Guild Wars 2

Im semi against this idea too.
Throwing 2 servers together is disruptive – when we got linked and put in MU’s against unlinked servers our ability to give them a decent fight just took a nosedive for a couple of weeks (our score went up, but thats another story).
We’re very slowly beginning to get back to our previous level.
It just took a while to adjust to each other which is fine as a once off. It happening routinely would just get pretty tiresome fast. Honestly it was pretty frustrating initially, despite liking the folks we got linked with.
After the 5th or so move how bothered would you be trying to integrate the 2 communities?
EDIT:
Change it if necessary but it should be done with a degree of reluctance imo

Mixed Borderlands – yep i like desert.
World Linking Schedule – infrequently. Maybe as little as possible. Its just really disruptive and unless populations have changed drastically, i’d leave it be.
Deployable Mortars – Well … what purpose do they serve that isn’t covered by treb?
Wouldn’t be against a good means of destroying siege but mostly think its a waste of time and resources that wouldn’t add anything to the game.
Cannons – NNnnnnnnnnnnnoooooooooooo, just no. Noooo no no no no no.
I absolutely detest this idea, too much damage, too long a range, too significant in a fight.
It’d be a pain in the kitten to counter siege, could you even ballista it? Just an absolutely awful, terrible idea, i cant state strongly enough how much i hate this idea.
Repair Hammer – Meh

Anything siege related i basically have no interest in.
The siege side of the game is as interesting as its going to get (its not in the least bit interesting incidentally).

I’ve gotten randomly rooted a few times in wvw too.
Couldn’t say it was due to taunt, or anything else. I play a few classes so cant remember which it was (probably thief?) but definitely not ele.
I relogged to fix the problem.
Started happening to me around when alpine was reintroduced i’d say

Disappointing ……………………………………..

Damage fields across the board dont react well to changes in height.
Its the same with one of the mallyx abilities.

Trepidation Lost.3469:

we just want alpine back if dbl is in the way i’d rather it go

I dont really get why it would be one or the other.
Is there any server in the game that would fill up 3 bl’s these days?
Just convert alpine and the desert bl to eb style maps and have them open up as eb fills.
Each side having a keep (and ideally a wp most of the time) would push everyone closer together.
Close the maps and disable the points if the population to support them isn’t there and just leave eb as the default map.

I quite like it.
Having 3 versions of it is kind of excessive these days though.

I got pretty sick of the openness of the Alpine bl’s (and how tight the towers and keeps were).
I liked the bay camp, the ruins, the north camp and bay itself was quite good but all of them had a lot of line of sight and change of levels. The camp north of bay had its moments and i’ve had a pretty hilarious zerg fight around the jumping puzzle a couple of times. The rest of it was a wasteland and i’d struggle to think of a single great fight that took place in it despite spending hundreds of hours there . It was too open, it was just bland. And the bridges and stairs leading into hills were a far, far worse chokepoint than anything on the current bl’s. The bridge and door into the keep room in there were even worse.

FONGORE.7410:

“The difference is noticable and if your planning on hanging around for an extended period of time i’d upgrade.”

Trying not negative, but what kind of logic is that? Isn’t that basically telling people to pay for advantage, or worse pay to win? I personally would rather have a even playing field for everyone. Cause that is what competing in pvp in WvW is about.

Or at least it should be, and the reason I wont be “upgrading”. /rollseyes

Shrug
I didn’t design it.
I’d rather have a level playing field too just for a bit of variety but its not imo.
Elite specs are really kitten strong.

I’d disagree that base Guardian competes with Dragonhunter.
The new virtues are just really, really strong.
Its worth it just for that.
(having a decent ranged weapon in a ranged dominated meta helps too).

Reaper is so different to base Necro i guess its debatable.
I would have thought some other elite spec does the old necro’s job better than it nowadays though (mesmer?).

The difference is noticable and if your planning on hanging around for an extended period of time i’d upgrade.

stuck too : (

Is there anyone who’s progressing this story?
If i tried doing it a dozen times would it work once or twice?

Thesilentflute.8761:

^ a "GvG"er on strategy

There is no strategy in wvw eu side. The server with the higher offpeak presence wins, the end, no exceptions.
WvW matches are just different over here

I think it’d be pretty tough to police banner use. You’d probably have to go for an all or nothing approach with them really.
Still think the offensive aspect they offer is good enough that there should be no restriction. I think people are learning to cope with and counter them regardless so see no particular need.
Yeah the spectator aspect is important but it think the participant pov should be the no1 priority and i think some players or groups make much better use of them than others.

Has any guild ever tried getting every player to equip a minion summon type elite btw? Could imagine that being pretty hilarious and broken. Someone make it happen pls

I dont entirely get the meteor shower and tornado issue.
Can you cast tornado while channeling meteor shower or something?
Regardless i’d leave things like that to anet, if they see it as an exploit they’ll remove it, if they dont then its intended and fair game.

I think certain people being recognised / recognisable is kind of the price of ‘fame’ and it’ll only apply to particularly good guilds who should be able to overcome it when facing a less recognised group / guild.
If they dont it prob wont take long for the less recognised guild to receive the same treatment so … yeah.
I dunno, think it should be the kind of thing thats pre agreed.

Banner spam is slightly cheesy but it and rallies are a mechanic were kind of stuck with and most seem to deal with them pretty well these days (been put straight back down more or less instantly after receiving one a couple of times recently).
Think the buffs they give are a bigger game changer than the rally part of them these days personally.

Thought the best of part being agreed before hand was pretty much done and dusted tbh.

I’ve fought and enjoyed 10v a few times and think it’d be a shame to drop them, they’re different but fun in their own right. Think they have much more of a place than 25v which is just a mess, the area gvg’s nancy takes place just isn’t suited to numbers that big.

Caliban.3176:

Especially in EU where what happens in primetime means almost nothing because at night everything changes.

From what i hear in NA theres actually round the clock coverage on many servers so i can somewhat understand their interest in that whole aspect of the game. Its just so completely and utterly meaningless in eu though which is probably why the whole guild roaming scene is / was more popular here.

If there was actually fights worth having 24 hours a day over towers and whatnot i might give a crap about them but when you know one server in the match up is going to t1 all their enemies stuff and t3 all their stuff by outnumbering their enemy 3-4:1 (not to mention pick up 10k+ points) at a time when the overwhelming majority of the playerbase is asleep its just impossible to care about. Results are more or less pre determined as soon as a match up is made in EU.
Real competition between servers only really takes place for about 6 hours in EU, rest is just pvd the vast majority of the time.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Caid.4932:

Speaking of ethics or rules – anyone else think ghost tonics should be frowned upon?
Focusing specific players seems like a legitimate tactic to me and preventing it in that manner just seems a bit … underhanded (?)

It’s a counter to your “legitimate tactic”.

Well yeah but bringing 40 to a 20 man gvg is probably a pretty good counter to most groups. Not all counters are necessarily fair or should be considered legit.
Yeah you could use gems and what not but different races, sexes and heights will pretty much always give away who’s who if your familiar with the guild involved.

Im kind of on the fence about it personally. I think it can be nice to recognise the person leading as it can give you an early warning about where the melee are off to.
For focusing particular people … you can mark them or if its a guy who’s gotten seperated from the group its not really going to matter what he looks like.
Probably doesn’t really matter. Just curious on peoples thoughts on it.

iorlas.6721:

i was asked to provide ss of 60man blobs ..i did just that thats why i bothered.If i didn’t post hem no one on gandara would belive me..ie:lying.
Run your blobs guild grps whatever but don’t try to bs that you don’t..thats the view of an idiot.

Immolator.5640:

iorlas.6721:

Not crying just pointing out ya idea of small/mid roaming groups is a 60+ blob.

None of the above guilds have ever ever had over 25 (thats referring to TDA, JDGE, XXX and Dius), and the first ones mentioned field 15 as basic. Any of this 60 man blobbin from the guilds mentioned is insane, and unless screenshots are provided no one on Gandara will believe you.

Keep trying

Speaking of ethics or rules – anyone else think ghost tonics should be frowned upon?
Focusing specific players seems like a legitimate tactic to me and preventing it in that manner just seems a bit … underhanded (?)

biglilstampie.2410:

hey i see some TaG in that photo aswell, looks like there is 2 servers and 3 different guilds in that photo

Its still a 60 man blob!!!
HE HAS A POINT kitten YOU

… sorry cant resist

Immolator.5640:

iorlas.6721:

Gamgee.8612:

iorlas.6721:

rotfl…mid/small roaming guilds…tell that to 60+ blob in UW.

JDGE, YARR, TDA, Dius and also I saw BORD fielding like 6 players today, TKT, Tchu and sometimes FRI is also fielding small groups(I know I forgot some). Sure, now that we have an uneven matchup to our favour there’s PvE pugs joining the blue shiny thing on the minimap, but if you’re looking for a decent fight there’s alot to have Hope to see you! I saw a RoF blob aswell, doesn’t mean I have to go cry on forums.

Oh and also thanks YARR for the asuraball! Really got the hang of it on the end! There’s vids of it aswell.

Not crying just pointing out ya idea of small/mid roaming groups is a 60+ blob.

None of the above guilds have ever ever had over 25, and the first ones mentioned field 15 as basic. Any of this 60 man blobbin from the guilds mentioned is insane, and unless screenshots are provided no one on Gandara will believe you.

The few dius players on tonight (bout 6 of them) were leading pugs on gandara bl so its actually quite possible they had them numbers.
Not that i’d know, i wandered off and abondoned them as i tend to, being the kittener i am.
Nah seriously i just find anything over 25 boring and its not enough players for a competitive pug group most weeks.

We’ve just finished a match against a server 10 spots above us so we can relate to the annoyance at being thrown in a match with a server miles ahead of you rating wise. I have no doubt there’ll be plenty of players dancing on your corpse when they roll over you outnumbering you 10:1, spawncamping you with siege (they’re a classy bunch) and getting their kitten handed to them when they end up in anything vaguely close to an even fight.
The regular wvw community will lecture them about being jerks (and be ignored no doubt). Then laugh when they die like chumps.

On the bright side you’ll have no trouble finding fights which is better than running around an empty map looking for something to kill and have 40 people pop up around you if you do manage to find anything, making it a lousy fight. Frustrating week for you and a boring one for us

I hope you realise that the jerks aren’t going to read the forums and its just us bored regulars who hate these kind of matches too. So cut us some slack pls

Yaro.3251:

that’s in general suboptimal tactic since they will be attacking your whole team while you at least in part will be focusing someone specific.

Depends in fairness, I’ve had gvg’s were our backliners were completely and utterly ignored for the whole match. Only damage they took was from retal. They could (and some did) go full berserker and made a total mess of the enemy melee. One thief is all it would have taken for that to be a horrible, disastrous idea.
Also tbh necro’s are a much better target for that kind of harrasment. They just aren’t that well equipped to deal with being tunneled and if / when they die the enemy aoe spike takes a huge hit and becomes far less threatening. They make far more of a difference than many give them credit for or realise tbh.
Staff ele’s granted dont do well when being pressured but they have far more tools to deal with it, even if they’re quite glassy they’ll last a long, long time against a thief if they’re good.

Also some classes are basically wasted dropping damage into the main ball. Non Glamour Mesmers for instance, their clones die instantly in the main ball but they’re extremely annoying and dangerous if throwing them on the guys on the periphery. If your using two mesmers and a thief you’ll burn through an enemy backline extremely fast or at the very least hinder them adding to the main ball enough for your lesser ball to survive and compete.
Once a team runs out of necro’s and staff eles they’ve lost. Their spike wont be that much of a threat and fairly easy to survive and their ability to top themselves off and survive a long fight goes down the toilet.
Using a backline pressure tactic is more long game tactic, you’ll suffer in the first engagement or two and if you lose it’ll usually be in the first 20 secs. But most groups can survive losing a guardian or warr far, far more easily than a necro or staff ele.

My thoughts on numbers
I think the main problem with 25v25 is the area that gvg’s take place is so thin, just not enough room for manoeuvre with them numbers. It still feels a bit cramped to me at 20v20 really. Maybe if we booted the spectators out of the area it’d be better though im not sure they’d agree, i guess the warthogs would become an issue then anyway.

I think 5v5 is better suited to spvp tbh, stats in wvw are just a bit too high. Its a bit too quick and easy to burn someone down pretty much instantly.
10v10 is fun but doesn’t leave much room for playing with the set up imo. It is a lot of fun though, maybe the most fun of the ones i’ve played actually. I think its a bit of a pity more dont play or try it personally.

Still think 15v15 is prob the best though. Gives room for experimenting without the cramped area you fight becoming much of an issue and it gets large enough so that the better team wins as oppossed to the better players (not necessarily the same thing).

I know it’ll never happen but i’d love to see matches take place at the ruins just north of the usual area. Way more interesting in terms of los and different levels. The flat area just south near the bridge to supply is a better field for the more traditional fights imo too, more square, more room to flank and bait. Be impossible to avoid disruptions though which is a pity.

Thieves are annoying, warrs aren’t. Annoying classes with annoying mechanics tend to annoy people.

Immolator.5640:

Try fighting Elona then tell me that banner ressing should be nerfed .

We shouldn’t be fighting Elona eze, its a completely and utterly absurd, broken, rediculous match up. Anything that happens in this match up really shouldn’t be the basis of any design decisions.
Having one broken mechanic ‘fixing’ another broken mechanic is kittenty design. Just remove the two broken mechanic’s.

Chris.3290:

There should be rewards for “lemming” yourself into superior numbers

They’ve said numerous times they didn’t have superior numbers.
Currently banners do a good job of somewhat negating a full map zerg golem rushing a keep before you have a realistic chance to react but its a crutch. Its one lame mechanic papering over another and it should be removed.

Nice match today, i presume it’ll be featured on the next show?
The pressure on VotF’s backline seemed to work really well.

DevonCarver.5370:

we’ll continue to monitor the effects and make changes as necessary.

Considering you’ve said the same about the match up changes i have 0 faith in this being true.

Simonoly.4352:

Caid.4932:

Simonoly.4352:

Eugh. This matchup is going to do nothing for the Gandara WvW community which is very much on the decline. Elona can expect a very much empty Gandara borderland, with a karma/Wxp train recapping Gandara structures on EBG. Other than that, you won’t find good fights outside of organised GvG.

Pfft, speak for yourself.
It’ll probably be pretty boring for elona but if they have smaller sized guilds they’ll get good fights during the week.
An empty Gbl with a karma train recapping stuff on ebg sounds like every week for us anyway.

Strange reply. You seem to “pfft” in derision but then go on to agree with me. Probably a little harsh to say there will be no good fights for Elona outside of GvG, but Gandara as a server feels a little fragmented at present, and its becoming harder and harder to rally people for active defence. I’m sure it will pick up at some point, but it’s all a bit messy at present.

Shrug
It depends where your sitting on gandara i guess.
As a part of a guild group im quite happy with the situation really. Were in a good spot as far as a rating and our guild sizes go. Go much higher and we’d just be fighting much bigger guilds, go much lower and we’d have nothing to fight. Most guilds seem to share a similar opinion and are quite happy really.
I’m aware that other parts of the wvw community are dysfunctional and basically broken but … its not my problem to fix and i wouldn’t know how to if it was.

Simonoly.4352:

Eugh. This matchup is going to do nothing for the Gandara WvW community which is very much on the decline. Elona can expect a very much empty Gandara borderland, with a karma/Wxp train recapping Gandara structures on EBG. Other than that, you won’t find good fights outside of organised GvG.

Pfft, speak for yourself.
It’ll probably be pretty boring for elona but if they have smaller sized guilds they’ll get good fights during the week.
An empty Gbl with a karma train recapping stuff on ebg sounds like every week for us anyway.

In fairness if people are into running dungeons they haven’t gotten much attention either. 1 new dungeon in a year isn’t much to shout about.
The only new content they ever release is some pretty trashy mini games.
But yeah ill agree that wvw is the standout aspect of the game just because pve is dire really. Get zerker gear > hit 100b on cooldown > win.
Spvp is rubbish too as i’m sure the participation levels of players will show.

Pity they dont seem to realise it but obvious that every other developer does as open world rvr is included in every new mmo being developed.
Kind of sad that they introduced (or reintroduced) some really nice ideas to the genre and are leaving them to rot. Suppose someone else will rip off the idea and do a vaguely decent job of maintaining it and get all the money / credit for their ideas.

TheGreatA.4192:

I don’t see why guilds do not have GvG’s every single day. Rolling over or getting rolled over by pug zergs must get pretty boring after a while. The only challenge is how many numbers they can come up with.

In a GvG you face enemies who are organized, who generally know what they are doing and won’t go down from the first push.

Its just different, different tactics and tbh the enviroment where gvg takes place is pretty boring – no los, no chokes, no cover no high/low ground and the field is really thin. Most days this week we’ve run into a few guilds when roaming and sometimes its nice to be outnumbered (within reason). Zerg busting has its moments too.
Different tactics work in each too. Getting a glass cannony thief in for a gvg can work quite well, they tend to just die horribly when roaming.
I’ve had some good gvg matches but i’ve never had anywhere near as good fights as i’ve had when roaming.
Gvg is like a guarantee of a decent fight. Roaming is more hit and miss, sometimes the fights are crap or nonexistant but occasionally you get rediculous, brilliant fights out of it.
We had a lot of great fights this week – the ones against hob in eb that tended to become 3 ways were all fun, the ones against NP, Crux and … a few others on Gbl (sorry rubbish memory).
The fights against HoB, BSF and NR on wednesday were pretty good too (we were playing pretty kitten at that point which was frustrating but we got our act together at a few points and had fun regardless).
So personally i dont regret roaming this week.
Regardless by the time we found out TUP were willing to go less than 20 this week the only day they were able to do it that we would be on was thursday and we already had one arranged for then

Dranul.2094:

I think the problem lies in (a) its the summer and some guilds are short. More so I believe, having GvG’d most of the guilds on Gandara that they took the opportunity to fight people like Fire whom they haven’t fought before.

I disagree that 10v10 is played like 20v20, its a huge difference, like caid said I believe 15v15 can still be played as per a normal GvG.

As to meta this and that… I don’t believe in that – I see guilds doing GvGs that are stuck in 2012 mentality. It’s not all the same.

10v10 requires build changes, weapon changes, different playstyle to normal (for us) where we take 20+ and fight huge numbers.

We also might disappoint – that we don’t run 80% guardians if we dropped to a 10v10

I believe wam engaged TDA with 5v5 and 6v6 so there u got your small scale <3 Just not everyone’s cup of tea.

We usually have to approach guilds every week in order to get a match, I cant remember the last time we were approached – so asking all the time becomes tiresome. We like people to throw down the gauntlet and challenge us. Expected Dius, yak to rematch us. Summer for some prevented numbers. Yak got numbers though :P and GvG’d Fire – just disappointed ya didn’t want a rematch

Next time gadget.

We rarely get 20 on and last time we asked you didn’t want to do less shrug
10v10’s we played we fought in the same manner as always. Might not have been the best strat ever but we won them so …

Also about being approached – you should stick your name up on gw2gvg. Its fine for us cause we know who you are but it’d help against servers like jade sea who you haven’t fought in months. They might not know your around, or who to contact or what kind of numbers you run.

quenoz.3859:

Drizzy.1268:

And TUPies, dont you agree that a 10v10 is better than no GvG at all?
Remember the fun we had with the 5v5

we find that 10v10 is a massive difference to 20v20. at 10v10 you focus on a single person and drop them and then move to the next target, much like smallscale.

We fought 10v10 matches a couple of times, its much the same really. Difficult to fit some builds / classes in though. I like 15v15, think thats the sweet spot personally.

Plainview.7029:

I’m glad a few folks understood my intent. I may have understated a thief’s ability to roll in a zerg or even overlooked some other valuable roles. I am happy to see other’s opinions on the matter as they allow me to correct my original beliefs.

Of course thief is a pain in the kitten . I can sympathise (to an extent) the woes of players who get a knife in the back. I wanted to advocate for the practical applications of the pain in the kitten back stabber.

I like that they have a class that seems to be balanced heavily with solo roaming in mind. I still find too many of their specs quite chessy and frustrating to fight though. Its not a balance issue or a l2p issue (I struggle against engi’s because i have no clue how to fight them, have a better record against thieves than most specs tbh).

I dont even care that they can run away, playing a guardian who isn’t specced for 1v1’s you just get used to it – think necro’s are the only things that have a vaguely hard time running away from me.
I honestly cant think of a single occasion i’ve had a fun or interesting fight against a d/d or a d/p thief though (and i’ve fought hundreds more than any other build in this game).
S/d thieves are quickly becoming the bane of my existence (too much evade spam).
Pistol / dagger is actually a lot of fun to fight, its a pity they seem to have dissapeared recently.
Also while i recognise theres a big difference between a good and bad thief its just way too easy to be competent with them, too many specs are idiot proof.

Honestly i think they’re badly designed, i’ve played one and i know theres a few parts of the class that annoy me and seem pretty broken too. Quite a few thieves in the guild who have a long list of complaints about them too.

Remember REQ on RS used to roam with 2 mesmers, 2 guardians and 1 other. They were pretty good and it seemed like a good set up.
Guardians were basically bait / meat shield and the mesmers blew stuff up.

kribre.9683:

Also, Dranul I dont know if you guys have been in contact with individuals in the other guilds?

This basically, we might have a post looking for one here but it rarely leads to anything. We had 2 set up by about saturday from people contacting us (we might have contacted fire, i dunno). 2’s enough for one week.

PredatoR.5247:

does this affect GvG 15v15 as well???

Affects everything.
The effects are firing off for me … 30/40 secs after they’re used.

Yaro.3251:

The question is, if we have adequate instrument to have that kind of picture.

Well thats the basic issue and until that changes its hard for me to care about who’s best.
My guess is GH, GD, VotF, VII and Scnd are all very close together and capable of beating each other on a good day and until all 5 are playing each other regularly its impossible to tell.

Oren.1736:

canno’t be bothered to deal with it

This mostly, we’d rather let you do the work and we just run in and kill stuff xD

Johje Holan.4607:

whether I win, lose or draw, it is simply not fun to fight them.

^^
The reason the current design for thief sucks. They have a role, they’re quite good at it (in zerg fights too if specced for it) but it’d be nice if fighting them wasn’t such a bloody tiresome chore

Ogre.1750:

problematic.9623:

RG…VoTF. Ogre. Jackie. Do you understand each other now? Are you going to compromise?
Make two ladders.
One that includes (historical matches for historical reference of who was active at certain times).
One that is reset like normal ladders after a certain amount of time with a winner declared.
Lets point out that the game format is not being assisted by developers and it is unusual for players to be making structure decisions…

Thats got to be the voice of reason if i ever heard one. It only makes sense to have a sort of fresh start, if we really want to get serious about this. At the same time, a registry of all matches, altho ambitious, isnt a far-fetched possibility considering the system already in place.

Im unsure of everythign else tho, but seasons as an overall concept could work. Maybe 3 month seasons? With Glicko and everything. Dunno, brainstorm welcome.

EDIT- Trice, lol youre right, I considered Deathclock inactive, but i see ive been missing out the past week! I gotta stop roaming forums and actually wake the kitten up, thanks for the heads up.

I dunno, its hard enough getting a relevant active ladder with a years worth of gvg’s up there …
Until theres the opportunity to have a gvg against any guild at any time these kind or ratings are just going to be … inadequate and largely irrelevant.
The competitive aspect is good i agree but the rating up there just doesn’t mean much.
Like look at TDA in 6th (?) place. They’re never going to play against VotF or VII or Scnd or guilds of that type because they run around with about 10 guys every night. They’re just not comparable.
(They are awesome though, <3 TDA)

RG are an issue too tbh. Most of the teams they played and gained rating against had 1500 rating at the time of the match. Many of them no longer do and to catch up or overtake them would probably require a guild to beat arguably better opposition. And if you lose one match ever you can basically forget about overtaking them. Its a bit of a ball and chain on the site imo.
Theres too many messy, silly aspects to trying to rank individual guilds currently or formerly in this scene. Theres not enough opportunities for guilds to match up against each other without mass transfers happening left, right and centre.

I love GvG’s its probably one of the best things thats happened in this game. I love your video’s Ogre, I love the coverage you provide and getting to see NA guilds or T1 guilds or T9 guilds that im unlikely to ever run into myself. I’d love to see some new and weird tactics and strategies being thrown out and being highlighted in your video’s. I’d love for their to be some competition between guilds and seeing them develop and come up with strats and counter strats in later matches and counter, counter strats.

The ratings up there have no particular value beyond giving a hazy idea of the quality of a guild.
I dont know about other guilds but some of the matches and scores of gvg’s we had contained many players who dont play the game anymore. The dius who played Unity or TUP the first time doesn’t bear much resemblance to the dius who played VotF last week or most likely the dius of a months time. Hell Unity are a completely and utterly different guild now tbh. They’re kind of a community, score based, pug training guild (and apparently very good at it, with some nice idea’s. No disrespect intended in these comments).

Can we just get past who’s the best guild? Do we care? If VII are the best this week will they be next week? How long till someone in a position to challenge them for that ‘honor’ is able to test themselves against them? By the time that opportunity comes will they be in a position to challenge them or will VII even exist at that point?

Let the pride and ego massaging be the winning of the individual match, not how many matches you’ve won

I think the rating system is fine as is, there just hasn’t been enough matches played for it to have any meaning atm.

Wemil.7052:

I hope jade sea is getting a nice warm up for sfr/vs/jade next week<3

just kidding

aurora! push it hard! wanna meet you! you got some ppls I wanna roll over!

I give 200 gold to each server if you just give up now and let sfr fight aurora<3

We gave up a couple of months ago, wheres my gold?

Oren.1736:

Amelia Knox.9362:

gandara and ag don’t care too much about points, wakeing up without anything is bad but we manage
I hope Ag doesn’t gain too much ranking.

For all the Gandakitten ople yesterday night in Js border, stay in your side of the map so we put pressure in both side and we start flipping stuff instead i just take my T0 stuff in south – hill side

Gandar’s first reaction to JS rushing their BL is to bring everyone to AG to cap as much as possible. though worth saying, gandara have been getting the more pressure from JS so far on their BL. Really disappointed in how low the organisation in gandara has become, you guys used to be top notch, now it seems you prefer to third wheel every fight AG takes part of with JS, i really cannot remember a fight with JS that gandara was not poking our sides. JS bl will fall if gandara start pushing it more seriously there at primetime, maybe then they can get rid of that WP in their bl’s hills and have some breathing room.

Thought i’d comment on this as we were doing most of the poking. For a start we’ve flipped hills a couple of times on our bl but you wake up the next day and its T3 and sieged to the teeth again. The fights at cragtop on sunday we were mostly looking to help tbh as seeing it drop to t1 would help even if you took it.
Happy to admit we did a rubbish job but we’re bloodthirsty kittens and its hard to resist most of the time. When you did flip it we were at the gate cutting off JS reinforcements so we aren’t all bad

Generally speaking you have the more fun groups to fight anyway so you tend to get more attention is all. Ag bl is definitely the more popular bl this week, just more fights and less issues with getting cannon or ac fire on your head pretty much everywhere.

Rookni.2469:

I do not think he ment we had any problems with you tbh. Understandable that you all teamed up after a while. Kudos to the guilds that ran alone now and then

Yeah it was pretty understandable and fair (mostly). We knew we outnumbered RL pretty bad at start of evening and felt pretty bad for them. Was a lot of fun anyway when CRUX joined the party.
Got a bit silly towards the end of the evening but … meh, i’ll take it over jade sea bl where there was nothing really to fight.

While im not overly fond of the ladder style organisation i do think the site needs some kind of organisation. Like theres 100 or so guilds listed there.
Overall i think the site has helped a massive ammount as were up against Jade Sea this week, a server i haven’t fought in months and I can find out what guilds they have, who to contact in them, what kind of numbers they prefer (10v10 or whatever) and maybe i recognise one of their opponents and have some vague idea of the level they’re playing at.
Thats all brilliant, really helpful information.
Its up to us to stop taking the ladder seriously if we think its doing more harm than good.

Ogre.1750:

A new custom is starting to develop to counter this “serious bussines” learning freeze thing… sparring bouts. Mostly born out of the refusal to compromise e-pn but a common will to scrap. Problem is it is seen as a missed opportunity by many.

You see the “serious biz” aura is rly a double edge sword… it makes everything so much more compelling and tense, important almost… but yeah, it kills experimentation and development.

This can only be fixed by a simple game mode implementation, maybe slotted monstruously in the sPvP frames. I would accept 15v baseline, seems more reasonable than 20, while retaining the small army feel. Deathmatch means fast fights, and the high count in teams makes it very accesible to the layman.

At any rate, its good to dream, but as of today our only way to endure serious biz spirit is to spar. Throng surfing is a very limited fountain of training, and will give you bad habits as a GvG crew.

I dont know. People still read a lot into these sparring matches. I definitely think the mentality of those involved could do with being adjusted a bit.
I guess i hope that as gw2gvg develops and more matches get added and the effect of winning or losing becomes fairly minor people just dont take things as seriously.
Hopefully when that happens people will feel more comfortable taking risks with set up.

I also think it can have other negative consequences as some guilds are saying they’re having a hard time getting people to fight them. They dont say it but its kind of implied that people are afraid to lose to them

Jackie.1829:

Caid.4932:

Too few matches take place too infrequently for it to develop at anything other than a snail’s pace but you still see a lot of different approaches to the basic setup and the odd completely different set up with some groups going really heavy on ranged for example.
It’ll get there, just not very fast and I dont see people experimenting with the basic formula too much unfortunately.

This. The opportunity to GvG is so infrequent and requires such massive organization (8v8 in GW1 was scrapped in favor of 5v5 due to organization, getting 20 core players on at the same time assuming they have normal lives and arent completely hardcore gamers, is a total nightmare, unless you have 30 quality players in your guild to pick from). On top of that, once you finally get a match, you dont feel inclined to try something new, you want to make sure you win, because you feel like you only have this 1 shot at proving yourself. I mean Ogro clearly says in his episodes that GvGs are an kitten contest (its in the video intro lol). So when you consider that every GvG is “the serious business” when does anybody get to practice and try things out.

In tpvp, regular tournament games are practice, if you lose em no biggie, people dont go kittening about them too much because it was just a daily tournament game. But every chance you get to GvG immediately feels like you are playing the real deal and you find yourself saying “this is it, serious business”. But if you go in with that attitude, you never try new things out of fear, and the meta will develop so incredibly slowly because people feel if they get owned or lose they will get ridiculed by the community.

Just my 2 cents anyways, as a person who theorycrafts a ton of ideas but never got the opportunity to test them out because it cannot be risked.

Well yeah … there was time we just kittened around and brought whatever happened to be on on the day (think we had a couple of gvg’s running 4 mesmers in a 15v15) and didn’t take them very seriously.
Then we ran into a couple of groups who quite blatantly had put a lot of thought into it. Who said they could only 15v15 when they had 10 guys sitting on the hill and whatnot and we got stomped hard.
I dont know, i’ve grown to appreciate trying to get the proper set up but you do tend to stick to what you know and not experimenting too much because in a lot of situations you really dont have many opportunities to make mistakes, it doesn’t help really.
Most of the weirder strategies we’ve come up with came about when the standard one just wasn’t working or was something we basically stumbled on in the middle of a match (and most had little value outside that particular match).

The pride people take in gvg’s is a good thing overall as i just dont think people would bother coming up with strategies otherwise but the lack of opportunities to take part in them makes every one a bit too important atm.

I dont entirely get the mentality thing. We really didn’t expect to have a chance in hell of beating you really, we played in the hope of taking a round or two off you and I think most of us would have been really proud of that. Hearing it was going to be featured on GvG showdown was somewhat nice but kind of heaped on the pressure a bit to ‘give a good account of ourselves’.

It looks pretty horrific in the video’s and we were outplayed pretty drastically. But … I think we’ll learn more from that match than all of our wins put together really. It gave us a good kick in the kitten really, just seeing how much further we could take things.
I dont think most of the community will see it that way though.

Jackie.1829:

Mind you, this is something you as a community chose as well. The amount of flak VoTF got after their first GvG with RG,

Wasn’t paying attention to it and have no idea what the score or outcome was but this is unfortunate.
We’ve had a few rematches and they tend to go very, very differently each time. People put to much stock in one result (or results in general really).

I hope you guys say screw it and bring out the crazy strats. Theres some of us who’ll appreciate it the attempt and will think more highly of you despite the inevitable disasters (oh no you lost a match!!!) that doing that would bring … give the rest of us a chance too xD

Ogre.1750:

Burst squads countering periphery dps and cc already happen, usually a one man thief job, but in todays meta refining this could be a definitive edge.

This works pretty well but im not sure how much of the effectiveness is due to people just not knowing how to react to it really.

ranged being able to collapse in their melee train

Is probably the best counter to it but is the kind of thing that’ll get an inexperienced player killed extremely quickly.
Regardless its far from an ideal position for them to be in and the thief / ele can collapse in on their own melee train and be more comfortable in it imo (depends on set up obviously).

The main problem with the lack of development or the slow development imo is.
GvG and zerg busting are just too different.
If you send a thief to harrass a pug zerg backline they’ll just get burned down instantly by the 30 longbow rangers hanging back there basically. It just doesn’t work.
Walls of reflection are pretty good against pug zergs, one because they’ll spam attacks into it and rangers, rifle warriors and grenade engi’s and the like are pretty common in them. They seem like a bit of a liability in gvg’s atm as the only thing they tend to reflect is abilities that’ll shadowstep you into the middle of an enemy aoe spike.

Too few matches take place too infrequently for it to develop at anything other than a snail’s pace but you still see a lot of different approaches to the basic setup and the odd completely different set up with some groups going really heavy on ranged for example.
It’ll get there, just not very fast and I dont see people experimenting with the basic formula too much unfortunately.

Medozorz.5920:

What retaliation? my poor ranger has none: D

LIES!!!
You play for TUP you MUST have some

Yeah, VotF destroyed us. Hard to be too angry or dissapointed about it because they were just a million miles ahead of us. Was educational and they’ll destroy better teams than us.
We messed up the opener on each round (with a lot of help from them) and the rest of the match was desperately trying to survive basically.
A lot of work to do on our part anyway, we’ve been coasting a bit for a long time but we were given as good an example as any on where and how to develop.