Showing Posts For Crescendo Forte.4821:
From what I understand, they haven’t increased the limit cap again because it causes lag/rendering issues for older/lower end computers. I don’t mind seasonal items only being available from season to season. It makes them special, and gives people more goals to complete during holiday events. I couldn’t agree more that the recipes need another going over. If I could more cheaply create large walls, without having to use an inordinate amount of pillars and materials, it would make my guild’s hall look far more lived in and less like an empty temple. I wouldn’t mind new decorations, and it seems like they’re adding them slowly. We recently got WvW siege, for example. And before that we got writable gravestones and signs.
Nope, but the OP’s post was about the upcoming expansion, if the second sentence was anything to go by.
So, sure, a few months after expansion/Living World Season Four…good to go!
It was inspired by both the end of the season and by my previous post (Which was over 7 months ago). You’re correct that it’s probably a bit late, scheduling-wise, but I feel that showing Anet that the community still feels strongly about the sad state guild missions are in might get them to not abandon them further. If the next expansion releases even more meta-worthy trinket stats, and doesn’t release them for guild missions, I fear that missions will be even more desolate than they are right now.
Preface
I posted about this 7 months ago here. I’ve decided to bring it up again because there’s talk for a new expansion and I don’t want these problems to continue to be ignored. Many aspects of this post will be similar to my previous one, but I’ve striven to not make it just a simple copy paste, so I encourage you to read it all. Now without further ado:
The Problem with Guild Missions and Commendations
What are guild missions?
Guild missions are a set of activities designed to be completed as a small or large group. Completing these activities gives you 70-80s each, rare/yellow loot, and guild commendations. Banners and consumables don’t appear to be in the reward pool anymore.
Usage
Guild Commendations are used at several merchants. They can be used to buy special guild armor, weapons, miniatures, ascended accessories, and some random items from the Guild Trader. (Mostly scribing stuff) If you don’t want to click, it’s 1-3 comms for RNG gear boxes, guild banners, and guild siege. 5 For some guild back pieces, 4-7 for guild weapons, 14 for guild hall weapons, 13 for each guild armor piece, 10 for some insignias, 12 for ascended accessories, and 20-25 for status items like minis and tonics.
On average, you get 12-15 commendations a week, and that is quite a few commendations to get weekly. So what’s the problem? It sounds like there’s tons of rewards for doing missions! There’s two glaring problems with these rewards
- You cannot buy HoT statted Ascended Accessories (And presumably won’t be able to buy the next expansion’s stat sets), Armor or weapons. Not even the crafted ones!
- Crystalline Ore cost in addition to requiring commendations makes these items feel far more expensive than they have a right to be. Not only are you time gated, but you also have to farm Dragonstand for hours and hours. (40-150 ore depending on the items)
So, once again, let us look at
What’s wrong with Guild Missions:
- Little variety to missions, especially after 5 years. This is getting really old, Anet. And some days, you’ll have the same mission two or three times! (Looking at you, Blightwater)
- It takes a long time (2 weeks) to afford both accessories, especially when compared with the other methods. (Bitterfrost, Ember Bat, Doric, etc.)
- No HoT stats
- Once you get some ascended trinkets and a few skins that you want, you have absolutely no real motivation to complete guild missions. Sure, you get rares and ectos, but you could honestly just go to a map meta anywhere else and get the same without having to suffer through content you’ve done hundreds of times before. Rares and ectos are nice, but I don’t think they’re enough anymore.
- Bugs in receiving rewards. (Whether it’s receiving rewards early or not at all)
Why is this bad?
- This instigates a trend towards declining group content on a guild scale. (Especially PvE guilds)
- This shows that mindless farming is to be rewarded over organized (albeit easy) group content.
- Anet has not created new missions or encounters for guilds to do. It’s been 5 years. These have gotten stale. Being forced to do the same mission more than once a week just highlights this issue.
- Only 1 accessory can be bought per week IF your guild does every mission. Smaller guilds or guilds with mixed server origins may be forced to eliminate WvW missions from their pool. Others may be unable to complete some of the harder missions. Why shouldn’t those guild members turn away from guild missions if it’s going to be faster to just farm Bitterfrost?
- People who do guild missions will generally do them with only one guild. They have no reason to help out with other guilds they may otherwise rep from time to time.
- Bugs exist currently where players get their rewards early, or not at all. Sometimes talking to the NPC at the end of a race fixes it, but plenty of times, it does not. And there is no NPC at the end of Puzzles or Challenges.
So how do we fix (most of) this?
- Add items of value for guild commendations. Some suggestions:
- More decorations/scribing rewards
- Yet another currency exchange
- T6 mat bags
- Creating new items to purchase that don’t cost Crystalline ore. (Maybe a different map currency, or just no map currency?)
- Add new random drops from missions
- Bring back banners and consumables.
- Mystic Coins
- Random Scribing mats or decorations (Like how Nightmare CM can give you shards of the ocean)
- Chance at a guild weapon/armor recipe book to pick a recipe. Or to get a random recipe.
- Guild weapon (Baseline, not the Guild Hall versions)
- Add HoT stats to the merchants. And make room for the next expansion’s stats as well!
- New missions or encounters.
- Bug Fix. Not really going to tell you how to do that one, because I’m sure it’s probably just a lack of reports going towards y’all.
Conclusion
Adding new drops, including HoT/New Expac stats, and creating new encounters are, in my opinion, the most important points to work on. I believe they are absolutely vital to keeping the guild mission gamemode alive.
I hope that Anet reads these suggestions and takes the state of guilds and guild missions into account when they release their next expansion. These are, by no means, perfect solutions, and I encourage more suggestions and discusion on how we can improve the game-mode as a whole. If you read this whole thing, thank you for your time.
Server linkings are up for change every 2-3 months, give or take a couple weeks.
Rangers and thieves aren’t really good classes to bring for Zerging. (theyr’e great for roaming though. You should try it!) If you were to bring a power rev to a PvE raid, you’d be laughed out of the squad, unless the squad decided they wanted to kitten themselves by accepting you.
In WvW, zerg compositions have a set meta, with subsets in that meta. Guardians, support eles, condition necros, and revenants are high valued classes. Guardians provide stab, protections, and moderate damage. Support eles provide cc, consistent healing, and great condi clear. Damage eles (usually a hybrid build these days) provide great damage potential. Necros strip boons and deal great condition damage. Revenants provide resistance.
In comparison to all those useful classes, why would I want a thief? Thieves have little defense against bombs that will always at least clip you, since no commander and no person dodges perfectly. Thieves have no team support and deal very little multi-target damage at range. They’re there to flank zerglings that get too far from tag, not fight with the zerg.
Ranger is considered the “beginner” class. The majority of people new to mmos or new to guild wars will generally pick a warrior, ele, or ranger, as those are class archetypes shared among mmos. A ranger druid has to be good at healing and have a set build specifically tailored to surviving at close range to work in a zerg, and most rangers do not have that.
So why kick you from squad? If you are playing a “less useful” class, most commanders don’t want to waste their stab composition on trying to give you boons when you’re probably going to be the first to die, even with stab.
Is it prejudiced? Yeah. Will you have to work hard to prove yourself? Yeah. Can you fix the problem? Yeah.
Your solutions
- Join a WvW guild and tailor your ranger/thief build to fit in with their needs
- Swap classes
It seems like all rangers do have kennels for their pets, if we can trust anything from the patch notes at all.
Oh my god. The hotkey for the pet menu is K. It’s for Kennel. I’ve always wondered.
Another example using current T1 matchup.
Under the 3,2,1 system the scores are currently: BG 116, Mag 102, JQ 76. A spread of 40 between 1st and 3rd.
Under a 2,1,1 system the scores would be currently: BG 71, Mag 70, JQ 55. A spread of 16 from 1st to 3rd.
2-1-1 system would clearly result in much closer matches.
Doesn’t that just mean that the server that tries hardest to win is getting rewarded far less for their efforts? Because that’s all I see. Your server can make a kitten good push in off hours and wring out a second place, but the currently offline 3rd place will get just as many points as you. Where’s the motivation to even bother?
Hopeful this scoring will create more match variety. Not too many people still care about scoring and tiers in the 20hours they don’t play. we just want to see what other guilds are out there to fight in our respective raid times.
So far being in t4 isn’t bad as there is rotation of different servers in and out. stagnation and match fixing causes attrition.
It won’t create more variety, at least not for T2. T2 at this moment in time always has 2 servers that are T2 in population and coverage, and 1 server that is T1 in population and coverage. 1 of the T2 servers rotates out with one of the T2.5 servers every couple of weeks, smashes T3 and bumps back to T2. The T1 server smashes all of T2 because of all the off-hours coverage and server blobs they have. Then the T1 server goes back to T1, knocking another T1 server down to T2 to do the same thing over again.
That is a problem of population and server transfer fees/limitations, not of scoring.
With this new system, T1 servers will absolutely dominate, accumulating a massive amount of points during periods of low coverage.
Let’s make an example.
Skirmish 1/PeakTime:
Server 1(T2 server+oceanic):1
Server 2(T2 server+sporadic coverage):1
Server 3 (T1 server+coverage during most timezones):2
Skirmish 2/WindingDown, Server 1 starts logging on and back-capping. Get the same score as Server 2.
Server 1:2
Server 2: 2
Server 3: 4
Skirmish 3/Server 1 has the coverage for this skirmish and flips everything.
Server 1: 4
Server 2: 3
Server 3: 5
Skirmish 4/Servers 2 and 3 have ppt heroes log on before work:
Server 1: 5
Server 2: 4
Server 3: 7
Skirmish 5/Server 3 has top coverage with little resistance, and rides the ppt heroes train.
Server 1: 6
Server 2: 5
Server 3: 9
Repeat every day for a week, with some changes between Servers 1 and 2.
So what we see here is teams and players that work hard to retake their BL, only to get 2nd place, are awarded the same amount of points as the people who aren’t even there.
Maybe in T4 they don’t care about scoring, but scoring is very much a factor to consider when you’re fighting to stay in T2 against T1 servers where you can actually get some fights that aren’t steamroll easy.
I’ve found most of the recent changes to WvW have been good, and have made many posts saying so. This one is flat out horrible.
Awarding 1 point for 2nd and 3rd will offer no incentive for competition. One server could just not play and have no negative consequence. What’s worse, it take a huge amount of strategic value away from the game, trying to push one server down to 3rd, or help another up to 2nd, or whatever, in order to try to get the skirmish placement one wants.
As there will be no difference between 2nd and 3rd, this will only incentivise constant 2v1s against whichever server is placing 1st. This will be no fun for the 1st place server. WvW is supposed to be a 3 way matchmaking system, not 1v1.
So how would TC/SBI/FA be any better if there was a 2v1 against TC?
If this has been done in order to keep the matches closer together, then I don’t understand why y’all haven’t implemented a system I suggested when the skirmish system was implemented. The ratio between 1, 2, and 3 are the largest you can get among whole numbers. Instead, award 3, 4, and 5. This would lower the ratio and make it so there is still a close match by the end of the week, unless the 3rd server is just really outmatched.
Do you REALLY think that a scoring change will make the TC/SBI/FA match any better?
If you are trying to make outmatched servers more competitive, then this is no way to solve the problem. It’s just a gimmick. Outmatched servers need people and organization, not some scoring gimmick.
So how many guilds is BG going to give to SBI/FA to make for a better match? Yeah, thought so.
The other dramatic effect this will have on WvW is how it will effect volitility in glicko. Since servers will now be very close together in score, there will be less gains/losses in glicko score. This means that servers will have a much more difficult time trying to move up or down the rankings. This will also lessen the variety of matches as servers will remain further apart in scoring, thereby lessening the odds of a random tier jump.
The 3/2/1 scoring system has been shown to increase the score between the first and third servers, which is why you see the wall in NA between T1 and T2 gone. Increased volatility index has mixed T1 and T2 servers in matches which has added more variety in the matches, not less.
It says in the patch notes that this was something the players wanted. Sorry, I never remember this topic being brought up.
Seriously, how can you guys be so shortsighted. It really doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see how this is going to change things.
Well, scoring changes was asked for by the players and by poll results. As for fixing WvW we all know that Anet has to balance the sides, not the players, because the players want easy wins. That’s why when BG was re-opened there was a rush of players/guilds, or was it because of the great community that BG has.
Did you even read the post you responded to? They said 2v1s wouldn’t help. It wouldn’t make the TC/SBI/FA match-up better. 2v1s aren’t fun. They are not good game play.
And they’re saying adding a new scoring system ISN’T the answer! They’re saying we need more people in SBI/FA! Just because BG won’t “give” T2 guilds doesn’t mean what they’re saying is wrong.
As to “variety in matches”, I would rather fight the same 2 T2 servers every week for months than fight 1 T2 and 1 T1 server every week for months. The issue itsn’t variety, it’s the quality of the match-up.
But I agree with your last statement. Anet needs to stop manually opening and closing servers. They should make transfers to lower tiered servers exponentially cheaper and transfers to T1 servers near-impossible for large groups. We have 4 T1 servers right now. That is unacceptable.
To all the people suggesting “just team up”:
What happens when the T1 server with T1 coverage and T1 numbers on every map wins against the T2 servers anyway? Yeah, no change. T2 will still be a huge mess of rotating T1 servers crushing T2.
In the case the 2 T2 servers actually damage T1 Flavor of the Week enough to knock them down to rank 2, won’t the 3rd place server still be 3rd place?
The 2 T2 servers will not be able to knock down a T1 FotW to 3rd place. Because they will fight back and focus on the weakest server of the two. I can’t imagine FA defending SBI’s home BLs. I can’t imagine SBI defending FA’s home BLs.
If you’ve paid attention to the past few weeks, T1 servers aren’t winning in T2 by a close margin because we’re “ignoring” them. They’re winning because they have near 24/7 coverage or coverage when T2 servers don’t. They’re winning by tens of thousands of points, not a mere thousand.
If T2 servers combined their strength to take on a T1 server, then one T2 server would still get screwed. The T1 server that got “beaten” (lowered to second place in T2), would be in that tier for a longer period of time, which means the T2 servers would be in a constant state of 2v1. That isn’t fun. 2v1s aren’t fun. WvW is meant to be a 1v1v1 game-mode. Setting it up to be a 2v1 game-mode just makes winning less rewarding and makes T2 an even bigger kitten-show than it already is.
Whoever thought this was a great idea has shown they have no idea how to give the community what it wants. The community wants 3 T2 servers fighting each other, 3 T1 servers fighting each other, etc. We don’t want to funnel more people into T1 servers because you get the current problem: 4 T1 servers.
Fix your server population nonsense by making transfers OFF T1 servers cheaper, and making transfers to T1 impossible.
Main problem with the fix is that once people have unlocked the stuff that they wanted you are right back at where you started.
Yes. That situation is pretty unavoidable in the long term. I’m hoping that by adding more consumable purchases or late-game purchases that this effect is lessened. I am also hoping that the addition of more guild missions would help refresh the experience.
There seems to be no clear-cut solution, but leaving it as it is is stagnation.
Hero Panel (H)>Build (2nd Tab Down, Square/Hexagon Icon)>Weapon Skills. (3 more tabs at the top left.)
To UNLOCK new utility skills, you go to Hero Panel>Training. You use Hero Points (Skill Points, renamed if you were around back then) to unlock them.
To change the utility skills without using the panel, get out of combat and click the tiny semi-greyed line above the utility skills. Note you cannot change weapon skills. You will also have to unlock certain things if you are playing a new character.
The Problem with Guild Missions and Commendations
What are guild missions?
Guild missions are a set of activities designed to be completed as a small or large group. Completing these activities gives you gold, rare/yellow loot, and guild commendations.
Guild commendations are used to buy the items listed here. If you don’t want to click, it’s 1-3 comms for RNG gear boxes, guild banners, and guild siege. 5 For some guild back pieces, 4-7 for guild weapons, 10 for some insignias, 12 for ascended accessories, and 20-25 for status items like minis and tonics.
The Guild Trader (guild hall upgrade) allows you to buy 3 items a day. It sells a random ascended recipe, the crystal unique to your guild hall, a karma item, a random rotation of base decoration ingredients, and worthless bags of loot or minor sigils. That seems like a lot of variety, right? Wrong. The main use of guild commendations for the majority of players is buying accessories. Heart of Thorns stats and certain other special stat sets are not available for purchase from these merchants. Instead, you must obtain them through raids, Fractals, Ember Bay farming, and Bitterfrost farming.
So let’s look at
What’s wrong with guild missions:
• Little variety to missions
• A Maximum of 12-15 commendations may be obtained a week.
• It takes a long time (2 weeks) to afford both accessories, especially when compared with the other methods.
• No HoT stats
• As time goes one, fewer people will need to come to missions, because they have fully geared their characters and no longer need commendations. This means that fewer people will want missions and more people will be forced to or turn to mindless farming in Ember Bay/Bitterfrost. This is a natural decay that should be refilled by new players.
Why is this bad?
• This shows a trend towards declining group content on a guild scale. (Especially PvE guilds)
• This shows that mindless farming is to be rewarded over organized (albeit easy) group content.
• Anet has not created new missions or encounters for guilds to do. It’s been 4 years. These have gotten stale. Also, we had 3 bounties and 3 treks this week. What a lousy way to spend an hour. The system needs more customization at the very least.
• Only 1 accessory can be bought per week IF your guild does every mission. Smaller guilds or guilds with mixed server origins may be forced to eliminate WvW missions from their pool. Others may be unable to complete some of the harder missions. Why shouldn’t those guild members turn away from guild missions if it’s going to be faster to do so?
• People who do guild missions will generally do them with only one guild. They have no reason to help out with other guilds they may otherwise rep from time to time.
How do we fix (most of) this?
• Add items of value for guild commendations. (More decorations? Buffs? Yet another currency exchange? T6 mat bags? Leather/Wood/Mineral specific bags? Com to laurel exchange? How about those skins with guild insignias on them?) Creating new items to purchase should be priority number 1.
• Add HoT stats to the merchants, even if you have to place them in HoT only zones.
• New missions or encounters. That bullet-hell thing in Nightmare Fractal is really cool. Hint Hint.
These solutions will give people more reason to come to guild missions, and more reason to use commendations. My suggestions are only suggestions, and are not perfect solutions. There is certainly plenty of room for discussion on how exactly these problems should be fixed, but I think we can agree that adding items, encounters, and HoT stats are a good first step.
As to why this idea wouldn’t get people to be all “get off my map”. When you aren’t outnumbered, you have a much easier time taking objectives and getting rewards from them. So if we look at it that way, the buffs just serve to equalize the rewards that you would normally be getting if you had a full map. They shouldn’t be high enough to be better than having a full map, just equal to or slightly less than.
Not outnumbered: 10 loot chances per 5 minutes. No magic find. Participation as normal. You take objectives with decent speed.
Kind of outnumbered: 5-8 loot chances per 5 minutes. Some magic find to increase the quality. Some participation increase as objectives are slower to get, but not a ton. You’re still outnumbered, so the enemy is generally getting more points than you and can make unguarded objectives hard to find.
Outnumbered: 3-5 loot chances per 5 minutes. More magic find and particpation to balance out the fact that you aren’t going to be looting as much. You’re outnumbered, so encounters with enemy groups are starting to get harder and potentially less rewarding.
Super outnumbered: 1-2 Loot chances per 5 minutes. It’s incredibly hard to take objectives of any kind. Fighting the enemy zerg head on is a death sentence, so you’ll have to use guerilla tactics, which means your participation is gonna suck. Buffs hopefully mitigate this a bit and make it more rewarding.
Preface: I’m on FA. We’re outnumbered a LOT. Unless you’re on the one map we have 3 tags on, you and your guild’s tag are generally outnumbered. I won’t even get into the fiasco that is us being in T1 this week. Still, we’re used to it, so why am I complaining?
What happens when you get the outnumbered buff?
- Some players straight out leave. It hits morale hard to see that you’re outnumbered. Who wants to fight that noise when you could just swap maps to where you aren’t outnumbered?
- The outnumbered buff pops off and on. This is annoying. You know the enemy has significantly more people than you, then they don’t. No wait, they do. No, they don’t.
- Buffs are ok. The armor not breaking is nice.
Recommendation: Change the Outnumbered Buff so that there are 3 tiers of being outnumbered. The buffs you gain would scale with how outnumbered you are, meaning that if you are the sole group on the map, every objective you complete will mean more for you. Since this doesn’t effect the server, I think that that is a relatively balanced concept, but I am open to discussion on this.
The following buff recommendations are just there as an example. (The current buff is 50% Participation, 20% Magic Find, 25% World Experience, and no armor damage on death) Also, I can’t find the actual number count for what ticks a server over to being outnumbered, so I can’t really put those in.
Minorly Outnumbered
- 20% Participation
- 10% Magic Find
- 10% World Experience
Majorly Outnumbered
- 35% Participation
- 15% Magic Find
- 15% World Experience
- Armor Doesn’t Break
Extremely Outnumbered (Think off-hours)
- 50% Participation
- 20% Magic Find
- 20% World Experience
- Armor Doesn’t Break
Core Benefits of This Change
- The buff might motivate smaller groups of players to keep playing as they’ll be able to more easily maintain their participation levels, even when sneaking hardier objectives.
- Since there are 3 tiers, commanders not only know that they are outnumbered, but they know if they’re facing 10 people more than them, or 30.
- The Outnumbered Buff won’t flash as much, hopefully.
Some possible discussion points not addressed:
- Is knowing how many extra people you are fighting too much of an advantage? Or is this similar to just having a good scout/spy?
- Will this mean fewer rewards in general, for the average WvW player, or is it worth it, since you’ll probably hit a Minor/Major tier far more often than you would hit the normal outnumbered now?
- Buffs are certainly a tad lackluster and ignored (Except the armor repair: A++) by the general player base. Would they really be noticed more this way? Should these be increased more? Should they be decreased?
- Would this be effective?
Thank you. Please discuss.
My suggestion would be a change to the way we all currently pickup specific items then end up complaining to anet about not having enough bags or space.
Considering the average player chooses to salvage or sell to merchant all green and blue weapons or armor and salvage rares/exotics for ectos with higher grade salvage kits an idea came to me. I know theres an option to salvage all greens and salvage all blues with the salvage kits, but let’s take it a bit further.
- The change suggested would add unique options to all Salvage-o-matics.
- Would only be able to “Turn on” 1 Salvage-O-Matics at a time.
- Right Clicking the Salvage-O-Matic now has another option: Auto Salvage ALL Blue&Green equipment on pickup. This keeps the SoM turned ON so as you aquire items from fallen foes or containers, any blue or green equipment(weapons and armor only) would be autosalvaged which would give you any minor runes you’d normally acquire, by manually salvaging, and drum roll please the materials AND LUCK you’d normally acquire by*manually* salvaging as well, directly into your inventory.
By now you are wondering: “what about the silver fed SoM?” To answer this, Both SoM’s are different as if they operated as one has higher chance for rarer materials than the other…It can boost both depending on what you have so there’s no real issue with either of the SoM’s
- New mentioned option could boost sales towards all salvage-o-matics / Salvager’s Supplies & bag slots/shared inventories.
- Players will not have to go back and forth as much to sell greens/blues, which saves inventory space.
- Did I mention easier access to luck?
- Umm…more space?
- No more fear of Bags of Masterwork Gear
While this can be a good idea, I have three issues with it.
1. Anet just finished reworking salvaging through the “Salvage all” mechanic. They are unlikely and probably unwilling to look at salvaging again so soon. Especially since it’s barely been 2 weeks since the release. It’s a bit of a “Give a Mouse a Cookie” incident.
2. Anet has shown over and over again that they prefer the “overwhelm the player with loot so they feel that they’re being rewarded” method. Having auto-salvage means that people might feel less rewarded, or might realize how little mats they really get from salvaging gear. (Still enough to warrant salvaging, but way less than you might expect).
3. Sigils and Runes: This is a separate problem that needs to be fixed, but we’d be swapping an inventory full of gear for an inventory full of sigils. One is more preferable than the other, even if it doesn’t’ make sense logically.
tl;dr: Anet is probably not going to be looking at salvage QoL changes for awhile, since their last one was so kittening great.
You do realize its more balanced to have 1 BL which is harder/easier to defend than the others and give that to the Red/Green server or whatever the colors are right? What isn’t balanced is giving the server that is predicted to win the exact same BL to defend as they will automatically have an easier time defending it. If a server is predicted to win then they should by all means have a home BL that is harder to defend as it will help balance the playing field.
And even beyond that. If something is hard to defend it goes both ways. As soon as someone takes it from you, it becomes that much easier for you to get it back……
That kind of balance is done with Glicko/Warscore. If your server is consistently winning, you should go up a tier until you find where your server belongs. Once there you should have just as much of a chance to win or lose as everyone else. Balance between winning/losing servers is done map side via Home BLS and EB Keeps. You do NOT need seperate map types to accomplish this. Also, you should not be punished for winning. You should not be on the brink of going up a tier and then be forced back down because you’re doing well. Putting one server at a disadvantage because they are predicted to win is literally imbalance. If the scores are super close one week, why should the server that won by a couple hundred points be reduced to third place automatically? That just seems unmotivating.
Regarding your point about the two BL’s not being equal: WvW isn’t nor ever was designed with “equal” or even fair in mind. I think having a unique bl’s for each color could really change things up, and that’s why I voted the way I did.
There will not be unique borderlands for each server. There will be 2 Alpine and 1 Desert. I agree, World vs World does have room for unequal defenses. Each home borderland is meant to be much easier to defend for that server. In Eternal Battlegrounds (which is out of the scope of this conversation), certain sides have easier and harder keeps to assault and defend. My issue is that having 2 Alpine and 1 Desert will make one (or two) side(s) worse off for their Home Borderlands. I repeat, they are not making 1 borderland per side.
Actually, they did mention something about that… My guess is it will be put up to a new vote if this current one wins. Source: https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4lx2gx/may_31_new_wvw_poll/d3qwc2f
I repeat, you don’t know what you’re talking about.
Thanks for the source. I didn’t know what I was talking about. I would still argue against having 3 different BLs at once because of the imbalance. 3 of the same BL rotating every 1-3 weeks sounds a lot fresher.
@op
Ok, dbl is being worked on so it’s a better map that more players will like.
We were told that if we go the “simultaneous” route, changes are we will get a 3rd new map so each side is unique.
It’s going to be ok.
That sounds even worse. I would still vote for all servers having the same map every week and simply changing the map type every 1-3 weeks. We’d get both variety and balance. Simultaneous 3 way sounds disturbingly unbalance-able.
Point 1, EB and ABL are already different. Therefore this point is moot. Players are already used to differing point maps that also require different tactics. Having differing home maps wouldn’t be any different. Players are smart enough to understand that different maps might be worth more if fully controlled and decide where to go from there.
Point 2, ANet indicated it wouldn’t be three of the same map. Different maps and class balancing are not anywhere near the same types of balance issues. And since populations have never been in balance having a different map is nothing compared to time zone differences in populations. This is not an issue.
Point 3. People from both sides have said that 3 months of one map would have a negative impact on population. Currently 74% of people seem to prefer not to have that occur or favor having more variety in map selections. Which means if blocked by the minority it will create ill will in the 74% of voting player base which might further decline numbers or encourage people that support the game via in game purchases to spend that money elsewhere which hurts new development funding and weakens game mode populations further.
On top of that mixed maps allows new changes to be tested live and opens up more options for new maps to be introduced and played in live where they can be tested by all versus a few that may or may not test which results in poor feedback.
Voting for non-mixed maps votes for stagnation, which is where we lost player base before HoT. People left because of lack of changes and things grew stale.
Having different home types would definitely make a difference. Your home BL is meant to be your “gimme”. It’s easier to gain points and defend key objectives. Forcing a side into having a harder time for a week would just plain suck for that server.
Source on that second point? Because that sounds awful. If they did implement it, I would still vote to have every server the same BL and have it rotate every 1-3 weeks or so instead of 3 months. No staleness that way, and no imbalance between servers.
I will argue that map type does affect population. As you said yourself, people left because things grew stale. People also left because they hated the Desert BLs. People also stayed because they liked the Desert BLs. I am not claiming that keeping the borderlands static will fix population issues. I’m saying that making them simultaneous will make your issues worse.
I already said I know I am in the minority here. If I can convince people in the majority that it could be better to vote the other way, then I have achieved my goal. I am not asking to invalidate the poll. I am simply stating my point of view and engaging in discussion. If the poll goes through and the borderlands don’t suck when they’re simultaneous, then I’ll be pleasantly surprised. But I don’t think I’ll be surprised if they suck.
Regarding your point about the two BL’s not being equal: WvW isn’t nor ever was designed with “equal” or even fair in mind. I think having a unique bl’s for each color could really change things up, and that’s why I voted the way I did.
There will not be unique borderlands for each server. There will be 2 Alpine and 1 Desert. I agree, World vs World does have room for unequal defenses. Each home borderland is meant to be much easier to defend for that server. In Eternal Battlegrounds (which is out of the scope of this conversation), certain sides have easier and harder keeps to assault and defend. My issue is that having 2 Alpine and 1 Desert will make one (or two) side(s) worse off for their Home Borderlands. I repeat, they are not making 1 borderland per side.
I’m not here to disagree with you but I want to point out that the DBL could potentially be used as a balancing factor. Note the high ppt that the green servers have generally now which means they are pretty far ahead of their peers. DBL could be used as a balancing weak point and be given to the Green server in all tiers.
While I can see how that could possibly make the larger servers weaker, it would make winning far less fun. You would be punished for doing well. I am open to alternate ways of handling the population imbalance issues, but I believe that introducing such a drastic “fix” willy nilly is counter-productive and more ignoring the problem than mitigating it.
Now I know I am apparently in the minority here and that this is a super late argument. I was late in submitting to the poll because I was traveling and was shocked to see how people voted. I believe that the borderlands should remain separate for some pretty legitimate reasons.
—-
Reasons:
1. The borderlands are inherently different from one another.
One will always be easier to defend than the other. It doesn’t matter which one is easier, but it is generally agreed that these maps were NOT created equal. Whichever side gets the odd borderland out will have either a comparatively easier or harder time holding their own borderland. If you’re set up for failure, your server will have reduced turn out that week. You can play the hero and say that won’t affect you, but you aren’t your server or your militia. Remember how lower scoring does affect herd mentality to not show up.
2. When a previous poll was released, Anet admitted that a 2/1 split would inherently be imbalanced, and people still voted for it. Why are we wanting to introduce unbalanced content when Anet can barely balance population?
World Versus World is a tricky game-mode to balance, especially when it comes to population, terrain changes, and basic point changes. Introducing even more issues into this pool of mess seems self-destructive at best, suicidal at worst.
3. Mathematically Speaking: The “I hate the DBL and want to play it less” argument.
Voting for shared BL:
“DBL is harder to keep”: You get to play Alpine as much as you want and you suffer 33% (1/3 of BLS available) of the time when you get DBL as home BL. Your server suffers 33% of the time.
“DBL is easier to keep”: You suffer 33% of the time when you get DBL as home BL. Your server suffers 66% of the time.
Voting against shared BL:
Whether DBL/ABL is easier to keep is a non-issue.
You suffer 50% of the time. Your server does not suffer.
So if you hate DBL with such a burning passion that you would set the house on fire to keep yourself warm, I ask you to take a step back and think about what you actually want. An unbalanced game mode that routinely puts sides at an absurd disadvantage damaging the odd-server out and making the game-mode less fun to play for a week, or a balanced one that might slightly inconvenience you.
Frankly, I don’t believe this question should have ever been asked of the general population. Especially once Anet acknowledged themselves that it would be unbalanced.
Beautiful.
You reap what you sow.
Since you aren’t willing to explain raids people just stay silent.
Consider this retribution for all those Arah runs where I was trying to teach people lupi but they were too scared to ask for help because of people like you guys who refuse to play with people who haven’t already mastered the content or memorized your trite meta lingo.
I and others advertise with specific requirements in our lfgs. Us being suspicious of others lying to us and the frequency of people attempting to hide inexperience is not people being afraid to ask us because we’re “mean” or “trite”. It’s them lying and attempting to hide inexperience so that they can join “good” groups that will carry them. They could easily form their own beginner raid groups, but they refuse.
I saw plenty of “beginner arah” runs back when dungeons were ran. I see plenty of teaching raid runs today. You are being overly dramatic and you are enabling manipulative and selfish behavior.
So I was looking at what healing skill to take for my raid the other day. I disagree with the majority of metabattle druid builds advocating only glyph of Rejuvenation, as I believe a druid is there first for healing, and then for utility BEYOND Grace of the Land. I can agree that the healing glyph has its uses, but I reject the notion that it is meant to be the healing skill for druid. This isn’t really meant to place on skill above the other, but to start a discussion on when certain healing skills should be used and in what instances. Tl;Dr at the bottom if you want to skip the math.
Here are my findings comparing the Glyph of Rejuvenation and Healing Spring with their respective traits.
Glyph of Rejuvenation (non-celestial): (24s cd)
Self-Healing: 4,860 (1.0)
Healing Allied Healing: 1,300 (1.22)
Miscellaneous effect.png Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 300
Total healing: 6160 [1300 to allies]
Glyph of Rejuvenation (celestial)
Healing Self-Healing: 1,300 (1.0)
Healing Allied Healing: 4,860 (1.22)
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 300
Total healing: 6160 (same as before) [4860 to allies]
With “Verdant Etching” (seed planter), a celestial seed is dropped giving the following:
Healing Healing: 500 (0.5)
Next outgoing attack misses; Stacks duration. Blind (4s): Next outgoing attack misses.
Conditions Removed: 2
Number of Targets: 5
Radius: 180
Combo Combo Field: Light
*Grace of the Land Stack for those within the 180 radius.
Total healing on both: 6660 (uh oh) + 2 conditions removed per player. Reduced Recharge by 20%. Final cooldown: 19.25s.
(5360 or 1800 to allies)
Healing Spring: (30s cd)
Healing: 4,920
Gain health every second; stacks duration:6 Regeneration (3s): 2340 health
Number of Targets: 5
Duration: 10s
Trap Radius: 180
Radius: 240
Combo Combo Field: Water
Total healing: 7260 + 3 conditions removed on all players. (1 per pulse. 3 pulses)
(2340 to allies)
Healing Spring with Trap trait is 20% reduced recharge and 60% duration increase.
Healing: 4920
Gain Health every second: 4680 over 6s
Cool Down: 24s
Total healing: 9600 + 3 conditions removed on all players.
(4680 to allies)
TL;DR
Comparing the two final results:
Glyph of Rejuvenation: 6660 +2 conditions cleared + grace of the land. 19.25 cd.
Healing Spring: 9600 + 3 conditions cleared. 24s
Ally Healing Results:
Glyph of Rejuvenation: 1800 or 5360 to allies + 2 conditions cleared + Grace of the Land. 19.25s.
Healing Spring: 4680 to allies + 3 conditions cleared
Please Discuss.
(edited by Crescendo Forte.4821)
When most pugs make an lfg they want a smooth, fast run with little stress. They do not owe you a fractal run. They do not owe you a carry. They put up their lfg with the assumption that those that join will be level 80. While the fractal will scale your base stats up to 80, your armor and weapon will still be your standard level. Your traits will still be your standard level. You are asking people to cater to your needs, while being unable or refusing to cater to theirs.
If you want to underlevel or underman fractals, then find some friends and do it with them. Pugs owe you nothing.
As others have said, you don’t need a commander to start a raid. They have said numerous times that they’ve begun working on an lfg section for raids.
As for the waiting issue. That will happen until you find a stable group. When you find a group that you feel is fun or appreciates you, ask to add some of them as friends. Also let them know you’d be open to raiding, or join their guild. Networking is really important/nice in this game. I used to network for fractals, as it reduced the chances of me getting awful pugs with no AR. It made my runs easier and quicker to set up. Now I have 5-8 people I can look to see if they’re raiding and need a druid or a tempest or something, or if they want to join my raid.
Once you have a few friends, raiding gets easier. But it’s work at the beginning.
Currently, there are 8 dungeons and 25 explorable paths. My proposal is to not add or buff straight liquid rewards in these paths, but to incorporate an already existing system into dungeons.
Currently, there is a system in place on every non-starting zone or city map that rewards you along a reward track when you complete an event in that zone. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Map_bonus_reward
My proposal is to merge this system with the current dungeon system. Rewards would be given on either a daily or weekly timer. (similar to Raid reset) The changes that would have to happen internally to the dungeons would be the following:
• Dungeon bosses and “bonus event” mobs would all have an event marker attached to them (as has been done to jumping puzzles).
• A set of rewards (preferably dungeon level specific) would have to be created for each dungeon and for various bosses.
• ALTERNATIVE: A map progress bar, similar to the new meta maps, filled by killing mobs and participating in the dungeon.
Clearing bosses and dungeon events would award either (daily or weekly limited) loot for that event, or if using the alternative, would award some dungeon bar progress.
Pros:
• Encourages full clears and discourages skipping bosses.
• Introduces more ways for players to get varied level loot for salvage or lower level mats.
• Bosses and mobs still skippable for the speed runners out there, but now there’s incentive to do more instead of less.
• A way to bring dungeons back for people yet still keep a daily/weekly limit.
• Dungeon runners get some rewards and incentives to play again.
Cons:
• Adding an event progress bar, designing rotating rewards (so one particular boss or dungeon isn’t farmed), or instating event markers for various rooms/bosses in all 25 explorable paths is a ton of work. There’s bound to be bugs and glitches.
• Potential lfg issues with some players wanting to full clear and others wanting speed runs, but that existed in the “golden age”.
• Dungeon path sellers (particularly Arah sellers) will get more loot out of selling, but fewer buyers, as more people will be trying to complete the content on their own for rewards.
There are probably a few other pros and cons but these are the main ones I can think of at the moment. While I don’t honestly expect this system to go anywhere, I’m told it’s always good to get your ideas out there, so at least you did something more than complain.
On a somewhat related note, are people still getting bonus items for completing a set of 4 Fractals? I haven’t received any for the last 5 or 6 runs (just the Pristine Relic, Empyreal and gold); I’m unsure if there’s been a stealth nerf or whether I’m just having a really bad streak.
Bad streaks happen man. Remember, you don’t get rings/ascended equipment until at least level 11. I’ve gotten nothing from the shakies at least 4 times in a row before. Same night too.
Data: How to read this spreadsheet.
Sheet1: Contains my initial Tier-specific data at the top. The lower columns are the compiled data points from the whole project (second phase level specific data included). There are small notes to remind myself of what goes where, and some random dates when I was still marking what day I had done a fractal on. The lower right section contains the master chart with the final averages and some useless data I thought would be more useful when I first began. I’m leaving this in such a way so that if I missed some useful opportunity, someone else might be able to spot and utilize it.
Sheet2: Rows1-51 are all collected, Level-specific data, where row 2 is level 1, and row 51 is level 50. Below that are averages associated with their respective levels. Averages are highlighted green if above 3 (what I arbitrarily decided was a nice number of rares to get from a fractal) and yellow if they are less than or equal to 3. The color blocks were to make it easier to differentiate the tiers. Each Tier has its accompanying sample size. Each Level lists its sample size. The final column of data in that subsection is the Standard deviation, which I have no idea how to use. If the Std. Dev. was above 1.5, it was highlighted red. If it was below 1, it was highlighted green. I considered not bothering, but I figured someone would be interested.
The 2 graphs to the bottom right are the average loot table currently, and the average loot table with the 2nd and 3rd tier tables swapped.
Graphical Analysis and Conclusion:
It looks like keeping track of these fractals has given a small difference of less than .2 rares between the 3rd and 2nd tiers. Still, it does show that there is something strange with the current loot tables, and they are not as straightforward as higher level=higher reward. Swapping the two tables creates what I could see as a more reasonable curve. The slight spike between Tier 1 and Tier 2 could be attributed to giving higher rewards on purpose due to AR checks and other prerequisites. Rewards do get better the higher your tier, but not necessarily by level, and not for tiers 2 and 3. The standard deviation between levels is seldom below 1 and usually around 1.5-1.8.
Completing all tiers of fractals in a day would net you almost 17 rares. My groups tended to run 35-45 minutes high fractals, (21-50) while running 25-30 minute low fractals. (1-20) So total estimated time is: (45+45+45+30+30)/60=3.25 hours at the most. If you estimate 1.5 ecto per rare, you make 25.5 ectos per 3.25 hours or around 7 ectos per hour. Gwtp.net places this at 2.40G per hour (after tax)+the 1g to 1.5g base end fractal reward. To be around 3.4 to 3.9g and hour. This is still not taking into account the high chance of exotics at later levels, nor the chance at ascended chests. Still, while the gold per hour is not as high as a standard pug dungeon speed group, there is one thing fractals have that dungeons don’t: a massive (up to 10k) karma bonus. In the end, I would place fractal rewards as on par with dungeon rewards, just because of the karma.
Thank you [vVv], my wonderful guild, for being awesome and supportive and contributing the lion’s share of this data. Thank you, my fractal friends, who groaned whenever I asked for another rare count. Thank you Kendall, for keeping me motivated and on track in the initial phases, when we realized something was up. All of y’all made this worth it. And hey, it’s done! Woohoo!
Perhaps I should have kept a separate set of statistics for exotic drops,as they may have an effect on getting other drops, but I don’t see this as likely. Maybe next year.
Tl;Dr: Something’s strange with the Tier 2 and 3 fractal tiers. Namely, it’s seems they’ve been swapped. But it’s not much to worry about in the long run. Probably?
Guidelines:
Participants who submitted data to me were given the following guidelines. When there was doubt on whether their numbers were correct (did I get that rare from a mob or a chest?), that particular sample was thrown out. Cores and Lodestones do not count. Aetherized scraps and similar do not count. Only salvageable rare equipment. (Please remember, I started this with ectos in mind.) If they received the rare from a mob, and not an end chest, they were to either mark it down, tell me to subtract it, and/or salvage it immediately so it would not affect the end count.
If there is anything unclear, please feel free to ask. I will do my best to justify my thought process and my procedures.
Limitations:
General unwillingness for certain fractal levels via painful mistlocks, so there is some lack of data on a few higher level fractals. Results may be especially skewed toward higher levels in the 31-40 tier and 41-50 tiers. Also, I am an amateur. I am not a statistician. This may not be the best method to compile this data. I also have no idea which tests to use to check for errors.
My guild is relatively small, and while several of us love fractals, we are not a fractal guild. I would be interested if someone else wanted to continue this particular thread of data collection on a similar or larger scale.
Findings:
Together, my fractal running friends, cooperative pugs, and my guildmates have put together 675 data points. We did our best to spread out our data throughout the tiers, though we ran into some roadblocks when it came to the more tedious mistlocks. Pug responses were used, though only when it was clear that they understood the guidelines above. Otherwise, their responses were scrapped. (I’d say less than 20 samples needed to be scrapped, not counting those from disconnect/no reconnects.)
Our results were almost as expected, a general trend going upward from around 2.5 rares at the lowest tier (1-10) to 4 rares at the final tier (41-50). The anomalies that led us to attempt more thorough investigation and collection were the 2nd and 3rd tiers. Their “rare” loot tables appeared to have been swapped back when we only had about 20 samples per tier. While there was a general positive trend, the rare count decreased significantly enough to warrant a second glance when you reached tier 3. So we increased our sample size. With the loot table as it is, you are rewarded slightly less for doing a 3rd tier than a 2nd tier fractal. We did not collect enough individual data to make a conclusive decision on whether higher level fractals in the same tier truly give better loot than lower level fractals, but there are some interesting splits worth looking at. (One friend insists her best rewards come from level 22s, though the data suggests 23s as much more profitable than 30s.) Please see the provided data to draw your own conclusions.
Continued.
Hello. My name is Rain Spell and some of y’all may have seen me running around doing fractals all day. This is a long post. Tl:dr at the bottom, but it’s better to read this whole thing.Dropbox link to data.
In early October, I began keeping track of rare drops from fractal end chests. I began with the intention of proving to a friend that fractals could be worth running, in comparison to a dungeon (via ectos). I noticed some numbers were coming up strange, so I switched from collecting data per tier to a more specific, data per level per tier. I do not have the expertise to fully compile and analyze the data I’ve collected, but I did notice a not-so-fun trend.
For our purposes, “Rare drops” are rare, salvageable equipment gained from end chests at the end of each fractal. The final number of rares at the end of the set is taken, to help eliminate some of the variation from different fractals. (I considered throwing out fractals that included the Molten Testing Facility, because of its notoriously awful chest, but decided that that was too much manipulation.) I did not count exotics, because I did not want to mess with a loot table that was so divided. (There are 3 possible exotic types you can get from chests, Tribal, Karma, and Standard, as far as I know.)
Assumptions:
- Magic Find does not affect end chests (I believe this is true, even if some claim otherwise. I noticed no major variations between friends who had less than 100 and those that had more than 200 when it came to end chests.)
- Reward level does not vastly effect end chest rewards. While I’ve heard suspicion that reward level affects end chests, I believe it only affects the last shaky chest.
- Participants were truthful and watchful of which rares were from mobs and from endchests. They did not salvage their rares until after they had given me their count.
- Primary assumption: Any human errors are within the realm of reasonable deviation, since the sample size is so large.
- A sample size of 50-70+ per tier is large enough to see clear trends. (In fact, it was possible to see the trends at less than 20)
- Fractal rewards increase per fractal tier/level being completed, and are affected by both, positively.
- “Luck stealing” does not exist. One person in the party receiving 8 rares has no effect on the other party members.
Continued.