Guild Wars 2

Agreed on the shaving + making sure we don’t overdo it with big hits to the classes.

Also good points about making sure that we don’t take away the things “holding down” some of the strong builds. I think Mes and Ele are probably ok for the most part, as long as we tone down the conditions output from some classes, and bring the S/D Thief in line.

Jumper.9482:

Since everyone else is suggesting visual improvements,
Necromancer marks, IMO, should have a distinct signet-ish icon when casting. I mean, as it stands, every mark is pretty much equally deadly and you’re forced to dodge each one no matter which it is, but it would be nice to know if their Reaper’s Mark went on cooldown or not for example.
When versing a Warrior, when I react and dodge his Eviscerate or Hammer Burst, I know I’m safe for the next 9 seconds (unless he weapon swaps) and can act accordingly.
Against a Necro? I can’t possibly count their cooldowns…because, well, they all have the same animations..

This is assuming ANET doesn’t want to spend the resources to completely rework the Necro’s animations.

Nods, I agree. Some of those are hard to see, or all use the same animation.

The marks themselves may have different effects once they’re placed on the ground, but that doesn’t help if the mark instantly hits you or an ally.

Zanthrax.6538:

@JonPeters and ColinJohansen

A huge thank you for responding…I suspect you guys are aware but definitely don’t underestimate the value of communication even if it is a little update on the same things your working on say every month etc.

@Colin I hope you can understand from players perspective being stuck with this meta for such a long time without change and then to watch PAX and see that response. That being said, thank you for responding and I would like to apologise for the crap your twitch chat had to deal with.

A question to Jon and Colin etc Do you guys feel that allowing the meta to stay in such a state for so long was a mistake in hindsight? Also do you agree with the sentiment that the Pace of PvP could be toned down to benefit both play and viewing pleasure?

In GW1, we had a major tournament, and we had a balance patch come out right before the tournament. The teams in the tournament felt that this was difficult for them, as they already had to travel/etc., so it really messed up their builds. BUT, I also understand how you guys feel – we held balance updates until later so that we kept the meta stable (even if it has issues) for the tournament.

There are 2 sides to that, and I think both sides have merit.

As to the speed, yes, I agree. We want to make the game more fun to play and also easier to watch. This isn’t only for esports, it’s also for new players. Slowing the game down slightly would allow more players to watch good players, and more easily figure out how to play. So I agree w/ you there.

We agree! We are working to make the game more rewarding, fun, and easy to get into. We’d love for the game to be an esport, but as you say, that’s not something you can force!

Strong + steady.

Sync/CC/The community at large
These guys were awesome. I just wanted to say a quick thank you to the teams (Car Crash and Sync, you guys are amazing), and everyone else who was involved with the tournament (thanks for the help Supcutie!). Everyone who helped with Mist League. Everyone who helps w/ all the podcasts and state of the game. I’d also like to thank all 64 teams that came out for the tournament.

Our game isn’t perfect. There will always be something we want to change, or we want to improve. Contrary to what you hear on the forums, the #’s for the PvP game is actually steadily growing. Some players are learning, but a lot of new players are coming into the game. We’re going to keep working to make the game the best it can be, and you guys have already demonstrated your great love and passion for the game. I know you guys get frustrated and feel the need to vent on the forums. I can see that. As a player of many competitive games, I get that. But we’re going to keep pushing.

We know we wouldn’t be here without you. We know we’re going to need your help and support as we get ready to climb the next mountain. We’ve heard a lot of your ideas and concerns.

• We are reworking rewards for PvP.
• We’re working on new game types.
• We’re planning more tournaments and working with a lot of well-known entities in order to help the game grow.
• We’re working to improve the teaching aspects of the game, and to make the game more easily understood.

When I see you guys posting on the forums about how upset you are about X or Y, I know that deep down most of you are saying: “Kitten dang it, this game could be good. There are just these things that are holding it back, fix this stuff please so that this game we love can grow!“

We feel your passion and frustration. We share it. So the next time you make a post and get kitten ed off that a dev doesn’t post, just remember that a lot of times, we’re talking about it at our desks, or in a meeting room, or on our way to lunch. We can’t fix things instantly, but we’re doing as much as we can, as efficiently as we can, with the time and resources we have. At the end of the day, all you can do is all you can do.

I can remember being a kid, sitting in my father’s study, going through his books, trying to understand what he saw in them. On his wall, next to the window which overlooked our back yard, was a framed picture, with this caption below it:

“God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I get it now. And, older than I was then, I realize how little time we have on this planet. So now I’ve learned to pick my battles, and invest my time only in things that I feel, after careful consideration, warrant the coin of my life – my time. (“Time is the coin of your life. It is the only coin you have, and only you can determine how it will be spent. Be careful lest you let other people spend it for you.” -Carl Sandburg)

I think Guild Wars 2 is worth my passion, and that’s why I, like my fellow devs, work so kitten something that isn’t perfect. It’s still a work in progress, there are still SO many things we want to do with this game, and places we want to take it.

So if you get frustrated at the pace we’re making, or if you just need to take a break so you can try another game, or if you wait on something to be fixed the way you want it, that’s fine. We’ll keep working with our heads down, our minds churning, and our ears open, trying to make GW2 the best game it can be.

And we’ll be here when you get back.

-Chap

PS – Watch “The Wire”.

Notes:

• Suggested music while reading http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kPWvpDm076o
• TL:DR – We love this game. We’re listening to you. We don’t post in every thread because we’re busy. Thank you for being so passionate about our game. Life is short – enjoy it. And you should watch “The Wire”.
• This post was written while taking breaks to cut up proxies and sleeve them for a Legacy storm deck (ANT storm), so I can practice for SCG Legacy Seattle.
• This post was written while under the effects of Radiohead and tea, earl grey, hot.

butch.8136:

So I shouldn’t expect a replay mode nor observer mode a la gw1 anytime soon. K, is automated tournaments like gw1 hard to implement?

Just so we can get some perspective…

Yes, that’s also very hard to implement, but will be a great addition to the game down the road!

Jumper.9482:

Please don’t tell me scaling down or removing AI HP bars/names from spectator (Probably the single-most important thing for improving the game’s viewability, http://ultraimg.com/images/9KU2V.gif ) is 1 year of development time?..

That one is perfect for this kind of thread, and something I think you’ll hopefully see soon here. It’s clear when watching games there are areas that need improvement to make visibility easier to allow people to watch and understand what’s going on, that’s a big one that jumps right out at you for sure.

fugazi.5139:

may be it is GW2 PvP +WvW.
It has to be.

Extra fun fact: the population of WvW who plays any given week regularly is larger than the entire population of all of Gw1 the game any given week for a large chunk of the games lifespan. Just want to put things in perspective, Gw1 was amazing, but there is a reason we made Gw2.

BrunoBRS.5178:

is there nothing that can be done to merge the EU and NA PvP? like, if not a merge (lag issues would be intense), then maybe work on allowing PvPers to guest on EU (or NA if they’re european) on off-peak hours, kinda like GW1 districts.

My understanding is this would require a total overhaul of the way the game systems save data and player interactions across worlds, plus put really large latency and trans-cont cable down-time issues into play. All of that being said, it may not be impossible, but it’s not going to happen any time soon given other priorities. It’d be super cool though even if it was just for PvP, I always loved that aspect of Gw1 when I saw we were up against a Korean team and I knew we were probably doomed.

fugazi.5139:

I don’t know why I find this so hard to believe considering Gw1’s PvP was so much more active. So much more fun. Just so much more in general. I may have busted a vein laughing at this statement. What all in Gw2 do these numbers include? WvW,HotJoins,tPvP and sPvP. That’s just insane. If it is so active why do you face the same 5 teams in a row in tPvP? If the excuse is the match up to the ladder that is a whole other subject considering the ladder is so majorly flawed.

We Gw1 super-fans tend to remember things with rose colored glasses, I know I do at times since it’s one of my fondest life memories over those years!

People tend to play in different places in Gw2, hot join, solo and team queue and custom arenas combined account for a much larger population than GvG/Team/Random/HA arena ever had most of the time. This doesn’t include WvW, which population wise blows the roof off on top of this.

One thing I think that factors into it sometimes is region based play, Gw1 had the entire world matched up simultaneously so even during off hours, you’d catch people from other parts of the world. With region separation in Gw2, you get people in your region so it’s much harder to gauge the total population.

It’s ok if you like Gw1 better, but to dismiss Gw2 entirely for that reason would be a mistake. (not saying you are, but some folks do!)

Super Riceman.8702:

3. Add a way to spectate tournament games but make it delayed by 5 min instead of watching it live.

Since it’s late and I’m here, want to quickly debunk this one. This is like a year+ work minimum for an entire team of engineers, and may not even be feasible in our game engine.

Just to give some perspective on why stuff that often seems so easy to do, often times isn’t being done.

In general great thread though folks, keep the suggestions rolling =)

Since you called me out by name you get called back yo! Just wanted to point out that quote from PAX about PvP was not from me, though reading the article it sure sounded that way so I can see where it would be confusing

I don’t think PvP is done by any means. We’ve had some great successes this year, the total PvP population has gone up tremendously as the year has progressed and is much larger than Gw1’s PvP ever was at it’s height, which is nice to see since the game hasn’t launched in half the world yet. Spectator mode and custom arenas have opened the door for some really exciting growth and moments in 2013 in particular. We still have a long ways to go to get to where we’re going, but considering where we stood when we launched with almost no features in PvP I think we’ve come a long ways. We are of course always continuing to watch and listen to feedback, things like the addition of solo queue are direct results of that.

As a reminder, we did a blog post back in July that summarizes our major focuses for Gw2 in the 2nd half of 2013, if you scroll down to the PvP section you can find what some of our major focuses are. We told you what we’re working on priority wise already, once we have specific details we’ll share those as well : https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/looking-ahead-guild-wars-2-in-2013/

From that list, we’ve already completed some of those tasks since July. As we said back at the end of July, one of our major focuses is on that sense of reward and progression for the 2nd half of 2013. And since they are game-wide and not covered in the PvP section: of course our skills and balance team will be continuing to update and balance now that the tournament final is over.

Don’t expect double FPS overnight . Also, the changes I mentioned will mostly only be noticeable in combat or in large groups of creatures/players.

-Bill

Are you running in Windowed mode? It only works in Fullscreen or Windowed-Fullscreen.

Eidola.9148:

The extra keybinding doesn’t really work for me as I have my middle mouse button set to the Interact binding. Which means that I really like it if “Search” became “AoE Search” when the AoE Looting checkbox was enabled!

I’m going to be talking with Design about this issue this week. I like the idea of changing the text to “AoE Search/Loot” when you use that option and having AoE Loot trigger when that prompt is up (but only when the search version of that dialog is up).

-Bill

In addition to Colin’s response:

As Colin mentioned we have dedicated resources to addressing performance (server and client side). We formed a small team back in Spring to get the ball rolling. Recently we’ve been upping our resources and have made policies company-wide to ensure our releases don’t have negative effects on the performance of the game. You’ll start noticing, as early as the release in 2 weeks, that we’re improving performance of the game.

Optimizing is an extremely dangerous thing to do, especially to a Live game. We can’t just push out these optimizations as we go, as much as we’d like to. They go through a testing cycle of a minimum of 6 weeks to ensure they don’t have a negative impact on the game. We have a great group of people in QA that are staying on top of reports on the forums as well as doing dedicated performance testing across the game while putting together information for our Engineers to address issues as they pop up.

As I mentioned above, the first round of noticeable improvements should be rolling out in a couple weeks. From then on, I hope to have some sort of noticeable gain every 4 – 6 weeks. I hope to have more information on this in the near future.

-Bill

I put together a fix for being rooted to the ground last week. This will probably make it into the game later this month. It also fixes things like blinking skills, persisting skills effects and animations, etc.

-Bill

I was investigating this late last week. I have a pretty good understanding of what the issue is and hope to have a fix this week sometime. Assuming that I can get a safe fix put together, we’ll probably try to sneak it into a hotfix later this week. Can’t make any promises at this time, though.

-Bill

Hey Everyone, just a quick update.

Our QA has been able to repro this issue and a bug report has gone in for it. Hopefully we’ll see a resolution implemented soon but I have no ETA at this time. Thanks to everyone who submitted your information/reported the issue. I’ll update the thread again if there is any change in the progress.

Healix.5819:

If 80 people are required, is Tequatl’s chest (not the bonus one) lootable more than once a day? If not, not enough people will show up after prime time, especially on the lower pop servers.

It is yes, Taco will have normal every time rewards (rewards for each 25% health interval you’re able to take him down) as well as a bonus daily reward roll you can also get for defeating him.

zaxziakohl.5243:

I love the idea, and the mass events is great. However, I think if you are going to do this and require such large numbers for mass stuff, that you should have a notification thing (similar to the current one for Scarlet Briar) that tells us when these epic events are happening. I think participation would be much more likely. Just make it so we can turn it off and on, for those who aren’t interested.

We’re looking into this functionality yes! If we end up messaging multiple bosses long term we’ll likely make this an option you can turn on/off in the options panel so people not interested can ignore the spamalot.

Conncept.7638:

Will the system which allows the Scarlet Invasions to ‘echo’ in to overflow servers be applied to this and other current large-scale events?

During the release Tequatl will work this way yes, all overflows created within 10 mintues or so of Tequatl arriving will also inherent the event. We’re doing this manually right now while our engineering team works on the ability to have this handled automagically by the system, once that is completed we’d roll that concept out to other major encounters as the default behavior…forever. No ETA on this, but we’re working on it right now.

I’m willing to bet someday when people get really good at him, less than 80 people will be able to pull it off, that tends to be how anything works in an MMO. It’s balanced for 80 average players though though and scales up into the hundreds because we want to make epic, large scale encounters available to players out in the open world. We’ll have a mix of a lot of different types of encounters as we continue to update our boss and world encounters, but Tequatl specifically is intended to go for the epic scale.

The idea is we’re going to make him hard, and require a lot of players, he needs to have rewards that make that time worthwhile. In the next update the same philosophy will apply to the karka queen, who will get a bump to her rewards as well given her difficulty; her base line player number is much lower than 80.

Extra bonus info: The highest chance of having a rare chance ascended weapon for you is on Tequatl’s daily bonus chest if you defeat him: game on.

Here’s a fantastic game design lecture by Will Wright. Starting at the 12:50 mark he’s talking about feedback loops in much clearer language than that dense technical link I posted earlier:
http://youtu.be/CdgQyq3hEPo?t=12m54s

One thing he mentions is how the negative side of the feedback loop is usually the most interesting. People usually play games to achieve the success side of the loop, but it’s not very rewarding without having experienced the failure states. Imagine that like a slider, where some people want games with no failure feedback like that amazing mario game posted above, and some people want the slider cranked all the way in the other direction. And that’s what this emerging genre is. It’s an exploration of the furthest reaches of the aesthetic form of negative feedback loop. In that way it’s kind of like the Black Metal of games. Black Metal evolved as musicians were trying to find the most extreme ways to break the established rules of musical aesthetic. (though obviously there are the minimalists and modernists etc. who break them even more.) The point being that most people can’t listen to to more than 10 seconds of Black Metal. It makes them agitated, or so annoyed they get angry. (I know this because I’ve tested several people I know >;) Likewise, this platform hell, or whatever you want to call it kind of game makes some people annoyed and angry. Guild Wars 2 in general is like a beautiful sweeping orchestral movie score. It appeals to a much broader audience.

There is a well established three part structure to popular music, and 90% of the hits follow it to a T. and there’s an ancient 3-act-structure for story that 90% of books, movies, and plays follow to a T. But there are fantastic examples of media that purposefully subvert those structures and the fact that the rules are broken is part of what makes them great. There Will Be Blood has no hero who grows through a struggle, learns a lesson and wins at the end. It’s not so much a story as it is a character portrait on film. And there are entire genres of music that are defined by the ways they break the popular paradigm.

So when I hear folks saying “How are invisible instant death traps fun?” it sounds to me like asking “How can you enjoy Death Metal or 50s Jazz or movies where the hero dies at the end?” It’s simply a matter of taste.

Someone above described what “good design” is in a very textbook sort of way where there are balanced feedback loops with clearly delineated goals and telegraphed challenges. And that is a perfectly valid way to critique games. And most of the time when games break those rules it’s because of sloppy, ill-conceived design, technological hurdles, time constraints, etc. Most movies that break the 3 act structure do it because the writer, director, editor etc. just aren’t good at what they do. Pop music that lacks the Verse-Bridge-ChorusX3 is often because the artist doesn’t know any better.

But when an artist is experienced with their craft, knows the rules backward and forward, and has worked within that framework before, THEN with intent and forethought decides to make something that breaks those rules, pushes one element to its extreme, or some other innovation, THAT’S when “good” happens. Not for everyone, because most people dislike anything that deviates too far from the norm. But there is always a market of people who can recognize the point of the exercise and appreciate it.

Like before, I’ll throw out the caveat that I’m not claiming that the SAB team is that master craftsman pushing the medium forward in dramatic brilliant ways. Only that we are THINKING about the design choices we make, we recognize when we are breaking rules, and we have a reason for doing so. Because SAB exists within the ecosystem of Guild Wars 2 it’s not going to be an exact replica of IWTBTG. We’re a hybrid, and that brings lots of interesting challenges with it. I’m sure we’ll learn a lot from this first TM release, and incorporate those lessons into the next round.

Well, that’s enough prattling at 2:30 am! Good night/morning!

We have folks constantly working to improve performance, we’ve actually made quite a few perf updates this year. You’ll see more perf updates in the upcoming releases, we have a team working entirely on performance at all times that won’t be going away any time soon.

Good suggestion, I will see what I can do.

Fishbait.6723:

More temp` content.
Who is surprised?

Huh? This is not temp content. This in character with any number of rewards that are about showing off what happened recently. You will be showing off that you won the previous season, but once a new season starts everyone is back to start. Having the reward for a limited period of time is very different from temp content.

Dekar.2759:

DevonCarver.5370:

Winners will have access to the finisher until there are new winners. At that point those people will gain access and the winners from the previous season will no longer have access to the stomp.

Well that was a fast reply, starting to think I missed some reading about this answer somewhere.

Does this insinuate that the finishers will always be the same every season and it’s only the other achievements that may change from time to time which in theory should be doable in any server?

It certainly insinuates it. But that is as much as I’ll say for now. Nothing is set in stone.

Oroibahazopi.9074:

Well I’d rather have it being playable and slowed down than lagged out and not having any skills work.

Only thing that changes is you have more time to react, it doesn’t “gum” it up. Right now you can’t react at all in large fights because you can’t activate skills I know which I prefer. Also more reaction time only really nerfs the mindless aoe spam, direct instantaneous attacks will be just as dangerous.

You know which you prefer out of the system as it exists now and some system you’ve made up in your head. Obviously the one you’ve dreamed up is one you like more, but the real implementation of it would have a host of problems you haven’t mentioned. When we have a solution that is better than the current system, we’ll get it in, but all of the things we have tried so far have been no better than the status quo.

Winners will have access to the finisher until there are new winners. At that point those people will gain access and the winners from the previous season will no longer have access to the stomp.

Think of it like this, the finisher is intended to show off who won the last season. If you don’t continue to win each and every season, you will not retain the bragging rights.

styx.7294:

And influx of rewards? The influx of rewards is 10 gold/hour farming, talk to NPC for 10 achievement points, and unique weapon skins every 2 weeks in Living Story. You better be bringing hell of a lot of rewards for me to tell someone in Lion’s Arch that it’s worth their time to step away from autoattacking in a PvE map and risk actually dying somewhere.

Well, I can’t promise it will work, but I’m kitten sure trying.

Oroibahazopi.9074:

It’s slows down the server time so that the server and people’s clients have more time to do the calculations. It means that everyone’s inputs will be registered correctly and you don’t have the “am I alive?” moments because you’ve been frozen out.

It’s less of a lag than putting things into slowmo.

GW2 is not a deterministic serious of events. If I cast lava font you are warned and able to move out of it. If we slowed things down to the sense of being queued up it would quickly gum up what GW2 combat is.

Moon.6371:

What do I have to do in order to get my question concerning obvious transfer abuse answered?

Will there be anything implemented (such as weighted league points, server (il-)loyalty debuffs, intraleague server locks or similar) that prevents people flooding the probable winner of the league during the first week, then transfering back to the home server (within the same league) and benefitting from abuse?

When I have an answer to give you, I will give it. That’s just the way it goes.

Evon Skyfyre.9673:

DevonCarver.5370:

We definitely don’t want to go to the level of fragmenting the game to the extent that we have PvP, WvW, and PvE versions of all the skills as that creates a disconnect with the characters we want you to use in all those places. That said, we are certainly discussing the idea of adding skills that would have a WvW focus. But they are just on the discussion level.

So the way this was handled in GW1 was bad?

Yes. Not only was it incredibly complex to maintain it became completely unwieldy to players as well. GW2 has made a great number of changes to systems specifically to avoid the complications we created in GW1. Not creating multiple versions of skills for 3 areas of the game would be one of those changes.

bradderzh.2378:

The issues are not usually that a server has low population, it’s that a server has a low wvw population. A top tier server that has lots of dedicated wvw guilds around the clock who primarily care about wvw don’t neccasarilly have a higher population than lower tier servers, it’s could just be that the ratio of wvw to PvE/spvp players is higher.

However, you can’t tell people what game type to play, so you will still lose each week because they don’t want to help out in wvw.

The issue is, that while you may be on these lower tier servers and still care just as much about wvw as the higher tier servers, you are essentially on the wrong server and if this system rewards the heavily stacked servers more it’s only going to promote more stacking.

You mention in this post why nothing is changing here. We can’t merge servers based on what percentage of players on a server play WvW. We make determinations about servers based on their overall population. Your best bet is to use the influx of rewards from the season to convince people on your server to start paying attention to WvW. Or convince people to transfer to your server to boost your WvW ranks.

bradderzh.2378:

We, the people of lower tiers, don’t mind testing our metal against tough odds. We do however mind it when the servers with the most players and best coverage gets the best rewards purely for the numbers reason only.

But as you said in another topic, wvw isn’t fair. All rank 12 has to do is throw enough matches to drop to rank 13 and get the best rewards.

So, as I’ve said before, we are still looking into ways to try and alleviate those problems, but that is also what WvW is like right now, so while this season will create new rewards and new incentives to play, it isn’t as though this is a brand new problem. We want to make it so that skill is more important than sheer numbers and we have some ideas. None of them are so easy/safe to implement that they are going to happen in the near-term.

Oroibahazopi.9074:

For every season or just the first one?

We are talking about season one for now. What the future may hold, who can say?

Oroibahazopi.9074:

Oroibahazopi.9074:

https://wiki.eveonline.com/en/wiki/Time_Dilation

I am aware of Time Dilation and that would very clearly not work for our game at all. Skill lag is a problem and we are doing what we can to fix it, but I don’t see how deliberately lagging out those fights would be better. I mean, I suppose we could also just kick everyone out of the map right then as well and it would solve the problem. But it wouldn’t be fun.

I’ll scoop the blog post. World Ability Points will be refunded to everyone at the start of the season.

skeet.1390:

So do 4 leagues in NA. This eliminates the enormous population difference from server 1 to server 12 and 13 to 24.

If you really think the server that is ranked 12th at the start of this stands any chance against the top servers you are delusional.

I never said they did. However, I’d argue that they do in fact stand a chance against the 6th ranked server and the 5th ranked server. We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

Walabone.6713:

I hope you take into consideration adding achievements that encourage zergs to disperse. Lets not have another WvExp situation.

Although, all in all, I’m not enthusiastic about this new system. I fail to understand the concept of “competition” that you hope to instill, when the playing field is inherently unbalanced. Numbers win everything. How is that a fair competition?

At no point did I, or would I have, said “Fair competition” WvW is not intended to be “fair”. There are servers with more people, there are servers with better organizations and that will always be the case. This competition will be about showing how your world can do over a defined period of time, against a variety of opponents. SPvP is the part of our game that aims for a completely level playing field. WvW would never be able to match that goal.

draugris.9872:

After watching the Pax Stream yesterday i have no hope that anything will be done in a reasonable amount of time. Devon made his announcement and for the rest of the panel he just sat there. Not a single kitten question came from the audience regarding wvw and only one question about spvp. Almost all questions where about living world / rp / lore, so that does say anything about the interest of the people and therefore the focus of the development of this game.

Well, regardless of questions on the panel, I spoke for a good 1-2 hours with folks about WvW after and before the panel. We are very, very focused on WvW. The issue with skill lag is quite large and while we’ve continued to hammer at it, there is no single solution available. We’ll do what we can, but it is a war, not a battle.

Jinks.2057:

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ve consistently said we are doing 2 leagues in NA and 3 in EU. The leagues will be broken up strictly by world rating at the conclusion of the matchup prior to the league start.

Its still fail.

In NA you will have the 12th ranked server vs T1 coverage.

WTF

3 leagues is way better module with championship week to close out

We literally can’t do three equal leagues in NA as there are 24 servers. That would leave us with 2 servers per league with no match up every single week.

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

NA will be 2 leagues of 12 servers, not 4 of 6. In addition server merges are not on the table as the population of the game as a whole doesn’t suggest they are necessary.

Oren.1736:

Devon, will Gold league players receive better achievements points/final rewards over silver/bronze league winners?

The achievements and achievement points will be exactly the same across the leagues and there will be few, if any, rewards that are different across the leagues. The dolyak stomp is the clearest example. The winners of each league will get a finisher specific to that league. From Gold to Bronze. The rest of the rewards will be more about how you performed in your league, than which league you were in.

Oroibahazopi.9074:

Will be the only sizeable amount of achievement points I can get at them moment since the WvW ones give hardly any ;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;;)))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))))

Srsly if you add PvE components to this WvW meta achievement it will be a joke.

I didn’t say PvE components, I said that they will function like the Living World achievements. They will be WvW specific and much like the achievements you see already, except actually reachable in 7 weeks. As to the total number of points, it will be hundreds, nothing like the achievements currently in place.