Guild Wars 2

New players may have no idea what I’m talking about, but Personality was a character stat that was tracked for a very long time in the Hero panel. It was basically never used in-game, and it vanished sometime this year in an update. However, I think there is a good reason to bring it back now.

In the living story, dialogue now changes according to the choices made at character creation, which you cannot alter. So, for a human, it changes depending on whether you are nobility, a commoner, or a street rat. 3 options x 5 races = 15 possibilities to program for.

Without going into detail, there were 10 personalities – which changed according to choices you made. Most players won’t create 15 characters. However, if personality was what altered the living story experience, a player may end up having a different personality at the end of a story chapter or two than they started with — which gives them an IMMEDIATE incentive to play it again because it will play out differently this time. This isn’t difficult to implement, especially since it is currently being done for 15.

Say there’s a map that has three major bosses on it with very different battles. Depending on your personality, one of them will let you through without a fight. Replay it now with a different personality and the experience will be vastly different because one of the battles will have changed entirely. How much more interesting would the living story be if you could experience 10 different variations with the same character? Maybe you’d have to use 4 characters since personality is more difficult to alter entirely so quickly, but is still more likely than creating 15.

Many of the Megaserver’s problems seem to come from its lack of information. Why have the Megaserver system decide what map instance to zone into when you can simply have the player decide? Why aren’t they numbered? The overflow maps always had this problem. “Join … in overflow map”. Why didn’t it just give you a map number and specify if that map was full?

So, there are 24 NA servers. Now that they are merged into megaservers, what are the hidden results? Take Kessex Hills. There used to be 24. How many are there usually now? 1? 2? 7? Wouldn’t it be easier to prompt the player for which map?
Example:
Kessex Hills 1 – Full
Kessex Hills 2 – High
Kessex Hills 3 – High
Kessex Hills 4 – Med
Kessex Hills 5 – Low

Make an option in the F11 menu: Always prompt for zone server OR automatically place in appropriate zone.

Even if I can’t make the decision. It certainly simplifies things if I know which one I’m in. I’ve seen good results in some of the VERY less used maps. Maybe all 24 servers are being loaded into a single map, but you see other players now!

PROBLEM: One thing that’s become rather problematic: Set amount of events / more players = less active events. There are so many more players on many maps that you can’t get to an event – ANY event – before it’s completed. More players should make the events spawn more rapidly, especially since the Daily favors events so much now.

And…just a small note on the dailies. Remember how we had so many options before, and now everything PvE, WvW, and PvP are jammed into just 10? The daily activity was a good daily idea. That’s why I did it…daily. Now, what’s the point?

So, yeah, more events, and less secretive maps. And the contested waypoints – just have them move you on arrival if they need to like they always did.
Contesting waypoints basically just removed them from the game.

Server: DB
League: Silver
Enjoyed Season 1: No, not in any way.
Should we have season 2?: Please no

Do I enjoy WvW outside of Season 1? Yes

Imperatora.7654:

That just creates a WvE situation where there are too few fights going on. the problem with spreading everyone out over a huge map is that, well, everyone is spread out. You need a high enough density of players for there to be actual PVP

You bring up a profound point that really made me think. It seems that it really boils down to the understanding of what WvW is supposed to be – for which I do not have an immediate answer.

Some people look a WvW as merely a larger scale of sPvP. In sPvP, you must watch your capture points; they don’t defend themselves. It is (at basic design) only players against players. Logical progression: 5v5, 8v8, WorldvWorld. You’re responsible for 24h coverage because it is a PVP map.

However, that logic breaks down very quickly upon inspection. A 5v5 match is not the same as an 8v8 match. The gameplay is different. The strengths and weaknesses are different, etc. Therefore, this same gameplay does not translate to 30v30 or 60v60. They are different. Also, matches aren’t set for 3v8 like some matches have been set in our beloved Season One.

But think about the sPvP maps. If it were really just PvP, ideally we’d just all be fighting in an open field, and some of the maps are like that. However, take the example of Temple of the Silent Storm (by far my favorite). If you ignore the events and structure of the map, you’re going to lose. It becomes more like chess: being strategically placed, stacking buffs for points, knowing when to distract and not be distracted. There is an example of a smaller number of players being able to completely dominate maybe twice their numbers if they were coordinated and understood the map and their enemy did not – because of the huge interplay of the environment. I knew when it was important to hold that point and when it was not and going to flip with you standing on it anyway. I won because I was where you should have been at the right time; I may never have fought you directly. Both of us go down; your team got 5 points, mine got 11.

That’s the kind of WvW map that I want to play on. One where the map, its dynamics, and its potential inescapably matter. Yes, that’s a lot of PvE involved, but it’s an environment I have to harness and use against other players while they are trying to do the same thing. A structure should be strategic and tip the scale a long way in a fight. There should be no reason a commander would lead a large group to cap a tower, drain its supply, and leave it with no intention of upgrading or adding seige because it is just going to be flipped again in 5 minutes so that commander can flip it again 5 minutes after that. It should be something worthwhile, something that would be stupid to not want to hold it. It should matter. It should supercede player skills in the long term matchup. Sure, we can fight it out on the field; player skill vs. player skill. But this is a week-long matchup. It should be a campaign against your world — digging in the trenches and taking ground. At the end of the week, how did the campaign end up? Where were the lines?

Instead, we have whole maps being flipped in 30 mins only to be flipped back in another 30 mins, and whichever server did it the most “won”.

In PvE, your successes are beneficial to players; they do not affect an opposing player force. I believe WvW would be phenomenal if it were a place that brought PvP and PvE together in this way.

Don’t take out the PvP; don’t take out the battles. Make it something more; somewhere everyone wants to be.

Immolator.5640:

@OP, it’s more effective if you spell it correctly.

Sorry I had to

LOL, thank you. It was late when I started this thread =)

CyRuS.6915:

Epic.3950:

ens.9854:

This whole post makes no sense, zerging is itself a strategy, and it is used because it is so effective. Do servers send out small teams when they need to? Sure do. The idea that nobody will figure out what to do and keep forming 60 man zergs even when it’s blatantly foolish to do so is just silly. And this does nothing to combat the problem of just being flat outnumbered; you will just be losing all your territory to 3 separate groups instead of getting steamrolled by one.

zerging is a strategy is like saying atheism is a religion. its lack of.

Zerg vs Zerg has just as much strategy as does 5 vs 5 or 1 vs 1. The real issue is that some servers have considerably higher populations than other servers and the less populated cannot compete. The solution to that problem is not to somehow nerf zergs. A solution would involve balancing the server populations.

I agree with the guy above who said that the post makes no sense (or perhaps little to no sense). The post presumes that all zergs are not implementing a strategy. I can see the logic in a highly skilled small group being able to take out a larger group of button mashers. However, to assume that all large groups (zergs) are composed of noobs and facerollers would be simply incorrect. There are plenty of zergs that are doing alot of strategic things with very skilled players. A small group of skilled players is supposed to get rolled by a larger group of skilled players.

Out in the open field, yes, of course a larger group would overtake a smaller group. However, defending a structure should be a different dynamic. A huge zerg assaulting a tower gate succeeds regardless of what rains down on them – with very few exceptions. And who wants to stand around all day in a tower to defend it? The structure should be able to defend itself substantially — and scaled. Players would tip the balance. The design is wrong. Get a tower, build a treb. That treb should not be vulnerable to damage unless the tower is taken, else why bother putting it in a tower? The current tower designs don’t account for this. The smartest seige is placed in odd places because the base design doesn’t give an advantage.

The Lowlands Keep: Why does that not have champion moat monsters that come up on land?

The Valley Keep: Why isn’t it completely surrounded by maze, and why doesn’t that maze change?

WvW is all about number of players. Nothing can counter a large zerg except another large zerg. It doesn’t matter how upgraded a location is or how much seige is built inside, the zerg will win, especially against a tower or supply camp.

Things flip too easily and frequently. This is good right now since the achievements are based on this principle. But honestly, it shouldn’t be like this. Structures should be sturdier, and something should counter the zerg.

One simple correction could be that the “legendary” defenders and guards scale to the number of enemies in proximity to it. If you don’t like getting one-shot, make them have nasty AOE attacks. Anet certainly doesn’t hold back when it comes to the Nightmare content.

Force strategy: How many times have I been in or near a zerg that busts easily through a fully-upgraded tower only to drain its supply and move on with no intention of upgrading? I propose that towers specificly award no points for ownership until a new, gold-free, but supply-required upgrade is completed. This would force a server to take a supply camp first and hold the structure until enough yaks supplied the tower with this basic upgrade. Towers and Keep should be stragetic strongholds. How many towers, keeps, and SM itself have trebs built on the supply depot? That is ridiculous. The only strategic place to put a treb in most towers is on the supply depot so that it can still hit things, but forces an opponent to actually take the tower to destroy it. The outer area of SM is a huge EMPTY area with trebs build on the various supply depots. Anet, I think you can design something better than that.

Personally, I think Keeps should have more than 1 level, with a gate in-between. Have permanent traps fall from above, triggered by players. The defending server should have the advantage — by a lot. The borderland Garrison has 5 outer gates to baby-sit. Why does it take more effort to defend it than to overtake it? Why build a tower if you’re not going to put a mass weapon on top of it? For the view? It should be a strategic structure. What castle doesn’t have dozens of guards defending it?

If the structures remain basically useless besides awarding points, the answer will always be numbers. Why have the matchup at all?

Indoles.1467:

My personal preview of what these changes would cause in a PvP perspective:
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
A well played player may be able to use longbow to some degree of effectiveness now. Mainly due to the 20% buff at the middle damage interval.

Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
Conceptually good, but practically you will rarely ever see more than 5s of that cripple affect a player, much less a good player. Still, it may see some use now.

Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
Better, but I doubt it will see much use still considering the poor up time and requirement for it to occur.

Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.
Hmm. Very hard to say how much this will affect the ranger. It will surely help those that bring this trait, but picking this trait up means 30 deep into a line that is pretty poor and we will still need to go 30 deep into wilderness survival for the condition removal.

Wilderness 5 Natural Vigor. Reduced the increased endurance regeneration from 50% to 25%.
A blow to the passive endurance regenertion no doubt. I’ll have to trait back into vigor for sure if I want to maintain my dodges.

Wilderness XII – Bark Skin Increased the damage reduction from 30% to 50%.
Fairly worthless. A ranger needs empathetic bond to stand a chance in almost any fight these days.

Nature Magic IX – Two Handed Training. Added the following functionality to this trait. Greatsword and Spear attacks have a chance to grant Fury on hit. 50% chance. 3s Fury. 10s cooldown.
Very interesting. I’m not sure. I see the benefits, but the rng makes this remind me of glacial heart. When you need it most, it seems to never occur. Then again, it is an added bonus to the trait that was never bad.

Nature Magic X – Enlargement. This trait now uses Signet of the Wild to trigger. This reduces the cooldown to 60 seconds and allow it to interact with the Signet of the Beastmaster and Signet Mastery traits.
Potentially a life saver. But has limited uses due to reactive bonus. Requires 50 trait points to have it affect you, which means you can’t bring empathetic bond. In other words, I would never use it in the current state of the game and the ranger profession.

Nature Magic VII – Nature’s Vengeance. Moved to Grandmaster Tier.
Nature Magic XI – Spirits Unbound. Moved to Master Tier.
An excellent change. I always felt that Nature’s Vengeance was very powerful and Spirits unbound was needed earlier. I haven’t considered the available builds for those willing to place 10 trait points elsewhere now.

Sun Spirit. Reduced the passive burning from 3s to 2s.
Storm Spirit. Reduced the damage from the Call Lightning skill by 33%
Really hurts the spirits to a point that I consider near worthless. Players will notice a severe lack in damage output with a spirit build now (which was needed, but I feel this is a bit harsh).

Wow, excellent point by point review. And I agree with all of them, especially the spirit damage nerf. Spirits are much more easily killed now in PvP, so the burning damage isn’t an all-the-time given.

Elusive.9481:

GoldenTruth.2853

……
Dungeon rewards need fixing, but that should be done by changing the end reward to match a proper risk reward. Many people still tend to skip any mobs they can even if there is a champ tossed in anyway.
……..

Agreed. This drives me CRAZY. Raaaaaawwwrrr! If a dungeon lists an objective, DO IT!! This is a dungeon, not a express check-out line. What especially makes me crazy is when a thief is insistent upon shadow refuging the party past a group of mobs that repeatedly aggros to the party when shadow refuge expires and the mobs pile on the slowest member of the party (I’m not whining, cuz it’s not me) because they are the closest. This causes said thief to scrutinize everyone else for what they could be doing wrong.

In the time it has taken for this to fail so many times, we could have just killed the mobs. If that isn’t the case, go make a better build. —Exit Soapbox Stage Right--

Really though, the end reward should be based on the objectives that were completed. It’s not like the game doesn’t know you didn’t do them. Some have chests, yes, but many, many do not.

Like, in AC, why do so many insist on skipping past the graveling burrow at the very beginning of Explorable Mode? The WP is BEFORE the burrow, meaning anyone who has to WP back has to run past said graveling burrow alone and have it beat up on them. Why don’t we just destroy it now as a complete party and have it done. It doesn’t respawn, and the objective is listed in the upper right unless you destroy it. Is this really saving any time? No. No it is not.

GoldenTruth.2853

……
Dungeon rewards need fixing, but that should be done by changing the end reward to match a proper risk reward. Many people still tend to skip any mobs they can even if there is a champ tossed in anyway.
……..

Agreed. This drives me CRAZY. Raaaaaawwwrrr! If a dungeon lists an objective, DO IT!! This is a dungeon, not a express check-out line. What especially makes me crazy is when a thief is insistent upon shadow refuging the party past a group of mobs that repeatedly aggros to the party when shadow refuge expires and the mobs pile on the slowest member of the party (I’m not whining, cuz it’s not me) because they are the closest. This causes said thief to scrutinize everyone else for what they could be doing wrong.

In the time it has taken for this to fail so many times, we could have just killed the mobs. If that isn’t the case, go make a better build. —Exit Soapbox Stage Right--

Here’s an idea I’d like to hear some feedback on: What if guilds were able to hire Champion Guild Mercenaries from their upgrades that they could deploy somewhere in WvW. I say mercenaries, but I mean one. Currently, Guilds can claim a location and give it whatever active buffs that guild has. However, what if they were able to post a Guild Champion somewhere in WvW, whether they were the active claiming guild or not. This would allow many smaller guilds to contribute to defending an area around the clock. Plus, it would look awesome to have a bunch of champions (or even just one or two) sporting different guild emblems.

This, of course, has some variables. Do the champions expire when they are defeated or when the timer ends? If they respawn on a timer, what is their default behavior? Would we be able to specify if we wanted a Guard, a Rogue, or an Archer? Would a larger guild be able to research into stronger mercenaries or just more of them at the same time?

Tell me what you think.

I was pondering the frustration of holding a keep. Even fully upgraded, a keep is not that difficult to break into – certainly not for a zerg. It almost always becomes a matter of numbers. I’d like to see advantages given for planning and map coordination. So, here’s my idea:

When you look at a keep from a distance, it is beautiful and tall. TALL. I think it would be awesome to be able to upgrade a keep with a new level or story. Walls could get higher (but still have arrow slits), but the keep becomes much more difficult to take. The Keep Lord would move to the higher level, causing the invading server to have to travel up to fight it possibly with bottlenecks. Of course, this would come at a huge supply cost, requiring the server to take and hold camps for significant time to achieve it.

Also, burning oil takes a lot of supply to build, and it is very easily destroyed. It’s almost not worth building if it weren’t a requirement for higher upgrades. Instead of having it be able to be destroyed, change the mechanics. Have a keep or tower be able to produce buckets of burning/boiling oil. If that server invested in making a bunch at the cost of supply, etc, then the attacking server is going to have to rework their attack until the keep runs out of prepared oil. If a server neglected to make a stockade of oil, they’ll be sorry when they get a zerg at their gate.

Tell me what you think =)

A thought to Legendaries: Make the visual effect of the legendary independent of the weapon type. Example: I love my short bow. I don’t particularly want to shoot rainbows and unicorns and leave flowers wherever I walk. I’d like to select or have different crafting requirements for it to do something else. Then, if someone wants their greatsword to have unicorns and rainbows, they can. It would make each legendary a bit more unique and personal.

This forum is excellent. I feel the same way. My big question is: How do we actually get Anet to listen. They MAY read our posts if we’re lucky. But they really need a giant homing pigeon to fly into their office and poop on the floor wearing a sign that says: HEY ANET, YOUR LS IS AWFUL. MASSIVE PEOPLE ARE LEAVING THE GAME. STOP IT. I have loved this game, but I’m done.

I agree with everything said here. It’s a DAILY grind. And you have to catch the LS content (which I won’t tear apart here) in 2 weeks before it changes to something else. Lame. Sure, I can take a week off or so, but miss out on a huge chunk of achievement points from a practically mandated activity thrown in your face that is, frankly, content I’d rather avoid.

1. The ranger spirit revamp was completely unnecessary. Spirit-build rangers were killable in PvP already; now the spirits are practically useless. The spirit build came in response to the necro buff since rangers STILL don’t have much condition removal at all.

2. The Gem store is nice, but you’re getting a little greedy. Want to enjoy the new content without being crippled? We have a gem-store item obscenely priced just for you. It’s only been a year, and you just made all our exotic gear obsolete. You just broke your game.

Are there any accurate posts about what affects aggro tables for mobs? The wiki page itself says it is out of date. I have searched the forums, but have not found anything concrete or verified. If there is new information, can someone point me in the right direction so the wiki can be updated?

continued……

So, my points:

I run some gear with MF in runes when my survivability is not a issue – and by not an issue, I mean I stay up and can heal myself enough to do so without the aid of others. I’m not relying on others to make up for less hit points or toughness or healing. I put out the same damage OPPOSED to the normal gear I would be wearing that would give me more defensive stats.

I don’t run MF food because I don’t think it outweighs the benefits of running with regen food. Swapping those around and putting that amount of MF in my food will not allow me to put sufficient healing into my gear that would generate the same effect – by a long shot.

Now, about DPS (and the reference to my mesmer). My main is a ranger, and has been since launch. I say that because they have buffed pets recently, but the calculations I have been using were before this. As a ranger ( a non-trap ranger), a significant amount of my DPS comes from my pet. I point this out because the stats of my pet – and therefore its damage are INDEPENDENT of my own stats. They scale with my level, but not with my specific numbers. They ARE affected by my traits, and my signets. Why do I point this out? Because if I trait 10 points on my beastmastery line and select major trait #2, it didn’t give me +100 to power, precision, toughness, or vitality, but it gave +300 to ALL of my pet’s attributes if I have stayed up and kept my pet alive, not to mention the +250 to an attribute coming from my stacking sigils. I’m pulling more weight than you think I am. I don’t feel very selfish about the MF coming from my runes. Also, in my ranger playstyle, the most effective heal for myself is the ‘heal as one’ because of the amount, recharge, etc. It affects no other players. However, I can often be seen using my healing spring. It’s not for me — in fact, it puts me at a disadvantage. However, it greatly helps others in the group from its condition removal, regen, and water field combo. Other party members’ blast, leap, and whirl attacks benefit them greatly in the LONG time water field. I can do none of those finishers with the weapons I run with. If I didn’t care, I’d keep my basic heal on; it makes it a whole lot easier for me to stay alive. Is that selfish of me?

My mesmer: Similar scenario. I have a powerful phantasm build. They do most of the work, not to mention that my confusion lasts 53% longer. Phantasms DO base their power and precision off of my own stats, but not their toughness or vitality. They have retaliation, fury, and 70% more health. So, again, if my toughness and vitality are not an issue, is some MF selfish? Also, all of my phantasms generate AOE regen— but wait, why would I do that since my phantasms are almost ALWAYS too far from me to grant ME regen? Oh yes, it’s all the melee fighters in the group who are benefiting from the constant regen. Oh, and being a mesmer, I usually don’t benefit from my own portal to get others through a rough spot because I still had to get through of my own accord.

The point? Do I get labelled as ‘selfish’ by the witchhunt because I have some MF, and am CLEARLY a non-team player?

Drawing Guy.3701:

Fascinating. Of course I poll people and spend hours verifying gear instead of just not bothering and doing the dungeon. I also assume people have their traits to zero, so don’t count those either. Having 12 crafting schools mastered (yes, that means I’ve done some twice as I’m an altaholic) though means nothing – you can max out crafting without ever buying all the recipes, and even then not all stat combinations are available in the crafting schools (though this update looks like it has added PVT). Don’t quite see how that then ties to ascended jewelry – anyone can hop to a Laurel vendor and see every ascended jewelry combination.

So you’re saying that your stats don’t suck as you’re not using MF armors. Cool, thanks for agreeing with us – less MF gear = better stats. MF accessories also come with a pretty big loss – the only exception being “all stat”. All Stat accessories come with a little bit of everything and actually come out ahead in raw stats, so they’re one of the few that I don’t consider a real compromise even if they’re not necessarily the most efficient. Runes by far have the best MF gain to stat/utility loss you can get with Food being the second. You still can’t argue against the fact that you are still making a compromise at the cost of the party. We can crunch numbers and make assumptions all day, but that doesn’t change the fact that every stat you lower to increase the self-serving Magic Find affects your effectiveness. There is no need for personal attacks or kittening that your mesmer can kick my kitten – even if you did win, that only proves you’re more skilled, not that Magic Find increased your ability to kill me because you know it doesn’t.

Genuinely good response. I’m actually enjoying this discussion because I believe we are starting to understand each other a bit better. We actually do agree on several points. Let me point out those first to show our common ground:

It seems you’re defining “MF Armor” as armor that contains MF as one of its 3 basic stats. Excellent clarification, since that was not how I was defining “MF Armor”. I was using “MF Armor” to describe a set of armor pieces, runes, accessories, rings, upgrades, etc. that had MF as the ‘extra’ points in it as opposed to a second ‘Set’ by my definition. So, on my main, where I have two armor sets, it is really, ‘I have two sets of gear that both contain a large amount of power, precision, conditional damage, and a plentiful supply of toughness, healing, and vitality. They differ only in the remaining possible boosts: One has MF, one has additional survivability (toughness, vitality, healing power). I have dubbed them my ’MF set’ and my ‘Survivability set’. I clarify here because I agree with you:

1. The “MF Armor set” which is usually the ‘Explorer’ Armor is ALWAYS crap and a huge waste of stat potential, makes the character weaker regardless of player skill, and therefore will affect the party. AGREED. I made a large post about that in this forum in more detail. The stat loss of having MF there cannot be recouped by other means.

2. Though not explicit, I agree: Max out your crafting professions. You have done 12. Some may say that’s exccessive; I congratulate you. And, you are correct, even then, it makes some assumptions. You’ve implied heavily that you understand what is craftable and what is not. That’s exactly what I think a responsible player needs to know: The alternatives, the options, what they have at their disposal. —-- Opposed to someone who has a full set of a specific named armor or dungeon set (with default stats, skins are independent) and assumes they have good, exotic armor. They may have limited themselves to basically 3 stat boosts, have deficits everywhere else, and may have reached some diminishing returns in those stats. My other crafting profession push is that the jewelry and accessories you can craft are SO much superior to the vast majority of what you will pick up…. unless it is ascended. Ascended gear has better stats than you can craft.

3. If you are going to put some MF in your gear, do it with runes, infusions, food, and items with ‘bonus’ stats. Pirate runes are still wasting stat possibilities; they’re inexpensive for a reason.

I’m going to continue in a further post. This one may be getting a little long……

gimmethegepgun.1284:

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

gimmethegepgun.1284:

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

Kaaboose.3897:

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

Kaaboose.3897:

GreenNekoHaunt.8527:

The only thing dramatically wrong about having full MF gear is that you’re weaker than a full berserk (I’m playing hybrid that means with full MF gear I actually hit more damage or at least more crit damage when with my few percent)

Plus MF gear has no defense or vitality. This means if you play on MF gear you have to be able to dodge and avoid most of the bosses attacks but you’re stronger than a hybrid.

I don’t understand why you people complain about full MF gear players being weak. They’re stronger than a hybrid version of them so be happy with that and expect them to be good players.

It’s like someone saying “I rather go on damage than agony resistance” and doing a fractal 20 run with 0 AR. He might be able to survive till jade maw by only dodging and avoiding. MF is no big difference hear.

You have no Major stats with MF gear. A substantial drop in stats reguardless of how you look at. As I’ve said before players thinking it doesn’t make a differnce just highlights the need to have it shared so that it’s not a useless stat to the rest of the party.
The only players NOT wanting this changed are the ones that will lose the ability to leach off other players.

Yes it’s major stat is MF still it gives you power and precision. As a hybrid user half my gear is based on power and precision the rest is based on power defense. My precision is suffering from this thus my total end damage is lower without MF but I stand longer and survive longer. MF gear decreases my damage by about ~300 and my health and defense by ~400 and increases my precision by at least +40%.

If I crit more often I don’t need as much damage anymore as almost every attack hits heavily. Plus I stack might for 30% chance on critical hit thus magic find gear gives me an extra might boost.

Then just use rampagers and be even MORE effective.

Why should I go on rampage? I don’t want condition damage. I want damage, precision, defense, vitality and optionally crit or magic find.
Plus I’m not the person who leech other people. I just think that the idea of group based MF is just weird. Plus I too am one of the magic find people that are the last standing (at least if I only go on MF with gear else I’m pretty much on the ground almost all the time)

If you don’t want condition damage then take Berserker’s. Not only does it replace MF with something useful (crit damage) it also bumps Power up to a major stat instead of MF, so you now have more Power too. So you will now always deal more damage, especially on crits.
And yeah, you kind of are leeching when you go MF. You’re passing on the burden of some of the damage you ought to be doing to other people, using up everyone’s time, in order to get more money for yourself only.

For some reason I do use berserker. No seriously I already mentioned I use berserker-soldier-hybrid. But then my damage is – as I already said – not as high as the total I reach with MF, however with berseker-soldier-hybrid I am able to stay alive even longer and even take some hits from the enemies.

Then you’re arguing that full Explorer’s has better damage but worse survivability than your hybrid setup. As in, a tradeoff. Tradeoffs aren’t directly comparable because sometimes they’ll be better, sometimes they’ll be worse. However, full Berserker’s will have even better damage than full Explorer’s will give in your example, because it doesn’t replace combat stats with non-combat stats. It will always perform the same (on defense) or better (on offense) than Explorer’s, never worse.

I run MF, but I agree that Explorer’s armor IS a bad stat tradeoff. 3% MF vs. ANYTHING is taking a hit with little reward. My MF comes from Runes, some accessory upgrades and celestial ascended items. Even then, the MF replaces some of my survivability when my survivability is not an issue. My alternate armor puts out the same damage, but less survivability. I don’t get MF from food because I always run with food that has constant regen.

Again, I’m all for MF, but Explorer’s IS bad. ANYTHING else is better:
128 Power – linear to direct damage
128 Precision – 6% increase in crit chance at level 80
128 Toughness – +128 to Armor. Armor is the divisor in direct damage mitigation.
128 Vitality – +1280 HP
128 Condition Damage = +32 Fire Damage per second or ~13 Damage per stack per second of bleeding.

OR

3% MF – Instead of an object having a 10% chance to drop, it has 10.3%

So, yeah, MF via Explorer armor is shooting yourself in the foot, but getting it other ways can still be effective.

Bushido.2184:

degovernator.9043:

If that’s the case, then make gw2 for any one linux distro. i would be happy to get any linux and play gw2, as opposed to buying windows (again). Besides alot of linux distros use similar builds, any one with sense should be able to make it work if a-net just makes a basic distro for one of the most popular ones.

Yup, target a specific distro. The Steam beta was supposedly Ubuntu only, but in a few hours after released it was already up and running on Arch Linux, and it’s not even Debian-based. The community is a community full of hackers and will gladly make it work on their own distro one way or another; the community does that work for you.

I also have to hand it to you on that one. That is a sound strategy, and would be plausable. That kind of brings it into a whole different light.

On a slightly different note, of which I do not know the answer, has anyone checked out the GW2.dat file? It’s certainly no Elder Scrolls or other game that was content-port friendly. GW2 also ignores half the settings/instructions DirectX sends it. It’s certainly a creature of its own. I don’t know if the way Anet wrote it makes it more Windows-dependent or less Windows-dependent than other titles. Is anyone familiar with its build design?

And I apologize, I stand corrected. This is NOT a Windows vs. Linux forum. It’s a Linux forum; Windows isn’t the issue. This stands independent of Windows. I think I understand the distinction of what a “Native Linux” client really would be.

Drawing Guy.3701:

… and even if it all is already easy, you’re taking the entire parties time by making the dungeon longer because you are lowering your DPS majorly (not arguing lowering your defense, since the argument of MF is ok because you’re skilled and you don’t need that defense, it should be turned into DPS).

Turned into DPS by which stat exactly? At level 80, it takes 21 points of precision to increase your crit chance by 1%. Crit damage? That’s based on crit chance, so better more precision first. So then Power? What if all my gear already has a power stat? Or were you thinking I was wasting one of my stats on that measly 3% MF in the combo? Hmm 3% times 6, 7, even 8 pieces would give me 24% MF. Not that useful, but that DOES make pretty crappy armor.

Little Secret: That’s not where the MF is in my gear. My DPS is JUST FINE. I think all the MF haters need to look at an effective player that runs MF and then see how you would suggest they alter their stats. And I don’t want to hear a word out of someone who hasn’t touched a crafting profession, cuz you don’t know how much you DON’T KNOW about stat combos. That’s practically a guarantee that your jewelry is crap, unless you’re all ascended out. And please don’t tell me you’re running with the runes that came with that dungeon armor. If you need a proper demonstration, I can hop on my mesmer and his phantasms will EAT YOU. Any damage I do is practically a bonus compared to them.

Oh yeah, and does everyone remember that trait lines give you stats? There’s 700 points of stats that won’t show up when you ask them to ping their armor. Did you want to audit that too? Why don’t you just put on a rubber glove and do a thorough exam and make sure everything’s in order.

By the time you analyze and approve your party’s armor, you could have already been halfway through that dungeon.

GamerToukotsu.4219:

Drawing Guy.3701:

snip

Didn’t read all of it, but first paragraph and wanted to add the following to this post.

Whenever you are wearing Magic Find gear or Berserker gear WHEN you waste a party’s time you are more than likely not going to be invited back to the group.

If you have 3 fights in a dungeon that normally take 2 minutes to kill. Someone has performs badly due to gear and makes it a 4 minute fight, they have essentially wasted 10 minutes of time. Two extra minutes multiplied by five people is ten total minutes wasted because of someones performance in a dungeon.

Now for the real question:

How much is your time worth?

If this were a business, LOL. If I worked 10 more minutes at my job, the amount of money I would make, after taxes, could buy gems and be converted to gold and would exceed the gold producing rate of ANY activity in this game that I could do in 10 minutes. And I don’t make a huge wage. I’m playing a game, not working Wall Street.

Umm, No.

If you want a level 80 in a certain class, earn it. The class you’re swapping to may not have been so easy to level. You certainly don’t get the full scope of the class if you haven’t “been in the trenches” and tried to level in zones WITHOUT all of the available utility skills and exotic scaledown.

If you want to try out a class at 80, go to the heart of the mists.

As for the PvE world, you certainly don’t have do it all – or even the majority of it – to achieve 80. Try out a different path with the new character. If you’re bored with the game, try a different race; that changes quite a bit of things.

Lastly, what do you plan to do with all your soulbound gear that your new profession can’t use? Do you expect it to be refunded to you or converted somehow? That’s just lazy.

If you can’t be bothered to level a character and are bored with the world, changing a level 80’s profession is not to cure your boredom, it will only compound it.

I’ve heard this argument a lot. It’s a stat. It may not be very useful to others. However, I don’t always agree with the stats that someone builds their character with. For example, the Glass Cannon Warrior. I am frequently frustrated with them in dungeons. They do a lot of damage — WHEN THEY ARE ALIVE. When we all approach a boss and three glass cannon warriors are dead on the ground almost immediately, who is the one with the bad stats? Maybe they should have had a bit more survivability. Do I get to analyze their build beforehand? No.

Let me tell you how I run my magic find. One of my characters has two sets of armor that he always carries. One has a substantial amount of magic find. The other has a lot more survivability. The damage output is the same.

Since the damage output is the same, I am “pulling my weight” against enemies with either set. If I am running a dungeon, and keep myself alive without problem, my MF stat is not hurting the party, but is substantially benefiting me. If the dungeon is causing me to be downed frequently, or be defeated, then my sacrifice of survivability for more magic find IS an issue, and IS hurting the party as a whole. In those dungeons, I swap to my other armor. Damage is the same, but now I can withstand a lot more incoming damage, stay in the fight, and therefore help the party as a whole. I am still benefiting, because I will not receive ANY loot if we just continue wiping.

So, I think that the glass cannon warrior that was dead for 90% of the fighting had stats that weren’t helpful because all their extra crit damage did NOTHING for the party since they couldn’t remain standing. Especially if their crit chance is very low. To me, THEY are the irrisponsible and selfish ones, not my magic find that is replacing stats that I do not require at the time.

It’s always funny to watch Linux debates. I have my own opinions, but I’ll try to be a little more objective and say my peace. There are many posts I want to quote, but that would be pretty cumbersome, so here goes:

Yes, I have hardware that runs on some form of Linux, ie, routers, etc. That is where Linux has its strength: Once you get it to do something, it keeps on doing it efficiently and very stable, such as the huge amount of the internet backbone that runs on Linux. It runs it fast, efficient, less power consumption, less holes for viruses, etc. That’s because that’s ALL it does. There is no extra code to exploit, no subroutines that can be activated for malicious functions or chew up resources.

Remember trying to install a game on DOS? An advanced graphics game. Did you ever have to scroll through dozens of drivers trying to find one that the game could use that your video card would use, and that your monitor would use? Why did that go away? Microsoft DirectX. A whole GROUP of standards, not just D3D (a lot of people forget that). The game is written for DirectX, and DirectX works with your individual video, sound, etc. drivers and delivers the gaming experience. There is also OpenGL (which actually does not replace ALL DirectX functions). DirectX and OpenGL are VERY different. So, of course the mac port was DirectX in an OpenGL translation layer. Anet didn’t want to re-write the game code from the ground up. And no one seems to have addressed the result: How well does it function? Not as good as the Windows client, obviously. Obviously. So what ensures anyone that a Linux client would work better?

Mac OSX is a standardized supported operating system. Windows have several standardized supported operating systems – updated, licensed, money to cooperate with companies to create applications. Linux is not. It may function; it may do wonderful things, but it TRIES to be standardized and supported, but it isn’t — that’s why it’s free. How many versions of Linux are there? I mean sub-versions like Ubuntu, Fedora, Suse, etc. and ALL the little version steps within them. Will they all run the same software? NO. So, why would I expect Anet to try and write a client for it? Thousands and thousands of different versions of similar base code. There is no single “Linux”. Microsoft and Apple have the money and right to update and standardize their OS. Linux does not.

Anet did not write GW2 from scratch. They wrote it on DirectX. Anet did not write the subroutines for Windows to communicate via the internet. Windows takes care of that automatically. Multithreading, Human Interface Devices, Sound, the whole nine yards. I am an IT Professional. People who do not like Windows do not know how to use it. There is a massive amount of functionality and versatility that you may never even come across. It’s really comparing the Apollo missions to the starship Enterprise. Yes, they both travelled in space. Linux is never going to replace Windows’ function in the computer world. And, games run on Windows. Adapt.

Jeda.5209:

Elusive.9481:

I want this thread to be a resource of ideas that would make WvW a bit more fun and interesting. Feel free to critique the ideas, support or disagree with them, add your own, and MAYBE we can get Anet to take a look at them. This is not intended to be a major overhaul of WvW, just ideas that make the current setup better. Please avoid anything involving loot bag drops or seige despawning; those have been beaten into the ground and are not easy fixes. So, here are some ideas to start:

1. Quaggans guard the WATER gate of Garrisons and are actually a challege if they are there (perhaps a legendary Quaggan Shaman)

2. Currently, Sentries can’t kill dolyaks. They try, but can’t. Perhaps increase the sentry damage to dolyaks so they can, unless the dolyak has NPC guards.

3. Greatly increase the hit points and healing of dolyaks so they are much, much more difficult to kill (out of a camp) and might require the assistance of a sentry (see number 2).

4. Make the point potential value of keeps, towers, etc. go up as they are upgraded. The total points possible is already altered because of sentries and the elusive yak kill points. Upgraded places would become a larger target, and upgrading would have even more advantages.

5. Add gates to the walls leading to the north supply camps in borderlands. Maybe paper gates, but something to make it a bit more defensible.

6. Scale defending NPCs health, damage, or numbers to the number of enemies close to it while it has crossed swords, perhaps reduced by the number of allies close to it. Not in a strictly linear scaling, but something to give zergs a challenge when there are no defending players. The NPCs should not be more powerful than if a player was there instead.

Critique, add, etc.

Regarding #2 I always thought sentries can kill an unguarded dolyak. I have never stood to watch the whole encounter without interference because I’ll either jump in kill the yak or sentry, but I’ve seen them disappear seems like everytime a yak runs into a sentry of a different faction.

Anyway, I always thought that is the purpose of claiming those sentries, other than karma and now wxp, was to kill yaks and disrupt supplies going to tower, keeps, or castles.

I thought that would be the purpose too, but I see unguarded yaks on the map all the time pass sentries. They do a little icon dance, but the yak gets through, and the sentry returns.

Perhaps changing the damage or hit points for the sentry/yak relationship isn’t the best idea. I’m really just going for a strategic purpose for sentries. So instead, how about this:

Every time a yak passes a sentry of its own team, it receives a long-duration buff. A speed buff would be nice, or maybe retaliation. Soloing would still be possible for both, and not having a sentry at a place wouldn’t grind things to a critical stop, but it would lack a benefit. An obvious use for solo players.

If there were a drawback to passing an opposing sentry, maybe the dolyak could lose some of its supply.

What do you think?

I want this thread to be a resource of ideas that would make WvW a bit more fun and interesting. Feel free to critique the ideas, support or disagree with them, add your own, and MAYBE we can get Anet to take a look at them. This is not intended to be a major overhaul of WvW, just ideas that make the current setup better. Please avoid anything involving loot bag drops or seige despawning; those have been beaten into the ground and are not easy fixes. So, here are some ideas to start:

1. Quaggans guard the WATER gate of Garrisons and are actually a challege if they are there (perhaps a legendary Quaggan Shaman)

2. Currently, Sentries can’t kill dolyaks. They try, but can’t. Perhaps increase the sentry damage to dolyaks so they can, unless the dolyak has NPC guards.

3. Greatly increase the hit points and healing of dolyaks so they are much, much more difficult to kill (out of a camp) and might require the assistance of a sentry (see number 2).

4. Make the point potential value of keeps, towers, etc. go up as they are upgraded. The total points possible is already altered because of sentries and the elusive yak kill points. Upgraded places would become a larger target, and upgrading would have even more advantages.

5. Add gates to the walls leading to the north supply camps in borderlands. Maybe paper gates, but something to make it a bit more defensible.

6. Scale defending NPCs health, damage, or numbers to the number of enemies close to it while it has crossed swords, perhaps reduced by the number of allies close to it. Not in a strictly linear scaling, but something to give zergs a challenge when there are no defending players. The NPCs should not be more powerful than if a player was there instead.

Critique, add, etc.

Ok. The excuses and vagueness from any answer we get from Anet are extremely annoying. If you don’t want us to know, say so. Very simple. “I don’t have the exact figures at home” — seriously? What about when you’re at work? Even the wording is sketchy, maybe you don’t have the exact figures, but do you just know? Or can guess?

Giving a response is not the same as giving an answer. It’s smoke and mirrors and the entire forum knows it. So just give clear answers: A: The actual answer or B: We don’t want to release the number to you because we think they’ll be exploited and we’re working on altering the numbers to avoid that. And THEN, we’ll stop asking! It’s Win-Win.

GW2 is a fantastic game. Well done on many, many levels. I have to applaud you all. But, it’s hard to play a board game without knowing the rules. How are we supposed to get better? How are we supposed to help you make it better? Your player base is a huge resource for feedback and ideas. Do you know how many medical breakthroughs have been accomplished by packaging a problem as a game and releasing it to general population?

You have made an amazing free-to-play game. Why say no to free feedback and analysis?

You do good work Anet, so stop acting so suspicious =P

There is a phenomenon happening as a result of GW2’s usage of the Glicko 2 Rating system. The ratings of the servers in each tier stay relatively close to each other, but are growing futher and further from the ratings in the adjacent tiers. Look at the ratings overall. Each tier has a substantial gap in the rating. This is making it increasingly difficult to move up or down a tier. In summary, the best way to vastly improve your rating is to have a HUGE point gap between you and the other two servers. However, this component in the calculation has a transform to make it non-linear — it flattens out at the extremes, giving diminishing returns for large point differences. So, it just flattens the ratings of the 3 servers back towards each other. If anything, it should do the reverse and amplify the score so that rankings move.

In general, Anet, I don’t think the math is doing what you wanted it to do. Glicko works when you play against many different opponents. However, we play against the same 2 servers again and again and again. Of course the math is going stratify. There aren’t opponents with very different ratings to stir the pot. The system was designed for chess. WvW is not chess.

Morningstar.6208:

2-Outmanned buff should have priority in Dev teams schedule to reward people playing outmanned and it has to have different levels. Harder you are outmanned better the buff gets.

You can’t put offensive or defensive buffs in the outmanned buff. That would just result in a group of self-proclaimed “elite” WvWers getting on a map and yelling at everyone else, “Get off the map, you’re ruining our outmanned buff, and the buff is more helpful to us than you.” Even if the buff scaled for something else, you’d get farmers of whatever it buffed who’d want to be the only ones on the map so they could optimize their farming.

So, build a new computer that has at least 900x the capacity of the old one for half a billion dollars. Um, okay :? Even though 80% of the time, it would be sitting around picking its proverbial silicon nose just for those few moments when it might need those resources assuming the internet even allows it to run at its full potential.

So, significantly lower the number of players per map. Um, okay :? No, that’s not the answer.

So, limit the number of B and C shard players to the amount of A shard players on the map. That doesn’t work. The map was running fine and well within functioning parameters when it loaded the ones it had. And if shard A is out to lunch, does that mean no one from B or C can enter that map? No.

So, sometimes you’re outmanned by the time you got on that map after a queue. You were probably outmanned before it got busy, and would have loaded in. But the server got busy. One defending arrow cart can damage 40 or 50 invaders. Suddenly bandwidth and processor usage shoot up.

So, maybe in practice, it isn’t a fixed number. And if the server was prioritized to stop and load shard A people in, the culling and glitches would go crazy. In processor cycles, it’s much more efficient for a processor to continue what it is already doing than to stop, do something else, and then come back to the first thing — by a huge margin. If someone led you to believe otherwise, they lied. If someone told you hyperthreading fixes that, they REALLY lied. Hyperthreading is like brushing your teeth when you’re put on hold. You call could be answered at any time, and you’ll have a mouthful of toothbrush.

But brushing teeth aside, I bet that’s what’s happening, and the devs don’t have the time to write as much as I did. I could be completely off, and I’m okay with that. But this is a possible educated guess for those who still want the answer. Either way, you’re a trooper for reading this whole thing.

The server may in reality not be “full”, it may be “too incredibly busy” to load your character’s mesh and texture info and integrate you into the exchanges happening and transmit the general map info to you. Notice that your internet bandwidth usage spikes when you zone. There’s a lot of information the server has to tell you about what’s happening in that zone when you enter it. Also, personal computers have multiple cores/processors, and servers are only compounded on those same technologies. It may have 64, 128, etc. cores, which makes it more likely that a “The left had didn’t know what the right was doing” event to occur and load another character from that same shard instead of a different one when it thinks it has the resources to do so. It may be that there were already more players from shard B and shard C on shard A’s borderland BEFORE multiple fights like the above began. But in the middle of all that, when a shard A player tries to enter, the server just might be too busy – for a while. It doesn’t kick shard B or C people out, and if it took priority to load the shard A person in, the real time performance would degrade, there would be tons of culling, and rage would be had all around.

So, yeah, vague and dodging, cuz the community doesn’t want to hear “The computers can’t handle that and we’re not Intel.” So, the server puts the player in a queue and lets them continue playing wherever they were instead of going to a loading screen where the player would have to wait and wait and wait and wait and wonder if their client lost connection.

And, it’s true. How do you reproduce that in a testing environment? You’d have to have 70+ devs all on a server in several large battles and push the server to the max. However, they couldn’t do it in-house because they’d all have intranet connections to the server. You’d have to place them around the globe and have the server fight with different internet latencies from around the world through hundreds or thousands of different internet packet paths. THEN you might be able to reproduce it.

continued…

MikeFerguson.8921:

DonRobeez.3560:

- How many players can one map contain?

As many as we can fit without causing too much stress on the servers. We can’t be more specific than that, but I can assure everyone that the cap is definitely split equally between all three worlds.

We have heard multiple reports for months about people being queued for a map and entering it only to have the outmanned buff, but unfortunately we’ve never been able to verify ways that could be occurring. I’m not saying it isn’t happening, but we haven’t ever been able to reproduce the problem, and if we can’t reproduce the core problem, it makes it basically impossible for us to find and fix the bug

Okay. There’s been a lot of speculation about this response, and it does (as many have said) seem vague and dodging the real answer. However, it may not be at all. I may be wrong, but here’s some food for thought that might support the answer we are given:

Let’s assume that there is some number the server (the ACTUAL computer/s the game is running on; when referring to separate server worlds, I’ll use the term ‘shard’) is instructed to distribute as much as possible between the the three shards for a given map. As a player, the server does not know what skills, movements, etc. you will use before you trigger the action, so it cannot pre-render anything, and it does its best to show your animations and movements in REAL-TIME with an absolute minimum of culling, since culling is the great evil. This doesn’t take a whole lot of bandwidth as your local computer actually does most of the rendering after it receives the information from the server.

Now: Let’s say you and a friend are running around the map together. You see each others’ skills, movements, etc. in real time – which is important because you are affected by AOE boons from your friend, etc. By two of you being in close proximity, the server must send you information about yourself, receive information from you, and transmit information about your friend to you, and transmit information about you to your friend — in REAL TIME. So, worst case scenario, the server is doing 4x the amount of data transfer/computation that it would do if you were alone, or 2x the amount it would if you and your friend were far enough apart that the server did not have to send data about the other.

Next: Imagine 30 people from the same shard all on a map, all far enough away from each other that the server does not trasmit information about the other players. Let’s call this 30 streams of information (1 for each player communicating actions, etc. to the server). Suddenly, they all group up on a tower and zerg it. To avoid culling, because culling is the great evil, the server has to receive actions, etc. from 30 players and transmit info about the other 29 players to each — in real time. It doesn’t know their movements, heals, buffs, etc. before that player triggers them. So, it’s no longer 30 streams, it’s 30×30 = 900 streams.

continued….

I think I saw one example of personality affecting the game. In the Wintersday event, in Tixx’s place, sometimes you had to paint the unpainted princess dolls. On my “Captivating” toon, they would giggle and wave. I’ve also seen them bow at times (not when I hit them), and some people were asking “Why do they scream and cry when I paint them?” I think they were reacting based on the character’s personality.

It just describes the setting when I hover over it. It doesn’t list the differences in this one. (Other settings do though). I did notice that on high, my character leaves footprints in the snow, and on medium, it does not.

I’m familiar with what all of the display options affect except for one: Environment. What kinds of things does this alter? Does anyone have any examples? On low, the snow disappears on the floor of the citadel in WvW. I haven’t found a difference between medium and high. I’m quite savvy about rendering schemes, but I can’t tell what changes between these settings. Thanks.

This guild is awesome, very friendly, and very active. I have tried out several guilds and truly enjoy being a part of GASM. They truly do rock in WvW, while still teaming up for all aspects of the game. I came as a stranger and found it very welcoming!