Guild Wars 2

I really like the “Deposit All Collectibles” option. It’s convenient and awesome.

I really don’t like the “Compact” option. It messes up my organization (minis in my invisible bags, blueprints at the bottom, different weapons in the middle… you get the idea).

These two are right friggin’ next to each other on the inventory Options drop-down! Many times, I have attempted to deposit all my collectibles, only to jam all my stuff as far up as it will go.

I propose an easy fix. Well, two fixes, either one of which would work, but they could both be implemented and I think they’d be easy to do.

Option 1: Implement a “Deposit All Collectibles” hotkey in the Control Options, perhaps under Miscellaneous or User Interface, and let us bind it wherever we want. I’d probably do Alt-I, because I’d want it to be easy to remember but difficult to do on accident – I’m altering my inventory!

Option 2: Add a setting under General Options, perhaps under User Interface, to disable the “Compact” option. That way, people like me who literally never want to compact our inventory can simply take the option away. There could maybe be a drop-down selection to enable it, disable it, or ask for confirmation (“Do you really want to compact your inventory?”) for those who want to do it sometimes but not accidentally.

I know it’s a minor thing, but I think this could be implemented with less than one half of one staffing-hour, if the person really knew the UI code. I mean, I don’t know how you guys organize everything, maybe the inventory code and the other options code is just all over the place, but it seems like it would be a really easy thing to do that would save a lot of headaches from a simple (and very close!) mis-click. I mean, the text is small on the screen and the buttons are right on top of each other, so it’s easy for us to mess it up.

Anyway, that’s it. Thanks for listening!

I, for one, prefer volatile match-ups to stale ones.

Yes, that means that you will sometimes suffer a crushing defeat. Sometimes you’ll suffer crushing defeats many weeks in a row. But with stale match-ups (i.e. “the old way”), servers settled into fixed tiers and there was a top dog and the loser. In those match-ups, being in the permanent loser spot with the same opponents was way worse than randomly getting a streak of losses due to bad luck.

And if losing really makes the game not fun for you, then you’re just a bad sport. Good players know how to turn losses into learning experiences and become better players for it. After all, in a zero-sum game like this, someone is going to lose. Sometimes that will be you. When it’s your turn in the barrel, you sac up and see what you can learn from the situation.

I feel your pain, Ring of Fire folks. I’m from Sorrow’s Furnace, we were in the North American tier 8 (the very bottom) for months. Now, a big part of it was that we lost hard for a while, and our rating dropped like a rock. But then we got our act together, and we started stomping the other tier 8 servers.

And kept stomping them week after week after week after week…

The problem was that there was a substantial gap between us and tier 7, and at the time, tier 7 was clustered pretty close together. The servers kept changing positions, they were so close; and that stopped them from falling within striking distance of us. And so we were stuck in tier 8, because the way the Glicko ratings work, to increase our rating we not only had to beat the other servers in our tier, we had to beat them by more than we did the previous week.

So yeah, you’re gonna have a boring week. Cheer up, though – at least it’s only one week for you.

Lorelei.3918:

Then you got guys like DoctorFaust who see nothing wrong with needing over 400 hours to level and gear a character to a point where that character can be considered competitive.

It’s an RPG. That’s what you do. You want fairness and balance? Play SPvP.

As for being competitive, I jumped into WvW at level 12. At 50, I was killing level 80 characters. Not all the time, mind you, but I was able to do it from time to time with a combination of picking my fights carefully, paying attention to the situation, and analyzing the strengths and weaknesses of their build based on what gear and buffs they had.

There’s more to this game than mere total stat points and player skill – there’s also the rock-paper-scissors-esque elements of different builds.

Lots of good conversation on the matter of how to fight a thief – not knocking it, I actually have an 80 thief myself just so I could learn what makes ‘em tick, and I still learn new things every time I dive into the forums. One thing I haven’t seen anyone bring up, though, is the matter of how to defend unwalled objectives from thieves (i.e. flags, yaks, & camps). It might seem a minor quibble, but hear me out.

Suppose I’m trying to babysit a yak to a tower or a keep that desperately needs to resupply after barely fending off an assault. Doors/walls just put back up, supply almost empty after building defensive siege, everyone scattered to find out where that zerg-ball’s rollin’ up to next. Nobody wants to babysit yaks. Nobody but me.

Along comes a thief, peppering the yak with shots. Yak don’t fight back, but that’s OK – I do, and that’s exactly what I’m here for. Except the thief doesn’t engage me – so my guardian’s retaliation, my mesmer’s chaos armor, my engineer’s healing, all my defensive abilities are rendered useless (except AoE projectile reflection [feedback, shield of absorption, smoke screen, etc.], but those abilities have 30-40 second cooldowns). Well, my engineer’s healing is actually useful, it’s AoE so I can heal the yak. But even still, it won’t keep up with the DPS of a thief, and I know for sure that the thief is going to evade out of my AoEs and circle around to attack from whatever direction I happen not to be facing. I put ’em up just the same and do my best, but still, the yak is inexorably killed along the road.

And yeah, while some kind of lockdown would certainly do the trick, it requires actually getting hold of the sucker, and the point of thieves is to be slippery: while I’m out of stealth, I still have disabling shot, infiltrator’s arrow, infiltrator’s strike, shadow strike, withdraw, roll for initiative, shadow step/return, smoke screen, and dodge rolling to get in & out of combat without taking damage. Obviously I can’t use them all at once, but there are so many options to evade attacks that don’t even use stealth.

If I’m on my guardian, I can chain blinds & blocks for a while – but if I don’t kill anyone in all that time, I’m getting the living kittens kicked outta me as soon as my guard’s down. My mesmer & engineer have decent buffer tanks, between their various boons & heals, but they can only last for so long until I’m stuck between rotations. Thieves and thieves alone can pop in & out of combat indefinitely, picking an objective off right from under my feet, while I have no way to force an engagement without relying on luck (such as nailing them with a lucky AoE, or waiting for them to screw up – there’s nothing I can do to force the issue).

And if my mesmer goes down, I just have to wait for the stealth stomp, because my 1, 2, & 3 abilities all require targets. But really, that’s just the icing on the cake.

Point being, I can’t stop a thief from shooting a yak out from under me, even if I’m a thief. Same goes for a flag, and a supply camp is just a joke. Sure, I can hang out in the middle of the NPCs to not die; but as soon as I walk away, that camp’s getting solo’ed. I’d like to be able to do something proactive, instead of simply hoping the thief 1) gets bored, and 2) doesn’t come back after I reckon the coast is clear. My problem is not that thieves can only be effectively engaged on their terms – that’s how they’re designed, and that’s fine. My problem is that thieves can engage what I’m trying to protect without engaging me. And yeah, as in the original post, traps are useless here because I can’t possibly trap a whole camp or a whole yak route or even a whole flag’s perimeter – again, I have to rely on luck if I want that trap to pay off (and the cost just isn’t worth the risk).

So, because of all of that, stealth needs a counter.

Handin.4032:

DevonCarver.5370:

The NA matchups won’t be available until the reset.

In the future will we have a bit more of a heads up, especially as to what color the server will be? I know on TC the guild leaders like to get together and decide what guilds are going on what maps so that not all the guilds go on the same map, and the color of the map decides if they’re bay side, hills side, etc.

Handin, there’s an easy workaround for you. Ooh, two easy workarounds, actually! Both will assume you’ve got your EB & BL groups planned, as it doesn’t matter what color you are – EB & your BL will always be EB & your BL. As for the other two BLs, there are two options to coordinate without knowing who is what color:

1. Have a team go “left” and a team go “right” from your BL. If you’re in the middle, it’s nice & obvious what’s left & what’s right; just imagine wrapping the edges of the map together, so that if you end up in the green position (at far left), red (middle) is right of you and blue (far right) is left of you.
2. Have a “top” & “bottom” team – your top team goes after the higher (green or blue) borderlands, and your bottom team goes after the lower (blue or red) borderlands. This one’s probably less confusing… but I thought of #1 first, so I decided to put it in anyway.

On another note entirely, I also want to thank the devs for introducing this element of randomness into the matchups. I am perfectly comfortable getting wtfpwned every now & again; losing hard is just a part of the game sometimes. The proper response to a roflstomp is not to get demoralized & quit, but to take stock of the situation and adapt. I’m not saying such adaptation will result in victory, I’m saying it will result in learning (so long as you’re paying attention). Adversity is often the greatest teacher.

AndrewSX.3794:

Where are al those ppl who said “Screw balanced matches, we want variety!” now.

(not pointed at you rof guys.)

Right here, buddy! I, for one, am very glad to see more volatility in the matchups.