Guild Wars 2

ionix.9054:

Excellent point OP. But, there already is little to no server identity. You are correct at the harm this causes, but we have already passed the qualitative critical point, so the quantitative harm is minimal. We have diminishing returns on the damage done by decisions like this today.

Back in the ‘good old days’ (I’ll withhold the name of the one true RvR gem…), people picked a server and that was it. You never once communicated with the enemy. This allowed the imagination to build up your enemy and build a strong… VERY strong sense of server identity. And TBH this was half the fun. Really, for those that played the original RvR games think about it. All you knew the enemy by was their guild tag and play style. You could communicate with a selection of them in the forums (but it was 100% unmoderated trash talking).

This proves what this game has been outside of PvE (which is pretty strong—- MINUS the stupid RNG paradigm) is nothing more then a big giant Red team Blue team Halo match.

The old MMO days are long gone. The only hope currently is… well you can do the Google search!

First rule of MMOs: the best experience is always in the distant past or the near future.

Distaste.4801:

First off, the megaserver system will try to place players together based on server, guild, friend, etc. That means that if your server can field an entire map by itself you’ll likely not see any change. Second with guesting the issue, or non-issue rather, already exists. Blackgate already gets tons of guests to their PvE maps and clearly this is not a problem.

I’d also like to ask that people here actually think about someone other than themselves for a second. Even if there are minor ill effects to some server communities, the overall boost to the games health trumps that. Would you rather have your server community with a handful of people left playing or a whole lot more people playing and your community expands from serverwide to gamewide?

The same logic applies to WvW but the server pride blowhards can’t think outside their small boxes to understand the situation. We can either have a bunch of dying servers and server pride(how it is now) OR we can kill servers to condense/balance the population and give the server communities something new to rally behind.

I think people are assuming that megaservers will lead to faction vs. faction matchups, but I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. You can still have team based play, the only difference is you won’t need to have one team per server. The higher pop servers would stay that way, but they could consolidate the low pop ones to help add more parity to the matchups. If the bottom three servers started fighting on the same team, would it really harm their server pride?

Straegen.2938:

Lets have another discussion… remove AoE.

Removing AoE is far more practical. First it would greatly reduce lag. Second it would eliminate the need to stack. Third it requires more skill to use targeted abilities than using AoE. On and on and on… AoE is the devil.

If ANet could do it all over again, I suspect the top of their list would be toning AoE WAY down.

Agreed. Maybe as a compromise they just drastically reduce the effect area on most of the spells. I feel like the defensive aoe spells aren’t that much of a problem.

If they didn’t cap the targets they’d have to cap the damage. Balance matters.

Guys this is bullkitten a sentient plant creature is hitting these wooden doors with fireballs and it’s working.

Frigid.6027:

ascended armor stats arent a huge increase, you’ll be okay

This is a fair point, but the disparity of acquiring mats in WvW and PvE shouldn’t be so significant in the first place.

Drawxne.6079:

Ugh, the toxicity on this thread is getting terrible. And people from all sides are just fanning the flames. This is a game, it’s supposed to be fun. If you’re not having fun, then please don’t throw the blame around the board on why you aren’t having fun. So even if Ehmry Bay does lose this week, what does it even prove? It proves that the opposing teams put up the better fight. Nothing more, nothing less.

I admire everyone’s enthusiasm this week, but some of these comments are taking things way too far. So everyone just relax and have fun. May the best server win, and may they express their victory in a courteous and sportsmanlike manner.

Nope, this stuff is great.

Love the ‘taking the week off to farm pve’ comments btw. Plausible yet completely absurd.

Caelib.2497:

I feel stupid for having spent SEVEN WEEKS working for this shameful excuse for a reward.

When you consider how little effort it takes to complete the other Living World meta-achievements, this is a huge slap in the face.

I think this video pretty much sums it up for me:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TtTzTYDUwvQ#t=23

Arrre you ready, Weavahhhh????

These rewards are crap imo (for myself I only made it to 5/15 due to limited playtime and an unwillingness to do things I don’t consider fun). Good idea with the dragonite ore, since the drop rate in WvW sucks hard compared to PvE, but needed way more. There should have been enough mats in there to craft at least two pieces of ascended armor. WvW players are going to be behind when it comes to crafting their sets anyways, seems fair to give them a bit of a boost.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

A lot of BP players blame EBay already for “riding Yak Bends coattails”. They ignore that their forum warriors, a very select few who are very obvious without being named, have ticked off so many people from both sides that an alliance isn’t needed to focus down their server.

Your server is an attractive target. Blame the people who made it so satisfying to punch in the face.

Just keep our heads down and everything will be okay. At least you admit we’re being double teamed.

While on the subject of forum warriors, don’t forget how vile some of yours were back during the EB/BP/AR days.

Dutchares.6084:

Why this stupid idea comes back all the time?

Zerg will also have the no 5 men limit.
So every one of the zerg will have:
- all the boons to max. (enough people casting them .. on everyone)
- has more healing .. more people healing > few people healing
- has more dps (more circles and other AOE damage hitting people)

Please stop posting the same stupid things.

Still best way to stop zerging is to only reward a few for objectives, not the whole zerg.
Example tower(and guards/door) is max 15 people get rewards. Keeps max 30. Camps max 10. Killing a person is 1 random player that did damage to him/her, except when someone did more then 50% damage to the person.
Being in a +80 man zerg will mean you only get rewards about once every hour or less from objectives. Fights just AOE tagging stuff will don’t give you as much rewards as it used to be.

-

Implicit in all these arguments for lifting the aoe cap is that the people making it are vastly more skilled than the people in the larger group they are fighting. So naturally, their small group should easily defeat a much larger one, and if that isn’t the consistent outcome then the game must be changed.

Caelib.2497:

WvW has turned into a zerg contest to see who can keep their zerg closest together in a zerg war. I can hardly believe that this game has sunk to this level — the problem dates back to the time when AOE’s were nerfed to affect a maximum of 6 targets.

Please rethink WvW because right now the only strategy is an absurd idea of huddling together like a pack of lemmings.

If they didn’t cap the targets they’d have to cap the damage on each AoE ability. Is the problem that your smaller group lost to a larger one? And if they are as bad as you think they are you have plenty of tools to space out a zerg and chew them up.

Did they fan out across the map and do a head count or did they just try to rally everyone on the map and only came up with 30ish people? While it’s strange as hell that a well known commander could only rally 30 people on a queued map it’s more feasible to me than one server on one map having an artificially low pop cap.

I’ve noticed this too, but I’d need to see some solid evidence to back it up. It could just be that we have legions of PvE heroes queuing out the map. Has anyone made the effort to tally up everyone on the map when it is queued?

Staff 2 does need some work. I think the projectile needs to be much faster, and maybe add a boon to the detonation.

Shonie.5297:

Noodica.5428:

Shonie.5297:

ANet, please give Borlis Pass easy matchups so they can tank their rating with ease to get the 13 rank.
I’m pretty sure that’s what the OP was getting at.

ANet, please continue too give Stormbluff Isle easy matchups so they can continue to think they’re the best server with all those transfers.. Mmmmm, so good. I’m pretty sure thats where you were getting at.

Also, i have no idea why you think we’re tanking the matches.. o.0

So…
You make a sarcastic comment about not knowing why anyone would think you want to tank matchups…
There’s numerous threads on the BP forums about this exact issue.
Someone from your server confirms that the discussion has been had by people in your server to tank the matchups.
You agree that he makes a good point and call anyone that thinks that BP may want to tank matchups ‘mouthbreathers’.

Uhhh ok…

You’re not very good at this. Maybe Jinks will take you under his wing.

Noodica.5428:

Shonie.5297:

ANet, please give Borlis Pass easy matchups so they can tank their rating with ease to get the 13 rank.
I’m pretty sure that’s what the OP was getting at.

ANet, please continue too give Stormbluff Isle easy matchups so they can continue to think they’re the best server with all those transfers.. Mmmmm, so good. I’m pretty sure thats where you were getting at.

Also, i have no idea why you think we’re tanking the matches.. o.0

Well, we did discuss it and our community voted on whether to tank or not. Despite deciding not to by a huge margin, the fact that we voted at all opens the door to mouthbreathers insisting that we are tanking.

DevonCarver.5370:

insanemaniac.2456:

why we wont see a useful outnumbered buff:

scenario — player enters map where his server has outnumbered. server loses outnumbered. other players harass him to leave so server can be stronger.

Correct. The idea behind the buff is to incentivize you to show up even if you are outnumbered by pulling out some of the disincentive for losing a lot, but if we put anything too good on it, it will cause serious problems between players. We don’t want it to be something that people fight over, harass each other over, or generally cause a worse play experience because someone takes away the buff because it is our goal for the maps to be full and for no one to have the buff.

Juxtapose this extreme caution over buffing players who are outmanned with the reckless way you buff players who already have a significant advantage. Remarkable.

Rama.6439:

Epistemic.8013:

Rama.6439:

The only thing I like about this patch is that it will get rid of GvG from WvW, it had no place in WvW and that’s that.

Good riddance.

Has nothing to do with GvG, +150 stats is ridiculous. It’s basically a full set of exotic celestial armor on top of what a player already has on. It shouldn’t be in the game. When the league starts, how often will that #12 server have a stack?

Hmmm, has nothing to do with GvG, let’s take a look at the title, Less orbs, more “GvG” please, and everyone is talking about “GvG”. So, how does this not have nothing to do with GvG?

The stacking buff as it exists now is kitten design, regardless if the fights are organized prior or if they are naturally occurring skirmishes. So the problem does not relate to GvG specifically. Which KStudios made clear in his first paragraph.

Rama.6439:

The only thing I like about this patch is that it will get rid of GvG from WvW, it had no place in WvW and that’s that.

Good riddance.

Has nothing to do with GvG, +150 stats is ridiculous. It’s basically a full set of exotic celestial armor on top of what a player already has on. It shouldn’t be in the game. When the league starts, how often will that #12 server have a stack?

dreztina.4820:

Spvpers think wvwers get all the attention, and wvwers think spvpers get all the attention. The truth is both groups get shafted in favor of pve.

I don’t think many wvwers actually want the league system. It doesn’t make sense there. They are going to be significantly rewarding servers simply for their population and coverage, which is exactly what wvwers wanted to avoid. This league system is just another example of anet ignoring everything the community asks for and instead coming up with something out of left field that no one even wants.

Yep. The only face slapping is the palm of my hand hitting my forehead.

Anyone else seeing a face when they look at that thing? You should hide it under your shirt and tell everyone it’s Kuato.

Ghetto Guardian.9520:

daydream.2938:

For gods sake , give us a way to make gold in spvp. I am tired of being broke compared to my pve friends because I choose to do something else.

Too right you are, The bridge between PvE and PVP in guild wars 1 was the zaishen keys.

I made a suggestion months ago about implementing a similar feature. Basicaly use glory to buy these keys to open this Massive chests that has a chance of giving anything from a super rare skin, precursors, dyes. RNG was in guild wars 1, its just that it was implement alot better there.

I called them Glory Keys and Glory Chests.
The Glory Keys can obviously be sold for gold on the trading post. So people who dont pvp can have access to the rare skins that come from the chests, and pvpers then have an economy for themselves where they can pvp and spend say 5k glory getting a Key, or selling it for …5gold.

Along with Glory your earned them from also winning in tournaments. So you would do a tournie, win and get x amount of keys. Because you deserve it.

#PvpRewards
#Gw2

Good ideas. Also there needs to be a way to gain experience in pvp. If you could level a toon in pvp I think you’d see a lot more people queuing up. The way it is now presumes a person will play one or the other, but not both.

As far as the skins go I think they should put all of the higher end ones on the BLTC for gems. It’s been a year and I think there are only 3 skins for each armor type for sale. If pvp starts making them money I think they’ll pay more attention to it.

MokoToko.6890:

Tien.3865:

MokoToko.6890:

JobCreator.1956:

Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?

My names not Joey… :s

Surely you can’t be serious.

I’m guessing you were referencing Joey from Pokemon, since I was entirely random during that whole post. Whatever, that’s just how I pictured it is all…

Also, apologies for the lack of spoiler alerts :P

Watch Airplane! tonight, eff wvw.

Xsorus.2507:

joni.7619:

Xsorus.2507:

SWTOR is more of a Esport then this game, till Anet realizes this and focus’s on crap people actually like “WvW” and GvG this game will continue to suck the teet of SPvP

LOL gw2 isn’t a e-sport
but swtor e-sport??? loooooolololo, are u kidding? aren’t u?
Right now there isn’t a real mmo e-sport , just wow was close of it, but we all know the end

You’re talking about a game that not only had a far better Map mode then this game (huttball) but one that will have 4vs4 Deathmatch Arena best of 3 next patch. In both a Solo and Group Queue with a Ranking system.

and the solo Queue will match Roles of classes, So one team won’t have 2 healers unless the other team does.

So yea..SWTOR is going to be more of an Esport then this game.

Are F2Per’s still restricted on the number of matches they can play per week? SWTOR warzones were fun but lack of cross server queues really sucked once the population started to shrink.

Vena.8436:

I’d even go as far as to wonder if WvW itself wasn’t hurting PvP populations in the way the devs fear more than the addition of game modes ever would.

I think you hit the nail on the head here. The game did launch with two pvp modes, and the one that is more robust is flourishing while the other is stagnating. WvW is also much more casual friendly than sPvP is.

The condi one looks cool.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

I’m surprised no one has done the math for ascended weapons.

I suppose my biggest concern over ascended is that, even though it is only a 5% increase, it is a 5% increase of everything. When you have the full ascended armor, weapons, and trinkets, you’ll have 5% more of everything than if you didn’t. So, looking at the damage formula:

Damage = Power x Weapon Attack x Coefficient / Armor x Crit mod

Coefficient and armor are constant, so we can ignore that. Now, lets say that we go with a berserker ascended set, and we get 5% more attack, 5% more power, 5% more precision, and 5% more crit damage. Now, lets look at how those stats will work.

Power would be 5% more from what armor and trinkets give. You already have 916 power to start, and a full set of exotic berserker gives 1003 Power. 5% of that is 50, so you can add this 50 power onto whatever build you want. I’m going to assume a full 30 points into a power line, just for example sake, as well as ruby orbs on the armor. So, overall power raises from 2339 to 2389, which is a 2.1% increase in damag.

Precision would get a further 35 precision, which is about 1.5% crit rate. I’m also going to assume 300 precision from traits, so a full build will have 1082 precision, or kitten .5% crit rate. Ascended raises that up to 57%.

Attack power is just a flat 5% increase.

Crit damage is a kittene, since it increases by more than 5%. Where exotic trinkets give a total of 36% crit damage, the ascended gives a total of 44%. This is a total increase of 22%, and the rest of the stats will likely follow suit. So, while full exotic gives 62% crit damage, ascended will give 76% crit damage, or 14% extra. Assuming ruby orbs an at least 100 trait points, this will mean a total increase from 84 to 96. Since crit damage starts out at 150, this comes to a total increase of about 5%.

So, looking at that damage formula again:

Damage = 1.021 Power x 1.05 weapon attack x constant stuff x crit mod

old crit mod:

55% x 2.34 + 45% = 1.737

New crit mod:
57% x 2.46 + 43% = 1.832

Crit mod’s total increase is 5.5%

In the end, we have 1.02 × 1.05 × 1.055 =1.1299 = 13% increase in damage.

Note, this number can change depending on what build you use, but for now I just went with a fairly generic berserker skeleton.

Add this on top of the fact that you’ll also have 5% more armor, so you’ll take anywhere from 2.5% less damage to 2.8% less damage. When fighting another player in full ascended while you have full exotics, he hits you 13% harder, and you hit him for 2.5% less, given generic builds.

Considering that attacks hit upwards to 8k or so, that 13% is an extra 1040 damage, while you’ll instead hit for 7800. That comes to a total difference of 15.9% total effectiveness between the two of you. That is a little too high of a statistical difference for me to be comfortable.

So overall, when comparing ascended to exotic, bear in mind that the cumulative effect is much higher than advertised. You can do the math with different numbers if you so choose, but remember that the less that is invested there, the more ascended makes a difference.

The stat difference is as advertised, but you’re right that stat synergy makes the increase in damage higher. Zerkers in particular has great stat synergy. This isn’t unique to Ascended pieces, though. Go from Rare to Exotic and you see the same thing.

My main concern with Ascended is in WvW. The only place treadmilling will happen is there, and stat increases like this can sometimes have unintended consequences. For example, I’m wondering if damage output will outpace mitigation, and if it does will it have any significant impact on WvW.

The only thing about stealth stomping that needs to change is people not recognizing it when it is happening. That’s not on Anet though.

If you’re still working on your rotation you could also fight the profession npc’s at the north end of the mists. Then once you have a solid grasp of your build you can step into actual matches.

Frosch.7809:

Evilzara.6378:

Ok, give us 80g each. We’ll go to Maguuma.

So predictable.

Make the transfer and you get the gold.

Reckon this guy’ll crawfish given half the chance.

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

Justdeifyme.9387:

It’s all about the Server. On mine I can’t walk a minute on ANY Map without seeing people running around doing stuff. There are a ton of people on my server and I get in a Overflow everytime in Lions Arch, the Pavillion and any Area where a Meta Event happens when I’m not fast enough.

So I got curious, and decided to check a few areas.

I decided to check LA, and the two most common champion farms in CS. I assume you will include 7 pm central as prime time, but who knows. The server is Borlis Pass. Which as I’m testing is listed as “very high”. I’m not sure what very high is, but I can post more screen shots. The only thing we have a queue on is the actual pavilion, which btw had an artificially low number set on it I will let others speculate why.

You are welcome to check the time stamps on the mini map.

edit
I absolutely agree it’s about what server you are on. It’s just that there are only 4 or 5 servers where you can actually see people. Most of the servers are just ghost towns. You can see people in a few maps, or just in the living story area. Otherwise it’s dead.

I’ve been on BP for several months, if that is meant to be a screenshot of LA during prime time you are being extremely misleading. But don’t take my word for it, just guest on over if you’re curious. No need for screenshots. I lol’d at the “dude check my timestamps” bit, thanks for that.

Khayoss.2019:

Aeros.2046:

Apparently so. Its such a shame to see expensive vehicles trashed by 15 year olds just getting their learners permit though. Back in my day, when an Omega appeared it meant srs bsns. Now every wippersnapper with more money then sense seems to have one in their inventory.

lol, that was me. I’m 33 though, so not quite just getting my learners. You should take an omega out for a spin yourself, soloing towers is pretty fun… I’d love to get a chance to try a keep one day, but it seems like that will probably never happen.

You shoulda just let me play around with the guardian and the necro. We were having good times. The necro was going to get stomped, but that guardian woulda had me all by himself over time, he healed for more damage than a golem can do. I actually brought the golem up to try hitting the treb that was attacking our tower at first, but I couldn’t get LOS, so I just hit the wall until someone came out to play.

If anyone’s up for some golem duels this week hit me up.

/salute

I’m pretty sure I could take on two golems at once.

One of the things I noticed today is that the camera changes a lot, which can be disorienting because the casters don’t announce it before they switch. Occasionally they’ll be late to the action so we’ll get a glimpse of a downed player, then switch immediately to some action elsewhere. Not good.

I think the mini map needs some work as well. Make it easier for spectators to see the players on the map, and indicate on the mini map which players are being spectated, so we can tell where they are quickly.

No error code, just “Connection error(s) detected. Retrying…”. I was able to play earlier this evening, logged out around 8pm server time. Came back a few hours later and this crap happened.

It’s in WvW.

/15chars

It would give casual players a reason to come back and try sPvP out. I think you’d need solo queue and better matchmaking in place first though.

Good idea. Really though they need to go back to the drawing board with upleveling and make it so the disparity isn’t so stark.

Motoko.2875:

This means I get a completely new map I can go be bored on?

You don’t play. Remember?

Hopefully they’re scrapping Hot Joins and separating tournaments into team and solo queues.

Julius.1094:

Honestly one of the biggest problems with watching tournaments atm for me are all the kitten tiny asuras. The same thing that makes them stupid for pvp, that their animations are hard to see, makes them stupid for viewing. When the angle is looking from above in a team fight it’s just a lot harder to see what’s happening with all the tiny people with tiny animations that often just get lost in all the AOE spell effects. If the models were larger and with longer arms/larger weapons (basically, not asuras) the animations would be a lot easier to see on the stream and the fights would look better. I don’t know what possessed Anet to add in a tiny race to a game they wanted to have serious pvp, or why they haven’t fixed it yet being that it’s not that hard.

Agree with this too. Maybe for future tourneys they could require humans only or something. No Odd Job, guys.

I agree the pre-match discussion could have been much more in-depth. Rather than telling me so and so is using a “normal build” you could perhaps tell me what the builds strengths and weaknesses are and what the other team could do to counter/exploit them, and how that fits with the team comp as a whole. Overall good job to everyone involved, nice to see people taking the first steps.

Dio.2394:

Amins.3710:

It’ll be nice once we don’t have to fight AR/BP anymore… simply because you’ve neither learned nor implemented adaptive strategies over the last 6 weeks.

It’s one thing to say “population imbalances” made for crappy gameplay, but even the small roaming groups are just bad.

6 weeks… zero improvement on any front…

I mean, srsly?

Instead, what’s happened is larger tower hugging zergs afraid to come out even when there’s equal numbers.

Imagine an arm held up at a 45 degree angle.
Imagine the fingers and thumb curled in slightly.
Imagine the fist going up and down at the wrist.

I lol’d.

MindlessRuff.1948:

The ONLY way to change hotjoins from the state they are currently in, is to remove the hotjoin part. The fact that people are able to jump in and out at will does not encourage playing for the win, rather it encourages trying to get as many points as possible so you can rank up and get more glory points.

If you want to play to win, the way hotjoins form needs to be restructured, or you could go join the free tPvP games available, you get plenty more points for winning those matches, as well as a reward chest if you pass at least 1 round.

They should change it to a single match solo queuing system or get rid of it. OP makes a good point in saying that most people start with Hot Join, and in my opinion it is a deterrent to more organized play. Changing the point structure would be a less radical change (and therefore more likely to change) and might reduce the point farming.

Follidus.8027:

Yes, a ladder/rating system is nice for top tier players, but honestly I think the most important thing about it is helping lower tier players get into the game more by playing people around their own skill level.

imo it’s the lower tier players that are the most important if you want to see this game succeed. I think custom arenas are more important for top tier teams, anyway. But that won’t matter if there aren’t lots of lower tier teams out there trying that are having fun trying to get better.

Agreed. Speaking as a lower tier player, Hot Join really turned me off spvp. If you are interested in objective-based pvp, it is really an awful experience. I’m not sure what the fix is (point incentive maybe, less on killing more on holding and capping points, etc.) but it needs to happen soon.

TsukasaHiiragi.9730:

Trust me, the best ascended items are ‘roughly’ about 40% better than regular exotics.

This pic is one of the lower quality rings, look at the difference in stats. There are ascended items that have been linked that have had vendor values of 6g

Exotic Berserker Ring total stats combined 155 +6% CTD
That low end Ascended RIng total stats combined 222 + 5% CTD + Agony Resis + MF

You’re comparing apples to oranges. You need to look at items with similar stat distributions. If I remember correctly in WoW each additional point toward a particular stat would have a higher cost against the total stat budget of the item. I’m not sure how the system works in GW2 but I imagine it’s roughly the same.