Guild Wars 2

Beorn Raukar.4328:

Dekar.2759:

Can the Dev’s please just clearly answer the following questions in the most simple fashion with no strange innuendo or undertones that hint at something else:

Should everybody blow all their Glory savings at the vendors before March 18th?
Yes, they have been saying for months that glory would be taken away as currency.

What happens to any left over Glory?
It will get removed

What do people do with the multiple stacks of PvP Glory Boosters they can’t possibly use up before March 18th?
They can delete any stacks that were not used. Again, they said several months ago that Glory will be removed. People had plenty of warning to use glory boosts. Glory Boosters that were purchased with gems, are eligible for a refund, you should submit a ticket.

That’s the main concerns of the hundreds of people I know, we can endure change but nobody likes to be screwed over basically because they mistimed something or had to make choices based on speculation.
There was no speculation, the announcement of glory removal came directly from the devs several months ago, they added the glory vendor and recommended people to spend all their glory. This was almost 3 months ago.

EDIT: if the answer really was as simple as “glory is gone” than upset people are upset me included.
Again you had plenty of time.

This sir is what you call…100% missing the point. The removal of glory is obviously known what the questions were in relation is to the -rumours- that they may be doing something else with it other than straight up removal as with boosters.

Please don’t get all fanboi re-quoting the obvious it’s just a disservice to everybody. As for “plenty of time” that’s just childish and not true, many people have more than 800 hours worth of glory time they’ve been trying to use since the announcement which is not really a viable time frame for most human beings.

Can the Dev’s please just clearly answer the following questions in the most simple fashion with no strange innuendo or undertones that hint at something else:

Should everybody blow all their Glory savings at the vendors before March 18th?

What happens to any left over Glory?

What do people do with the multiple stacks of PvP Glory Boosters they can’t possibly use up before March 18th?

That’s the main concerns of the hundreds of people I know, we can endure change but nobody likes to be screwed over basically because they mistimed something or had to make choices based on speculation.

EDIT: if the answer really was as simple as “glory is gone” than upset people are upset me included.

At risk of getting sucked into this trash bin of a forum topic I will clarify some things about rB.

First I was not a guild leader of rB just an active player and commander. We moved aprox 68 people to Blackgate, 65 were funded at 50% transfer which we rated at 45gold per person. Aprox 28 left with me to SoR, that’s 40 that remained on BG, I recommended to those that stayed to join OnS or KnT since the rB leadership in the end decided to quit the game for awhile due to new job and marriage.

That said, since the first conversation I had with BG expressing interest in transferring late August and with the information provided to me at the time they looked like an awesome community. They were also an underdog at the time.

When we arrived…BG recruited 11 guilds within the month, I believe they are up to 17 guilds now since then and whether or not the guild tags are all still there many of the players are (example 40 rB).

The 28 of us who left we left due to what we considered a poor community at the time. During the short stay (3 weeks) I saw 3 active hackers (who still play), had an entire guild troll us constantly (RICH…btw I recorded them for 18 hours after they trolled me and they lost every fight for the entire duration because they are pro. They are gone from BG now which is a good thing for BG imo), they had lazy impulsive TS admins (which I believe they resolved as well), Noodles recruited Mayoken for some reason (that is a story not in Mayo’s favour I don’t need to get into), and even after recruiting 11 guilds they were still trying to recruit more.

Blackgate is not a bad community and I don’t believe it’s wrong to want to recruit guilds even if it causes imbalance since I’ve always had the opinion “win when you play, screw 24/7 ppt.” At the time and due to a combination of reasons that happened shortly after we arrived on BG…it was not a good choice. I still have many many friends on BG, I still respect some of their main guilds that play.

~Side Note
I honestly have a hard time understanding why every T1 match up thread is the same failed history report, shocked and a gasped people calling our guild transfers, and the occasional overly obvious instigator (troll) which somehow still rustled someone’s jimmies…you could almost say that is “grinds my gears.”

Fishbait.6723:

More temp` content.
Who is surprised?

Quiet you, this is a good thing.

DevonCarver.5370:

Winners will have access to the finisher until there are new winners. At that point those people will gain access and the winners from the previous season will no longer have access to the stomp.

Well that was a fast reply, starting to think I missed some reading about this answer somewhere.

Does this insinuate that the finishers will always be the same every season and it’s only the other achievements that may change from time to time which in theory should be doable in any server?

If I don’t win first place in the first season will I ever get the chance to get the first place finisher reward in another season?

I know many people already expressed their concerns but I’m on a server that has no chance and risking rank 1-3 on another server is better than never having a chance at something I may never achieve. I’ve put up with the fact my server has fairweathers but I never cared until now and depending on how the reward is implemented it will ruin guilds and servers in my opinion that are on the rocks like mine.

If the permanent account rewards are achievable as season two rewards or once season two starts have another method to acquire them (which gives temp bragging rights at least and new rewards for season 2) which ANET can guarantee than I believe many communities may be saved imo.

Doomdesire.9365:

This thread summed up in one picture

More like…good episode though.

RockonHarder.7235:

Are you even from Dragonbrand?

No I am on a phantom server and I just like to make stuff up and throw my reputation on a speeding highway full of bad drivers because it’s fun.

Ryu, I did get to that point. I bit my tongue the entire time but as of May 31st I gave them my opinions and don’t care about their opinions but I do still care about the success of the server and majority of the people since they are not involved or as informed most likely about this kind of stuff.

In otherwords I am now a key player in the drama now which I’ve tried to avoid for so long on Kaineng and DB. I’m sure Mayoken will try to smooth things over somehow which may be a good or bad thing.

Eva, we didn’t have a chip on our shoulders that’s the problem. The natives have the chip and feel threatened by the population the transfer guilds bring in so they get all uppity about anything different. Also saying things like “the true heart” is just another way of saying “you ain’t us and nevah will be” on a video game.

AARP syndrome.

Nickthemoon, CO never tried to dictate or take over anything. We silently went in and did what others wanted the entire time. We’re not even part of their “leaders forums,” we get assigned to a map and try to work with whichever guilds are on it.

Jayne, be happy they have the truth despite how drama cry baby it is. I don’t agree with most of what CO says on the forums either so I know if I post I’ll be guilty by association.

Going to air some dirty laundry here about DB so you can make a proper decision and don’t care if people hate my honesty for it.

I don’t think you should come to DB, based on the patterns I see it’s on the same path as Kaineng.

-Guilds that “strategically” stop playing because when we aren’t winning
-Server PPT dependent on overnight crews that sometimes show sometimes don’t
-Server meetings that end up more venting about BS than discussing the “who, how and when” for achieve goals
-Terrible “natives > transfers” holier than thou attitude.
-Several guild leaders are going to either quit or take long term breaks in the near future
-Website leads don’t reach out to guilds but rather demand guilds to reach in (which shows they are “real serious” about cooperating with everybody)
…etc, sounds familiar?

Difference is Kaineng had fewer guilds and tried harder before it imploded. Don’t trust me about the eventual drama, here’s a recent drama:

Cry Baby Story Inc. (I’m coaxing over the insults that went both ways)

May 31st – Reset Night on EB. 5 guilds are heading there; my guild had majority players so we ended up leading main zerg. 1.5 hours before reset I tried to talk to the other 4 guilds who are always in EB (despite other guilds asking them to rotate EB once in a while which they refuse and despite they having a history of not cooperating with other transfer guilds but I tried anyway) and not one of them got into TS to discuss strategy, one officer of one guild says they are going to play defense and scout as they “always do” but he’s not sure via tells. I told him it’s stupid not to know what the main zerg is doing, try to get somebody on TS or send me a tell to spend 2 minutes so they know what I am doing at least and we can be partially in sync.

At 8:59pm EST one of the reps finally gets on TS to inform me I don’t know him and it’s his purse before dropping his cyber resume which amounted to “I log online like everybody else but I say I’m better than you.” I tell him I don’t care and don’t give a rats about your history or anybody who can’t spend 2 minutes to know what each others strat is so just do your thing. After he trolls me some more and makes fun of Red Essence for some reason about how I will fail he drops a “welcome to DB” before rage quitting. They also shortly after map reset send a spy to join my guild.

Game time, we win all our fights cept one three-way we had to run away from in ogres, we have our third of the map plus SMC, plus two towers and supply in the enemy zone. SMC and our third is being upgraded safetly, we have walls already on SMC and working on gates it hasn’t been 2 hours yet. I keep getting trolled in map and tells because I am not responding to their “scouts” who don’t give numbers as fast as they like but I did move my zerg quickly to defend klovan, overlook, WC…etc and we saved them all. They are defending scouting like they wanted, I am leading main zerg and trying to adapt to their strat despite not having a full force in my hands to fight off the enemy full forces at times but all seems good our PPT is great and third safe.

All we had to do is maintain, main zerg was hovering around SMC and ready to warp to spawn based on scouts at this point and anytime we had a chance press SBI on their towers we took and re-took…etc. Well their scouts decided to not report any SMC moves to let Mag ninja it on us so they can troll me, they blamed the strategy, they blamed me…etc when it really it was a scouting performance issue. It’s about 2 hours 10 minutes into the night, I had my fill at this point from the “regulars” as they call themselves, I delayed our zerg to let Mag build up millions of ACs in SMC, I break the double team strat and kitten off both sides before we bail map.

Knowing the spy is in my guild still we get a bunch of us to kitten , moan and cry in guild chat about the night. We talk about creating our own alliance within the server without the DB “regulars” just to get them to poop a bit…etc knowing they are reporting it all back thinking they are so sneaky. Next day the spy quits the guild, all of Saturday the “regulars” furrow their brows about this alliance talk and this morning they come up with this:

http://dragonbrandforums.com/index.php?/topic/345-dragonbrand-coalition/

Weclome to Wagonbrand

If you transferred you will be welcomed for about 2 weeks but you’ll only be respected by other transfer guilds. Be careful where you end up, in my opinion stable communities are worth Tier fluctuation if they even fluctuate. Be happy with your homework before you move is all I can really say.

Can we call this change out for what it actually is? Yeah, it’s a lazy “fix” and nothing more.

On a macro level the reset time now sucks for both EU and NA.

On a micro level myself and a large majority of my guildies can’t play any Friday now thanks to queues.

If you look at my post history I am not known for complaining or even posting very often but this change is seriously an unwelcome one for people with jobs. As many people have mentioned already a real solution would be to solve the EU issue without passing the problem over to NA. NA reset was already an hour too early for most West Coasters as NA prime time is 9pm EST – 2am EST by most all other game metrics.

I won’t post again but this is as disappointing as it gets as a WvW focused gamer since I can’t look forward to Fridays and Friday is usually the best WvW day.

I appreciate the fact that you actually read my bloody rant so kudos to that. I completely agree with your assessment that it is optimistic and heck I’d go further and say it’s almost pretty much idealistic. I’m glad you are going to try because the worst that could happen is what we already have.

I wish you the best of luck for trying and hope you and a couple other guilds get a recognizable alliance name.

Now that you know Micro-Alliances is awesome let’s talk about that minor attitude issue too. Stop worrying about your server score right now, no you stop worrying about it. That’s it, don’t look at the score but here’s what you should care about…your performance when you do play. Focus on dominating during the times you play, doesn’t matter if it’s just one map that does well a night for your entire server. If you win when you play that’s what matters and people will notice whether you want them to or not.

I’m on SBI currently and been here since the start, I can tell you we are currently #1 solely because of 24/7 population. We have more people participating because we have higher morale which feeds more participation; we are not super duper organized like some bravado bozos brag about especially if you compare us to other RvR games. Your servers still have a real good chance to be competitive but due to the scoring system just focus on being competitive when you play, the #1 server long term is all about who doesn’t burn out the fastest.

That’s it, that’s my advice take it however you like or leave it and call me crazy.

Community Solutions

Points 1 & 2 were to create context, this section is why I created this post. Instead of just following the typical life cycle of an RvR game and griping about game mechanics I believe there is a solution to maintain competition and overall satisfaction within your guild or server community.

“Alliances & Attitudes”

Hold On!

Yes the solution is alliances; the solution is not “one big alliance per server,” as well as a very minor shift in attitudes which many have already adopted.

Let me explain:

Multiple smaller Alliances (Micro-Alliances) per server using the same voice comm is the future. Why?

Pros:

1. Micro-Alliances can accommodate every style of play.
-Since there should be a micro-alliance per style when it comes to organizing RvR gamers of the same state of mind…more is always superior.

2. More Involvement of Smaller Guilds
-Smaller Guilds don’t want to lose their identity yet if your server only has one massive voice comm they often don’t participate as much since they don’t feel they are big enough to tell other people their opinions. These smaller guilds often just follow commanders while it’s convenient and bail once things gets hard, people call them PuGs and insults them daily. Micro-Alliances can give them a voice and get them involved without consuming them.

3. Many RvR Leaders burn out.
-Sometimes a guild doesn’t even participate in RvR unless “x leader” is online so the more people in the same voice comm allows other leaders to step up and utilize more RvR player talent appropriately.

4. Some Guilds quit
-Always there are few guildies who want to stay when guilds leave or core players quit but since they don’t know anybody else they end up quitting as well. Micro-Alliances using the same voice comm gives familiarity and in almost all cases new relations and so if one guild goes belly up, some of the talent that want to stay will choose to stay since they can find a new home.

5. Battlefield Performance
-Instead of having several guilds of different play styles spread across different maps trying to agree on how to take over a map you now have larger populations who can coordinate better. Ex. hardcore aggressive alliance on this BL, general kick bone alliance on that BL, slow and steady on that BL…etc. As well since said Micro-Alliances should be using the same voice comm it will be much easier to communicate strategy on a micro and macro level.

6. Less Drama
-More accountability by default leads to less drama, if X Alliance says they can cover and map and they fail miserably one would think drama would ensue but what often happens is people finally accept it’s time to listen to the advice of others at that point. (Yes some people need to bomb first) More information sharing is good only if it’s needed, having Micro-Alliances claim BLs some nights allows people to identify performance more realistically as opposed to several guilds hiding under the rug when things are bad but pop out when it’s good. As well keeping people of the same state of mind on the same maps by default decreases drama, if somebody trolls their Commander they now have a larger playerbase to back their Commander up.

7. Increased Morale
-You on a lower pop server that doesn’t always win yet you know you kick bones but nobody believes you…Micro-Alliances to the rescue! Imagine on the forums saying “butt kick alliance of server-x was on Red BL 9pm-1am and crushed!” You may not be on the best server but you can build morale by talking about your micro-successes. Who cares if the server is doing bad, when butt kick alliance plays people notice…when you play other servers people will be talking about you saying “which BL is butt kick on? I don’t wanna mess with them!” Increased morale = increased population, others will want to mimic butt kick alliances success and slowly your server should do better.

8. Micro-Alliances happen anyway
-That’s right, already there are guilds that prefer to work with other guilds and many guilds merged with others…etc. Don’t wait until it’s too late, don’t play politics with everybody trying to “like everybody,” get your guild involved with others and start up or join a Micro-Alliance before your server population bleeds talent slowly and silently.

Cons:

1. Potentially more drama
-If you don’t filter the guilds you want to create a micro-alliance with there could be disagreements. So if you do it, do it right.

2. Potential Identity loss
-If you start up a micro-alliance you do it for the greater good, not so you can talk about your individual guild tag. Frankly I think it’s a good thing anyway but some people are so paranoid about how they as an individual or guild is perceived they may not like being treated normally. My advice to that is, go watch Fight Club and figure out you aren’t special.

Cnt~

First I’m going to start by stating that the post will be long and everything I’m about to say is purely my opinion. If you disagree just remember to put your pitch fork and torch down before replying, seriously put the pitch fork down I’m not against you as an individual or trying to doom the game.

Secondly, everything I will be discussing is what I perceive to be in the best interests of WvW and as a consequence your server health and competitive guilds as well assume it’s in the context of RvR gaming.

Lastly, I am going to say this “it is human nature to try and become more efficient at everything we do in life, those who perfect it have perfected laziness.”

Contents
1. RvR Life Cycle
2. Game & Server Problems
3. Community Solutions

RvR Life Cycle

Month One: Get max level and RvR, several servers try to create a utopia where everybody is equal that eventually fail, several servers create a mega-alliance that also fails.

Month Two: Hardcore Guilds/Alliances dominated due to gear/level and rush to perfection, they start to burn out.

Month Three: Hardcore Guilds/Alliances move on, few HC leaders stick around with a reduced playerbase. Casual Guilds/Alliances start to take over due to playerbase, casual leaders start to burn out, several quit posts appear.

Month Four: General playerbase start to accept the limitations of a game, many move on and guilds start to merge or fade away. Talk about server merging becomes a real discussion, forums become more cynical.

Month Five: Usually a major patch, update or projected content appears…many people make their decision to move on or not based on it. RvR becomes more volatile, major battles become rare, people adopt a “let’s fight when the enemy is pop is low” attitude. People look for “reasons” to play a different game.

Month Six: The major update or patch most likely is deployed and brings back a PvP population boom…it doesn’t last long term and forum tears increase temporarily. Server communities start to finalize, major drama ensues when community leaders realize that nobody “needs” them…hopefully they realize it’s about wants not needs.

Month Seven: Talk about other games, in-game convenience issues, class balance and expansions frequent the forums. Game population hits its long-term plateau, at this point if populations dip it’s solely based on the communities and not game mechanics.

This is my assumed life cycle of every RvR game based on every RvR game I’ve ever played; because of the frequency of pattern I have accepted it as reality.

Game & Server Problems

We all have our idea of what matters most, I’m going to list the ones I think matter most to the long term population not the “on the fence” crowd. List is prioritized.

1. 24/7 Point Ticks – It’s not server transfers, it’s the fact that as long as we have 24/7 scoring system we will have one dominate 24/7 playerbase server. This demoralizes other servers even if it shouldn’t, more on that later.

2. Costs & Time Costs – Why spend gold and hours to upgrade something you lose 40 minutes after you go to sleep? Demoralized servers now adopt demoralizing habits.

3. Game UI – RvR game with no warband feature. Commander icons that embarrass intelligent strategy and encourages embarrassing behaviour. Lack of Alliance features.

“Exploits vs. Features” debate, class balance debate, AoE limitations debate, Culling issues…not even the orbs really mattered and so listing or discussing them I feel is irrelevant for this topic in my opinion. Why don’t those other issues matter? RvR guilds don’t quit when things equally affect the enemy, I believe how the scoring system affects morale, how the population affects behaviour and the game UI affects organization is what imbalances competition and thus are the key problems.

Cnt~

I lead the odd RvR night on SBI, not too many to prevent burn out but whenever I read these forums since they were released (I) keep getting confused…

Which server are we allied with again?

Pic 1 —> Friday – Oct 26th (We’re allied with BG)
Pic 2 --> Wednesday – Oct 31st (We’re allied with JQ)

Call me crazy but there might be some sort of strategy that can used to manipulate one server to attack another…oh whoops don’t want to give it away GG.

EDIT: I had to put brackets around the “I” because apparently it makes a bad word being so close to “released” and “keep.”

Well I certainly can’t speak for the rest but it’s a flawed design to be honest, you can’t expect population spreading if there are no time bottle necks so there will always be 1 24/7 server and the rest just have to settle with kicking kitten during certain times.

That’s not just “SBI waking up,” very specific guilds have been trying to coordinate during certain times which is why you will see one map do really good and several bad usually during prime time.

The Truth: There are none

The Secret: Strategy

The Strategy: In 3-way fights you always side with the server who’s attacking the other server aggressively.

The Reason: If you attack the defending side you either forced the aggressive side to stop pushing to defend or you created an opening for the defending side to attack you. I call it pulling tails, you don’t want to pull tails or somebody can pull yours.

The Summary: 2 servers going one direction is always superior than 3 servers pulling each other’s tails. (Unless you are getting teamed of course)

The Topic Purpose: Too much “so-so working together” drama, I have loosley explained why things happen at a macro & micro level. If anything I said my piece, long live SBI.

I usually try to avoid forums because it’s usually full of complainers and conspiracies people but I’ll try to chime in to keep this post good.

First I’d like to point out last Friday my guys were trying to take west keep in SBI Borderlands from JQ and we stacked a bunch of trebs on the inner hill once we blew up their outer wall and HoD happened to have a group inside too. We knew the second we tried to push the Lord they could AJ us and we waited for a long time until we just said “**** it” let’s just go anyway. The second we pushed towards the Lord (hoping to use our trebs as cover to build catas closer) HoD right on queue ran behind and destroyed the few people left and all our siege leaving us to get owned by JQ. Of course people thought “ahh we got doubled teamed they must be allied!” Not true, it was a logical move considering HoD had the smaller force inside the keep at the time and sometimes it just makes sense to play within your means whereas other times you just play for fun and in HoD’s case it was probably both at that time.

So if we had an alliance with HoD I must have missed the message as we tried getting that west keep about 4 times seriously that night and couldn’t, it was a dead stalemate in that borderland (SBI controlled top, HoD their third, JQ theirs…etc) for over 6 hours.

Anyway, many kudos to HoD as I use them constantly as an excuse to try and organize our own server. Looking forward to slowly getting a proper alliance on SBI this Sunday.