Guild Wars 2

Terravos.4059:

Amins.3710:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Poxheart.2845:

I haven’t logged into GW2 since I started playing ESO. Aside from having three opposing sides there really is no comparison between the two games. ESO’s PvP is everything that GW2’s isn’t.

Too bad the actual combat in that game isn’t that good. It’s not worth a subscription.

ESO’s in combat Movement, Panning and skill use is HORRIBLE: It’s amost impossible to attack while panning around you to see where you’re being hit from.

However, the pvp system is soo much better than GW2’s PvD system.

That’s because you’re using what basically amounts to Elder Scrolls Movement system as an MMO.

Let me guess, You’re still using Mouse 1 and 2 for Swinging your Weapon and Blocking right?

I use an N52TE pad.. and a Naga, There is no way I could play like that, So what i did was changed my Mouse 1 and 2 to Forward and Backwards like I have it in GW2.

and I simply made My normal 1 and 2 Keys that I use for my 1 and 2 abilities in GW2 my Weapon Attack, and my Blocking Key, This allowed me to basically play the game in Mouse look like I normally do in MMO’s

Couldn’t have made a larger assumption if you tried.

I’m a newb gamer – excuse me – I know not what a keybind is… /golfclap

They’ll probably fix it, but it’s not important to them right now… however, until they do, you’re limited on panning behind you while running / strafing in combat.

Prysin.8542:

people seem to forget that ESO IS STILL IN BETA.
THEIR BETA DOESNT EVEN CONTAIN 10% OF DAILY GW2 PLAYERS.

But ofc, this could in no way be the reason why it is lag free. Obviously a low population across a large server park with a low workload can never affect lag or game performance, right, right?

That’s been discussed earlier in the thread. I for one expect lag to be about the same. Although, having said that, the apparently lower level of AoE in the game COULD have a significant effect on that. At this stage we simply don’t know but I doubt it would be worse.

Contiguous.1345:

Prysin.8542:

people seem to forget that ESO IS STILL IN BETA.
THEIR BETA DOESNT EVEN CONTAIN 10% OF DAILY GW2 PLAYERS.

But ofc, this could in no way be the reason why it is lag free. Obviously a low population across a large server park with a low workload can never affect lag or game performance, right, right?

That’s been discussed earlier in the thread. I for one expect lag to be about the same. Although, having said that, the apparently lower level of AoE in the game COULD have a significant effect on that. At this stage we simply don’t know but I doubt it would be worse.

depends on their particle effects. ESO has higher requirements then GW2, so even if the AOE size is smaller, depending on particle effects, the client side lag in large encounters (Beta isnt even CLOSE to the final size of the game) will be equally laggy.
Also, it seems you can mod certain parts of the game, client side, allowing for some client side modding in an MMO opens the door to abusing basic mechanics such as FoV, and high density information allowing for small advantages over other players.

Erm…

Like some have mentioned. WvW is not as interesting as portrayed, some of my members in my guild are not incline towards WvW as it is boring and not as attractive compared to the other forms of PvP deployed in the MMORPGs they have played.

By saying that, we must embrace the fact that Guild Wars 2 is a game designed for casual in mind, casual players dislike difficulties and will violently put down any forms of difficulties as absurd or kittened. On other hand, the “core” (a term defined by Iwata, CEO of Nintendo) and “hardcore” prefer challenging contents with appropriate rewards.

Again, like some who have noticed, WvW is a place where much ego gathered and removal of the matchup forums strike a heavy blow towards the only few emotions that made players play WvW. So, is WvW really that fun? That is something the anet team need to analysis. Most people stop playing WvW after an hour or two, why does these people stop playing after an hour or two while there are people who can play WvW the entire day? What are the different in term of emotions these people have?

Personally, I usually couldn’t play WvW for more than 2hours, even if there are bags dropping everywhere, the kill counts keep going up. I don’t find the excitement or enjoyment that can last more than an hour or two, I couldn’t understand how people can continue playing WvW every hour on daily basis without fail. Perhaps, I get bored much more easily compared to others. However, I do think that the WvW is badly designed and is just created to satisfy a group of certain type of players in order to reach a greater market share.

Lastly, EOTM is nicely designed, it does give off castle siege feelings. The designers might have knowledge of castle sieges in other MMORPGs.

Prysin.8542:

people seem to forget that ESO IS STILL IN BETA.
THEIR BETA DOESNT EVEN CONTAIN 10% OF DAILY GW2 PLAYERS.

But ofc, this could in no way be the reason why it is lag free. Obviously a low population across a large server park with a low workload can never affect lag or game performance, right, right?

Last time Anet released numbers we had about 450k active GW2 players. There are over 4 million TESO beta accounts. So I am not sure where you are getting your 10% from.

Malediktus.9250:

Prysin.8542:

people seem to forget that ESO IS STILL IN BETA.
THEIR BETA DOESNT EVEN CONTAIN 10% OF DAILY GW2 PLAYERS.

But ofc, this could in no way be the reason why it is lag free. Obviously a low population across a large server park with a low workload can never affect lag or game performance, right, right?

Last time Anet released numbers we had about 450k active GW2 players. There are over 4 million TESO beta accounts. So I am not sure where you are getting your 10% from.

Because there wasn’t 4 milion players in beta and most of players didn’t even get lvl10 so they couldn’t even try ava.

You could see the account numbers on the TESO Beta Forums. Mine was close to 1 million, but I saw people with over 4million, too.

And the beta weekends are stress tests, they are limited purposely to stress the servers as much as possible and the developers are testing different settings in the background to find the best results for the launch.

Prysin.8542:

depends on their particle effects. ESO has higher requirements then GW2, so even if the AOE size is smaller, depending on particle effects, the client side lag in large encounters (Beta isnt even CLOSE to the final size of the game) will be equally laggy.
Also, it seems you can mod certain parts of the game, client side, allowing for some client side modding in an MMO opens the door to abusing basic mechanics such as FoV, and high density information allowing for small advantages over other players.

Particle effects aren’t really a cause of lag. Even client-side, they don’t involve any significant 3D calculations because they’re just texture effects ‘painted’ over the viewscreen. It’s a bit of visual trickery.

The real issue with AoE is the calculation that has to be performed server-side to determine who gets how much buff, damage or CC from each source. That leads to skill-lag, a much more serious issue. It’s possible to live with a low frame rate (client side lag) but not being able to fire skills, select targets or rubber-banding all over the map make it impossible to play.
From what I’ve seen, these problems seem to have been addressed by avoiding AoE skills in general. I saw very few ‘red circles’ and a lot of single target shots.

As for customising the client: again, it’s possible to design problems out by choice of game mechanics. WoW allowed quite extensive use of macros without these being a real problem. In GW2 even something as simple as increased zoom became a serious issue.

I’m not saying TESO is going to solve all these problems – just that GW2 never really addressed them. It’s as if someone had a ‘vision’ of what they wanted and passed that brief down to the programmers with no regard to practicality. That would square with the fact that all player-based suggestions have been studiously ignored, no matter how simple and obvious.

Heezdedjim.8902:

The map uses a lattice structure, so objectives have to be taken “in order,” rolling up the links and working back toward the other side’s home corner. So you can’t just randomly sneak in and cap one thing off on the other side of the map. This eliminates the rampant karma training and establishes a “front” between the three sides where all the action will focus at any given time.

You’re wrong about this. There is no need to take objectives in any kind of order. It is entirely possible for a group of people to go deep into enemy territory and take resource camps and even a keep without having taken those closer to the front. However, given that keeps can’t be taken as quickly as in GW2, the enemy may try to stop the attempt (unless distracted elsewhere).

Heezdedjim.8902:

Hule.8794:

Heezdedjim you forgot about Ress tents. You can build ress tent anywhere and it is not afficted by contesting the keep. But tents are really easy to burn down. Do proper placement is needed.

They do exist. They’re sort of like a mini forward base or like one of the vehicles that include a spawn point in games like PS2.

It’s a consumeable you have to buy and have with you, and it only allows 20 players to respawn at one before it goes away. They can be useful for bringing troops back to an ongoing battle a little quicker, if deployed near the front line and not burned down right away. I never saw one actually used in beta, but with some established and more coordinated groups in game, they could be of some value.

I’m not sure if one can be put inside the keep wall or if they can only go outside keeps. If they can go inside the walls, then (assuming enough people bring them), they could help to get defending forces safely inside quicker.

While most of what you said is accurate, I can confirm that forward camps can be placed inside of keep walls so long as the ground is flat (they have a huge footprint). There is also an exclusion zone that prevents you from placing more than one in close proximity. I haven’t been able to test the range of the exclusion zone yet, but it seems to be pretty big.

I’ve seen a couple of neat tricks with forward camps that I look forward to using once the game goes live. The biggest drawback to them is that anybody from your faction can use them until they’re used up, which means that an organized group placing one deep in enemy territory to allow group members a quick respawn will likely see pugs use them up.

Contiguous.1345:

As for customising the client: again, it’s possible to design problems out by choice of game mechanics. WoW allowed quite extensive use of macros without these being a real problem. In GW2 even something as simple as increased zoom became a serious issue.

I’m not saying TESO is going to solve all these problems – just that GW2 never really addressed them. It’s as if someone had a ‘vision’ of what they wanted and passed that brief down to the programmers with no regard to practicality. That would square with the fact that all player-based suggestions have been studiously ignored, no matter how simple and obvious.

This is 100% spot on and indications are its not even regarded as an issue by anet. Its not just WvW but PvE as well they make design decisions all the time that increase the server load. It appears as though minimising this load isn’t even a consideration.

TESO will put a noticeable dent in the WvW population here. I’m not going go all hyperbole like some do and say it’s the end, but there are a lot of things to like about it that GW2 doesn’t offer (map size, trinity, no downed state/rallybotting, emperors, actual decent commander setup for guilds/groups/pugs, no arrow carts or omega rushes, more possible builds that may or may not be viable at 50++, etc.). Some of those people that leave will come back, but it could continue the other direction too if Anet doesn’t show something and if TESO can hold people’s interest. Really the only thing GW2 WvW holds over TESO AvA (to me) is the combat/animations. Now that can be a big deal I understand, but even then (to me) TESO isn’t that bad, and can easily get better – it will always be different.

Terravos.4059:

drazzar.3042:

Isn’t ESO the game, were you can get snared and stunned without a chance to break it? Sounds pretty kittened up for me, I’m not telling you to stay with GW2, I’ll switch to another game as soon as possible, but I don’t think ESO is a good option for that.

You can break Stuns/Knockdowns/Mezzes via Pressing Both Mouse Buttons, It’ll use half your Stamina but it’ll break you out of the CC and make you immune to it for 5 Seconds

Roots you can Dodge out of it (also uses Stamina)

Snares though require a Purge ability (there is a few you can pickup)

See? No one knows this though. Can’t tell you how many I killed by just immob/snaring them… Much hilarity.

I like how castle outer walls in ESO have windows. That must be pretty strong glass.

eotm and eso killed www population.

yesterday i went to my home border to craft ( it is the easiest way to access craft ) and i evolved in fights . most of the time we were outnumbered and at the end i logged off from this map sad .no big rewards from kills , no good fights and most of the times opponents retreated from the fight even we are outnumbered .

lesson learned . i will never go again to home border for crafting !

Reborn.2934:

…most of the times opponents retreated from the fight even we are outnumbered …

This is the thing. It’s become normal for some servers to actively avoid fighting. If a tower is unoccupied, they’ll take it. If not they’ll move on.
Once they’ve taken something (preferably overnight), they siege it up to the eyeballs.
If their tower or keep is attacked, they’ll pour in from the nearest waypoint and use ACs and door trebs until the wall/door is breached, then waypoint out. (It’s ridiculously difficult to stop people running into a sieged tower – every class has enough stability/invulnerability to survive the few seconds it takes, even solo.)

In open ground any hint of a fight is avoided. If you do manage to catch them by surprise, they scatter and waypoint as soon as they can get out of combat.

@Contiguous.1345 ofc all avoid fighting because there are not any defending / supporting rewards in the game.

the remaining defenders doing it for sport and not for the rewards , but for how long ?

Amins.3710:

Terravos.4059:

Amins.3710:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Poxheart.2845:

I haven’t logged into GW2 since I started playing ESO. Aside from having three opposing sides there really is no comparison between the two games. ESO’s PvP is everything that GW2’s isn’t.

Too bad the actual combat in that game isn’t that good. It’s not worth a subscription.

ESO’s in combat Movement, Panning and skill use is HORRIBLE: It’s amost impossible to attack while panning around you to see where you’re being hit from.

However, the pvp system is soo much better than GW2’s PvD system.

That’s because you’re using what basically amounts to Elder Scrolls Movement system as an MMO.

Let me guess, You’re still using Mouse 1 and 2 for Swinging your Weapon and Blocking right?

I use an N52TE pad.. and a Naga, There is no way I could play like that, So what i did was changed my Mouse 1 and 2 to Forward and Backwards like I have it in GW2.

and I simply made My normal 1 and 2 Keys that I use for my 1 and 2 abilities in GW2 my Weapon Attack, and my Blocking Key, This allowed me to basically play the game in Mouse look like I normally do in MMO’s

Couldn’t have made a larger assumption if you tried.

I’m a newb gamer – excuse me – I know not what a keybind is… /golfclap

They’ll probably fix it, but it’s not important to them right now… however, until they do, you’re limited on panning behind you while running / strafing in combat.

Know what’s an even bigger assumption, assuming I was in fact calling you a newb gamer (I wasn’t)

using horrible default keybindings is definitely a newbie thing to do.

-ken

Terravos.4059:

Amins.3710:

Terravos.4059:

Amins.3710:

RyuDragnier.9476:

Poxheart.2845:

I haven’t logged into GW2 since I started playing ESO. Aside from having three opposing sides there really is no comparison between the two games. ESO’s PvP is everything that GW2’s isn’t.

Too bad the actual combat in that game isn’t that good. It’s not worth a subscription.

ESO’s in combat Movement, Panning and skill use is HORRIBLE: It’s amost impossible to attack while panning around you to see where you’re being hit from.

However, the pvp system is soo much better than GW2’s PvD system.

That’s because you’re using what basically amounts to Elder Scrolls Movement system as an MMO.

Let me guess, You’re still using Mouse 1 and 2 for Swinging your Weapon and Blocking right?

I use an N52TE pad.. and a Naga, There is no way I could play like that, So what i did was changed my Mouse 1 and 2 to Forward and Backwards like I have it in GW2.

and I simply made My normal 1 and 2 Keys that I use for my 1 and 2 abilities in GW2 my Weapon Attack, and my Blocking Key, This allowed me to basically play the game in Mouse look like I normally do in MMO’s

Couldn’t have made a larger assumption if you tried.

I’m a newb gamer – excuse me – I know not what a keybind is… /golfclap

They’ll probably fix it, but it’s not important to them right now… however, until they do, you’re limited on panning behind you while running / strafing in combat.

Know what’s an even bigger assumption, assuming I was in fact calling you a newb gamer (I wasn’t)

Might not have been your intention, but you inadvertently did.

Apparently GW2 WvW’ers weren’t buying enough Finishers to make it worth Anet’s time to invest in Balance / Updates in a more reasonable fashion of time… /cough – more than once every 6 months.

Stagnant game play (development) in WvW and a lack of clear direction w/ an end goal is what kills it. It could take the form of: Loot, Noticeable Buffs so you can PvE content faster, progression to WvW specific Abilities, Zone Unlocks, etc…. yet, GW2 doesn’t have any of these.

Also, take into account their reward system for defending is negligible and does nothing more than to promote the PvD Karma Trains and server blobs… there’s alot to be adressed and there is NO timeline put forth to the public, to even consider sitting tight and waiting it out.

GW2 had it’s year to improve WvW and while they did address alot of the issues, the general consensus is that those issues never should have made it to Live to begin with…

The assumption on Anet’s part that ‘since we’re F2P, they will come back for expansions, updates and new content’ and however this might be true for PvE’rs, more often than not, once a PvP’er or WvW’er disassociates themselves w/ a particular game, they’re already invested in another one and the likelihood of coming back for WvW is next to ziltch.

GW2 is primarily a PvE game. They’ve made that loud and clear through their actions.

Amins.3710:

The assumption on Anet’s part that ‘since we’re F2P, they will come back for expansions, updates and new content’ and however this might be true for PvE’rs, more often than not, once a PvP’er or WvW’er disassociates themselves w/ a particular game, they’re already invested in another one and the likelihood of coming back for WvW is next to ziltch.

Add the fact that it takes a fair bit of practice and muscle memory to get twitch-good at PvP with a particular weapon set and keybindings. Once you’ve dropped a character for even a short while it’s really hard to pick up where you left off.

Whenever I stop playing a game, I never go back.

Xillllix.3485:

1- Removal of Matchup forum decreased most people’s interest
2- Matchups are too long, all the good you may do in one day has little impact over the weekly score
3- Lack of a true GvG system (with guild ranks and halls) means less and less people are interested in GW2 overall
4- WvW relies on reward because it is lacking a sense of accomplishment like GvG in GW1 had
5- Pve is too easy, lack of new zones (with new music, skills and challenges) and hard zones makes the overall community bored
6- EOTM showed us how WvW could be so much better, but at the same time has no impact on score, which in turn left most of the community confused about what Anet is trying to do with WvW
7- New skills that aren’t worth using, lack of promised content (like new traps), static maps, bugs (like getting stuck after Blink or Lightning Flash) amongst other problems also do not help

In my opinion only GvG and PvE expansions with many super-hard zones can save GW2 in the long run. Anet has amazing game mechanics (best I’ve seen for a mmo) but seems not to capitalize on them.

Love this post.

Amins.3710:

Apparently GW2 WvW’ers weren’t buying enough Finishers to make it worth Anet’s time to invest in Balance / Updates in a more reasonable fashion of time… /cough – more than once every 6 months.

Want to sell something WvWers will spend gems on? Give them something useful that they want to use and sell them for 400 to 800 gems each:

Sell instant upgrade bundles that let a player instantly do a wall or door upgrade (or maybe any upgrade) to a tower or keep (not SM) without supplies.

Sell a camp upgrade bundle that allows a player to add increased supplies and caravan guards to a supply camp instantly without supplies.

Sell quick-build siege equipment that can be deployed like the partially-built siege equipment that Siegerazer deploys so that it can be completed with only a few supplies and maybe has a defensive bubble when first deployed.

Sell a Dokyak mini that adds 5 to the amount of supplies a player can carry that lasts for one week (or the duration of the current match-up) before it expires.

Have a set of special WvW Black Lion weapon skins that require not only a Black Lion weapon ticket but also Badges of Honor to purchase to encourage the purchase of Black Lion keys.

Sell special siege equipment blueprints not available any other way, like the Hylek guns used in the Taquatl event or the Risen catapults/trebuchets from Orr.

Sell siege equipment with special skins or effects, like ghost catapults or the Risen trebuchets in Orr.

Sell a deployable NPC guard team that will patrol within a limited range of where they are deployed.

Sell a Golem Disruptor trap that ejects the pilot and then destroys all of the golems within a limited range.

Chaba.5410:

I like how castle outer walls in ESO have windows. That must be pretty strong glass.

Maybe they use Gorilla Glass?

atleast we know Apple is in no way related, or else that glass would break the first time someone spit on it.

Matched up against SOR this week. I have not seen a SOR person in EB for a couple days. Dragonbrands pop has been down since the pvp league. We had a huge transfer from our server. The last month or so we have finally rebounded some. The only queues in EB is on reset night. Other servers we play against in tier 3 or 4 have no where near the people they had before. The strat of wvw has degraded to karma training. Defending is pointless. When you are doubling the other servers scores each week or getting doubled defending your 3rd in eb is meaningless.

Not as fun anymore. The drop in pop shows it. The drop in quality of play shows it.

mikoe.6574:

Matched up against SOR this week. I have not seen a SOR person in EB for a couple days. Dragonbrands pop has been down since the pvp league. We had a huge transfer from our server. The last month or so we have finally rebounded some. The only queues in EB is on reset night. Other servers we play against in tier 3 or 4 have no where near the people they had before. The strat of wvw has degraded to karma training. Defending is pointless. When you are doubling the other servers scores each week or getting doubled defending your 3rd in eb is meaningless.

Not as fun anymore. The drop in pop shows it. The drop in quality of play shows it.

SOR was rumored to want to fall and they lost all there guilds because of it. We played vs them last week they only showed on the first night for the most part the week before though they fought a lot.

Nothing realty changed in wvw ppl are just working out the best ways to play it and its very hard to get into wvw and do well with out knowing a lot of tricks. In some ways wvw has become very hardcore type of game play. This is how a lot of games work out in the long run.

Jski.6180:

Nothing realty changed in wvw ppl are just working out the best ways to play it and its very hard to get into wvw and do well with out knowing a lot of tricks. In some ways wvw has become very hardcore type of game play. This is how a lot of games work out in the long run.

I agree that you have to know a certain amount of tricks in order to be effective, but other than that I politely disagree with your statement that WvW has become very hardcore. In reality, it’s become completely the opposite precisely because of these tricks, as every single one of them encourages non-hardcore game-play.

- Numbers > Skill: with no AOE cap and easy rezzing through down-states, all that really matters are numbers. That’s why people constantly run in massive blobs. As a small organised group you can still do decent against larger groups, provided that they’re disorganised PUGs. Once the bigger group has even a modicum of organisation, as a smaller group you can harrass them, and that’s about it.

- 2 Keys > 10 Keys: in a zerg, everyone has a particular role to play and when lag goes through the roof, most people let auto-attack do the work or press a few buttons at most. However, as a small group or solo roamer, you actually get forced to learn your class and your opponents as you can’t hide as a faceless number in the zerg.

- PVE > PVP: everything in this game encourages PVE, rather than PVP. Which is obviously ironic for a PVP game. There’s no decent rewards for defending and a heavily defended T3 tower that gets taken after an hour long battle gives similar rewards to a T1 one that gets steam-rolled in a few minutes. That’s why people actively avoid the fight and PVE karma-train.

- Coverage > Strategy: there is no need for strategy when the outcome is already decided by who has the most numbers and who has the best coverage. PPT has become a side-game that only a few people care for, realm-pride has gone out of the window. The only strategy left is to find the path of least resistance and karma-train that.

- Offense > Defense: with no clear rewards for defending, less and less people care about upgrading things, placing/refreshing siege and generally defending objectives. Yesterday, one of our commanders abandoned EB for an empty BL without even trying to defend our T3 keep. The mind boggles. What are left with is active keep-trading for karma.

In short, GW2 encourages zergs and PVE. As a casual you can log on for an hour, hobble along with the zerg, take some objectives, get some loot/mat/gold and in general feel good about yourself. There’s nothing hardcore about that. In fact, I’d go as far as arguing that GW2 WvW is the least hardcore competitive realm-vs-realm I’ve done in any MMO.

Now, one could argue that in prime-time it’s hardcore when organised guilds slug it out against each other, even then I’d disagree. None of these guilds have the exact same numbers, plus there’s a lot of add-ins. More often than not, the outcome is decided by this.

Obviously, in organised GvG events, it’s somewhat more hardcore as skills/numbers are pretty much equal, whilst numbers are exactly equal. However, even then it’s hardly hardcore. All guilds pretty much run the same setups/strategy (i.e. hammer-trains) and there’s relatively little skill involved in that: pump might and boons, run in, pop stability, lay down a veil, end up in a big cluster-kitten with two balls of players running over each other whilst AOE CC and damage does the work. Grossly simplified, but that’s the gist of it. There’s very little targetting, very little assisting… once everybody has gotten accustomed to their role and sticks close to the commander, you’ll do fine enough.

And I personally believe this is exactly why WvW has taken such a drop. Game-play is one-sided (i.e. offense, but really avoiding fights and karma train), there’s no strategy left in the game with fewer and fewer people defending, numbers and coverage decide the outcome of a match-up, and for real hardcore players (i.e. solo roamers, small hit-squads and organised guilds) there’s little left.

Yesterday was a prime example of all that’s wrong with the game. I woke up early so got into EB, with probably about 8 other people of our server. Kodash has nobody online it seemed, Baruch Bay about 4-5 tops. We capture SM after some fight, but know we can’t keep it as we’re normally massively outnumbered, so we decide to siege it up a bit so we can hold opposition off whilst we siege up and upgrade our own towers/keep.

After a few hours with hardly any opposition, we got all our towers to T2/3 and or keep to T3 with in all some decent siege. Then suddenly a 40+ BB zerg rocks up out of nowhere and sweeps all that’s in front of them. However, when they notice 2-3 defenders in one of our towers, they move on to a empty one, PVE that and then go back to the earlier one that by then has no defenders left as we’re running around trying to cover all our bases. Eventually, all that is left is our keep. It’s T3 with some good siege in it, so it won’t be easy to take, but it’s 6v40+. Yet, the moment the first arrows of the AC fall on them, they pull back, port out and go PVE an empty BL.

We quickly recap our towers and I go roaming, as that’s what I do. For forty minutes – I kid you not – I do not see a single enemy in EB. Yes, it was early morning, but they clearly had a 40+ zerg that just evaporated. Eventually I end up at their spawn, wait their for 15 or so minutes and – lo and behold – a player comes out of spawn. Wait?! What’s that….? 40+ people players behind him. Obviously the karma train in an empty BL has moved back to EB.

And that karma train does the same thing… PVEs everything whilst actively avoiding any resistance, then ending up at our keep. At that stage we got 15 people, keep is T3 with lots of Superior Siege in there and 1,400 supplies. We can give them hell, but hey ho… our commander decides it’s not worth defending and goes to an empty BL, taking a lot of people with him. Eventually it’s 3v40+ and we lose a T3 keep.

That’s why people leave. Easy-moding PVE karma-training and not “losing” by actively avoiding any fight makes you feel good about yourself, but eventually it’s get stale.

Massive blob capping empty towers then switching to different borderland; it doesn’t matter which side is doing it, it is fun for no one. It doesn’t matter if ESO will be any good or not; it is at least somewhat different.

iggybl.5034:

Massive blob capping empty towers then switching to different borderland; it doesn’t matter which side is doing it, it is fun for no one. It doesn’t matter if ESO will be any good or not; it is at least somewhat different.

Any game (such as ESO) where the devs are at least TRYING to craft a viable open world PvP mode is more deserving of our attention than GW2 has been. ANet isn’t even pretending anymore …

Cactus.2710:

iggybl.5034:

Massive blob capping empty towers then switching to different borderland; it doesn’t matter which side is doing it, it is fun for no one. It doesn’t matter if ESO will be any good or not; it is at least somewhat different.

Any game (such as ESO) where the devs are at least TRYING to craft a viable open world PvP mode is more deserving of our attention than GW2 has been. ANet isn’t even pretending anymore …

TESO AvA might end up as bad, it might fail horribly.

GW2 WvW system is bad and has failed.

I would rather gamble on ‘might’ than ‘is’.

GW2 is a solid game. The combat is good, the classes are great and lots of other good things I like about the game. I am just tired of playing in a marginalized game mode.

Numbers are certainly down on BP. We used to queue several maps pre-leagues and now a queued map is very rare. We also aren’t falling in tiers so the migration is probably happening to other T3 and lower servers at a similar rate.

As for ESO… ughhh… not a great AAA MMO especially for the $240 it will cost to play it in the first year. I am sure some will like it. It has a good combat system but implemented in the worst possible way. Basically it is the GW2 Combat Mod only with a TON more clicking and fewer skills.

Straegen.2938:

Numbers are certainly down on BP. We used to queue several maps pre-leagues and now a queued map is very rare. We also aren’t falling in tiers so the migration is probably happening to other T3 and lower servers at a similar rate.

As for ESO… ughhh… not a great AAA MMO especially for the $240 it will cost to play it in the first year. I am sure some will like it. It has a good combat system but implemented in the worst possible way. Basically it is the GW2 Combat Mod only with a TON more clicking and fewer skills.

Well, at least you have to give ZeniMax credit for paying attention to feedback from players during the beta and for addressing issues quickly. I think ZeniMax has probably already changed more things in ESO in a couple of months than ANet has done in WvW in the 18 months since launch, and there is actually evidence that the ESO devs care. AvA in ESO is clearly intended to be the major focus of that game’s endgame … you can’t say the same at all about WvW in GW2. Who would you trust more to fix issues with open world PvP over the next few months … ANet or ZeniMax? I know where I’ll be placing my bet.

Hello Jaxs,

I am pretty worried about ESO tbh.

I had a chat with some folks about the weekend beta and they mentioned the word ‘polish’ and proceeded to describe about the extreme lag in AvA (server backend likely), etc.

I was in the last Warhammer beta weekend with max lvl20s and the RvR was superb in Tier2. It was only on release that we hit the city siege that folks realized the game wasn’t complete. People left in spades, and the city instance wasn’t fixed till months after the game was released.

Drawing from the experience, I am doubtful about ESO’s longevity because code cannot be rushed. If it’s not polished at this stage, it won’t be polished on release. It will be done months later.

That said, most folks will try out ESO just because WvW has become stale as you said.

FW

Jaxs.5830:

Cactus.2710:

iggybl.5034:

Massive blob capping empty towers then switching to different borderland; it doesn’t matter which side is doing it, it is fun for no one. It doesn’t matter if ESO will be any good or not; it is at least somewhat different.

Any game (such as ESO) where the devs are at least TRYING to craft a viable open world PvP mode is more deserving of our attention than GW2 has been. ANet isn’t even pretending anymore …

TESO AvA might end up as bad, it might fail horribly.

GW2 WvW system is bad and has failed.

I would rather gamble on ‘might’ than ‘is’.

GW2 is a solid game. The combat is good, the classes are great and lots of other good things I like about the game. I am just tired of playing in a marginalized game mode.

Fannwong.3059:

Hello Jaxs,

I am pretty worried about ESO tbh.

I had a chat with some folks about the weekend beta and they mentioned the word ‘polish’ and proceeded to describe about the extreme lag in AvA (server backend likely), etc.

I was in the last Warhammer beta weekend with max lvl20s and the RvR was superb in Tier2. It was only on release that we hit the city siege that folks realized the game wasn’t complete. People left in spades, and the city instance wasn’t fixed till months after the game was released.

Drawing from the experience, I am doubtful about ESO’s longevity because code cannot be rushed. If it’s not polished at this stage, it won’t be polished on release. It will be done months later.

That said, most folks will try out ESO just because WvW has become stale as you said.

FW

Jaxs.5830:

Cactus.2710:

iggybl.5034:

Massive blob capping empty towers then switching to different borderland; it doesn’t matter which side is doing it, it is fun for no one. It doesn’t matter if ESO will be any good or not; it is at least somewhat different.

Any game (such as ESO) where the devs are at least TRYING to craft a viable open world PvP mode is more deserving of our attention than GW2 has been. ANet isn’t even pretending anymore …

TESO AvA might end up as bad, it might fail horribly.

GW2 WvW system is bad and has failed.

I would rather gamble on ‘might’ than ‘is’.

GW2 is a solid game. The combat is good, the classes are great and lots of other good things I like about the game. I am just tired of playing in a marginalized game mode.

There was very bad server lag on the campaigns where some of the factions were locked. There was zero server lag on the campaigns where the factions were not population locked.

As far as graphics, the performance in ESO blows GW2 away. I can fraps at full 1920X1200 on ultra high settings with 100 people on the screen casting spells without a problem.

I agree with Amins and Jax. GW2 has superior combat and control of your character. GW2 also has a superior UI. ESO has a superior PvP map and basic “world versus world” mechanics (no hard rezzing, no aoe cap). About the AoE cap. Ranged AoE damage is typically pretty low. Melee point blank AoE is higher but nothing on the order of the damage AoEs can do in GW2. Single target attacks do more damage than AoE attacks in ESO (as it should be). They just hit more people (as it should be).

You can break out of stuns in ESO by using your endurance and your ‘interrupt’ ability (that everyone has). It will be difficult for people to complain about stealth since everyone has access to stealth (this will have good and bad consequences).

Also, ATM the TTK in ESO is way too short, but that could be a function of not having high enough levels to get the better survivability abilities.

Fannwong.3059:

Drawing from the experience, I am doubtful about ESO’s longevity because code cannot be rushed. If it’s not polished at this stage, it won’t be polished on release. It will be done months later.

That said, most folks will try out ESO just because WvW has become stale as you said.

The good thing about GW2 is that because its F2P if ESO doesn’t work out its easy to come back.

Oozo.7856:

I agree with Amins and Jax. GW2 has superior combat and control of your character. GW2 also has a superior UI. ESO has a superior PvP map and basic “world versus world” mechanics (no hard rezzing, no aoe cap). About the AoE cap. Ranged AoE damage is typically pretty low. Melee point blank AoE is higher but nothing on the order of the damage AoEs can do in GW2. Single target attacks do more damage than AoE attacks in ESO (as it should be). They just hit more people (as it should be).

Agree with the comments about ESO damage, they are as it should be.

However on the UI I’d actually argue that ESO is superior because the base UI is minimalist but it can be modded to exactly what you want it to be unlike GW2.

I tried ESO beta last weekend. While I love their map design (towers and keeps really feel like towsers and keep, not some legoland fortress.) While the frame rates were solid, the skill lag was ridiculous and nearly unplayable, and there wasn’t hundreds of people on the map. It would take seconds for skills to fire. After an hour or so I went back to playing GW2 cause the controls were just too unresponsive. I do wish Anet would take a page out of ESO’s UI design. Let me get rid of the stuff I don’t want to have cluttering my screen.

morrolan.9608:

Oozo.7856:

I agree with Amins and Jax. GW2 has superior combat and control of your character. GW2 also has a superior UI. ESO has a superior PvP map and basic “world versus world” mechanics (no hard rezzing, no aoe cap). About the AoE cap. Ranged AoE damage is typically pretty low. Melee point blank AoE is higher but nothing on the order of the damage AoEs can do in GW2. Single target attacks do more damage than AoE attacks in ESO (as it should be). They just hit more people (as it should be).

Agree with the comments about ESO damage, they are as it should be.

However on the UI I’d actually argue that ESO is superior because the base UI is minimalist but it can be modded to exactly what you want it to be unlike GW2.

Yes, it’s moddable. But that comes with problems of it’s own. For example, you can see your enemy’s magicka and stamina with a mod and there is currently controversy that you could even use the mods with other third party programs to do things like auto-interrupt casts.

The mod situation in WoW was horrible. There were certain mods that put you at a serious disadvantage if you did not use them yourself. Let’s not even talk about Rift which had a built in macro/scripting language that was sophisticated enough to play the game (and play it well by just pressing one button – too much automation). WAR also had mods that you could use to automate many things. For example, if you had an ability that only worked after a parry then you could set up a macro that automatically used that ability if you parried.

I actually like GW2’s restriction against mods and macros.

Oozo.7856:

I actually like GW2’s restriction against mods and macros.

Ditto – it required you to use.. you know.. gameplay skills…

Julie Yann.5379:

I tried ESO beta last weekend. While I love their map design (towers and keeps really feel like towsers and keep, not some legoland fortress.) While the frame rates were solid, the skill lag was ridiculous and nearly unplayable, and there wasn’t hundreds of people on the map. It would take seconds for skills to fire. After an hour or so I went back to playing GW2 cause the controls were just too unresponsive. I do wish Anet would take a page out of ESO’s UI design. Let me get rid of the stuff I don’t want to have cluttering my screen.

It was a stresstest, lag like that should be expected during stresstests, because servers get stressed more than usual.

Oozo.7856:

Yes, it’s moddable. But that comes with problems of it’s own. For example, you can see your enemy’s magicka and stamina with a mod and there is currently controversy that you could even use the mods with other third party programs to do things like auto-interrupt casts.

ZOS won’t allow that. As for seeing enemies majicka and stamina I don’t see why that is a problem, other games allow you to see all that info in PvP.

morrolan.9608:

Oozo.7856:

Yes, it’s moddable. But that comes with problems of it’s own. For example, you can see your enemy’s magicka and stamina with a mod and there is currently controversy that you could even use the mods with other third party programs to do things like auto-interrupt casts.

ZOS won’t allow that. As for seeing enemies majicka and stamina I don’t see why that is a problem, other games allow you to see all that info in PvP.

Health is fine (obviously). Magicka and Stamina, I disagree with. Let’s say you run across someone fighting someone else or just coming off of a fight. You shouldn’t be able to see if they are a total sitting duck or not.

There was server lag in the past beta cause they were testing the upper limits of the Campaign Maps

Its about like how ya get Server lag in the really massive battles in EB for example.

FPS wise it was fine…

the UI is awful though, This is probably more to do with them making a Console MMO…I’ve found the generally the reason UI’s end up being bad in games on PC is because they were done on Console as well. Hopefully a lot of it can be modded out though.

I’ll agree with anyone that GW2 has better character control and movement over ESO.

But i’d still prefer ESO because its closer to DAOC then GW2..

Things like the AOE cap and down system really really suck in GW2.

AS for TTK Ozoo, I think that has more to do with the current scaling right now for people below 50.

It seems once you hit 50, you get a massive bump in stats. For example going from 49-50 gave some people like 700 more armor cause of how the scaling works.

As for ESO… ughhh… not a great AAA MMO especially for the $240 it will cost to play it in the first year.

Also anyone else notice this is now like a talking point for some people “Yea look at this game that cost $240 a year” instead of saying $15 a month.

I can tell you right now…..I’ve never decided against playing an MMO because of $15 a month…I play an MMO based on one thing….if I enjoy it..If I do..I pay the money.

A Monthly fee doesn’t matter at all.

Also the next beta which is like the 14th from what i understand will include the newest build in the game.

The one that’s been in the past beta’s has been like a Build from like 3 months ago..With them fixing only the most basic “crashes” for example.

Oozo.7856:

Health is fine (obviously). Magicka and Stamina, I disagree with. Let’s say you run across someone fighting someone else or just coming off of a fight. You shouldn’t be able to see if they are a total sitting duck or not.

Like for example a big green arrow alongside their nameplate that says ‘here → kill this uplevel’?

Julie Yann.5379:

I tried ESO beta last weekend. While I love their map design (towers and keeps really feel like towsers and keep, not some legoland fortress.) While the frame rates were solid, the skill lag was ridiculous and nearly unplayable, and there wasn’t hundreds of people on the map. It would take seconds for skills to fire. After an hour or so I went back to playing GW2 cause the controls were just too unresponsive. I do wish Anet would take a page out of ESO’s UI design. Let me get rid of the stuff I don’t want to have cluttering my screen.

ESO is in beta and the devs have been testing all sorts of different things each week. Earlier in the beta hundreds of players were together in mass battles that had virtually zero lag and zero fps drop. It seems that almost everybody had lag issues this last weekend, so most likely they tried something and it didn’t work very well. ZeniMax has been constantly trumpeting the ability to ESO to handle huge numbers of players at the same time so I’d practically guarantee that they will have that fixed by launch or soon after. It’s probably the key virtue of ESO and an obvious swipe at GW2 and other MMOs that choke on the mass battles that many players enjoy.

There may indeed be some aspects of ESO that turn me off (not sure I’m going to like the combat ability mechanism), but I’d bet that lag won’t be one of them.

There was only really bad lag on the campaigns that had population caps. The campaigns lower down the list had no lag. And yes, of course they are pushing their systems to see what they can handle so they know where to set the population caps.

The lag you experienced was similar to the lag you would get in GW2 to this day if you are near a large threeway battle for SM.

And, to imagine the scale of the PvP zone, imagine a zone with 10+ keeps all the size of SM separated by long distances.

Cactus.2710:

Well, at least you have to give ZeniMax credit for paying attention to feedback from players during the beta and for addressing issues quickly. I think ZeniMax has probably already changed more things in ESO in a couple of months than ANet has done in WvW in the 18 months since launch, and there is actually evidence that the ESO devs care.

Keep in mind it is a Beta and they can change things easily. Once they release they are going to get bogged down like every MMO studio. In dev circles it is called a tail. When a product has a little tail (users and ever growing patched code), they are light, quick and efficient. As the tail grows, adapting to player requests becomes increasing difficult. Essentially the game a company ships with is the game they will have down the road. ESO is already 90% the game it will be two years from now… warts and all. Once it goes into the wild, the engine will be tweaked, bugs will be patched and minor features will be added just like every other MMO.

Before we crown it king of WvW, lets see how ESO does with a few million subs logging in at once. Many an MMO has cracked including some big ones like WoW and SWToR under new user load. ESO may be a credible alternative to GW2 and I certainly welcome the competition but my experience with ESO so far has left me cold to the game.

This game can only survive if it focuses on the Guild content:

1- Guild versus Guild game mode
2- Guild ranking system for WvW
3- Guild focused matchup system (Guild pledge allegiance to protect one of three alliance)
3- More Guild Missions, Puzzles, etc
4- Guild Quests on PvE map
5- Guild Halls

Without this the game will keep losing it’s original players for PvP game modes AND PvE.

This game is Guild Wars 2 not Server Wars 2, we can sacrifice server pride if we replace it with guild alliance pride.

i love how my thread turned into ESO VS GW2