Showing Posts For Dashwood.3215:
I"m having the same issue since I “upgraded” to Yosemite.
I’ve been running the client for months without a problem on my retina MacBook, but after updating to Yosemite over the weekend the game freezes every time I try to open the Trading Post.
Come on guys, Yosemite has been out for weeks now, surely you have to be working on a fix for this?
I’m on Underworld and I’d merge the four lowest servers (not three, think about it) in a heartbeat. Between us we would actually make one viable contender. Just.
Since the Mac client is just using a wrapper, there’s no reason why the same couldn’t be done for SteamOS. It really just depends on user demand, which itself depends a lot on how successful SteamOS becomes.
However right now you can run it on SteamOS by streaming it from a Windows PC (if you have a spare Windows box). I do this all the time with my Mac and it works flawlessly. Much better performance that actually running it with the official Mac client!
I’ve been on Underworld since the beginning, and right now WvW there is pretty sad. A group of half a dozen players is a zerg, and a group of over a dozen players is a fantasy. Fissure of Woe have it even worse. Current this week we are up against Dz and it’s not even worth turning up – the population imbalance is so massively severe we have no hope of getting anywhere. That’s not even fun for Dz – generally they just sit in their fortresses and once in a while go out roaming and watching UW people run away from them or get steamrollered.
My guild are thinking of moving to another server higher up the ladder, but then that just makes the problem worse for anyone left on UW.
You really HAVE to do something about this – for new players coming into WvW here it’s not an enjoyable experience at all. Here’s what I suggest as some possible quick & dirty fixes:
1. Merge the bottom four servers into one. The WvW population disparity is so severe at the bottom tier that the entire tier added together still would only form one fairly low-end contender. It would be an relatively simple fix and finally give the lower tier servers some decent combat.
2. Another solution would be simply make server transfers free to the bottom Tier servers. I have a few friends who would happily transfer over to join our Guild there but the cost is prohibitive. Yeah, I know ANet make money from server transfers and I respect that, but if you’re not going to merge the servers I assume you actually want the servers you have to have a viable minimum population. You can have it one way or the other way, but right now you have the worst of both worlds.
3. Give massively increased Magic Find to anyone on a map with a very low number of teammates, regardless of whether they are outnumbered or not. For example, there are frequently times in UW when there are less than 10 people on a map. So give them all a bonus +50% Magic Find. Or even a bonus 100% – anything that would incentivise people to jump into a map and go roaming. Right now UW can’t even raise enough people at any one instant to both cover EB and our own borderlands, never mind attack the enemy borderlands. And because there’s no-one to fight, there are no rewards in being there. If I can kill 30 players in one session on a major server, or 3 (if I’m lucky) on a bottom Tier server, then you need to make the rewards for killing those 3 appropriate. So bump up the Magic Find and then people will WANT to come here.
In short: either merge the bottom four servers, or if you must keep them at the very least give people incentive to want to move there AND take away any roadblocks stopping them.
Or watch it die on the vine, and I really don’t think any of us wants to see that.
(edited by Dashwood.3215)
Just do it like in GW 1. Was simple, effective, and it just worked. And yeah, bring back GvG the same way too.
I have the same issue, 100% repeatable.
I have most of my settings on Medium and can play WvW all day long now. New MacBook with nvidia card, so that hardware definitely works.
Don’t know what you guys did, but on my MacBook the new Mac client has about 4x the performance than it had before. It’s gone from being barely playable on lowest settings to about 60fps with Medium settings.
It’s still a lot slower than the Windows version, but at least I can play it now. Thanks!
Hadn’t thought about what it would do in close matches, but yes, you’re right. It would make holding those points absolutely vital in those cases.
OK, make it simpler: whichever world is in the lead gets no buffs from Bloodlust. Second place world gets small buff (say+25), last place world gets big buff (say +50). Enough to keep the game interesting for everyone basically.
That way the server doesn’t have to recalculate the team sizes every few minutes, just look at whichever place your team is in and decide from that.
I like the idea of just adding a bigger buff to Toughness and Vitality if that keeps it simpler too. At least then the losing team aren’t going to get facerolled completely but have a chance to get a few extra shots in to keep things fun even while they are losing.
So… how about this:
Make Bloodlust give no bonus to the team with the biggest number of players, but a huge boost to a team with a smaller number of players. That way it’s worth the losing teams fighting to get it, and makes the winning team have to split their forces to stop them or risk losing the advantage of numbers they already have. Basically make it an anti-zerg boost.
Preserves balance, makes it useful, and people are happy… well, at least two out of three anyway ;-)
Thoughts?
Not signed. Keep the change, it’s a lot better the way it is now.
What he said. Definitely a very good change.
Add another one to the list of people hugely disappointed to find out that we can’t guest across regions. As someone whose guild has had both European and American members since 2005 in GW1 we are really upset that we can’t do this. It was one of the things that attracted us to GW in the first place.
How about a compromise: let us define one server from each region as a "home"server, and allow free travel between those two. Since WvW has different leagues in each region this won’t affect WvW rankings; and it would allow us international guilds at least SOME kind of solution.
I feel your pain. Basically you need to put a ton of points into Beastmastery and/or use a bear, otherwise forget it.
What everyone else said. My biggest gripe is pet survivability. I liked having one pet that was a real companion, instead of having to swap back & forth between two different pets all the time.
I think everyone by now knows that we have some serious problems in WvW: free server transfers, downed state, nightcapping, massively unbalanced matchups. All of these are basically subsets of one problem: that WvW as it now is suffers from severe snowballing.
In most tiers right now one team will outnumber the others by a little bit on the first day and night, grab an extra orb and get the buffs from it, and from then on the combination of superior numbers and superior buffs means it’s downhill really fast for the other two teams. By Tuesday (hell, sometimes by Sunday) the #1 team has an untouchable score and if we’re lucky there might be a fight for second place. Which means that many of the people on the losing teams just give up until Friday rolls around again, which compounds the snowballing problem even more. This just isn’t much fun for anyone, but that’s how nearly every match seems to be ending up right now.
Don’t get me wrong, I really enjoy leading a small underdog party up against a tough enemy and putting up a hard fight, but when your team is continually up against not only more players but more players who are also buffed up to the eyeballs with two or three orbs, sooner or later it just gets tedious being facerolled every time you leave your base to try to cap a Supply Camp.
I originally thought that this would all balance itself out in the long run, but now I’m not so sure. We have some servers in total free fall (including the one I’m on, Underworld) because people eventually just get fed up losing all the time and transfer off, and the cycle repeats itself into a very rapid race to the bottom, where there simply won’t be enough people left in WvW to make it even worthwhile playing.
So please ANet, for the love of all six gods, at least give us an outmanned buff that gives us a fighting chance. It doesn’t have to be complicated or huge: maybe if the #1 team outnumbers the other team by 2:1, give the smaller team the equivalent buff they would have if they possessed one orb. Give them a two orb buff if they are outnumbered 3:1. That way it won’t unbalance the game in favour of the smaller teams (since the bigger ones will probably already have orb buffs), but it will give smaller teams the chance to put up some kind of a fight rather than just going back to PvE until Friday night.
Underworld is all English-speaking, and WvW queues are minimal to non-existent. And some new WvW players coming in would be greatly appreciated!
Escorting a Dolyak should give a decent reward. I don’t think there is one currently, and that’s why if I just run across the map I can disrupt enemy supplies for free.
It used to have a reward but was abused by bots so it’s been (temporarily) removed. Blame the gold farmers for that one.
I played a Ranger in GW1 for years, where all the pets had exactly the same skills and damage, and so like most people I was really looking forward to being able to have pets with unique differing skills and capabilities in GW2. But am I happy? No, I am not. Because pets are so weak in GW2 that they are basically dead before I get the chance to use most of those cool unique abilities.
In GW1 my pet was a really useful part of my character – I very rarely had to res them during a combat and they at least responded to the very limited commands I could give to them. In GW2 I’m switching pets all the time in order to try to keep them useful, and spamming heals, calling them back out of AoEs – it’s a freakin’ full time job just keeping them alive.
Psychologically it’s also very annoying – in GW1 I built a real relationship with my pet because she was always there by my side helping me. In GW2 my “pet” is just a short-use skill that gets swapped in and out like anything else. There’s no real sense of my pets being a real animal companion to my character.
So given that the general consensus is that the Ranger is one of the weaker classes here’s my suggestion for redressing the balance. Don’t bother buffing our weapons, they are more or less fine the way they are (well, once the sword root bug gets fixed anyway), instead just buff our pets’ survivability. Even if it’s only a little tiny bit, enough for them to actually stay alive long enough to make a difference in a fight.
And at worst, if you feel have to lower pet damage in order to compensate, I could live with that. Because right now pet damage output is barely above zero anyway since they spend most of their lives either running towards the target or limping back to me waiting for F4 to cool down. I guess that’s why well over 50% of the Rangers I meet have a bear companion – it’s the only one that lives long enough to be even slightly useful.
Our pets are our primary class feature (those lovely F1-F4 buttons) and right now they are almost useless except as a cosmetic addition. We’re basically reduced to not much more than Thieves without a Stealth mechanic, or Warriors with crappy armor. I’d rather be a proper Ranger.
…This has allowed me to pretty much keep up a Phantom army most of the time…
Given this, I don’t understand the nearly across-the-board change to the Phantasm recharge times, and I’m hoping for a little insight.
I think you just answered your own question.
“Just split PvP and PvE skills already; the code is there.”
No, don’t. When ANet did this in GW1 it was the worst decision they ever made. Never, ever, EVER split PvE and PvP skills. Balanced skills are balanced skills, period.
As someone who has played Mesmer since the beginning of GW1, I have no problem with these changes. Mesmer is a great class in both PvP & PvE, I have way more survivability than anyone else in any party I’ve ever been in. Yeah, a longer recharge on Chaos Storm is annoying, but it’s still an awesome skill. Phantasms – whatever. Fire & forget, learn to use another skill in the meantime.
Good balancing ANet, as I would expect from you.
ANet needs to implement a system which distuguishs between skills in pvp and pve, like DragonNest has. Every skill can have different CD, duration and damage modifier values in pvp (maps) and pve (maps).
If they’d implement this, they’d have to rebalance almost every utility and elite skill of mesmers.
No they really don’t need to do this. They brought it in in GW1 and it was a complete mess. Skills need to be balanced equally for all purposes, not least because WvW is a hybrid PvP/PvE model. Having two versions of every skill is horribly confusing to the average player, and psychologically spoils immersion.
Having said that, I do think Blink needs to get some love in general, it’s not exactly most people’s first choice skill, and this kind of fast confusing movement is a perfect example of the Mesmer’s art.