For example Necro can be very strong in 1v1 situations but, it is not regarded as a strong 1v1 class. However, they can be rather devasting when played in a group with all the AoE conditions constantly applying pressure.

“Look how good I am at running away and not dying” does not have anything to do with being an elite player. If there was any type of K/D ratio ladder it’d be all thieves and eles.

Two questions about waypoints and contested mechanic’s current state and your stated changes Mr. Witter

With the current system, a single player or npc just has to do any amount of dps just to set off the contested mechanic, locking the waypoint, and in the future you state that you can lock it permanently. Both of these mechanics are fairly irratating with the fact that just a lone player/npc hitting a door with a missed shot on a guard or whatever, sets off contested.

1. Will we be seeing a struck symbol(single sword on structure instead of double) designating that the structure is recieving damage, but is not under attack or any other feature preventing npcs setting it off and lone players exploiting the contested mechanic?

2. With the waypoints being able to perma-lock, do you still think players will still buy the upgrade with one of its two advantage lost(the other being more conveniently placed initial spawning), do you plan on decreasing the cost or any other plans to deal with this?

If you can’t answer or do not know the answer, we still appreciate the time you’re spending with us. Of course if there is anything else that you think we will find neato, feel free to divulge the info if you can. Thanks A-Net!

I like the anonymous name stuff. It means that only people that play against me often or see me posting on the forums will recognize me.

I don’t want to be a celebrity or to be a target. I just want to be some faceless soldier fighting for my world against other faceless soldiers fighting for their own worlds.

Splitting it up so that I’m only recognizable by a small handful of people means that I can’t be as easily read and that I’ll have better chances of success while attacking or defending.

I dunno, I just don’t see the need to have my name displayed unless I’m looking for notoriety or something. Notoriety sort of seems as though it’s counter to WvW’s goal.

Kerithlan.1659:

I like the anonymous name stuff. It means that only people that play against me often or see me posting on the forums will recognize me.

I don’t want to be a celebrity or to be a target. I just want to be some faceless soldier fighting for my world against other faceless soldiers fighting for their own worlds.

Splitting it up so that I’m only recognizable by a small handful of people means that I can’t be as easily read and that I’ll have better chances of success while attacking or defending.

I dunno, I just don’t see the need to have my name displayed unless I’m looking for notoriety or something. Notoriety sort of seems as though it’s counter to WvW’s goal.

Which is fine, but not everybody feels the same way, and I don’t really see any good design reason why people shouldn’t be able to display their names, and see those of others, if they would like to do so.

Also, regarding waypoints and the contested mechanic, why not just make it so that in order to contest a waypoint, you must deal damage to the structure with a siege weapon?

It’s good to see a lot of attention is being brought to this thread and the communication from ArenaNet is outstanding!

To keep this a question-answer thread, please refrain from long-term discussions to keep this thread more clean.

Thanks guys, keep on posting!

Matt Witter.6982:

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.

Just to calm nerves I wanted to bring this up again.
This is something that we would like to adjust, but doing so could remove one of the larger advantages of having the waypoint upgrade. With my mentioned adjustment it would also mean that one player would be able to lock down a location indefinitely. Changes to how this system works will need to be thoroughly designed and tested and as such will require time. I would not expect to see changes to how this works soon.

Why is so easy to make a waypoint to be contested? A mere hit on door would trigger contested, that’s too easy. Make it a percentage of door health to trigger it.

Or just 100 damage in a single hit will contest the door.

That will make it so no player can contest it and you have to use a siege weapon of some kind.

Draygo.9473:

Or just 100 damage in a single hit will contest the door.

That will make it so no player can contest it and you have to use a siege weapon of some kind.

While this may sound ridiculous: This would then allow someone to take down a Gate(or Wall w/ a Ballista) un-contested. Much worse with Zergs that can take gates down as fast as Rams.

Morningstar.6208:

Extra: Players from different servers can instance(PvE dungeon) together. Which will prevent players from switiching servers to PvE with their friends and will encourage people to transfer only to play WvW together with their friends. This will help preventing certain servers to turn into PvE only servers and stay competitive in WvW.

This is already possible for dungeons assuming people are in the same region(Europe/America). For open world that is basically the guesting system but they haven’t mentioned when they are enabling that.

StormWolf.7645:

Draygo.9473:

Or just 100 damage in a single hit will contest the door.

That will make it so no player can contest it and you have to use a siege weapon of some kind.

While this may sound ridiculous: This would then allow someone to take down a Gate(or Wall w/ a Ballista) un-contested. Much worse with Zergs that can take gates down as fast as Rams.

That’s the best part. Why should the map scout for us (as it currently does)? Ideally, the only structures that should ever show contested / uncontested state would be those containing waypoints (because it’s a necessity to show whether or not you can use the waypoint).

1. Are there any plans on listing or creating an overview of all active Commanders on a map? Like entering the Borderland and having an option to choose what commander to follow and see how many ppl have joined his squad and a small comment field which can be set by the Commander to describe their operation?
2. Are there any plans on regulating accounts which spy out Team and Map chats of the enemy servers?
3. What about making the Commander book buyable only by Guild influence points after upgrading to the last W^3 guild tier? So that the commander icon can be shared across a specific guild-rank but only be active one at the time

How about this as a solution:

ArenaNet appears to be able to easily change where the loot bags drop on the ground. Since that was their quick and easy solution.

What if they have the loot drop at the nearest Waypoint to be picked up after you inevitably die and port to it?

I made a suggestion about waypoints in the suggestions thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/WvWvW-Waypoint-contested-by-control-area.

Ok now we can discuss that there have more questions here.

question i have is this: Wil the option for not being able to enter WvWvW for awhile after a server transfer be implemented?

Thanks a lot !
Your communication in this thread is very incentive to look forward to the next WvWvW steps.

Habib Loew.6239:

As Mike said, we’re aware that there’s an issue and we’re looking into it but we don’t have a solid repro in our test/dev environment which makes it much more difficult to debug.

Could a test-server, dedicated to WvWvW maps where players can log, be helpfull to the reproduction of any kind of bug, glitches, issues ?
I’m quite sure that a lot of people, tired of the actual state of WvWvW or not, would be glad to give you a hand on improving the game.

Blehh.5240:

How about this as a solution:

ArenaNet appears to be able to easily change where the loot bags drop on the ground. Since that was their quick and easy solution.

What if they have the loot drop at the nearest Waypoint to be picked up after you inevitably die and port to it?

That would require dying every 3 minutes or less since loot despawns in 4 minutes and there is loading time. On the other hand having all your loot deposited at an NPC that you can “pick up”(like picking up stuff from the TP) later would be nice. Could even use the same queue system as the TP and the game won’t have to render any bags!

As some already mentioned:
- WvW loot bags:
Autolooted, account/soulbound lootbags are needed and a better way of handleing things

- Chatting with the enemy:
Chat wars can be harmful and hunting/griefing individual players, BUT why not allow x-server talk via “say”?
This way players can decide for themselves to give away their name to the enemy and even start face2face flameing without bothering too much other players/chat channels. And spies would be able to meet up… and can be sought out/punished by other players.

Edragor.9164:

As some already mentioned:
- WvW loot bags:
Autolooted, account/soulbound lootbags are needed and a better way of handleing things

- Chatting with the enemy:
Chat wars can be harmful and hunting/griefing individual players, BUT why not allow x-server talk via “say”?
This way players can decide for themselves to give away their name to the enemy and even start face2face flameing without bothering too much other players/chat channels. And spies would be able to meet up… and can be sought out/punished by other players.

I’ve been wondering about the chat thing. I remember some pre-beta stuff mentioning that one of the reasons for having a 3 side battle was so that you could potentially have 2 of the weaker sides team up against the stronger. Obviously this would require the two sides to somehow communicate but there doesn’t seem to be any in game way to make this happen.

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.

CS players would know: mp_fadetoblack 1

No need for timers. And it’s kinda dramatic since you close your eyes when you die.

Will we be getting more skill points in WvW to make up for not having to step into PvE in order to unlock Utility Skills without having to wait forever as you level up? Like for instance skill points that could rotate every few days, or possibly even once a week. Or is this too hard to code?

In the jumping puzzle in the Eternal Battlegrounds.. certain professions can teleport and skip pieces of the puzzle. Was this intentional? Or is it a bug that’s really hard to fix because of how pathing and map design works?

Simple question. Are you going to add Duels between players?

PS. Please do it

another thing: for godsakes move the JP to a different zone especially for EBG…

Seeing someone complaining that server X is camping the JP and please come help when his server is loosing in wvw and has a queue to get into EBG makes me wish i were on server X just so i could help kill him some more.

Its bad when you WANT the opposing server to grief people on your server so they will leave and in doing so help your server!

can and should still be a full pvp zone as it is now, just dont associate anyone in it with the player cap on any of the point maps

Tammuz.7361:

another thing: for godsakes move the JP to a different zone especially for EBG…

Seeing someone complaining that server X is camping the JP and please come help when his server is loosing in wvw and has a queue to get into EBG makes me wish i were on server X just so i could help kill him some more.

Its bad when you WANT the opposing server to grief people on your server so they will leave and in doing so help your server!

can and should still be a full pvp zone as it is now, just dont associate anyone in it with the player cap on any of the point maps

This^^^

I went into the JP one night after being in the queue for a while. I wanted to see what was going on as there was a lot of JP talk in chat.

Got in there and it was lik 50 people dancing around naked and RP’ing while we lost most of our objectives on that map. flips table

MikeFerguson.8921:

Account bound blueprints

We tried changing blueprints to being account bound and it completely broke the pack up skill when holding the blueprint so we can’t do that either unfortunately.

I’m hoping that someday may find some programmer magic that can solve this so we can at least get rid of them being soulbound, but nobody is looking at it currently.

^ the answer to your problems

Re: Loot Bags
The super annoying thing about the bags is if you miss them because they despawn after just a few minutes. I had two bags drop in the Astral Home sawmill camp while I was lying there dead. I hoped my team would win and rez me, so I could pick them up, but alas we lost. I respawned in the SW corner of the map and ran back to the camp, but the bags were gone.

I’d like the bags to either
1) stay around longer, (put a limit on how many bags you can have lying around at one time, but keep the bags around longer)
2) get teleported to you if you use a WP (coding is likely very hard for this one, so never mind),
3) drop them into our mail!!! (YES, please!!!)

Was hoping to see more answers in this thread.

The best answer to the loot problem is to just make it show up for you in a chest at your portal hub spawn.

Don’t have the loot disappear but have it cap out at 100 or whatever items. That way you can always redeem your missed loot, similar to what happened when you finished instances in GW1 and missed stuff.

I’m not sure if someone posted this before or not, but are guardians’ projectile blocking/reflecting skills (Zealot’s Defense, Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection) intended to exclude siege projectiles?
It seems strange that the elementalist skill Swirling Winds can actually destroy siege projectiles.

Gladiator.6018:

I’m not sure if someone posted this before or not, but are guardians’ projectile blocking/reflecting skills (Zealot’s Defense, Shield of Absorption, Sanctuary, Wall of Reflection) intended to exclude siege projectiles?
It seems strange that the elementalist skill Swirling Winds can actually destroy siege projectiles.

So can a lot of skills (thieves come to mind with Smoke Screen, which functions very similarly to Swirling Winds except as a rectangle). Anything that reflects projectiles won’t work, but pretty much anything else should, even if it’s unreliable. It’s just super easy for Elementalists to do it compared to other professions.

MikeFerguson.8921:

Ireniicus.2167:

% of classes that on average play WvW

List top players re kills / to death ratio

I would love to show the percentage of particular classes that play in WvW at some point, but it isn’t part of our current plans.

Kill/Deaths ratio is something we would like to avoid having. We don’t want people changing the way they play because they would rather protect their KDR instead of helping their allies in the game. We want people playing and fighting, not worrying about deaths impacting their stats.

I’m glad you guys don’t have plans to show KDR. I’ve always felt like leaving it off does a lot to keep people more focused on teamwork and objectives instead of just the next kill.

I’d love to hear more information about the planned AoE nerf. Are you guys planning to lower overall AoE damage but raise the number of possible targets to compensate? How will you handle classes whose majority of skills are AoE? Any information on this issue would be really helpful.

Here is a selfless question from me.

I feel like I am reliving Ascalon several times over. I started on Kaineng and issues got me to move to SF. Then I went from SF to IoJ with a guild where I started my own. Back then the lowest tier was the 8th, however today, many servers have been “mothballed” or given up by the WvW population to the point that the servers making up Tier 8 and Tier 7, and not beginning to affect Tier 6 are the servers that either aren’t being given WvW attention or have been thrown away.

Most of our WvW guilds transfered from IoJ to FA recently, in search of a new home. We feel the WvW population is actually diminishing and the number of servers that are being “thrown away” are increasing.

I feel so sad that its a 24 World Game, but so far so many servers have been abandoned by the WvW population in an effort to consolidate in order to survive in this massive gametype that requires many people playing (on all sides) to really make it come alive.

Is there a plan in place to rebalance the populations in the servers to give some of these fallen servers a second chance? I don’t mean the guesting/server transfer solution, but something to repair or reverse the damage that has occurred.

I thought of the idea of each tier having a different population cap max in WvW to keep the population and balance in check, but it seems way too harsh.

I just want to find a way that I can look six months ahead of time and see that eight healthy tiers exist, with their great battles going on, and not four tiers…with say…twelve servers abandoned or thrown away

I feel so far I have lost my home twice in Guild Wars 2 So now, I feel home is where those familiar to me exist now. I don’t have a central home anymore and wish to really make a server home where I can be happy.

Is there going to be any WvW improvements to make the battlefield (the map) more interesting ? i have few in my mind such as the ability to see the enemys commander icon appears when he gets near our tower/keep but in RED color , when attacking a tower at night the cross orange swords wont show up. And when the players join any WvW map they can see a list of the commanders in the map and with some info such as

Commander Yada [ 30/50 ] [ Join Squad] Button
Commander Blah [ 12/50 ] [ Join Squad] Button
the 12/50 number is the number of the players inside that squad .

Contesting WPs is too easy atm. Without the few seconds post event to WP, it will be trivial for enemy players to make WPs completely useless at their will. A single thief will be able to permanently contest a WP without committing any serious resources, effort or threat to the keep and to me, that makes no sense. I like that you can strategically contest a WP if you are going to siege an important location nearby, simply to slow down their reinforcements. I think that’s a rewarding tactical play, what I don’t like is all it takes to make this upgrade completely pointless is a few stray bullets or arrows every two and a half minutes.

It might worth looking into only contesting WPs when a certain amount of damage is done to a wall or gate. I know it’s tied to the defend event and messing with that could damage incentives/rewards for defending, but it’s stupidly easy to contest WPs right now and it wouldn’t make any sense having them if a stray bullet is all it takes to permanently prevent their use.

Kerithlan.1659:

The best answer to the loot problem is to just make it show up for you in a chest at your portal hub spawn.

Don’t have the loot disappear but have it cap out at 100 or whatever items. That way you can always redeem your missed loot, similar to what happened when you finished instances in GW1 and missed stuff.

That would be awesome. Maybe a more immediate and simpler solution to code would be an auto-loot for the game. Say they make a feature that could be turned on in which characters would loot anytime loot is around unless you would become encumbered. Then you would auto-loot all the bags that would fall on your feet. If you would become encumbered, then the bag would just stay there on the ground.

This would also be a nice solution for PvE in which I also miss some loot when I don’t see the mob glowing. I wish I would get the loot as soon as I passed by because I don’t see it all the time with so many particle effects going on in regions like cursed shore.

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

Okay. There’s been a lot of speculation about this response, and it does (as many have said) seem vague and dodging the real answer. However, it may not be at all. I may be wrong, but here’s some food for thought that might support the answer we are given:

Let’s assume that there is some number the server (the ACTUAL computer/s the game is running on; when referring to separate server worlds, I’ll use the term ‘shard’) is instructed to distribute as much as possible between the the three shards for a given map. As a player, the server does not know what skills, movements, etc. you will use before you trigger the action, so it cannot pre-render anything, and it does its best to show your animations and movements in REAL-TIME with an absolute minimum of culling, since culling is the great evil. This doesn’t take a whole lot of bandwidth as your local computer actually does most of the rendering after it receives the information from the server.

Now: Let’s say you and a friend are running around the map together. You see each others’ skills, movements, etc. in real time – which is important because you are affected by AOE boons from your friend, etc. By two of you being in close proximity, the server must send you information about yourself, receive information from you, and transmit information about your friend to you, and transmit information about you to your friend — in REAL TIME. So, worst case scenario, the server is doing 4x the amount of data transfer/computation that it would do if you were alone, or 2x the amount it would if you and your friend were far enough apart that the server did not have to send data about the other.

Next: Imagine 30 people from the same shard all on a map, all far enough away from each other that the server does not trasmit information about the other players. Let’s call this 30 streams of information (1 for each player communicating actions, etc. to the server). Suddenly, they all group up on a tower and zerg it. To avoid culling, because culling is the great evil, the server has to receive actions, etc. from 30 players and transmit info about the other 29 players to each — in real time. It doesn’t know their movements, heals, buffs, etc. before that player triggers them. So, it’s no longer 30 streams, it’s 30×30 = 900 streams.

continued….

The server may in reality not be “full”, it may be “too incredibly busy” to load your character’s mesh and texture info and integrate you into the exchanges happening and transmit the general map info to you. Notice that your internet bandwidth usage spikes when you zone. There’s a lot of information the server has to tell you about what’s happening in that zone when you enter it. Also, personal computers have multiple cores/processors, and servers are only compounded on those same technologies. It may have 64, 128, etc. cores, which makes it more likely that a “The left had didn’t know what the right was doing” event to occur and load another character from that same shard instead of a different one when it thinks it has the resources to do so. It may be that there were already more players from shard B and shard C on shard A’s borderland BEFORE multiple fights like the above began. But in the middle of all that, when a shard A player tries to enter, the server just might be too busy – for a while. It doesn’t kick shard B or C people out, and if it took priority to load the shard A person in, the real time performance would degrade, there would be tons of culling, and rage would be had all around.

So, yeah, vague and dodging, cuz the community doesn’t want to hear “The computers can’t handle that and we’re not Intel.” So, the server puts the player in a queue and lets them continue playing wherever they were instead of going to a loading screen where the player would have to wait and wait and wait and wait and wonder if their client lost connection.

And, it’s true. How do you reproduce that in a testing environment? You’d have to have 70+ devs all on a server in several large battles and push the server to the max. However, they couldn’t do it in-house because they’d all have intranet connections to the server. You’d have to place them around the globe and have the server fight with different internet latencies from around the world through hundreds or thousands of different internet packet paths. THEN you might be able to reproduce it.

continued…

So, build a new computer that has at least 900x the capacity of the old one for half a billion dollars. Um, okay :? Even though 80% of the time, it would be sitting around picking its proverbial silicon nose just for those few moments when it might need those resources assuming the internet even allows it to run at its full potential.

So, significantly lower the number of players per map. Um, okay :? No, that’s not the answer.

So, limit the number of B and C shard players to the amount of A shard players on the map. That doesn’t work. The map was running fine and well within functioning parameters when it loaded the ones it had. And if shard A is out to lunch, does that mean no one from B or C can enter that map? No.

So, sometimes you’re outmanned by the time you got on that map after a queue. You were probably outmanned before it got busy, and would have loaded in. But the server got busy. One defending arrow cart can damage 40 or 50 invaders. Suddenly bandwidth and processor usage shoot up.

So, maybe in practice, it isn’t a fixed number. And if the server was prioritized to stop and load shard A people in, the culling and glitches would go crazy. In processor cycles, it’s much more efficient for a processor to continue what it is already doing than to stop, do something else, and then come back to the first thing — by a huge margin. If someone led you to believe otherwise, they lied. If someone told you hyperthreading fixes that, they REALLY lied. Hyperthreading is like brushing your teeth when you’re put on hold. You call could be answered at any time, and you’ll have a mouthful of toothbrush.

But brushing teeth aside, I bet that’s what’s happening, and the devs don’t have the time to write as much as I did. I could be completely off, and I’m okay with that. But this is a possible educated guess for those who still want the answer. Either way, you’re a trooper for reading this whole thing.

I don’t believe alot of players know how Quaggan camps can actually benefit them.

-Each camp sends out a team of Quaggans to their set targets, these are the keeps.
-Then you have the Temple of Storms which strikes lightning on top of Garrison but they also send out a Quaggan squad to one of the lower camps, correct?

Now my question is about the Weather Nodes.
How do they work, do they increase damage output from lightning caused by Temple of Storms? Are they just sitting there waiting for someone to get destroyed to make the camp neutral again?
I don’t really know what they do and I would like to know.

Morningstar.6208:

2-Outmanned buff should have priority in Dev teams schedule to reward people playing outmanned and it has to have different levels. Harder you are outmanned better the buff gets.

You can’t put offensive or defensive buffs in the outmanned buff. That would just result in a group of self-proclaimed “elite” WvWers getting on a map and yelling at everyone else, “Get off the map, you’re ruining our outmanned buff, and the buff is more helpful to us than you.” Even if the buff scaled for something else, you’d get farmers of whatever it buffed who’d want to be the only ones on the map so they could optimize their farming.

Elusive.9481:

Morningstar.6208:

2-Outmanned buff should have priority in Dev teams schedule to reward people playing outmanned and it has to have different levels. Harder you are outmanned better the buff gets.

You can’t put offensive or defensive buffs in the outmanned buff. That would just result in a group of self-proclaimed “elite” WvWers getting on a map and yelling at everyone else, “Get off the map, you’re ruining our outmanned buff, and the buff is more helpful to us than you.” Even if the buff scaled for something else, you’d get farmers of whatever it buffed who’d want to be the only ones on the map so they could optimize their farming.

The solution is to keep the outmanned buff exactly as it is, but implement variable siege caps that take population into account.

Let’s say that the default siege caps are 100 rams and 100 everything else. As long as servers are fighting at equal strength, they will have access to the full cap. This means that if no server on the map is outmanned, all three servers have access to 100 rams and 100 everything else.

Now let’s say that one server is outnumbered 2 to 1 versus another server. Beginning at 15% and adding 5% per additional outnumbering factor the larger server enjoys (ex: 3 to 1, 4 to 1, etc), the larger server is unable to place that amount of additional siege, up to a maximum of 40% (or a factor of 6 to 1). This is a handicap on the larger server rather than a buff to the smaller server. It doesn’t prevent the larger server from playing, but rather slows down the rate at which they can steamroll as they will have to be more careful when placing siege.

Let’s say that we have three fictional servers: Cavalon, Sanctum Cay, and Istan. They’re in a match-up together, and the three servers are currently engaged against each other on the Eternal Battlegrounds. Cavalon is Red, Sanctum Cay is Blue, and Istan is Green.

Now let’s add some data to each server:
- Istan currently has 125 players on the map.
- Sanctum Cay currently has 25 players on the map.
- Cavalon currently has 65 players on the map.

Since Istan outnumbers Sanctum Cay 5 to 1, Istan has the amount of siege they can place reduced by 35%. Since Istan outnumbers Cavalon 2 to 1, the amount of siege Istan can place is reduced by 5% (to hit the 40% cap).

Since Sanctum Cay is outnumbered by both Istan and Cavalon by a factor of at least 2 to 1, they may place the maximum amount of siege available. Additionally, Sanctum Cay enjoys the Outmanned buff for extra karma, experience and coin.

Since Cavalon is outnumbered by Istan, they have no limitations to the amount of siege they can place. However, since Cavalon outnumbers Sanctum Cay by a factor of 3 to 1, the amount of siege Cavalon may place is reduced by 20% (15% + 5%).

Using our original model of 100 rams and 100 everything else, this means:
- Istan may place 60 rams and 60 everything else
- Sanctum Cay may place 100 rams and 100 everything else
- Cavalon may place 80 rams and 80 everything else

While Istan enjoys a larger population, the population handicap makes it easier for Cavalon and Sanctum Cay to fortify and fight back. Istan is no longer able to comfortably steamroll and hold large swathes of the map for extended periods of time. Istan is still able to make use of superior numbers and whatever coordination and communication they have in place to hold Stonemist Castle and so on, but find themselves spread more thinly when it comes to managing offense and defense.

That’s really the problem here. Larger servers are able to both attack and defend more efficiently, which leaves smaller servers with very little room to breathe. The other benefit of this model is that as long as the three servers are equal in force (let’s say Istan is fielding 100, Sanctum Cay is fielding 95 and Cavalon is fielding 90) the three servers can fight as though they’re at an equal level.

i like how all anet says has no time on it, with this patch i believe they will first be done with these few things somewhere in 2020.

As a bit of a different solution to the corpse spies I would suggest this alternative:

- Corpse does not get black screen
- Corpse can see allies
- All enemy players, siege, projectiles, AoE, siege projectiles, pets, spirit weapons etc are made invisible and inaudible to all defeated players.

That way the corpse can see if his allies are all dead (and he needs to respawn) or they are still in combat and he can wait to see if they win. Even if his allies die and he stays there for the next 30 minutes, the corpse won’t be able to report enemy movements or enemy siege locations so spying becomes useless.

What triggers outmanned buff? Is it when you are outnumbered by a certain ratio of players or is it a flat number?

Habib Loew.6239:

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

Raise this priority! The absolute worst thing about WvW is the horrendous reward system, and this is greatly in part because people don’t want to spend their time (or can’t because they are dead) running around picking up loot bags after a fight. The current system is so bad it just silly. You can’t even just spam “F” to pick them up mid fight because all you do is end up rezzing someone (and getting stuck doing it while you die) or picking up a stupid banner. Fix this, Please god, fix it.

Erlex.4518:

Habib Loew.6239:

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

Raise this priority! The absolute worst thing about WvW is the horrendous reward system, and this is greatly in part because people don’t want to spend their time (or can’t because they are dead) running around picking up loot bags after a fight. The current system is so bad it just silly. You can’t even just spam “F” to pick them up mid fight because all you do is end up rezzing someone (and getting stuck doing it while you die) or picking up a stupid banner. Fix this, Please god, fix it.

Agreed. This trumps all as it actively discourages participation of casuals who would help bolster ranks and make matches more competitive rather than one sides affairs where the only thing that matters is how many hardcore WvWers your server has and what time they log in/out

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.

Perhaps have some ‘Elf’ helper that players can get(purchasing with badges?). The elf will collect all the drops in a general ‘endless’ bucket(a tab that can be view-able by the player, but can’t do anything with until going to a merchant).

I understand we’d like to keep the ‘realism’ of having players loot the corpses of enemies on the battlefield, but, that just really isn’t that realistic. People shouldn’t be penalized because they run out of inventory space or don’t have time to loot because they’re in the thick of it in battle.

While the bags dropping at feet is an improvement, by far I do not believe it is the end all end all best solution.