Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

My big problem is that you designed a system with such a massive flaw, culling, to begin with. Especially, considering WvW was a major selling point and a massive part of your end game from day one.

Edragor.9164:

@Colin:
Reworking the structure for a complete culling overhaul is indeed time consumeing and “binding” lot of resources & manpower, I would agree.

But players asking for a fast & simple fix to culling, just to be able to eliminate the Tactical problems they get with invisible players. In short:

Some ugly tag/nameplate/indicator shown is better compared to haveing to deal with invisible enemies.

this, look how they fixed this in AION. just give us an options to turn off characters(allies\enemies\both) and leave only nameplates.
there was 500vs500 fightings in AION with no problem from server side.
it’s much better than fighting against invisible foes with invisible allies.

The BEST GAME IN THE WORLD doesn’t need PvPers like us. What will we do? There is no other games EVER out there, this IS THE ONLY ONE… LOL

RIP GW2

back to the first page

Tajz.9826:

**New better maps for WvW (Nobody like copy/paste for borderlands…)

No true, personally I found that one of the better decisions in the game. Nobody can claim that it isn’t balanced. I cringe thinking of all the whining when the borderlands aren’t the same anymore. I want new maps, of course (underwater would make for a new playstyle and new tactics with underwater siege) but please keep the borderlands the same.

i like the current wvw maps and tbh wouldnt want more for now. two major issues for wvw are:

1. progression
2. culling

everything else is kinda bearable. if they resolve culling and bring in some meaningful progression (hopefully not ascended grind alone), we’ll be in a really good shape.

as for the interview, pretty much what i expected. if most of the wvw team is working on the culling issue, how can u expect an entire xpac’s worth of wvw content in Feb? wvw is a seriously solid game thats keeping many, many interested and playing. yes, some guilds have left, but easily replaced if not outnumbered by new blood.

Lets be honest, the main reason people actually play WvW is the competitive aspect of the game. You fight the enemy servers to WIN. Now the problem here is…what do we win? a rank up? ok now we rank up and win… what do we win? nothing.

Hollow victories aren’t very fulfilling. If people end up losing more because of it (because drop kitten are so bad in WvW) it is even worth less.

If they made a proper ranking system where the top servers received static bonuses such as MF or something like that for the entire server (on top of what can be won from the points system) it would be quite rewarding for putting in time effort and money into WvW.

This would give a reason for WvW and a reason for all the lower tier servers to get their game on.

Perhaps changing it into a league system with 3 different divisions that rotates the matches would make it less stale. The champions of each league get rewards, hell it should be rewarding to be a champion. If you want to be a champion you have to put something into it. Then when you win, you get something out of it (balanced).

Now to address server transfers. Activate the paid server transfers. Begin with a 100 Gem server transfer fee. After the transfers have settled, increase the fee to 500 gems. At the end of every season, reduce the transfer fee to allow for easy transfers. Keeps things fresh.

At the end of the day WvW is competitive and its this which drives people to WvW.

One great reward would be that the top tier servers will get a boost in their % for precursor drops. Im sure everyone will want to WvW and get to the top. If not pay huge amounts of Gems to transfer there.

Win for community. Win for Developers.

@KensaiZen – That is exactly what we don’t want more population imbalance. That is part of the major reason wvw is so stale today.

Simple answer charge for transfers up, free to transfer down, and cant transfer in your current tier. And let guilds keep their bonuses if they decide to transfer to a smaller server.

In regards to progression and rewards. I honestly do not see anything that they could add that would make wvw more fun aside from drawing in more players just looking for loot/titles which are not the best players to be had in wvw.

Giving me 5 more gold in drops (or titles) will not make boring maps, same matches forever or disfunctional gameplay (exploits) any more fun, to me at least.

I don’t think people will be able to pay 500 gems for a transfer that easily.

That and also the population balance would eventually balance itself out. The only realistic way for a server to have a chance of winning the league would be to be at full capacity. Eventually there would be less servers but more full ones. Servers that are not bothered to WvW can stay in bottom and not be bothered if they wi or lose. Those that want to compete can transfer. I think this is what the Devs had in mind with free transfers but they didn’t have a carrot on the stick that people wanted so it was a fail.

I agree with the fee’s changing for moving to higher or lower position servers. That keeps it interesting.

I think the fact that people can get precursors easier from WvW would attract a major influx from PvE players into WvW as well as giving people a reward for time and money wasted.

@KensaiZen – They said they are more looking to expand servers (god knows how) and currently in this interview show no signs of merging anything or any thoughts of it. I agree it might be good for the bottom tiers. This and so many other things is why this interview shows how out of touch the devs are and hence all the complaining on this thread.

@KensaiZen

Competition isn’t gained by allowing easy transfers for the fair weather fans. The NFL has the best competitive atmosphere because there is a cap to what a team can have/get.

The transfers ruin the game becuase it allows people to do a range of things they shouldn’t be doing.

If you’re good, you don’t need to transfer to the winning server(s), you learn how to win with what you have. Joining a winning server is a joke, and doesn’t make you a winner, because you didn’t do anything to help them get there.

It just creates unreal population imbalances, a problem every PvP game has experienced.

Well good luck with 10 good people trying to carry a server. Oh wait it requires numbers to be competitive.

Let them transfer but let it cost 500 gems to do it or maybe 10g fixed rate. You wont have mindless transfers if its expensive. Also guilds would think twice about abandoning servers etc

Everything in WvW should have value, reward or penalty. In its current state it is just a slow death.

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

With all due respect, but some issues should NOT take long, like the mesmer hop-hop-hops on a wall and takes a keep with friends nevrer breaching a wall.
Or the we can’t see the target but we can take it out nonetheless.

Not to mention the very, very annoying we-can-catapult-a-wall-down-without-any-yellow-crosses-comming-up.

These are all very, very annoying issues, that should not take alot of time.

I understand that culling is indeed very, very hard to fix, but you also got to have some quick-wins imho.

It would be cool to have a back and forth discussion with the developers.

We’ve had this discussion in our guild many times and there are two camps. Those who fight for the carrot (loot, forts, karma etc) and those who fight for the sheer joy of fighting.

While the current maps are all now well known to most players it doesn’t really matter to the latter group, as they have a fully realised siege warfare system. It’s an amazing blueprint for lots more features and systems to be added to. I play chess and so say this to players in my guild who say they are bored – look at a chess board. A very small amount of pieces, set play area and a fairly easy list of rules. However the possibilities from this are almost unlimited.

The way I see it WvsW in this game is the same, there are still so many tactics and strategies to be found and tested. Mesmer bombs, Turtling and Golum rushes are just the start. So yes, as you can proberly tell I’m an optimist, I look to have fun with what I’m given no matter how limited.

For everyone on these forums not happy with WvsW I’d urge you to take a step back and look at what AN have given us here. Just last night I was watching the treb fire coming in from another fort and given how amazing this game looks anyway its a real treat to see such amazing fidelity in this part of the combat.

On top of all that I’ve mentioned we’re also, by the sounds of it, going to be treated to some fantastic updates and features in the coming months. As a PvP and WvsW we’re really excited to see what the teams come up with at AN and thank them for an already amazing game to play.

They are making such a big deal out of “February update” that by the time we actually get it, it will be a huge disappointment by the sounds of it.

Tallis.5607:

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

With all due respect, but some issues should NOT take long, like the mesmer hop-hop-hops on a wall and takes a keep with friends nevrer breaching a wall.
Or the we can’t see the target but we can take it out nonetheless.

Not to mention the very, very annoying we-can-catapult-a-wall-down-without-any-yellow-crosses-comming-up.

These are all very, very annoying issues, that should not take alot of time.

I understand that culling is indeed very, very hard to fix, but you also got to have some quick-wins imho.

Catapulting a wall down without sword crossings coming up is done because the people doing it were sneaky and set the cata w/o aggroing the NPC’s and there are no players there to defend it. It is not a game bug. It is how it was designed. Once the team of super ninjas is in (can be array of classes… Usually have at least one thief or mes though.) And go to fight the tower lord THEN the swords come up… Stop calling something a bug when it is simply a mechanic of the game.

Tallis.5607:

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

With all due respect, but some issues should NOT take long, like the mesmer hop-hop-hops on a wall and takes a keep with friends nevrer breaching a wall.
Or the we can’t see the target but we can take it out nonetheless.

Not to mention the very, very annoying we-can-catapult-a-wall-down-without-any-yellow-crosses-comming-up.

These are all very, very annoying issues, that should not take alot of time.

I understand that culling is indeed very, very hard to fix, but you also got to have some quick-wins imho.

I disagree. The culling is probably the biggest problem in WvW currently, and also probably the trickiest to solve, and occurring at the lowest level from a systems perspective.

I kind of applaud ANet for tackling this, because like you said, it means they must pass on the “quick wins”, in favor of building a stronger foundation. In the long term, this is the correct move, but in the short term it can be perceived like they don’t care about WvW or aren’t doing anything, since we don’t see the results of their hard work.

jportell.2197:

Tallis.5607:

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

With all due respect, but some issues should NOT take long, like the mesmer hop-hop-hops on a wall and takes a keep with friends nevrer breaching a wall.
Or the we can’t see the target but we can take it out nonetheless.

Not to mention the very, very annoying we-can-catapult-a-wall-down-without-any-yellow-crosses-comming-up.

These are all very, very annoying issues, that should not take alot of time.

I understand that culling is indeed very, very hard to fix, but you also got to have some quick-wins imho.

Catapulting a wall down without sword crossings coming up is done because the people doing it were sneaky and set the cata w/o aggroing the NPC’s and there are no players there to defend it. It is not a game bug. It is how it was designed. Once the team of super ninjas is in (can be array of classes… Usually have at least one thief or mes though.) And go to fight the tower lord THEN the swords come up… Stop calling something a bug when it is simply a mechanic of the game.

I kind of have to agree with this post. It rewards tactical play. It has to deal with oversights in tower design, sure (I’m pretty sure that if the NPCs were real people they’d raise an alarm), but it is what it is.

An interesting fix to that would be to get NPC scouts to run toward nearby towers and keeps Dynamic-Event-style — the NPC would run at the players, do a beckon emote, and then when talked to show the player where the enemy was hitting on the map.

Doing it this way would add another layer for the ninja group to overcome as it would require them to find and kill the scout/runner in order to remain hidden. That’s a bit closer to real warfare too: kill the scout, better chance of success.

Spartyr.6795:

I disagree. The culling is probably the biggest problem in WvW currently, and also probably the trickiest to solve, and occurring at the lowest level from a systems perspective.

I kind of applaud ANet for tackling this, because like you said, it means they must pass on the “quick wins”, in favor of building a stronger foundation. In the long term, this is the correct move, but in the short term it can be perceived like they don’t care about WvW or aren’t doing anything, since we don’t see the results of their hard work.

I disagree with you completely. Firstly culling is not the only Major problem with WvW and many of the other ones such as exploits or huge bugs could be much more easily fixed. So passing on those is just dumb (such as jumping into a keep or teleporting through the door or npc’s turning hostile in a keep and killing its own door, not being able to go through nw SMC wall when its down and fortified, etc, etc, etc.) These kinds of things make this game look like a joke really. And you suggest instead of working on these game breaking issues we should send all our manpower on something that might not ever be fixed. If you want a strong ‘foundation’ no bugs would be a good start.

In fact I have to say the only thing we have gotten from there culling ‘work’ is just worse and worse performance. Now I can not only not see thieves (the original problem), but now I cant see friendlies, enemies of all classes, siege at a distance on occasion. And when i do see them if there is enough my skills wont go off for 20-30 seconds. I’ll be honest I much rather not see thieves then the current performance. A big battle at SMC turns the game into almost a turn based game because of the lag, which extends across the whole map.

While they have been ‘fixing’ culling the game has been dieing.

Now as to the perception of Anet not caring about wvw. That would be because of interviews like this where they basically laugh at the core issues of the players. It would also be due to a huge lack of communication. Not much updates or bug fixes since launch. They can drop the servers immediately for some toymaker trix bag to fix it, but they cant fix jumping into keeps for what 6 months? Does that scream caring?

kanikani.2430:

Cliff notes:
-So no new maps in the near future
-1 week cycles for matches will continue
-Culling is being worked on
-We have talked about population issues but don’t design for it
-Paid transfers at some point in the future, but transfers are not that big of an issue
-Progression/rewards in Feb patch
-Live scoring no time soon (via website)
-Nothing major till feb patch.
-No UI changes (raid tools etc.)
-No changes to commander system

Did I miss anything?

You only missed:

-Massively hype forthcoming Feb patch
-Massively under-deliver in Feb patch

And Colin just added this gem later in the topic:

-Fixing Culling counts as a FEATURE

Q: When you improve render characters issues? Coz 100 visible players - is just lame!
A: Never! We will only improve unneeded sPVP things, maybe PVE-things, but forget about WWW!

And nothing funny. I’m seriously thinking, devs going that way ><

kanikani.2430:

Spartyr.6795:

I disagree. The culling is probably the biggest problem in WvW currently, and also probably the trickiest to solve, and occurring at the lowest level from a systems perspective.

I kind of applaud ANet for tackling this, because like you said, it means they must pass on the “quick wins”, in favor of building a stronger foundation. In the long term, this is the correct move, but in the short term it can be perceived like they don’t care about WvW or aren’t doing anything, since we don’t see the results of their hard work.

I disagree with you completely. Firstly culling is not the only Major problem with WvW and many of the other ones such as exploits or huge bugs could be much more easily fixed. So passing on those is just dumb (such as jumping into a keep or teleporting through the door or npc’s turning hostile in a keep and killing its own door, not being able to go through nw SMC wall when its down and fortified, etc, etc, etc.) These kinds of things make this game look like a joke really. And you suggest instead of working on these game breaking issues we should send all our manpower on something that might not ever be fixed. If you want a strong ‘foundation’ no bugs would be a good start.

In fact I have to say the only thing we have gotten from there culling ‘work’ is just worse and worse performance. Now I can not only not see thieves (the original problem), but now I cant see friendlies, enemies of all classes, siege at a distance on occasion. And when i do see them if there is enough my skills wont go off for 20-30 seconds. I’ll be honest I much rather not see thieves then the current performance. A big battle at SMC turns the game into almost a turn based game because of the lag, which extends across the whole map.

While they have been ‘fixing’ culling the game has been dieing.

Now as to the perception of Anet not caring about wvw. That would be because of interviews like this where they basically laugh at the core issues of the players. It would also be due to a huge lack of communication. Not much updates or bug fixes since launch. They can drop the servers immediately for some toymaker trix bag to fix it, but they cant fix jumping into keeps for what 6 months? Does that scream caring?

Sounds like you need a deep breath, and a break from WvW for a bit.

Colin, if no one has mentioned it: Thanks for the response. It is good to know that the devs do read some of the threads here.

I have always thought of Guild wars and now Guild Wars 2 an adventure for adults, not that there aren’t loads of non adult players who play quite well, but after seeing all of the whining and sobbing and nit picking I realize there are more children playing than I had realized.

GW2 is fun, and there is something for everyone. Are there kinks, yea, but name one MMO that has started and not had to fix something. And do you deserve a blow by blow account of when and how they are fixing the issues. Dream on, call Chevrolet and demand to know how they intend to improve gas mileage in there next offering, better yet demand 60 mpg on there next full size truck and tell them you want the exact date it will be achieved as well as how they are going to achieve it…..not very realistic huh?

The programmers have to try to please millions of customers and are on top of it. As a Project manager I know how daunting it can be to try to please thousands but millions, come on kiddies give them a chance to do what they do best.

Di Not~ Your post is very articulate, and I agree to a fault. The dev’s do deserve some time to really get things in line. They deserve the time to try and resolve the issues, and furthermore they don’t need to give dates for everything. That’s not a requirment in thier job-description.

Yet, I can not help but feel there is a bit of dev-fault in the mentality in this community. To be honest they Hyped the community heavily…Maybe not on purpose, but they did. They made us go crazy, they teased us over and over with scraps of information. And lets be honest here, fans of games are not much better then rabid dogs when it comes to “The newest New”. They told us consitently “we wont release an Unfinished game, and were going to take our time and make it perfect!”…Yet I feel they rushed heavily in the end. They pumped out this awsome game, but it felt very flat very fast to alot of people. The hype train crashed back on them. This game came out feeling sort of 3/4ths done.

Guild wars 2 is probably one of the best games ever made, and it will(like fine wine) get better as it ages. The devs will learn from there mistakes, and really work hard(cause this is there baby, and they do care about it. Maybe not us-as-much. But this game is their product. They spend years on it) to fix said problems.

I think WvW has the biggest grip for people becuase it is truely the most underdeveloped thing they made. Im sure they worked hard on it. But at points it feels they sort of “spat it out” and then were like “You guys will just have to deal till we get around to it”. Well they are finaly getting around to really looking at this part of the game(that should have had more attention since day one. Not this drought). So I agree that we should be optimistic that they are actually going to do something. That’s posative news.

I also weigh in that yes, This interview does not exactly paint them in the best light. When they told us it was going to be a big update, the community was prepared for something along the lines of game-changing. Something to make WvW on par with it’s brother and sister PVP and PVE. I am disapointed that they won’t be makeing this awsome new map, or seige, or anythign that’s going to make Zergs into armies(Tacticless Vs Tacticfull respectfully), or give us low-pops ways to make due with the small number we have against massive zergs. But I think we should be glad there even putting effort into this part of the game. Maybe if they get enough of a turnout after the update, and people start to really “care” about Wvw again…They may actually wake up and realize its just as important as PvP and Pve when they made it a selling point of this game. It should never be an afterthought.