Guild Wars 2

There has been some discussion about the size of the WvW zones. Myself being a numbers person would like to determine what the zone size should be in context to DAOC.

This has arisen as a result of complaints that wiping zergs and the ability to redeploy is off. I suggest doing a simple comparison between DAOC and GW2 in terms of objective distances in relation to DAOC’s Rez sickness debuff. The longer the rez sickness, the shorter the distances we can tolerate since people risk insta-dying if they return too fast.

Plan of Attack
In DAOC we have someone frap the following:

• At max run speed the distance from the border keep to the nearest Keep.
• At max run speed the distance between that first border keep to the next closest keep.

This will give us the TimeFromBorderKeep and TimeBetweenKeeps

Then at max run speed we determine the time from border keep to the nearest enemy keep (Suggest Hib to Mid run via boat for example). This should give us TimeFromBorderToEnemyKeep

We can then determine the ratios for distance versus Rez timer. Since GW2 doesn’t effectively have a rez timer we’ll use 10 seconds (loading screen, chat, etc time.) as GW2 Rez sickness.

We should all be able to agree that the longer the rez timer the short the distance needed since running back into battle with Rez sickness is going to end badly.

We should be able then to compare DAOC distances to GW2 distances and see how far ‘off’ the distances are.

Hypothesis: GW2 zones are at least 1/2 the size they should be if using DAOC as a reference.

Requirement:
We need someone who still has a DAOC account or friend still playing who can FRAPS the above described run and verify the current rez sickness timer. Posted to youtube

Results:
We can give ArenaNet the metrics so they can determine:

A) If the map size requires a Rez Sickness timer to compensate for distances. We can then determine the timer from the distance\rez ratios.
B) If the map itself needs changes.

This is an excellent opportunity since both A and B as solutions can be implemented. A rez sickness debuff in the short term while map changes are made.

Who can makes those runs today or this weekend and get the results posted (M:S format?)

I couldn’t agree more. I never understood people complaining about run times etc. The implementation of the maps overall design and size encourage zerging and leave no room for small roaming groups to engage without getting almost instantly zerged.

Courtesy of some DAOC emulator folks I have the distances but lol no way of knowing how fast people move in relation to that distance. Anyone know what the max DAOC velocity is?

Still hoping to get a youtube video showing the times.

You shouldn’t need to determine the velocity from DAOC to do what you want to do, since you are talking about relative DISTANCES. If the time it takes to get to the DAOC keep is longer than the time it takes to get to the GW2 keep, you can say either a) the DAOC keep is farther away than the GW2 keep, or b) you move slower in DAOC than you do in GW2.

Can’t because the scale isn’t the same. 10259 units of distance in A isn’t the same as 10259 units of distance in B since char models etc are different scales. I could figure out the difference I suppose if I had a /LOC command in GW2 and compare 10 steps to 10 steps but I’m hoping a few guildies still have accounts to make the time trials.

I agree with Swift, we are going to continue to see massive zergs simply because it’s the most effective way to control the most amount of fortifications. And the NPC invincibility buff goes a long way to making zergs more effective than smaller, faster, more coordinated groups.