Guild Wars 2

Make the wall closest to the south cannon in Red Keep invulnerable.

Problem solved.

They did this to Wildcreek so it shouldn’t be a big deal. Of course this should have been done a long, long time ago.

I think there may be some merit to that. Some of the matches I’ve seen lately where statistically improbable. Three weeks ago CD was #11 and we where matched against BG and SoS. The odds on that matchup was less than 1%. Last week we where matched against BG again.

The odds against this happening by chance is pretty slim, which leads one to consider manual manipulation, and if that is true, why.

It could be for variety. It could be for network reasons, having essentially two instead of three servers in a match could cut down on perceived lag. It could be to discourage people from playing a game mode they no longer wish to direct time and resources into, or it could be they aren’t really paying attention.

Either way it’s frustrating. I’ve been pretty much strictly a WvW player for years. There are dungeons and places in the game I’ve never been, and not a single character of mine has completed a Living Story. I log in, check the matchup and go right into WvW.

Unfortunately the last few weeks I’ve just been getting to the point that just don’t want to take part in these lopsided matches anymore. Sure it’s fun to be the underdog and occasionally squeak out a win or two, but to be in that position week in and week out… it just gets fatiguing.

The irony is that last week I was deliberating creating a bit of a tongue-in-cheek thread considering new and original ways in which ANET could further… um… ‘challenge’ Crystal Desert. Things like limiting our respawn time to once every 10 minutes, lowering our map cap to 30 (which would only affect us about 10% of the day) or perhaps disabling random skills every few minutes or so.

So imagine my surprise when I logged in on Saturday.

Well played ANET, well played indeed.

SMC siege being able to hit a keep is a bad thing, period. Having a way point in SMC and being able to hit surrounding towers is the advantage of holding SMC.

The dominant server can hold SMC giving it the ablity to constantly damage and contest what is considered the underdog server in the match, the Red keep.

Being on a heavily outnumbered server now for months and having been forced to have not only the Red keep but that blasted Desert BL as our home for months, I have seen the tactics servers use against us many times.

A server holds Stonemist until it’s way pointed, they build siege and have someone plink away at the Red Keep doing damage but also contesting the way point making it even harder for the outnumbered server to get around the map. Or they keep going until the outer is down and then zerg inside and hit the inner.

A server sits a zerg on the hill facing Red Keep, builds siege and waits while both the inner and outer walls are being damaged. Why they have a highly defendable hill right next to the ‘underdog’ keep where they can also build ballistas to hit defensive siege is just really poorly thought out. I have seen servers sit 40 people on that hill while we where trying to defend with maybe 10 tops.

Fix: Make the corner wall facing SMC invulnerable and remove vista hill or at least lower it’s elevation making it impossible to hit the inner walls while making defensive siege more effective.

Now the DBL is another head scratcher. They give the underdog server a borderland that the majority of people don’t like which also has very large easily attackable keeps. There are so many places these keeps can be attacked from where defensive siege cant hit or is just poorly placed, like the fire keep mortars (seriously, didn’t anyone test these things?).

Fix: DBL, if they keep it, should be random. Stop sticking the outmanned server with the worst borderland every friggin week.

Now if the servers where somewhat balanced these changes should be in effect anyway with the inclusion of making SMC uncontestable from the Red keep. But the fact that we have some really unbalanced matches makes these small but important advantages even more glaring.

While I agree that coordinated small groups can be effective in combating these issues it doesn’t change the fact that these issues shouldn’t be there in the first place.

Feel bad for yah, but CD has been like this for the past few MONTHS. Constantly outnumbered, little coverage, being matched against servers with 2-3 times the population (including yours btw), being bumped up into T3, having T3 servers dumped on us (two this week), having the Desert Borderland almost every week… Almost every bad combination of links and match-ups you can imagine we have been through.

So I know it sucks when servers take advantage of your lack of coverage to k-train your borderland every single day, and there’s little you can do about it,

We lose players simply out of frustration.

And yes we have also had ANET claim our keep, think they where on HoD at the time.

I have to agree with that, I’ve been with Crystal Desert for a while and it seems as though no ones really paying attention because we haven’t had a decent pairing or match-up in months. No offense to the servers we are paired with, they seem like nice people, just not enough of them.

We are currently facing a server that should be in T2/T3 and another that has at least 2-3 times our population. We where stuck with that kitten Desert Borderland for almost three months straight and the list goes on and on.

Because of this, we have been shedding players since people just get frustrated with playing out-manned literally 75% of the day, and servers taking advantage of this by k-training us when they know we simply don’t have the coverage.

My point being, if someone was actively paying attention to what actually goes on from a granular server level, these types of obvious imbalances should never happen.

That being said, we do have a solid core of good people so if any of you Guilds want a challenge, instead of stacking on the latest flavor of the month server, try moving somewhere where wins are not just handed to you. You have to earn them.