Guild Wars 2

Oh and everything upgrades too quickly, probably because the yaks move too quickly and spawn too often. Slow them down or increase the time between their spawns.

Some thoughts/feedback.

The guild I’m in was actually able to run together since about 15-20 of us got the invitation and were all on YB, so we tried it out. First, the queues were insane because of the stream/new content, but once we were in, I saw a few things that need improvement.

Walls: They’re way too high. You can build an AC on top of them without being able to counter-siege them in any way. ACs can’t reach, ballistas can’t reach, not even Omegas can reach them. Sure, you can build several of the new bubble siege, but only if you spend 60 points to be able to stop AC fire during use. Also, it gives the defending team a huge height advantage, so that trebuchets that they build can easily reach any trebuchets you build to take the wall down.

Keep Lord health: Too much health. Takes too long to take it down, especially with the different AoE abilities that they have. Would be impossible to take with enemy numbers around, especially if you’re running >20.

Keep Rings: The ring on the Lord of keeps is much too large. It’d be too easy to troll the ring (keep it from capping). Even SMC has a regular-sized ring. Make it the same size as current keep rings please.

Distances: Takes much too long to get from point to point. Especially between camps and objectives, so that if you lose your siege, you have to run too far to get more supply. And if you wipe, you basically have to run 5 minutes at least to get anywhere.

Verticality: Stuff is too high/low. Steep ledges, steep hills, etc. I get strategic geography, but much of it is just eye candy and isn’t functional.

Beyond those specific points, the maps just don’t seem conducive to fights. It seems as if there’s too much of a focus on bunker tactics and holding objectives easily with very little effort, with some random content (shrines, laser thing). The only fight zone seems to be the oasis, which has so much visual eye candy that it’s laggy without fights.

I foresee that EB will be bumping and the BLs avoided except maybe someone arranging a fight in the western desert area or in the south between the towers.

pure gold, thank you op

tym.3791:

What really makes me mad, not only is this guy cheating, and making us look bad on FA, I am smart enough to see what we on FA have in store.
YB is gonna be MAD, and we are gonna pay for it dearly. Not only will they golem rush all out stuff, they are gonna camp and defend it. Would not surprise me to see yb get a way point in our eb keep.

Its gonna be a tough couple of weeks.

topkek

oh noes, an eb pug group was beaten by two guild groups. that never happens!

holy trinity of keyboard turner, keyboard clicker, and racist. not to mention wrong about acquiring any new guilds on FA. baddie

get rekt

lol at the first pic chat box, “fa always cheats,” along with claims that the entire server zoom hacks. Guess it’s easier to blame someone else than deal with your own failings.

In any case, a significant number of FA WvWers have recorded and reported this hacker, along with sending in video evidence of their activities. Hopefully will be dealt with soon.

But obviously we organized it in the first place /sarcasm.

Boots.2849:

Curo.2483:

I heard that FA paid 80k gold to transfer IoJ people. Just a thing I heard. Not claiming it’s evidence.

Looking at GW2Spidy gem price history combined with the leaked details of conversations FA had with IoJ leadership during that time. FA was willing to fully pay for up to 35 players from IoJ. This equates to roughly 8.5-10k gold. A number that is well within the expected range and nowhere near the rumoured numbers.

lol that was an interesting time. At that point, we were discussing the nuclear option of mass recruitment. With quite a few ex-IoJ on FA from IoJ’s previous exodus, it was a solid potential recruitment ground. An insane offer was extended and politely refused, in the name of server community.

Word was out, though, and many of IoJ’s guilds ended up moving to FA in the following weeks and months. I don’t have the exact amount of transfer assistance given on hand, but it certainly wasn’t close to 80k.

I will say, though, that no more overtures were made after the first one, and all of the IoJ guilds approached FA with the desire to move, and asked if we might be able to help them. With or without transfer assistance, they were set on moving to FA. We just felt it was generous to help them as we could. It was the same story for 95% of FA’s transfers.

If you want to find a way to attract guilds to your server, look at the example of BG, FA’s recent transfer drive (including the now-retired transfer assistance to FA expats wanting to return, usually to play with old friends), or Mag’s recent rise. Each of them retained (most) of the guilds that they helped to transfer.

You should register on the FA forums and post this into the Introductions section on it. They’re one of the most active server forums among the NA servers, so you’ll get replies pretty readily with the proper advice.

It should be noted that a comparatively large portion of FA’s population is WvW, so most guilds that you find will be more involved in WvW than in PvE or PvP. Having said that, there are still plenty of PvX guilds to choose from.

Looking forward to playing with you.

It was spammed on the FA forums for about a week and a half ahead of the actual event. If you’re not on the forums, I’d recommend registering to get more involved and know when community events like this are done: www.fort-aspenwood.com

Semifinals starting! Tune in to see who the hard carry of FA is!

#hype

Semifinals starting! Tune in to see who the hard carry of FA is!

Tune into the FA Hard Carry Dueling Tournament now to watch a handful of FA PvPers brawl it out for a purse of 500g and bragging rights.

Tune into the Twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/acquire_fort_aspenwood

Tune into the FA Hard Carry Dueling Tournament now to watch a handful of FA PvPers brawl it out for a purse of 500g and bragging rights.

Tune into the Twitch stream: http://www.twitch.tv/acquire_fort_aspenwood

Bump this shizz. Not sure why servers that have a small WvW population (T5+, arguably T3+) have a Very High denomination as compared to T1 or T2. Nor why DB should have a Full status when FA, YB, and JQ lack such a status despite having a similar WvW population.

Especially considering the fact that there’s literally no differentiating factor between servers besides WvW. In every other game mode, server is irrelevant. So why not base it off tier placement, in the least? Give Bronze league High or lower, Silver Very High or lower (never Full for Silver), then adjust Gold league server according to WvW population, not PvE or PvP population. To be honest, I’m not sure how we’d measure WvW population as it’s constantly in flux, but the current measures are not healthy for WvW as a whole, T2, and/or the lower tiers especially.

Unless depopulation of lower tiers with simultaneous filling of top tiers is a scheme to make T2/T3 more competitive while shutting down Bronze league to consolidate players. In which case, I shake my head and think WHAT A DISASTER ©.

Atticus.7194:

Come on after all the underhanded stuff they’ve done (bought guilds, used hackers, 2v1’ed YB for weeks on end ect ect) it’s about time karma caught up with them.

Since when is helping guilds who want to leave their server underhanded? There’s literally no commanders who support or utilize hackers. And to be frank, YB started this madness by threatening to push servers down to T3. The YB focus wasn’t coordinated at all with the other servers. It just worked because the enmity for YB is a shared feeling among many.

Yeah, nope.

Liston.9708:

At this point in the life of the game, I don’t think servers rise much on their own. YB was consistent t3-t4 and got transfers during the last tourney to bump them to t2. Then we got more transfers…..

I suppose a server could rise from t8 on its own, but at some point you need transfers or the servers around you need to crumble to rise much.

Stop being so kitten reasonable, you’re supposed to fervently defend your server and brag about the YB community.

Inb4 fixed in two years.

Don’t ask ANet to remove them. Unless it’s entirely kittening up the game mode (which it isn’t tbh, if it’s still very annoying), it’s not going to happen.

I’m just waiting for them to nerf siege disablers like they said they were considering. Just half the disabler’s radius, range, and duration (30s max, preferably 20-25s). Maybe make it a 1s channel to allow for people to actually be able to reflect, bubble, or swirling winds to counter the disabler’s deployment.

Don’t ask ANet to remove them. Unless it’s entirely kittening up the game mode (which it isn’t tbh, if it’s still ver annoying), it’s not going to happen.

I’m just waiting for them to nerf siege disablers like they said they were considering. Just half the disabler’s radius, range, and duration (30s max, preferably 20-25s). Maybe make it a 1s channel to allow for people to actually be able to reflect, bubble, or swirling winds to counter the disabler’s deployment.

If you’re considering a new server, check out the vids Chaba posted above to get a taste of why FA is such a great place.

You’ll find yourself having bags of fun. And don’t you doubt, they’ll fill you up.

7v8v9, meanwhile 1v2v4 and 3v5v6 please. Why can’t nearly impossible RNG matchups work in T1’s favor for once. YB for T1.

Just saying, lol’d pretty hard when I saw 7v11v13, 8v10v12, and 9v14v15 for match-ups. Either RNG was expanded to allow more match-ups (because the chances for these was pretty low) or somebody really kittened up the match-ups using manual selections.

If the latter is true, there have been SO many better times to use manual selections for match-ups that it’s simply sad and pathetic that the only recent time it’s been used was managed so absolutely poor.

Truly, a feat to be admired for its stupidity.

Couple things I’d like to see implemented that came from the Silverwastes map is a possible auto-repair and auto-tagging of siege functions.

Instead of running upgrades on a tower or keep, you can select an “upgrade” that drains the supply in the tower/keep to repair it automatically. The upgrade can be started and stopped by whomever. Same rate of repair (10 supply = 10 supply repaired), done by the available worker(s). Best case scenario would be to have this running once all other upgrades are completed to help repair keeps without forcing WvW players to do this menial task over and over again.

Besides this, you can put in an upgrade that takes 50-55 minutes to finish, no matter what, and tags all the siege within the keep. Can also be started/stopped by anyone. Only drains supply at completion (can be 200-300 supply).

Cut the boring kitten out of WvW like repairing, and tagging siege to allow for more of the primary feature of the game mode: PvP combat.

Yet more FAers have returned home to play with old friends. Isn’t it time for you to come home, too?

If any are looking for a new server with Spanish speakers, Por la Razón o la Fuerza is a fantastic chileno guild that embraces all Spanish speakers to fight for them. They kick kitten and take names every night on FA.

Just a taste: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5bzX3_eZIw#t=124

Contacta Cheloss.1453 si estás interesado.

Fix the kitten lag. Makes it unplayable. Get your kitten together ANet

Thou shalt only dispatch enemies at Hills’ catapult wall using Banish.

T1 is for blobfests where you lag out of existence. It’s also where bored players/guilds go to die. They want something better, more active, so they go T1. They realize it’s the same as where they came from, and quit game.

My advice, go/stay where your friends are. FA’s had a drive recently to bring back ex-FAers back to their home (FA) to play with old friends, and it’s been very successful because people know that while the game mode is/will be stale, playing with friends never is.

Got no friends? Get more involved with your current server’s community. Most servers have a tight-knit community at its core. Playing with people you know changes the dynamic of playing GW2.

P.S. drinking game: drink every time you see the word “community” on the WvW forums, both official and PvF forums.

With AKD joining YB, I think it’s safe to say their NA is nice and stacked. I’ll recommend future NA guilds wanting to join T2 to go SoS.

Count of peeps returning back home to FA is over 10 now. The siege masta is back as well, Fatalis.

Don’t hesitate, come home! Talk to drtoph.4857 about any transfer fund assistance you might need, and/or post in our public thread about this about coming back.

Tiffany.8576:

Liston.9708:

In the end – fun factor is the ONLY thing that really matters in a game.

Darn skippy!

This #FightsTier tho, brah. QQ. <3

Good thing that screenie doesn’t show the numbers behind you. I’ve seen the TC blob when you run tagged, it’s quite the blob.

I don’t want this to be a match-up thread though. Purpose of this thread is to talk about where guilds should go if they want to come in order to keep a balanced tier. Go to the PvF forums to argue about the match-up.

YB doesn’t need any more guilds for now. They’re burgeoning at the seams with their numbers in nearly every TZ except NA EST. That’s the thing to focus on.

declan.3968:

Why not just house GvG in T8 ? There’s no way you will move up if nobody goes for ppt.

Still needs to have WvW activity, and the bottom tiers won’t have the same kind of open field fighting activity as T2 does. Just would be boring.

GvG guilds don’t just GvG.

Granted, this is by oT, a NA EST guild, but the fight was during NA PST prime. Just a taste of the yummy bags to be gained during PST/OCX against the SG blobs.

Join for the fun, or the bags, or the community, or just to fight with friends. FA’s a great place to call home. Just ask one of the 10+ ex-FA who returned home in the last few weeks. They’re glad to be home.

Speaking of which, if you used to be on FA and you’re pining for home, post up in these public forums that you’d like to come home. We might even help your transfer over.

Cheers.

I think you’re the guy I verified into our TS tonight, so I’d like to welcome you to FA and hope you have tons of fun. I’d highly recommend registering on our highly active forums and introducing yourself. Our community is tight-knit and welcoming.

Welcome to the bag farm.

To be honest, T2 is quite balanced, with a couple notable exceptions.

The only TZs that are unbalanced are EU and late PST into early OCX. EU is because YB’s guild TC are quite good (hats off to you btw, had good fights when I play late EU) and don’t have a lot of competition when BOMB/TK don’t rally for FA, so they end up dominating. In that first week when TC would golem rush all the things, I was worried that you’d be ktraining like that every week, so I’m glad that you’ve settled into the groove of T2 and not done that.

As for the PST gap, it’s entirely SG. No one outside of T1 can match their 30+ guild group (with 15-20 pugs generally, as they run tagged) that they run in PST until early OCX, depending on how long their driver Mance stays up for overtime. Their blob can be effectively stopped by the few FA PST groups, but we never number higher than 30 ( 35 at the very most), and they log by 3 a.m. EST. SG tends to run til 4 a.m. at least and SoS tends to be pretty quiet during late PST these days, so SG just runs amok everywhere with their baddie blobs. In staying up and pulling overtime, they tend to just be PVDing and ktraining for little reason but to do it (they’ve got a solid lead in the week and neither FA/SoS really cares about winning the week in PPT).

Other than these guild groups in those TZs, there isn’t much of an issue. PAIN rebuilding SoS’ EU will make that TZ balanced and fine, but as long as Mance & SG continues their T1 coverage and blobbing, T2 will be heavily unbalanced in late PST into OCX. Good thing they’re bad and are easily farmed when people are on, but there isn’t too much to be done when they’re golem rushing with 30+ against 5-8 defenders.

I welcome the other recent transfers to YB, however, including TV and TT, as their activity in GvG is welcomed and their fights are fun. YB NA is now quite strong. SoS should get the next couple guild transfers in NA, as their NA could be padded out more.

I’ll yield to Luvpie’s recommendations as he is on SoS, but at this point in time this seems to be the recommendation:

Edit: With AKD’s transfer to YB, YB’s NA EST will be pretty stacked, and their SEA buffed. To keep somewhat of a balance, NA EST guilds should look to SoS.

EU guilds: SoS
NA EST guilds: SoS
NA PST guilds: SoS
OCX guilds: FA
SEA guilds: FA/SoS

FA could be a good home for you too. Really either FA or SoS. Both have plenty of guilds to choose to drive for, with strong, lasting histories, a close community, and kitten good fights. Depending on your TZ, FA may or may not be the easier/harder experience, as we tend to dominate fights in NA prime, some parts of SEA and EU, but struggle in OCX and late PST.

If you’re curious, stop in at our FA public WvW forums and tell us a bit about what you’re looking for, see where’d be the right fit. We’ve had others in the past looking to drive on a new server with a brand new set of circumstances to liven up play, and FA is a popular choice due to the strength of our pugs/militia and the wide variety of guild groups to run with. However, SoS is also a solid choice.

In any case, post up in that public section and we’ll answer any questions you’ve got.

Best of luck in your search and happy hunting.

Uplevels are accepted as a reality of WvW, but it’s highly recommended and suggested that you bring 80s to competitive play. This means that nearly every day except karma train Friday afternoons, you should be bringing your 80s. Thankfully, it’s super easy to level to 80 in less than a week (even faster with Edge of the Mists karma training), and even easier to consult accepted builds for WvW on the interwebs or server forums, if they exist.

Just take the time to level it to 80, then jump into WvW. It’ll be a much more rewarding experience and you’ll get a lot more from it. You’ll also live long enough to enjoy it.

Instanced OS with participants not relegated to those involved in the match-up, as the bare minimum. This alone would do wonders for the GvG community. Means that all the GvG guilds don’t have to stack in one tier, and might even be able to GvG those on their own server.

Only thing I can think of is requiring some amount of supply to refresh the siege decay timer, probably 1 or 2. And you’d probably have to put a button of the combat bar (probably in a utility or in the healing slot) to refresh the siege, instead of just manning it. That way, it’s a constant drain on those who use it. It makes sense, but it’s also rather unnecessary.

We at FA believe thoroughly in the distribution of wealth, and you will soon find your bags full from the drops we share in our zerg busting of baddies.

Come join the fun on FA. Check out our forums and talk to one of the recent transfers to FA, see how they like it. Nearly every one of them loves it here.

Also, if you’re ex-FA, you may be able to receive transfer assistance to COME HOME! If you miss home and you want to come and farm with your old friends, drop a line in the introduction section of the forums and we might be able to help you out.

Cheers.

Straegen.2938:

Basically nobody can roll across a map with impunity which is how it should be. GW2 should encourage this counter balance style of play. It is a lot of fun for sure.

T2 could be the next old T2 in terms of a great place to find great fights.

Don’t know what you’re smoking, but SoS’s OCX can still roll across a map with impunity. Sure, they’ve been softened some due to YB’s NA crew high on their rise to T2 overtiming to PPT for the win, but once they start sleeping decently, that OCX will retake its place as ktrain masters. They won’t be ticking 600 like when Mag was in the matchup, sure, but they’ll be 400+ undoubtedly. Just give it time.

In any case, most FA won’t be putting in any more hours than usual, so don’t expect us to pull overtime to pull an empty PPT win. We’ll stick to victory by bags, thank you very much.

I just hope that more YB guilds might form to give us the fights we crave. Thus far, only PAL, TC, and SG seem to give that. Every other group is a pug blob or havoc. YB is simply too much of a pug server to give T2 what it needs: guild play.

Considering most of its WvWers are in FoW, LOOT, or PoV, who don’t run organized rallies or run together beyond a 5-man party to cap camps, there’s little chance of YB as a server developing a guild-centric culture. All of its future organized guilds are going to be imports, unless the three aforementioned guilds splinter into more organized crews. And somehow I doubt that.

Also, the OP is the guy who complained about the lopsided matches with TC and JQ a few weeks back, when pretty much all of FA’s community was having a blast farming the T1 blobs. Suffice it to say, he’s out of touch with FA in general. My money says he’s not even on our forums. Get on it, friend: www.fort-aspenwood.com.

T2 still has a long ways to go. Unless YB sheds its PPT-centric meta and actually thinks “fight first, siege second” rather than the latter first, T2 will just become the mini-T1. SG’s transfer from JQ definitely won’t help. If YB blobbed before, they’ll be blobbing even worse now. Let’s hope PAL and TC rub off on the rest of YB.

As for SoS, it’s only a matter of time until YB’s NA stops staying up through OCX that their OCX pugs start ktraining all the BLs again. The same thing happened when FA first went T2. Close match, lots of people out there, mega PPTing and blobs everywhere. Then FA stopped overtiming, SoS starting mass recruiting, and we saw the real balance of the tier.

Give it a couple weeks.

Deli.1302:

I find that the best people to solve this issue are the celebrity commanders themselves.

Once you’ve gained celebrity commander status on your server and are able to rally large numbers onto your tag, you should be using that as an opportunity to give newer, lesser known commanders some exposure to the crowd. Train new commanders and let them lead the group that you’ve rallied. Pass the torch, so to speak.

This way, the celebrity commander doesn’t always have to be the one commanding which helps prevent him/her from burning out and in the mean time new commanders can rise up and eventually be able to rally large numbers by themselves.

If only it were so easy. The thing about seasoned commanders is that they know the field. I’m not talking about map politics either. I’m talking about knowing the people to whisper and who to talk to to get things done. I can easily jump down a few channels in TS, talk to someone for a short bit, then jump back. I’m also 100% familiar with TS3 and have CCOMs set up, etc. The portfolio of skills and knowledge that a commander needs to have to be decently organized and good is quite large. And quite frankly, many don’t care to learn them, knowing how difficult or stressful that it can be.

So I wish that others would tag up. My favorite moment is when I ask if anyone wants to take over my 20 to 30-man group on TS, a solid militia group made up of people from various good guilds and <80% of them on TS (which is a difficult thing to achieve), and all I get is crickets. I particularly enjoy commanding, but I much prefer leading competent people who know what they’re doing and require minimal commanding to get them to behave in the right fashion in a fight.

Pugmanding is too prone to burnout and utter frustration. Most, including myself, just go on pugmanding kicks for a short while, then go back to playing soloely with their guild group, running untagged, avoidng the use of siege.

1. Diminishing returns
2. Smaller AoE
3. Less range
4. Evadable by golems

Fix it. After being hit by 9 disablers in a row while using one Omega, this is just stupid. I couldn’t even evade it? What?

Xenesis.6389:

Lytalm.5673:

Coming from FA player, I want to say good game to SoS, TC, JQ and Mag. I hope for Mag that they drop down and have equal fight with other servers.

Time for my little rant :

Altho I “kinda” enjoyed the outnumbered fights (god knows there were a lot of those against SoS, TC and JQ) vs pug commander or organized guilds, it always made me sigh when we were having a good fight and then suddenly a bigger group showed up and assjammed us. I know I know, loot bags. But still, it killed it a bit for me and proved once again that numbers rule it all.

Also, coverage wars.

Meh it happens to all sides. PvP was at our garrison last night looking for fights, your 20? vs like 10 Rx? with a side helping of WS and then TLC to add some jam. Main pug zerg was on EBG trying to keep FA voltron in check which eventually had to come back to homebl to help.

I must’ve missed this, being too busy fighting MMA+TB+EA+pugs at SMC. At the time, there was RAGE and my militia group of probably 30-35, with 5-10 of those squirreling around not really active in the fights. That kittenjam was real. Yeah, yeah, MMA only had 15, TB 10, and EA somewhere in between 10-15, but add those up, plus pugs? RAGE also ended rally rather early (11ish EST), so then it was my militia group versus those three guilds. Voltron against whom? Had a blast though, tons of fun.

Anyways, to refocus the topic, it was a fun season for as much as I played, though I would’ve loved to experienced it without playing (or not playing, in reality) Mag every week. It was basically a 1 v 1 every week for FA and the other servers. However, I was rather surprised how well we fared all things considered.

Cheers to those we fought TC, JQ, SoS, Mag. BG, we never had the pleasure but I’m sure it would’ve been a brawl when our numbers were actually on.

Remove as many rewards from capping objectives in EotM as possible and maybe EotM would be a palatable replacement to WvW. Probably not, since organization would still be nearly impossible and it would undoubtedly be incredibly zergy. Roaming would be fine, but say goodbye to small scale. 15v15 would turn rather quickly into 80v80, and that’s just a lagfest where one group gets 1-pushed by the other.

Fact is, no one goes to EotM for the fights except guild groups looking to troll the EotM ktrain. So unless they closed the distances and removed all the champion/karma/experiece farms, it’ll still be a place for ktrain pug zergs that utterly avoid each other as much as possible.

How about we keep the thread on topic, about respectful thank you’s and ponies and magic rainbows made of smiles.

Fun times zerg busting.

FA kicks rocks. Really big rocks. And we don’t even get stubbed toes.

Chris.3290:

Johje Holan.4607:

FA doesn’t have any West Coast NA? Or are you all talkin about middle of the Pacific Ocean time?

FA slows down after 9pm PST and usually is a wasteland after 11:30/12 pm. Their South American guilds are EST or even 1-2 hours ahead of that so they roar I to NA prime, but most of their guild drivers are East Coast or something because the drop off is always sharp.

It’s like some said before, other than some differences in coverage (SoS in OCX and FA in EU) I think most T3-T4 servers can roll with us pretty well in T2

3 a.m. EST is when the last of our EST logs, and most PST don’t stay on much later than that because the SoS ktrain blob is generally starting to do its kitten then. FA PST would rather fight alongside fellow FA than defend doors.

NA primetime is pretty intense though, around 9 pm EST until 11 pm EST. Every weekend for the last few weeks, it’s all been queued up for the entirety of the time or at least on the brink of being so, and the fights are great. Very competitive, and while the fights around 9-10 pm EST tend to be around 15v15, 20v20, or at most 25v25, by 10:30/11 EST, both groups gain pugs to offset their losses and they become 35v35 or 40v40, more or less.

I foresee YB having trouble against these guild groups that run 15-20, as they only have one non-pug group with these numbers (PAL) as far as I know, so it’ll usually be 15+5/10 pugs versus 25-30 YB pugblob. That rarely ends well for the pugblob. Guild groups can sit in AC fire and be just fine, as long as they don’t have another guild group fighting them simultaneously.

So unless PAL is around, and I’ve never seen them fight so I can’t say how much they’d threaten some of SoS/FA guild groups, YB will be hiding in their keeps.

Now, I could be entirely wrong, and I do quite hope so, but that’s my prediction.