Guild Wars 2

Again, you people realize that’s not ANet’s stance on anything, right? The responses in this thread are the opinion of their German Community Manager. He’s not even an ANet developer.

As for points not mattering, then ANet should just get rid of points completely. Get rid of server rankings. Afterall, everyone should W v W just for the sake of killing each other endlessly.

I don’t fully disagree with the point that we should enjoy W v W PvP just for the fun of it. I do W v W because I think it’s fun (when server populations are relatively balanced during peak hours) and because there’s not much else to do in GW2 after you’ve played it for over 200-300 hours (except maybe grind for a legendary or roll another class to 80, which I don’t want to do).

Problem is, ANet has the points and server ranking system in place to encourage people to do well in W v W. However, it’s more discouraging than encouraging to see your server behind by more than twice the amount of the dominating server. Even worse, when all of your server’s hard work during the day is completely wiped out because your server doesn’t have a dominating NA AM presence. Worse still, when you’re being spawn camped.

I’ve been on both sides of the coin. I’ve been on the dominating side and also the dominated side. It’s not fun either way.

I’m glad the response in this thread isn’t by an ANet dev, but only the German CM. Because if a dev had made those comments, I’d be seriously worried about the future of W v W in GW2…

Server hopping and night capping is one of the biggest problems currently plaguing W v W. It discourages servers without a dominant NA AM presence from even playing W vW because they’re so far behind in points and map coverage due to night capping. And if they do join, they’re constantly fighting an uphill battle. It’s not fun for anyone, whether it’s the dominating server or the server(s) being dominated.

ET will win this week’s tier 2 matchup, simply because they have the enormous zerg “guild” (or rather, guilds) Ruin.

Currently, there are only 4 servers with dominant and overwhelming NA AM presence: HoD, SBI, JQ, and ET. JQ and ET will keep bouncing from 3rd to 4th place for at least the next few weeks and thus, dominating the 2nd tier whenever they lose in the top tier.

Thanks for the response, Mike. Honestly, you and the W v W team needs to do A LOT very soon. Currently, there is nothing for “hardcore” players to do other than W v W. I believe most people who love to PvP and engage in W v W will say that GW2’s W v W can be extremely fun (when things go right), but is also very flawed.

Here are just some of my own complaints with W v W:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/W-v-W-Needs-TONS-of-Work/first#post135859

I can’t believe ANet still hasn’t fixed this broken rune.

Still not fixed? Seriously?

War Machine wasn’t online when these screenshots were taken, eh?

JQ is proving they can’t hang in the top tier, so they feel better winning the 2nd tier, against servers without nearly as large of a night cap population as them.

JQ proves that they have the 4th highest international presence during night time hours, which allows them to dominate the AM NA hours of the 2nd tier servers.

It’s going to be so funny when JQ gets owned again next week when they move back up to top tier.

W v W (at least top tiers) is a joke right now. The server with the highest amount of NA AM presence wins. Simple as that.

Most people fail to see or mention the main causes to problem of night capping / and 24/7 full queue times: Free, unlimited server transfers and international server hopping.

The 24 hour restriction to free server transfer won’t do much to prevent bad server imbalances. ANet has to limit server transfers to 1 week.

Allowing international players to play on another region’s server also causes major imbalance in WvW results. Servers with little to no international players will most likely be dominated during their off-peak, AM, and work / school hours by severs with a large international presence.

ANet needs to rework their ranking system to include queue times and server population (including international players). Their current W-L points system is simply too flawed. WvW is all about fielding superior numbers and the number of available WvW players.

buzzkapow.8465:

I have nothing against ET, they played a good game this week. I have problems with Ruin, and only with Ruin. That said, would i like to see HoD smack ET upside the head real bad? Yes, but only because ET spanked us (IoJ) this week, and every good turn deserves another. And Ruin is there. Smack em good. GL to the rest of ET though!

Ruin has sooo many bad players in it. They only “win” because they outzerg their opponents, similar to how HoD’s alliance outzergs their opponents.

It’ll be interesting to see if a massive zerg guild can outzerg a massive server alliance. I highly doubt it.

Key to HoD’s success: 24/7 WvW full queues with 20+ guild alliance to zerg your opposition into submission.

Oh, and the first week, taking advantage of “exploits” such as stacking permanent buffs on NPCs in WvW and far outleveling / outgearing your opponents by farming Yaks / supply camps. I guess the OP forgot to mention these things…

I wonder if Maguuma understands why the server lost by so much….

Yes, night capping is the main reason, but it’s also because the server died when Kripparrian and Krippi decided to go back to WoW Pandaland at the beginning of the week. This alone took away most of the night presence and any decent players on the server because 2 guilds pretty much died on Monday.

Kripp and Krippi’s guilds had over 400 members EACH – 200+ active players at night, usually at least 50+ players in WvW. Oh yeah, and Goon Squad is terrible and so are the other randoms on the server.

Dragonbrand is also the home server of most Taiwanese players. Taiwan’s primetime is NA’s AM hours. This is the reason why DB dominated the night shift.

The OP won’t screenshot his /age and achievements because he knows he’s lying about everything he’s posted. Just another troll post….

Brainwashed MMO kiddies expected more of the same out of GW2. More of the same “endgame” grind other MMOs have been feeding them for years just to suck $15 out of them and/or their parents every month…. plus another $50-$60 for expansions.

Basically, WoW is responsible for all of this.

Blizzard / WoW single-handedly both increased the MMO genre’s popularity / population ten-fold, and also ruined the genre by brainwashing kids of that generation of MMO gamers to think WoW is what all MMOs should be like: endless loot grinding, hamster wheel (treadmill) mentality, job-like raiding schedule type of “fun.”

MMOs used to be about the exploration, meeting random adventurers to achieve common goals, discovery, banding together to fight tough bosses, and PvP’ing for the sake of PvP’ing. But now, all of the supposed “hardcore” MMO gamers want is moar / better loot by grinding dungeons and raids for hours on end, all day, everyday. If non-stop raiding is what you want, then go play other MMOs such as WoW and Rift. You won’t find it in GW2 and ANet won’t add it to the game anytime soon (if ever).

These days, “hardcore” MMO gamers expect a full time job out of their “endgame” (probably because most of them don’t have real life jobs), by running on an endless loot hamster wheel. Maybe GW2 can start teaching a new breed of MMO gamers that not every MMO has to be as boring and brain-numbing as WoW… maybe not.

Am I saying GW2 has as much to do at max level as other MMOs that’s been released for years? Nope, I’m not. ANet does have to work on pumping out more / better level 80 content, they need to overhaul their unrewarding and uninspired dungeons, and they need to fix WvW. However, the “endgame” is not nearly as bad as all of these crybabies are making it out to be on forums.

So the lesson learned from these simple graphs is:

Stop letting people transfer to servers with ridiculous WvW queue times, especially for free. Allow guilds to transfer to lower populated servers and keep their guild perks / upgrades and influence.

I’d actually be in favor of ANet blocking server transfers completely, unless you’re transferring to a lesser populated server. 24 hours isn’t nearly enough to stop people from server hopping.

I’ve never seen a MMO allow this many server transfers this often. Completely ruins what little point there is to WvW in the first place.

GW2 was extremely addicting…. for about 3 weeks.

I still love to play the game, but usually not for more than 2 hours everyday now. It used to be 10+ hour sessions.

Don’t worry, most of the WoW kiddies already left GW2 to prepare for their Pandaland adventures.

ANet doesn’t have to worry about that hamster (panda) wheel loot grind of an expansion. They just need to worry about GW2 and try to make it better than it currently is, particularly the “endgame,” or when you hit level 80.

WvW needs to be much better than it is. If ANet can fix and add to their “endgame,” the WoW kiddies will be back in a month or two, once they get tired with WoW… again. If not, thank God they’re gone and ANet already has their $60 anyway.

GW2 has lots of things to do. It’s just not the player / gear “progression” (or rather, grind) most MMO gamers are used to. There’s no loot hamster wheel in GW2, nor are there any raiding that require a full-time job schedule to keep up with the cool kids.

Guild Wars has always been about exploration, character cosmetic upgrades, the lore, and most importantly PvP. The first and now 2nd game’s “end game” is PvP, not PvE. PvE was fun getting to 80, but that’s about it. Once you hit 80, WvW is where the fun is at. The problem is, there’s a ton of issues currently plaguing WvW….

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/W-v-W-Needs-TONS-of-Work/first#post135859

Whenever ANet fixes all of the problems in WvW and gives us a much better incentive to do well in it, GW2 will be THE game of choice for MMO PvP’ers. There’s been a huge void in the MMO genre since DAoC that needs to be filled. Hopefully GW2 will eventually be the game to do it.

Apotheosis.3786:

Does anyone else feel like this is a single player game even when you’re with people. I can’t put my finger on it, but the social aspect doesn’t seem very immersive.

Maybe join a good, active guild that actually enjoys running dungeons and/or PvP? If you don’t have any RL friends to play with and don’t have a good guild, then of course you’ll feel lonely.

ANet won’t change the costs of T3 cultural or faction armor.

They need as much gold sinks as possible because there’s already way too much gold in this young GW2 economy, mainly due to the various “exploits” such as karma conversion and CoF farming. Non-casual players are already fully geared up and sitting on tons of gold (I know someone with over 350 gold).

In fact, I wouldn’t surprised if they add more gold sinks soon.

Dragonbrand gets bored camping Maguuma’s and Tarnished Coast’s spawns, so some people decided it’d be fun to camp the jumping puzzles too….

Hint: Dragonbrand is green

It does suck that ANet isn’t being truthful and forthright with their official patch notes.

If you nerfed dungeons, let the public know. No need to keep it hush hush. We’ll find out anyways.

So I guess CM and CoF can be considered “stealth nerfs?”

CM no longer a powerleveler’s dream.

CoF no longer a gold / Exotic item farmer’s dream.

Knew this was going to eventually happen. These changes actually came later than I expected. The market is now flooded with gold and everyone is running around with CoF gear.

Sucks for casual players who didn’t get a chance to “exploit.” LOL

Very nice patch. We need more of these huge updates, ANet!

Thanks for showing us you care about improving GW2 as much and as fast as possible.

Thanks for all of your responses, even though I don’t share the views of many who disagreed with me.

Ruin is full of bad players. I’ve killed so many of them, but their zerg insta-rezes their downed players.

WvW is pointless when the side with the larger zerg and the server with more people online late night, wins.

My Sylvari Ranger during the night and day…

Zerg v Zerg

or

ZvZ

- Game crashes / disconnects should not make you have to re-queue for WvW when you log back on. We should be given a grace period of let’s say, 2 – 5 minutes if the game crashes or we get disconnected. Making us have to sit through another multi-hour queue simply because of game crashes or disconnects makes me want to give up GW2 WvW all together.

- Players “hacking,” exploiting, and using third party programs to cheat. I’ve never seen someone obviously cheating in WvW yet. Then again, it’s tough to tell with so much chaos, zerging, and invisible enemies. More and more reports of players cheating in WvW are popping up on forums and in videos everyday. ANet needs to stop this garbage before it becomes a major problem. Many games have failed because the developer could not stop cheaters from taking over the game.

- It’d be nice if each server Battleground map were unique, instead of being the same exact copy of each other. I know it’s tough to design and balance such large maps for PvP, but it’s boring to play the same map on each Battleground. Only Eternal Battleground is unique and different.

- Finally, give us a true reason to COMPETE in WvW, not just run around in zergs killing random people. Give us guild (not server) rankings and personal rankings (not just titles), available to the public to view. Other character / guild enhancements are also needed so we can feel like WvW is worthwhile. Killing people is really fun, but it will eventually run its course and people will get bored with WvW without great incentives. I understand and respect ANet’s philosophy on overall game balance and fair play, but the lackluster server-wide buffs are not enough to encourage us to do well in WvW.

GW2 WvW is the main reason why I play this game. The basic foundation of WvW is amazing, but due to all of these issues, it’s not nearly as fun as it can / should be.

Without raiding, character / gear progression, and other “endgame” activities, WvW is the only reason why “hardcore” players (and guilds) like me will stick around and purchase future expansions. ANet has to make sure WvW PvP is the main reason why people buy and play GW2. I really hope Arena Net is working hard to fix most, if not all of these problems plaguing WvW. In my opinion, this game mode can keep people playing GW2 for years to come if ANet makes it great. Thanks for reading.

I want to start by saying I love GW2’s WvW when it “works.” However, it’s rare when WvW is actually functioning the way it was “intended.”

I’ve spent a large portion of my GW2 playtime in WvW (over 3,000 WvW kills). Here is my list of things currently wrong with WvW:

- Insanely long queue times. ANet started a huge thread dedicated to discussing this problem, so I won’t talk about it too much. Something needs to be done ASAP because this #1 issue with WvW is making people not want to even play 1/3 of GW2’s game mode (and my personal reason for playing the game).

- Enemy zergs phasing in / taking 15-20 seconds to load on-screen is terrible. Having to face an enemy zerg is tough enough. Having to face an entire invisible zerg because the game prioritizes your teammates’ character models instead of enemy models is a bad game design decision and bad network optimization. I have to constantly tab target because I’m afraid I’ll run into invisible enemy players.

- Skill activation lag. This seems to happen more often in Eternal Battlegrounds than the other 3 server Battlegrounds. It sucks to have to spam a skill over and over and not have it activate. Takes all the fun out of WvW when your skills don’t work when you want it to work.

- Zerg v Zerg. Curently, WvWvW should be renamed ZvZvZ. This game rewards the side with the most numbers, not more skill or better tactics. Sure, an organized, better-geared team with more siege weapons and voice communication will usually win against a team with larger numbers that lacks in other departments. However, more often than not, the larger-sized zerg will win the fight simply due to the downed mechanic. Downed state should not exist in WvW. It encourages the zerg menality where people can be careless, die over and over, as long as they have 10 people nearby to insta-rez them.

- Low levels should not be in WvW. It was fine to allow sub-level 30 players to tryout and XP in WvW the first few weeks of release. But now, they’re just cannon fodder taking up space of level 80 players with good gear. It may sound a bit elitist, but it’s true. They make the already terrible queue times even more unbearable and ridiculous. Personally, I wouldn’t allow players under level 70 to queue for WvW, but I’d be fine if ANet disallow players under level 30 to queue for WvW.

- Guilds without “Art of War” boosts activated should not be able to claim keeps and towers. At least make keep / tower claiming expire so another guild can claim it if they have (more) active AoW boosts running. I hate it when some random guild spams the Guild Claiming NPC and claim a keep / tower for no reason. It’s then permanently claimed until it’s overtaken by an enemy team. Make absolutely no sense.

So this was what happened when I fired up GW2 earlier today:

Logged in, queued up for WvW, waited over an hour and a half, logged off.

Why does this keep happening to our ranged attacks when our target(s) are right in front of us, with nothing blocking the path of the arrows and completely in range?

I’m sick of the terrible hit detection in GW2, especially as a Ranger in WvW. Does this happen to other classes too or just Rangers? Fix this garbage asap, ANet!

Downed state should not be in PvP. Simple as that.

In PvE, downed is fine, but in PvP, it rewards the team that has the superior number, not superior skill or tactics / strategy. And of course, like the OP said, certain classes have much better downed abilities than other classes.

HoD exploited in WvW the first few weeks, out-gearing and out-leveling most other servers.

They also have a huge alliance of 16+ guilds taking shifts 24/7.

Nobody wants to play against HoD… not even other zerg servers like JQ who are used to dominating other servers with overwhelming numbers.

Here’s a novel idea: don’t allow low levels (sub 30) to get into WvW.

They’re usually canon fodder and takes the space of level 80, geared PvP’ers.

The Deluxe edition / upgrade is a total rip-off. The Golem Banker should have been permanent, or at the very least, give us a discount and make him available for purchase with gems.

I liked the change. It sucks when you accidentally start the animation to rez your pet when you want to rez your teammates and/or pick up loot.

I didn’t like the change where they put the pet on a 20 second cooldown if you switch your pet out of combat. I know why they did it (prevent spamming buffs), but they should’ve put the F2 skill on cooldown (if you used it), not the swap.

jonG.8369:

Patch notes for the 9/14 update are up on the wiki. It says that pet F2 and AI was improved. Let’s keep our fingers crossed…

I sure hope so. I hated spamming the key for pets to use their skill….

Whatever the solution is, it needs to come faster. As of now, WvW queue’ing is ridiculous for High to Full servers during peak hours. We are basically locked out of a huge portion of GW2 because there are not enough spots in WvW.

There is a lot of things wrong in WvW right now. Queue times, enemy zergs being invisible and phasing in, skill lag, and obstruct obstruct obstruct are just some of the major issues that need to be fixed asap. I hope you ANet guys are working hard on fixing all of these game-breaking problems.

Downed state in PvE is perfectly fine, but in PvP, it’s absolute garbage.

All downed does is encourage zerging. It’s bad enough in WvW, but with n00bs getting owned in WvW, all they need to do is wait for a rez…. even when they’re fully “dead.” Larger zerg > smaller zerg. Trivializes WvW fights.

Still nothing in my mail.

10+ gold down the drain…. sigh

This issue has costed me 2 level 80 Exotic bows someone made for me yesterday. He sent the mail via reply and it never got to me. He sent mails afterwards and they went through. I just lost so much materials and gold because of this garbage bug.

Can an ANet employee please make a response to this? Will we ever get our items back or are screwed?