Guild Wars 2

Macilien.3078:

Afton.1326:

All servers are international. If you are fortunate enough to have a server in the language you prefer and in a nearby location, then that is great, but by virtue of this you may also have a greater challenge with coverage. Leave it, work to improve coverage, or just accept that night coverage is not your strength.

It’s not like that the community decided to make some servers into unofficial German servers, this is an official distinction, which results in structural differences (e.g. available coverage). A weighted tick would address that, it would still give the side with the greater coverage an advantage as they can raze t3s and upgrade their own structures uncontested, but it wouldn’t be as bad as it is now.

It sounds like you are getting fair matchups when you play during your prime time hours. If you don’t care about rank, then the unbalanced off hour matchups that you complain about should be less of an issue for you.

We are currently getting one of two tiers, in the upper tier are the fun and challenging matchups, were we get to actually get to fight something, but we still lose ranking points due to our night coverage. The lower tier is extremely boring as we hardly get any fights and if we do they learn very fast and avoid us, but we still loose ranking points because we can’t keep that dominance up during the night. Unfortunately we now keep getting the lower tier matchup most of the time which is neither fun for us nor most of our opponents.

As far as ticks goes, I would just like similar capturing to have similar benefits regardless of time of day. If you leave your maps unattended, and lose many ‘daytime’ gains, this is working as designed (at the moment). If a dozen players or whatever are taking over half your assets because you can’t muster enough appeal to get half that many players of your own on defense – then that is on you. If you mean that smaller groups’ actions are less valued, it would still mean that those who play when fewer play (i.e., often ‘off’ hours) are still not being rewarded on equal terms for their playtime.

As I said a weighted tick means that each players contribution is valued equally. Imagine a 30 men guild zerg, first when all maps are full, they can make certainly a contribution but none that will decide the matchup, now image that same guild zerg when only 10 people are on the other servers, they can conquer everything with little to no opposition, so if you want equal rewards as you say you have to scale it down for the later group.

Yes, there are German servers, but this is referring to the main language of the sever and not the nationalilty of the server. Anyone, anywhere, whether they come from one of the German speaking countries or not, can join such servers – and even form guilds where German is not their main language of communication. This is the same for whatever language is the main one for a server and certainly not particular to the German servers.

Sure, most players are from Germany I would imagine, but this is all beside the point in this regard because WvW is part of a world-wide system where all servers are scored on equal terms.

Any alternative to this that builds on notions of area restrictions or national or regional biases – or that uses a scoring system that essentially means that equivalent contributions will not be of equal value for those who play off-peak hours – will unhinge the cornerstone of playing on equal terms, when and where you want in this game.

Although I may not agree with everything you propose, I think discussion of the options is constructive (although I am not holding my breath for changes). As people have been saying, the expansion should shake things up at least.

Macilien.3078:

Afton.1326:

The more important thing is that you do not have to stay on a German server if you do not like its 24h coverage. People choose their servers for all sorts of reasons. If you choose a German server because you prefer the language but also are of the opinion that the language is a factor in limiting 24h coverage – then you have to weigh the pros and cons. You could prefer the former or the latter and stay or go, respectively,

So you’re pretty much declaring all national servers pointless and we should leave them if we want to be competetive? I don’t care much where our server is ranked as long as it ensures that we get fair and fun matchups.

- or, if you want to live with both, you could work towards recruiting oceanics.

I don’t want our server to be the top nightcap server, I want fair and fun matchups which the current system does not provide.

To want to, on the other hand, devalue every player’s contribution who plays at an ‘off’ time is not a good solution.

The point of a weighted tick is that groups of equal size can have an equal impact no matter when they can play.

All servers are international. If you are fortunate enough to have a server in the language you prefer and in a nearby location, then that is great, but by virtue of this you may also have a greater challenge with coverage. Leave it, work to improve coverage, or just accept that night coverage is not your strength.

It sounds like you are getting fair matchups when you play during your prime time hours. If you don’t care about rank, then the unbalanced off hour matchups that you complain about should be less of an issue for you.

As far as ticks goes, I would just like similar capturing to have similar benefits regardless of time of day. If you leave your maps unattended, and lose many ‘daytime’ gains, this is working as designed (at the moment). If a dozen players or whatever are taking over half your assets because you can’t muster enough appeal to get half that many players of your own on defense – then that is on you. If you mean that smaller groups’ actions are less valued, it would still mean that those who play when fewer play (i.e., often ‘off’ hours) are still not being rewarded on equal terms for their playtime.

Otherwise, I would certainly welcome some bigger shakeup and redesign to WvW that, among other things, addresses distribution disparities across the board by Anet

Kaiser.9873:

Afton.1326:

I would much prefer that my actions matter just as much no matter what the time of day I am able to play. If the servers are international, then playng my prime time (oceanic) should be just as valuable as when anyone else plays.

All servers are open 24h and have equal opportunity to diversify their coverage – regardless of language and EU/US server location.

This would be true if the population of OCX, SEA, and EU were larger, however with a very limited number of players in those timezones there just isn’t enough to go around.

As it stands the contribution of non-NA players on NA servers is far higher for some servers than others. This imbalance leads to a large amount of consternation among servers that do not have a population of the non-NA players.

Ideally there would be some shuffling amongst the non-NA playerbase to even out non-NA population amongst the servers. Lacking that there will continue to be complaints about the disparity.

I’m not sure what’s not true about what I wrote. The opportunity is still equal even though there is not an even distribution. I also wish there was more balance with this for the health of the game but I file it under wanting fairer distribution across servers regardless of time (and wouldn’t wan’t any solution to involve biasing against players whose prime time is not that of the majority).

Macilien.3078:

coglin.1867:

Well because it is indeed a fact that no matter where you are located, you have equal opportunity to access any server. Regardless of what language you speak. It would likely cause some communication issues. That doesn’t change the fact that everyone has equal opportunity to access to every server.

The implication that this fact has any practical relevance is still ridiculous. Most people simply won’t join a server if they can’t properly communicate with most of the server’s population, especially not if that server is traditionally weak during their playtime, but if it is all the same to you, why don’t you join a German server right now?

The more important thing is that you do not have to stay on a German server if you do not like its 24h coverage. People choose their servers for all sorts of reasons. If you choose a German server because you prefer the language but also are of the opinion that the language is a factor in limiting 24h coverage – then you have to weigh the pros and cons. You could prefer the former or the latter and stay or go, respectively, – or, if you want to live with both, you could work towards recruiting oceanics. To want to, on the other hand, devalue every player’s contribution who plays at an ‘off’ time is not a good solution.

coglin.1867:

Macilien.3078:

Afton.1326:

All servers are open 24h and have equal opportunity to diversify their coverage – regardless of language and EU/US server location.

This statement is outright ridiculous, 95% of all German speakers live in Europe, even if you consider people who learned German as a foreign language still a vast majority lives in Europe. If you look at English on the other hand there are many more time zones with people who can communicate in English, so how can you consider this equal opportunity?

Well because it is indeed a fact that no matter where you are located, you have equal opportunity to access any server. Regardless of what language you speak. It would likely cause some communication issues. That doesn’t change the fact that everyone has equal opportunity to access to every server.

Exactly. As an international game, player groups and guilds whose language is not represnnted by one of the server’s can choose to play on any server: any player anywhere can play on any server (barring lock-outs). I can understand that it is frustrating to be on a server with poor 24h coverage – but this is one of the built in challenges of having worldwide WvW servers. The proposal of devaluing the value of my contributions and every other player who cannot play at a certain time is far more unfair. It would be fundamentally game-breaking for me anyway.

I would much prefer that my actions matter just as much no matter what the time of day I am able to play. If the servers are international, then playng my prime time (oceanic) should be just as valuable as when anyone else plays.

All servers are open 24h and have equal opportunity to diversify their coverage – regardless of language and EU/US server location.

I’m also curious about this. I used that address to report an exploit about ten days ago and did not receive a response. I don’t expect a personal reponse on the matter but some sort of auto-comfirmation or something would be nice to get – to indicate that it was received. That is, if it still is the right address.

I would be interested in skins that could be applied to individual pieces of gear or weapons.

I prefer to mix and match if possible. If I had one or two slots that just weren’t gelling with the rest, I wouldn’t mind spending a few gems to complete a look.

I would never purchase a whole outfit or tonic anyway. So uncreative and dull in my opinion. Anything that could promote looking less like others would be appreciated.

Astraea.6075:

Afton.1326:

Considering that the change that led to this problem should not have even come close to being implemented, any fix of it should have happened yesterday as far as expectations go for anyone who cares about this.

If a task is to be done, consider who is available to do it, what is needed to assure its proper functioning, and estimate how long it should take to do this – and factor in more time for contingencies. I cannot believe that the time needed for task completion would be so unfathomable that it couldn’t be estimated within a week (after 2 years of your production of this game). If this is a problem, consider investing some of your income from BL chests into proper manpower and organization.

Even if Anet does not have the resources to fix the problem quickly, not being able to give a seemingly forthright response about when it will be done just puts more salt in the wound.

Nothing personal meant here. The problems are obviously systemic.

Seriously? Releasing a new build into Production is not simply a matter of allocating resources to develop it and estimating how long it will take to build. There will be processes that have to be followed (some of which Gaile has already mentioned, such as localization) that make it a lot harder to estimate a possible release date.

The problems are obviously systemic? How so? The change is likely to be released in the next few days, if so, this will mean that Anet would have taken less than two weeks to design the solution and implement it into the live environment in response to the negative feedback from the CE revamp.

This time-frame is perfectly reasonable given this is not a game-breaking bug that requires an emergency fix. Yes, it is important to people (myself included, my last gold -> gem purchase was for 250 gems), but from Gaile’s statements it’s obvious that ANet are giving it a high priority, so I’m failing to see any “obviously systemic” problems.

This is less relevant now but I will try to explain it since you asked:

Giving “soon” as an estimation of when a key change will take place, is very poor.

Whatever the process of making this change involves, Anet should be able to estimate to within a week (i.e., not necessarily carry out within a week) of when it will be expected to be completed. Not being able to give this sort of precision would indicate to me that it is simply not prioritized enough. For a company not to be able to produce and reveal such a working deadline, even with all the contingencies taken into account, reflects poor management or a lack of priority or, othewise, perhaps a lack of transparency.

The systemic aspect concerns all of the above, as oppossed to an individual. I presume it wasn’t just Gaile’s fault, or any other hard-working individual at Anet’s fault, but that something in their organization wasn’t working effectively if being able to produce a more specific time was impossible for this type of task. There are of course tasks in this world that are difficult to estimate with any precision, but I don’t buy that this sort of task should fall into that category (for a company that has their act together).

This was all addressing the discussion of “soon” being an acceptable timeframe.

However, if I understand correctly, they have been more specific about when the fix will happen. This is good. If they are able to fix this within the next few days, that is good. Notwithstanding that when they announced the fix, it should have included an estimation of when it will be ready (e.g., within “7 days” or in “7-10 days” ) and then make sure that that deadline is met.

tl;dr: Anet should be able do be more specific than “soon” when it comes to when critical/highly anticipated changes shoud be expected. Regarding this fix in particular, good if they actually get it done within a few days – just be more specific in the future about when it can be expected.

I think that GW2 is fundamentally a great game.

Its combat design, its take on questing, not having to compete for loot and gathering resources, the design of the zones, and WvW are all things that really attract me to the game and make me care about it in the longer term.

I’m not a game hopper but see a game as a valuable investment in my entertainment future. If I don’t feel like a game has a future or that it cares about my opinions on its direction, it affects my investment in it (and thus my desire to find another game to make mine).

For me anyway, seeing the game go in a direction that prioritizes new, temporary players rather than investing its seemingly scarce development resources in enough steady content that I consider essential for maintaining a veteran player base (e.g, new PVE and PVP maps, new quests, new, reasonably attainable in-game armor/weapon designs) is disappointing.

I have gotten my share of entertainment value from this game by the way, if you look at at it from a monetary perspective, but this isn’t saying much – and is the least I would want from an MMORPG. I am willing to pay more to get more (of the kinds of things I want) and would never, in other word, expect 60 bucks worth of entertainment to keep me occupied for more than a few months. As a continuing game, however, I want the exchange to continue – more content from you, followed by more money from me. There has been some of this but not enough.

I guess it comes down to not going out without a fight. I can express what I’m not happy with for a little while here but if the priorities of the game continue to not engage me, that’s it. Bad fit is a bad fit. I’ll just move on.

Until then, I do care about GW2 – and any little nudges I can make to encourage that the game’s future goes in my direction I will make for now.

Considering that the change that led to this problem should not have even come close to being implemented, any fix of it should have happened yesterday as far as expectations go for anyone who cares about this.

If a task is to be done, consider who is available to do it, what is needed to assure its proper functioning, and estimate how long it should take to do this – and factor in more time for contingencies. I cannot believe that the time needed for task completion would be so unfathomable that it couldn’t be estimated within a week (after 2 years of your production of this game). If this is a problem, consider investing some of your income from BL chests into proper manpower and organization.

Even if Anet does not have the resources to fix the problem quickly, not being able to give a seemingly forthright response about when it will be done just puts more salt in the wound.

Nothing personal meant here. The problems are obviously systemic.

Although I haven’t complained about it previously, I have been extremely doubtful of all the reasons that Anet has given for the silly changes they have been making lately. This change undermines my trust in any of the reasons you give for any changes.

I can only interpret this as a tactic that has been deliberately introduced into the game to get players to spend more on gems than they actually want to. I don’t believe that it was changed for the sake of convenience. I am losing my trust in your company.

Stop this garbage.

Give me honest reasons for wanting to financially support your company – such as seeing more changes that benefit me (an experienced MMO player who wants more content!) rather than the eternal dumbing down for the morons that seem to now be your target customers and the petty money grubbing.

The downed state is just another little challenge to face in the game – like when you you try a new weapon or face a new boss. For me, it was neat to discover that I actually got a second chance instead of just dying. After a few times with it you should be able to figure out what buttons to push to try to reach the desired result. It’s certainly easy enough to practice the downed state skills… You’ll (nearly) die dozens if not hundreds of times – or you could practice it on the dummies in the pre-pvp area.

I’m also disappointed with this change. Less rather than more build homogeneity please.

I want more build diversity options and would prefer that you didn’t take away one of the very few options we have had. It matters to be able to put a little more offence on a mainly defensive build or vice-versa. Having this option matters to my gameplay and also to the feeling that I have more control over my builds.

All these players who would be confused by something as basic as switching a gem should not be catered to.

Instead, I would suggest trying to appeal to more WvW (and PVE) players who are turned off by the lack of stat diversity options in PVP (if they are anything like me).

This may pose more of a challenge for your balancing team – but see it as one of the challenges that you should be ready to tackle if your goal is to offer PVP as a more cohesive component of an MMORPG game.

If this pick is indeed providing bonus materials that other picks do not, it means that a BiS item is now exclusive to the gem store. This is an awful precedent regardless of how unimportant the material may seem.

Since in-game gold can be obtained via paying real world money and exchanging the gems for it, anything that can be bought on the TP can be obtained through a credit card and need not be earned through actually playing the game (beyond TP purchases). I’m sure I don’t have to point out that the advantages (even indirect) of items available through the TP and gem store are major facilitators for many “win” (win = reaching a key goal within the game) conditions. You can obtain the best weapons, materials that significantly reduce the game time and effort needed to max a craft and make the best gear, consumables, skins, pets, etc. These are things that many players see as achievements in themselves, but the prestige associated with it is low in this game because there’s certainly nothing to mark whether or not, for example, a certain legendary was bought via gold exchanged from credit card bought gems.

The fact that gold can also be exchanged for gems, and thus can be used to buy anything available at the gem store, is not important in this regard in my opinion. If something can be bought on the TP or gem store via a credit card gem exchange – that is all that matters in terms of being able to bypass actually earning the items in game. Again, it is the possibility of doing this that undermines the fairness: the possibility of someone acquiring the pick through gold to gem exchange (or otherwise in game somehow) does not negate the easy (unfair?) advantage that credit card purchasers get as they circumvent having to put in the in-game effort.

Personally, in principle, the idea of being able to potentially buy such advantages does not sit well at all. In practice, I use denial and just try to have fun, not caring much about how anybody else got their stuff.

However, this little pick seems to be pushing the envelope. I feel like it is commercially underhanded by purposefully making previously supposedly ‘permanent’ items obsolete (or at least less advantageous) by later releasing better versions. The improved versions are not improved because of market developments (for example, as with a tv) – no revolution in coding occurred that made it possible for them to do this now.

This is just a lousy business practice in my opinion – and something which is harder to ignore than my above issue with being able to buy gold. Please do not go further down this road.

I hope this pick thing is just a misunderstanding. This is an ok game for now, don’t muddle it up with this nonsense.

Interesting. “Amongst” isn’t unnatural at all for me anyway (either written or spoken), having grown up in New England, but, as someone mentioned, it can depend on what input you’re exposed to (in school or amongst* those you associate with).

“Whilst” on the other hand seems antiquated in my American English, although it is still quite common in the UK (and other commonwealth countries) from what I gather.

I’ve also been experiencing frequent laginess with GW 2 in the past couple days — short 1-3 second delays every few seconds or so where the other players, npcs, and skills stutter or freeze. Seems to be happening in whatever area of the game (Fort Aspenwood server) I am in. Gameplay is difficult. I haven’t had any issues like this in the past 2-3 months I’ve been playing this game. My internet connection seems fine with other applications. I’m in New Zealand.