Guild Wars 2

As a primarily wvw player since launch, and a carry-over player from GW1 the announcement today is disappointing as it seems the decimation of the wvw population will continue unabated. With the vaguely announced timeline, I am not optimistic there will be much of a population left for the population balance fixes later this year. I have slowly moved my two accounts up through the tiers, donating more gems to Anets efforts, in order to attempt to find consistency, or pseudo balance, but it is not uncommon for myself to log in during NA prime and find no commanders tagged in either Tier 1 or 2, when over year ago I could find multiple commanders at any time in Tier 3 – 6.

The launch of HoT, for which I bought two copies, was also a disappointment – not in as much the number of features it offered, but rather the lack of insight demonstrated by the company into the combat aspects of the game, when the combat is the truly defining feature of this potentially great product. The terrain and introduction of non-player elements ran counter to 3 years of feedback and the arguable failure of EotM to attract genuine interest. The borderland waypoint changes demonstrated to myself a clear lack of practical understanding of the current state of population and organizational attrition in the game; attempting to force more play across maps on the assumption that there are actually enough commanders or guilds left to support multi-map coordination. Nothing needs to be said about the class imbalance introduced as well, which created a virtual pay-to-win structure in the game, driving both wvw and pvp further into boring metas.

So, as much as I can understand trying to consolidate changes, whether to raise efficiency or minimize roll-backs, I have a difficult time seeing the purpose in Anet investing another year into a cure for a patient that will be dead by then. The attrition increases at a rate such that by the time your solutions are released, they are no longer appropriate for the situation. For example, the DB map might have been a successful addition, despite the reservations of myself and others, 2 years ago when the game had the population to support the dynamics.

Your metrics are polluted with assumptions, and your game mode is on life support. If you make no plans for further intermediate assistance into QoL changes for the wvw community between now and the overhaul, including the population distribution, save your time and money and shut the mode down. Your time would be better spent with your other game modes, as you have clearly spread yourself too thin, and adopted an insular approach to your customers which serves to assist nothing other than fragile management egos.

So long, and thanks for all the fish.

I always liked the part about Zergs the best. Most of the changes to the mode are counterintuitive to what DC expresses there. But, I have to admit he said a lot of the right stuff.

Quick review of your posting history shows:

1) you started engaging in discussion here a little over a month ago. Maybe you’re not an authority on what has or hasn’t been attempted in terms of dialogue.
2) the majority of your posts are complaining about the skill balance changes after the June patch, and bemoaning Anet’s nonresponsiveness

You were saying about retared (sic) monkeys ?

Bump, mode breaking bug, Day 5. Josh had stated it didn’t take much time to set this event up. It shouldn’t divert too much time to take it down. You don’t need to fix anything, just shut it off. Enough people have logged out for the week to justify diminishing returns of whatever was intended here. A ’we’re looking into it’ response would probably be appropriate.

Thanks for your comments. I agree, in practice WvW may not be a bridge for a lot of people. I tend to view that reality as being more a function of the red-headed stepchild phenomenon in how WvW is treated out of the modes. Over the years, Anet has made PvP more accessible/rewarding and WvW less accessible (but consistently, significantly less rewarding). So naturally, it’s probably the last thing many people get into.

My comment was more on the potential for WvW to be a bridge, as opposed to the current dynamic, if managed properly. I also view WvW as endgame, but I see PvP as a valuable asset to be played in parallel. PvP is a great way to learn and refine skill rotations and counters, and minutiae that can be overlooked in the chaos of large-scale fights.

I’ve spent a decent amount of time since beta observing players purge from a server, then rebuild, develop and repeat the purge. Player progression in WvW often goes from a person doing a lot of the more accessible things like scouting, capping objectives, building and maintaining siege, etc. Eventually you wrap your head around the idea of class builds and start to get into combat a bit more, maybe you even tag up and lead people to cap objectives. Then I see a lot of those people get their attention grabbed by the combat. Pugmanders who find they enjoy the combat more and more, and get tired of having an unstable team behind them, start their own guilds and recruit, they learn about optimal group composition and open field strategy. Eventually maybe they move on to zerg busting or gvg.

But we’ve seen the rift that can form in a community between PPT players and combat-oriented players. In my opinion this tends to be a result of combat-oriented players having perhaps played the mode a bit longer, on average, and is really more of a reflection of their frustration with the underlying futility of the mode which is traced back to the inattention that has most of us worked-up on this forum. Combat players start to identify their PPT-loving teammates with the oppressive overlords who malign their interests seemingly at every development turn. People used to respect this balance a bit more, but now, after years of neglect and PPT play encroaching more on the overall gameplay in the mode, it tends to be viewed more like a hostile takeover.

I would guess that most of us who’ve played long enough have seen what happens when you have too many of either type of player in a server. Become too fight-oriented and the server feels isolated and unwelcoming, become too PPT-oriented and the variety of gameplay suffers as people tend to cluster together.

But, back on point: like it or not, a healthy WvW environment has players which span a spectrum of interests. That spectrum, which is unique in the game mode, has (or maybe moreso the past-tense, had) the potential to ease more people into the beauty of the combat, if taking the plunge right into PvP was slightly intimidating.

I should also point out I’m not trying to say either PvP or WvW is the pinnacle of development as a competitive player. You have good fighters in both, and more often than not, the stronger combat guilds in WvW participate in some capacity in PvP.

This is an interesting video from May of this year featuring Anet’s head of marketing, Steve Fowler, and Josh Davis, the competitive events manager who brought us the golem event:

Building a Competitive Game Program

The context is more pvp, and a discussion about growing support for competitive pvp, but indirectly the presentation says quite a bit about their stance with wvw. From their presentation:

• Competitive players have higher than average retention rates
• Competitive players tend to play longer than non-competitive game-type players
• Players monetize better the more they play
• Lifetime value is higher for competitive players than non-competitive players

Some interesting highlights of the presentation:

20:32 – Josh discussing the concept of facilitating player progression from casual to competitive, and the need to facilitate growth. Steve follows up by pointing out that pvp can be intimidating to the casual player, and the importance of maintaining varying levels of competitiveness to slowly encourage players into pvp and thereby increase GW2 participation overall.

2:50 – Steve Fowler discusses why Anet is interested in competitive gaming.

20:15 – Steve’s sick burn of Josh

I had written once on this forum that in my mind the apparently combative stance taken with the wvw community was a missed opportunity on the part of Anet. A missed opportunity to sustain population (money), and also increase pvp participation. Everyone starts off in PvE and wvw is/can be a nice intermediate step into getting into pvp, which seemed to me was where Anet’s business plan was originally heavily invested, and supported in the video above. In my opinion, that chain of potential player development was hindered when Anet chose to view wvw as a competing format for pvp-oriented players rather than a platform to generate new pvp players.

The link between PvE and WvW was strained when the forums were removed, again when megaservers came in, and again further when recruiting forums were folded into a jumbled mass. WvW players are the only users who have to pay to transfer to keep the mode they play interesting, or accompany guild members.

WvW is increasingly becoming a mode that caters to the casual player, or deincentivizes organized play, and thereby stratifies the gameplay combat scale and stagnates the average skill level in a game with amazing combat potential/design. The more ‘hardcore’ players who in the past used to lead, take in, and teach new players basic skills in game have become more insular in an effort to maintain their guilds in response to the frustrations mentioned here, and declining participation. This forces new and disenfranchised players to fall back on a blob mentality which diminishes the potential for variety and development, and further, their transition into pvp.

So, as a player who optimistically pre-purchased two expansions, I have to say I’m a bit disappointed so far by the lack of effort to address the core issues relating to the deterioration of the game mode.

I believe the developers are a group of intelligent, well-intentioned individuals. But I would encourage you to engage the community on some meaningful level in an effort to keep the mode from devolving to what we see in EotM, which isn’t good for us, or your long-term profit. Working with us can help you to further your goals.

Chaba.5410:

Epsilon Atreides.3816:

All the servers preceeding in the months before us had guilds siphoned into T2 and fell afterwards – CD, SBI, HoD, etc.

Guilds left CD, SBI, HOD on their own for the most part.

I didn’t say they didn’t, I was just saying a pattern was already established and initiating the problem (gap in coverage) long before we got there. An issue that could have been mitigated if more people exercised common sense about how they transfer. The gap is created in part by player attrition, but the constant transfers between outmatched T3 servers and T2 is a big contributor.

Chaba.5410:

Epsilon Atreides.3816:

Fort Aspenwood’s community approached IoJ and offered to buy the server because they needed to strengthen their off-hours coverage.

You shouldn’t be asking why don’t servers stop helping to pay for transfers, you should be asking why players and guilds want to move up tier in the first place. If Anet isn’t going to do any sort of server consolidation and cater to the majority of players who like the larger scale combat, the player base will.

I wasn’t asking anything. Nor was I criticizing FA, or transferring itself. That was just a statement of fact for context. The root cause of the issue is people generally just not being able to chill out, enjoy the game, and not force the ppt agenda. Once one server gets in the mix like that it generally ruins the game for everyone because the way the ranking system is it forces you to have to PPT as well. Over two years into the game and you have communities that still don’t realize that it’s a self-destructive metric to be chasing. The current state of T1 should be a clear indicator to anyone with a brain. Balance can never be achieved the way the game is, so forcing people to focus on the score to an extreme causes the majority of the game’s population to obsess on aspects they don’t otherwise want to, burnout and frustration inevitably occur, people quit the game and the destabilization continues.

Chaba.5410:

Fort Aspenwood approached IoJ because the player attrition is causing more and more extreme mismatches down tiers and a lot more PvDooring off-hours as time goes on. Both servers have a shared history between the communities going back to the first IoJ exodus and continuing through the second and third. A lot of players still playing on FA came from the first exodus, including one of our self-professed “server leaders”, and there are players on IoJ who played at one time on FA. So our communities have a lot of similarities.

We didn’t approach any other server with such an offer. That offer was for IoJ only. Yes, it would have caused possibly even more extreme mismatches down tiers, but we saw it as helping out players on what is considered a sister server. Anet needs to get their kitten together and such a movement of players may have highlighted that need.

Yeah, I totally get that. Again, my comment was to the people showing up on the various forums to complain in their short-sighted way about the fights they’re not getting from us. We can tolerate the personnel losses because we get why people transferred. What I can’t tolerate personally is listening to the sanctimonious attitude of a person sitting on a team with 6 – 7 times the organized wvw population who lacks the brain capacity to understand why they have a tough time finding fights.

Chaba.5410:

Also, you’re forgetting to include the fact that one of those three guilds that left IoJ and came to FA was started on FA and went to IoJ for a time.

No I didn’t forget that, the origin of a guild bears no relevance on factual statements quantifying player movement and server population.

Jski.6180:

What i do not get why don’t most of the come T3 worlds (not SoS or FA or even DB they are more on the lines of T2-T2.5) get ppl from T4 and lower worlds to come to T3. Part of wvw is comunitly and if you cant build one then your world will die or simply be crushed by the odd T worlds.

This isn’t entirely directed at you, but just the general group of sanctimonious players in T2 who roll down and offer advice and complaints.

The rift formed in T3 started long before IoJ and NSP got into the tier. All the servers preceeding in the months before us had guilds siphoned into T2 and fell afterwards – CD, SBI, HoD, etc. The introduction of a heavily PPT-focused server, and people choosing to jump to a fourth server historically carried by a single timezone caused a sort of cold war in the tier which has switched the focus from fights to doing whatever is necessary to stay afloat in T2.

When IoJ got to T3 we had roughly 8 guilds that could field 15 – 20 people, through all of our timezones. About 2 of those decided the number difference wasn’t for them and left, which is to be expected to some extent. That left us with 6. Fort Aspenwood’s community approached IoJ and offered to buy the server because they needed to strengthen their off-hours coverage. Obviously people had mixed feelings about that, 3 guilds stayed and 3 guilds transferred to FA – 2 of the guilds that left covered timezones that are typically weaker (OCX, SEA).

So, that’s where IoJ is now, we have about 2 guilds that rally in NA, and 1 in OCX. And we recently picked up another guild in NA. These guilds don’t typically overlap that much, so at any given time through NA prime into OCX there is 1 guild covering all maps, with whatever pugs are still masochistic enough to log in. For comparison purposes, a quick check on the FA website lists 26 guilds, and that doesn’t include the 2 guilds they had transfer from T1 this week.

Because of the 4 servers trying for 3 spots in T2 over the last 2.5 months, whoever rolls into T3 is typically PPT’ing as hard as they can to drain glicko. This means map queues blobbing on multiple maps, people building siege in our camps and leaving teams in them, and all the trolling that goes along with that, etc etc.

There’s no real need to question why the T2 servers do it, we get why they do it. They want to survive in the current situation so they buy and recruit more and more guilds. In general, people are lazy, just want to enjoy their gaming time and they transfer in the path of least resistance. People on IoJ and NSP have, in my opinion, been pretty good about making the best of a bad situation and not complaining too much. The bulk of the complaints come from the T2 servers about why they can’t find fights, or how poorly we fight, when they can clearly see the situation they created – not us. It’s not our job to keep you entertained while you play in the most toxic ppt-driven way possible while trying to purchase our remaining guilds.

I ask myself the same question too, or did. At this point it should be pretty clear to all of us how much time and energy Anet plans on investing in this mode, essentially nothing. WvW is a sandbox gamemode which probably exists in essence to provide developers and other employees with a logical time to take vacation (during seasons) from the living story. The existence of a competitive form of WvW, and further GvG, runs counter to the plan to make pvp a sponsor attracting game mode due to the fact it would siphon competitive players away from the mode into which they’ve sunk the larger part of their investment.

Employees don’t answer here because, despite personal views which may contradict their employer, their company is publicly traded and undermining the confidence in their product will only threaten the parent company’s bottom line which is somewhat a function of the perception of customer contentment, and get them transferred or fired.

Any positive changes that come about in the game will likely need to be spearheaded by players taking the initiative to correct things people are displeased about. However, due to the prevalence of human apathy, anonymity, and the F2P structure, there is little motivation by players in a general sense, and our expectations about whether players will right the ship should reflect that.

Bump!

If you’re looking for an active, friendly WvW guild on a stable server, message our guild leader above for more info.

oxtred.7658:

Why is this in the www section?

Being able to one-shot a zerg with siege is the pinnacle of WvW gameplay, as RNGesus intended.

If you’re an experienced player looking for more stability, balance and competition, IoJ is home to a number of guilds which could suit you, including CORE. If you’re a player new to guild raids and zerg busting, looking to learn and be part of a team, CORE is a great place to get started.

Check out the OP and some videos above for more info.

I think it would be appropriate for one of the devs to spend the season on Maguuma.

I feel compelled to comment here for the first time since my first infraction/banning experience about 6 months ago. Note: my ban was received for asking ANet to explicitly state how players could report hackers in a way that didn’t result in unnecessary infractions and further contribute to the deteriorating dialogue between the company and the users. For that, I was banned. Moving along….

I have come to appreciate over time, to some extent, the position of the ANet employees who have to interact with us. Like any employees they are subject to the demands of managers, managers who are likely out of touch, or have never been in touch, with their product. I’m sure lots of us could relate. Obviously, publicly contradicting the message sent, or ideas generated, by that particular brain trust within the company means risking your employment. I’m also fairly certain that there are people working within ANet who agree with many of the things that are said here. However, their agreement and acknowledgement can only likely serve to perhaps risk their jobs and not much else. As has been stated a number of times before by different people on the forums, the best path forward is to vote with your wallet. Either you stop playing the game entirely, or you dial back your gem store purchases to send a message to the correct people.

Now, on topic, I’d be of a mind to encourage people not to support this request. Yeah, people have made some great videos, people really like the game and what they’ve managed to accomplish in it. However, it would seem to me a self-defeating exercise for the community to cooperate with the request. Part of the issue we face is ANet resources dedicated to the more casual player-base aspects, and a business model that seemingly relies on continually gaining new players to maintain revenue, while not addressing the bleeding of users out of the end game (WvW). From what I’ve read, China is not the end of the expansion, and the focus on new markets will probably continue at least for the next 2 – 3 years (last part is a guesstimate). A promo video for WvW is a band-aid solution to a systemic problem and assisting in its production is a clear contradiction to everything the community has been requesting for the last two years. In other words, the solution is not simply bringing in players to replace those who quit, it’s about addressing aspects of the game which destabilize the player base.

As much as I try to understand the position of the ANet employees and temper my comments accordingly, I have a hard time understanding why a little clarity wasn’t added here, just as a matter of simple human courtesy. I’ve been actively reading the forums since beta and asking for a favour in a vague manner from a group which on a daily basis maligns the way in which information is doled out is going to have a predictable result. Either engage the community with some transparency or continue with the communication black-out, at this point anything else comes across as patronizing.

Have a pleasant day.

No need to flame her when she’s trying to help. And no need to belabor that point. Report with something constructive.

Scanned through to see if this was linked here, didn’t see it:

Mike O’Brien GW2 China Interview

May shed some light on upcoming account bound discussion. Account bound dyes and something about account bound level unlocks in the Chinese version.

OP. I respect the sentiment of your post, and I agree there is too much QQ, but I think it may be a stretch to suggest that complaints themselves are unjustified.

It’s good to keep in mind that the people interacting with us from the Anet side are people, but it would also be good to keep in mind that they represent a corporation. At the end of the day it’s to whomever makes decisions for the corporation that the comments are directed at. The people interacting with us here unfortunately get caught in the crossfire.

Now, a fundamental flaw in your thesis is “….there’s more to do at any time than you could possibly get bored with”. That’s based on the presumption everyone enjoys videogames the same way. The reason we’re here in this forum is we play wvw/pvp. The people who turn up here generally find PvE a lot less interesting because it is not truly dynamic. It is a game of trial and error until you can do it in your sleep. So, we prefer the human element.

So, we purchased GW2 on the premise that pvp met certain criteria, explicit statements made by Anet, which it turned out it did not. At some point between the marketing parade and execution, pvp was heavily deprioritized.

A lot of constructive feedback was provided in addition to the QQ since launch. But, people who provide constructive feedback in this mode have found it relatively ineffectual, and watch as, at times, corporate decisions fly in the face of logic. The people who contribute those ideas here have likely seen less and less reason to post, and so you’re left with a higher density of QQ.

Try to remember we’re dealing with a company here. At the end of the day, a corporation does not care how you feel about its game, it is a headless monster that only responds to threats to its wallet. It does not require our sympathy and understanding as it lines its pockets with the dollars of average citizens trying to relax at the end of the day.

It might be interesting to check out the feedback from the Chinese launch activities. It would seem that the feedback there has been fairly negative. I travel there regularly for work and people I meet in my equivalent profession often make roughly 10% of my salary, but they would fit into the demographic that can afford the game, and would be considered poor by our standards. So, it would seem that some people who are not the “richest people in the world”, take exception to some elements as well. It may also be humorous to note that negative feedback has been vigorously censored by the local providers in China………sound familiar?

This is an interesting read from a couple months ago:

http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2014-01-14-you-thought-that-was-it-for-guild-wars-2

“What to do about those servers that can’t compete, though? ’Someone’s always going to win, someone’s always going to lose,’ Johanson shrugged, ‘but we want to do things to help ensure you have a really fun play. Even if you’re losing, you have moments and rewards and things you’re playing for that they’re compelling right down to the last minute.’”

“‘Population-wise, we’re doing great,’ insisted Johanson. ’We’re very happy with where we’re at. Six months ago to now, it’s a very steady, very very healthy population.’”

Hehe…………………..uninstalling today.

Posted here for context and visbility due to number of infracted and deleted posts in the subforum. Copy posted in proper Bug forum for clarification. The answer you provided is not reflected in the guidelines they provide in the link above, but sounds reasonable. And you proved my point about how simple it could have been for them to guide the information, thanks.

Also, riddle me this, which is spreading the problem more, having posts like that on the forum, or further alienating a group of people armed with disposable income, and the knowledge that there are no solutions or consequences to the hacking problem?

To me, how to report a hacker when you can’t use the targeting system seems like a fairly simple question, and one that deserves a response since I have posed it within the bounds of your terms and conditions, also posted a copy in the correct forum (bugs), and the fact it probably ranks over other pressing concerns like faulty cut-scenes, and animation glitches on musical harps.

Those people posting earlier this week could have been provided with an e-mail address to forward their reports, even with the purpose of humoring them. In my mind, not doing so moves beyond not treating users like customers into not treating them like people.

I’ll be ceasing TP purchases indefinitely and encouraging those I know in-game to do the same. Indefinitely shouldn’t be overly long though, I’m anticipating the April 15th uninstall date.

I’m wondering if a representative from Anet could clarify something regarding the ‘report player’ feature.

Best Practices

When a player is reporting another for botting, hacking, or cheating, the recommended procedure is to right-click and report. As described in the link above.

Could you clarify what steps a player should take to perform the same function when they are unable to target the player being reported? Is there a set of information that should be provided, and perhaps an e-mail address where the information can be sent to assist the Customer Support Specialists, in lieu of this in-game mechanism being able to function, for whatever reason?

Clarifying that may help to direct the information being posted on certain subforums, and may alleviate a small amount of frustration.

Thank you,

It’s actually a much different question than what you think. I want to keep the thread clean so it doesn’t violate the terms.

If I was transferring, this is a server I would be looking at. Good roaming/small team and some guilds that have been around as long as I’ve been playing, which says something in wvw.

I’m wondering if a representative from Anet could clarify something regarding the ‘report player’ feature.

Best Practices

When a player is reporting another for botting, hacking, or cheating, the recommended procedure is to right-click and report. As described in the link above.

Could you clarify what steps a player should take to perform the same function when they are unable to target the player being reported? Is there a set of information that should be provided, and perhaps an e-mail address where the information can be sent to assist the Customer Support Specialists, in lieu of this in-game mechanism being able to function, for whatever reason?

Clarifying that may help to direct the information being posted here, and may alleviate a small amount of frustration.

Thank you,

Straegen.2938:

While I agree it should have been released sooner, I doubt they want any significant changes to WvW right before the new season.

I agree what you said makes logical sense to assume. But in practice it doesn’t seem consistent with the free transfer policy. Creating population instabilities is a much more significant change to the game right before the season than people being able to have buffs on their alts that they already probably have on their mains.

This whole thing smells like a project manager who’s out of touch with the product and audience, but recognizes a cash cow, pushing their design team to focus on items they might otherwise choose not to work on. It would be interesting to know what sort of conversations happened about recouping cash in their business model after it became apparent the e-sports thing wasn’t gonna pan out, and what sort of fraction of their income that was intended to represent.

I just can’t see the sustainability in this approach. The core wvw population may represent a small fraction of the overall GW2 population. But the ‘endgame’ is still hemorrhaging players. New sales, and people being fed into the front end of this process must slow eventually (if it hasn’t already). So, without addressing the issue of keeping pvp a somewhat competitive format, I have a hard time seeing how this F2P model can last. A large source of income right now is driven by customer dissatisfaction, and that’s something you can’t just keep going back to the well for.

I invested money and time in the game (yeah, it’s just a game) on the premise it would take pvp seriously, and keep the power creep out of the game. GW2 has failed to meet either of these. The people I know in the game keep me interested, and we lose more of them each day. It’s unfortunate, the potential being overlooked here.

Kaos.9162:

Chuck Zitto.2367:

I checked all the boarderlands and don’t see a battle historian npc anywhere.

I found one right out in the middle of the spawn area in EB. He doesn’t seem to know how our server did last season, which is kinda weird, but I guess you can’t expect what little we get to work properly from the get-go.

The question “What league were we in?” also appears twice in the SS, so another bug there….

I saw something around a month ago that makes me think there is. I was on a PU mes alt (yeah), went into stealth while pursued by 5 – 6 people, but one of them cut out of the group and b-lined for me while I was in mass invis. I chained my other skills, made around 3, 90 degree turns in an open field and he zig-zagged with me each time over the course of 10 – 12 seconds. I did that deliberately after it became apparent he was tracking me.

Coincidentally he was running an obvious troll tag while grouping with a guild who we knew to be transferring off the opponent server the next day, so read into that what you will.

I don’t play stealth classes enough to chalk it up to anything but paranoia. But I haven’t seen anything quite like it before in my 15 months of wvw, or since.

Make a choice for beyond season 2. If you’re someone who cheers for the underdog, has a competitive side for wvw, and understands that helping others in your community is ultimately helping yourself as well….IoJ might be your last stop.

Jski.6180:

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Even more concerned as the mods have just removed the thread where people were posting the invisible and invincible ele!

Keep your heads in the ground anet, you’re doing a bang up job driving people away from your game!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs This is where you need to post about bugs and maybe haxs.

A thread was started there on the subject. It is no longer there. I believe I’ve worded that in a way consistent with the terms and conditions of the forum.

In other words, it would seem it’s unacceptable to discuss that, regardless of the subforum.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Even more concerned as the mods have just removed the thread where people were posting the invisible and invincible ele!

Keep your heads in the ground anet, you’re doing a bang up job driving people away from your game!

Did the thread get deleted, or did it get hacked and turned invisible too?

I’m scared, someone hold me.

(PS. Thanks for the infos and updates on that Anet. I feel informed as usual, and confident as a regularly paying customer that future TP purchases will see the profits invested in the mode I spend my primary game time in.)

adjusts blindfold

Second Child’s done a good job above explaining why so many of us have stayed for so long. I’ve also been on the server since beta. The server offers a great environment, encourages a variety of playstyles (fights and PPT), and has some of the more balanced coverage in the mid-tiers.

If you’re someone who is looking for a relaxed and friendly community, but competitive wvw experience, take a look at IoJ – a server that measures success in fun and stability, and not in rank or season rewards.

NotKalkz.1286:

3- Bandwagon servers will always fall apart no matter what (kain-Db-ioj-Sbi)

Never seen us referred to as a bandwagon server before. Or, is that a premonition of guilds to come and subsequently leave? Please keep us posted as to the status of the prophecy.

Should it be added to the list of known wvw bugs?

Sarsbear.3469:

snip

That’s an unfortunate comment on the state of pvp in GW. I’ve been on the same server since launch, so have been matched up with NSP/you guys a lot over that time. Much respect for how you played the game. I know on our server there are a number of people who you encouraged to be less bad after getting stomped by your team, including myself. Best of luck with ESO.

I was scouting our BL about 8 – 10 months ago, south of Bay, just outside of vale. Heading west to take a look in vale, I come up over the little hill near the south bay sentry and find 60 golems marching out of vale towards Bay. Slightly panicked, I put out a call in map chat which is followed by a half-dozen others calling out golems and for people to call in other maps and guildies.

People quickly start to arrive in the area to what we realize is not a golem rush, but 50 – 60 people in mini golem tonics.

A close second would be the mesmer map zerg an opposing server rolled on a theme night. Double-stonemist-scale lag in a camp fight.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

mango.9267:

We worked our kitten off post-Leagues to climb the ranks

yet you seem to forget what being 13-15 was like during the league.

it’s all about degrees. no one wants a kaineng-like invasion of their server that destroys the pre-existing culture/community.. but getting an extra hundred or so players and some additional coverage could go a long way to making those 7 weeks of non-stop outnumbered a bit more bearable.

No I’m sure he doesn’t forget. It’s great NSP is potentially getting some transfers. He’s not saying the transfers won’t help some servers, he’s just saying the way they’re going about it is going to affect some servers negatively. He’s thinking beyond the season, which is what they should be doing too. The negative effects are a natural result of inducing huge population swings, immediately before you start a tournament based on rank…..it’s stupid. Fix populations in between Seasons.

It is about degrees, but the issue is transfers won’t be regulated in any way that I’m aware of.

Trying to balance things up for leagues through a server-wide game of musical chairs is a hopeless exercise in gem store sales. Matches in Season 1 were a joke, in particular when matched with servers outside of respective tiers. Server populations have gotten even more polarized since then, so let’s all do the math on that one.

This approach to server population management is kind of like what not to do when a vehicle goes into an uncontrolled slide. When your car goes into a slide, the thing you don’t want to do is throw the steering wheel completely in the opposing direction to correct the slide. That’s called overcompensation and tends to keep your vehicle fish-tailing. Anet is attempting a similar overcompensation here, but the car is already off the road.

arKRazor.8654:

EBay has fallen from rank 12 to a predicted rank 20 at the end of this match.

It would be upsetting if they bumped up a server that’s been down here forever just in time to deny them a chance at transfers.

This is kind of what I’m saying. IoJ moved into the 12th spot for the first time in over a year, just last month. We were as low as 20th last summer. During Season 1, ANet reshuffled the leagues moving IoJ from the top of Silver to the bottom in a last minute change that contributed to the two largest guilds (one native and one new-ish) exiting, and effectively eliminated transfers and locked us into a rank our population didn’t represent.

Flash forward to Season 2 and we’ve been hamstrung again. T3-4 is looking to be badly balanced, and is now effectively static in terms of population, with the exception of those who leave. In other words, it only gets worse. Obviously, we’re not the only ones negatively affected by that.

Here’s a thought: scale the cost to transfer based on the number of transfers a server has received in a calendar year, or within some fixed period of time. But, not as a function of absolute transfers, instead the relative amount of transfers. More transfers = more expensive and greater incentive for servers to maintain their communities. The downside would be for servers which had large amounts of people leave. However, the upside would be the GW2 population now has more money in-hand for the violins we’ll need to buy to play for the poor, poor destacking servers.

On a side note, there is a reason sports have trade deadlines. If you could perform trades up until playoffs then the rankings/match-ups wouldn’t truly be representative of the strength of the team.

In general it’s an overdue response and hopefully it helps the mode. But in the case of our server it seems a bit unfortunate. IoJ only recently started to move up because other servers started collapsing. Our population has stayed around the same, we haven’t received a positive influx of guilds.

So, the server found a way to not implode after Season 1, despite the transfers ANet likes to encourage. The reward for a server that didn’t engage in bandwagoning and maintains a fairly loyal core population….it just got 33% more expensive to get any help, at we time when we’re being rapidly buoyed into a higher tier due to the instability ANet created. Coolbeans, well played again.

This thread might survive for a while since it’s Friday.

It’s an interesting point about the PvP threads and others. You can find material just as toxic and negative as what served as grounds for deleting the match subforum.

Given that it would seem Anet doesn’t have (or hasn’t been given possibly, to be fair to them) the resources to address the issues that have persisted in the game, it might make sense for a publicly traded company to not to want to have volumes of information on their site detailing the issues they are unable to address in their product.

I used to use the subforum as a way of gauging the health of the game mode in general, and on other servers. And it’s at least one way to get an idea of what the attitude is like on a server if you’re thinking of transferring. So, it’s unfortunate they chose to remove the forum for that dialogue rather than find a way to better regulate the problems they cited.

I find it frustrating that the terms around what consitutes a match thread have been left somewhat undefined, leaving ANet a lot of room to close threads that are in a grey area and reflect poorly on the game. I got myself banned for the first time a couple weeks ago for repeatedly posing the question “what constitutes a match thread?”. Reasonable question if you want to avoid crossing the line right? Nope, they don’t like that question.

Oozo.7856:

snip

Sorry, wasn’t saying you were calling the class easy, that was my opinion and it was in the context of the scale of fights being discussed.

I also don’t disagree with you about the path of least resistance. Mine was more a comment on which is the lesser of two evils: running around in a huge blob, or having to run somewhat of a cheese group comp because you’re fighting the blob. If it were purely about the challenge and never about beating your opponent, then you’d probably roam in a team full of rangers.

But yes, people running an easy mode comp to beat opponents with equal or lesser numbers should probably just do everyone a favour and uninstall. There are already enough challenges keeping this game mode interesting.

Full disclosure: main a guardian, so somewhat bias.

It’s relative. Depends on what the group is trying to do if something is going to be defined as easy mode. As you said, even fight, sure, definitely an attempt at easy mode. But if you’re setting up a guard-heavy comp because of, say, odds you consistently face, then it seems like something that could be overlooked as a necessity.

That might sound like an excuse to someone who fights small scale outnumbered all the time. But, it would seem to me that, keeping group ratios (say 2:1 odds) the same, increasing the total number of people in a fight leads to greater chance you can be focused by a larger number of attacks at any time. So, larger fights might necessitate a tankier overall group comp, even if the odds are the same.

In general, guardian is easy mode. Maybe not as brain-dead as warrior, but close.

Natronix.9827:

I’d say the great community you are looking for, that is similiar to TCs would be IoJ. I’m not sure if they changed their attitude since its been a few months since I moved, but if they havent, its probably a close second to TC.

It hasn’t changed, it’s improved a bit if anything.

IoJ doesn’t really post a lot of recruitment messages, I’m not sure the exact reason for that. I guess in general people aren’t interested in moving up the ladder any more; they’re happy with the scale of the fights, or would even prefer to see us drop a bit for smaller fights.

We’ve been slowly moving up simply due to servers around us losing guilds and IoJ staying roughly the same size. We’ve remained fairly stable for the last 6-ish months. One downside of this though is there’s an outside chance in the near future of facing DB/SBI more regularly, depending on where SBI/SoR settle after recent events. I don’t think there’s anyone on the server interested in T3-sized fights.

The server has a broad range of players. In general, there’s definitely a PPT emphasis, but there are a number of guilds who prefer to look for fights instead of PPT, and there’s maybe 2 guilds left who GvG.

Like every server, there’s a healthy number of fairweathers, but there’s a good core of people who are going to show up regardless, and not ragequit when things get too lopsided. The better part of the people who suffered at the bottom of Silver through Season 1 have pretty much seen the worst of it and are still around. Many people have been on the server since launch and so I’ve seen the same names most days.

If you’re interested in contacting someone on IoJ, maybe check out the community forum as a place to start:

IoJ Community Forum.

If you’re trying to find out which guilds are active, this thread seems accurate:

WvW Guild Thread

or on the IoJ forums:

IoJ Guild Thread

If it was me, and I was still looking around this rank, I might also look at BP or HoD in terms of stability. But, I don’t know anything about the communities there. Good luck with your move.

What I find interesting about this is that, although it’s posed like a question for discussion, it suggests to me that the design team has already decided to incorporate aspects of EotM into wvw and they’re trying to gauge backlash.

Further, it could also be early stages of a plan to shelve the old wvw format and move it all over to EotM.

EotM emphasizes aspects of the game that appeal to the more casual players, so it’s a clear indication which playerbase the priorities are directed at.

All due respect Chris, you guys designed a great looking map. It provides opportunities for a lot of dynamic fights, and I think has amazing potential, just like the rest of the game you guys created. Unfortunately, it will not change the core game mechanics which are eroding away at the group of people who predominately play wvw/pvp.

It’s kind of like asking which color we should paint the elephant in the room.

Anyway, you guys are probably just doing your jobs. Good luck to you.

Phantom.8130:

interestingly enough, during the first WvW CDI, population imbalance was the most listed problem with WvW. which they actually pointed out and acknowledged themselves afterwards. and it appears their solution to the population imbalance was to remove the punishments for server stacking (queues), and to add incentive for server stacking (the rewards from this tournament).

i’m guessing that there’s a proper amount of crack one can smoke to where that solution actually makes sense, because anyone with a functional brain can see how stupid of a plan it was. unless, of course, they were actively trying to kill WvW for some reason…. then that plan is the best way to go.

+1. Yes, Devs, would you care to comment on the appropriate amount of crack?

Honestly, I don’t even know what to say. The ignorance of this decision goes beyond making me angry at this point. I just think we need to study it……for science.

When EotM was announced I expected a couple impacts. First, as a mechanism that addresses que times in T1 rather than the game, the vertical migration of players would continue, and increase. Second, if you’re playing T4 and below (at a minimum) and you play in a wvw-focused group, the declining/lopsided participation in wvw will likely drive people (who choose not to transfer) into EotM on a regular basis in an attempt to find steady fights, and avoid the increasing futility of PPT.

So far, I’ve played on a server that’s ranged from T7 slowly up to its current spot in T4. For me, the funnest fights in that time have been those where you get ~15 decently organized people against the same.

I jumped into EotM for the first time yesterday with thoughts in my head of how it was supposed to encourage fighting more, smaller groups etc etc. What I found was the opposite. The map is amazing to look at, the designers did a great job. But wow, the blobs, the karma train.

Between the combination of the neglect of the mid-lower tier population stability, and what looks like the plug-and-play edition of what’s worst in wvw, I’m beginning to wonder if all fights will begin to progress towards blobbing now that we all have easy access to a communal EB, in essence.

I fully expect they’ll start closing/folding up wvw on servers within the next 4 – 6 months. Players will probably be offered a one-time free transfer to one of 6 – 9 servers they keep it open on.

TL;DR – the addition of EotM may yet further decrease the variety of fights available. Farming pug blobs will only keep organized groups amused for a while.

I’ve played on a mid-tier server since the game came out, the same one, and have weathered the ups and downs. My opinion is you need a balance between the fight/PPT mindsets or several things can start happening.

I started off like most people, focused on PPT, joined a PPT-focused guild and spent a lot of frustrating time upgrading keeps, flipping camps, etc. I then went more to roaming for a while and joined a guild that did zerg-busting and GvG.

I play on IoJ, which spent a couple months getting beat down at the bottom of Silver during season 1. So, on a server that had historically been more focused on PPT, people had to find other ways to keep interested, generally I think people began to focus more on the battles (fights) instead of the war (PPT).

Focusing on fights is a great way to get through a hopeless match-up, but there really needs to be a collective understanding on the server when shifting focus away from defending, otherwise your guilds that build your waypoints for you and other nice things will pack up and move to T1/T2.

Also, completely abandoning PPT activities will also generally abandon any rebuild efforts you may need to do on the server. As mundane as those activities may seem after all this time, they’re also simple things that help get new people into the game. The turnover in the mid-to-lower tiers necessitates keeping some focus on this or your server will simply bleed-out experienced wvw’ers over time.

The other extreme is being too PPT-focused. In which circumstance you develop a bad case of the fairweathers. A server running a karma train on your nicely upgraded stuff can cut your population to a third or a quarter of what it can be on a good week. That kind of instability is another short-cut to an exodus, and because of the overwhelming odds that it can lead to, the fight-oriented guilds face potentially boring fights if the numbers become too lopsided due the fairweather drop-off.

So, while either of these views can be fun, depending on the player. There really needs to be a mutual understanding between the two sides on what happens when you run into a really difficult week. PPT guilds need to understand sometimes a good defense is good offense, and that on some weeks, the upgrade game is a lost cause. When facing a lost cause in terms of PPT, have a plan to use the week to practice other things in wvw.

Fight-oriented guilds need to keep in mind that fights can be found on almost any map. Responding to calls in your BL before the enemy gets a strong foothold can potentially save you time in the long-run and allow your guild more freedom to map hop through the week. The waypoints your PPT counterparts build allow you to get to your targets faster, and the siege they maintain protects your map mobility.

tl;dr – it takes both for a server to be successful, however you measure success. Showing a mutual respect makes the game more fun for both sides, the fighters and the PPT players.

Cogbyrn.7283:

@Epsilon: Perhaps it’s been trumpeted to death because it’s the exact mode they developed to create a more fair and balanced, small-scale competitive environment. I’m not a dev, but why is that being dismissed out of hand? Because people just want to WvW? I’m fine with suggestions to make WvW better, but you tug one direction, and you’re just going to pull a different frame of reference full of people complaining about the new change they made.

You could group servers into Battlegroups and basically have all maps full all the time, creating a nice, balanced population game for WvW. But I would hate that, because it means I come home and probably sit in a queue for X minutes. I’m sure there are ways to relieve that pressure, but what sort of systems need to put in place to even make it a reality? How easy do you create Battlegroups and queue them into the same fight? What criteria do you measure that on?

The attitude of “here’s a solution, why haven’t you implemented it yet?” is intensely annoying to see, especially when the person doesn’t acknowledge any of the problems, or even has the gall to say “the coding would probably be easy”. It’s a personal pet peeve of mine when people assume technical knowledge, use that assumption to jump to a conclusion, then use that conclusion to insult a developer. The arrogance and ignorance involved in that process is almost impossibly astounding.

And I’ve so far worked for a consulting agency for 6 years. Any time a client has pushed over the edge with regard to behavior or professionalism, they’ve been forwarded on to leadership who then takes care of it. Multiple times, it has resulted in ending the relationship. That’s part of the reason why I’ve stuck with this company, because they care about the people and they value integrity.

I also do think it’s pandering to have to share product roadmaps with the masses. There’s no subscription fee whatsoever, so you could theoretically get thousands of hours of gameplay for $60. Then everyone expects all sorts of free content updates and systems additions/revamps. If you really wanted to help the game, you’d help make business cases for these changes, potentially incorporating microtransaction incentives to demonstrate ROI.

It’s fine to not think of this game as a business if you want to just log in and have some fun, but if you want to provide valuable feedback and recommend changes, you might as well come ready to support your ideas from a business perspective and consider the fact that there’s no subscription model to inherently support new content with a reliable revenue stream from all the players.

I’m not talking about sPvP being promoted, I’m talking about people giving the line of argument “there is a balanced mode, why balance other modes?”, that’s a nonsensical assertion. There are many improvements that could be made to wvw that don’t affect other modes (commander tags, party issues, tower glitches, 3rd party hacking, etc), so the tugging in one direction argument is true in some cases, not in all.

I agree that people oversimplify what’s involved in making some of these changes, but what I don’t agree with is the lack of transparency on some of these issues that allow them to fester in the general Anet vs. User dialogue. It would be better to say something is not going to be implemented, or not implemented in the short-term than to say nothing at all. If they believe announcing a lack of action would result in a loss of player base, well, then they’re just kinda stringing people along to squeeze out a few more dollars. But it’s their right to do that, and our right not to enjoy it.

I also agree that people who write on the forums demanding change should also suggest ways for them to help their bottom line (microtransactions). Yes, you could theoretically get thousands of hours of gameplay for $60, but that’s not the business model is it? If every person bought the game and never used the TP, where would the game be? So, the “you don’t pay a monthly fee so they owe you nothing” argument is a little weak. Implicitly, they are assuming we’re coming back to the trough. When they sat down and decided to put this game out there, they had an idea of how much the average player was going to be investing in their TP, or they would have never received a dollar to support their plan.

I don’t care about free content updates, I just want them to fix what they already built.

Sounds like you have a good employer, I also work in consulting, you feel your employer’s attitude is reflective of how business is conducted in general? Or not so much and that’s why you stay where you are?

Cogbyrn.7283:

You want a fair and balanced competition, but you don’t want to go to sPvP, which is specifically designed around the philosophy of being fair and balanced? I get that conquest mode isn’t for everyone, but if that is specifically your motivation for playing, I don’t know what you’re doing in WvW.

How exactly would you promote fairness/balance in the mode that is so highly dependent on populations and contribution from the entire server?

Sorry, but you’re stretching it with your logic, in several posts – maybe you’re trolling. The “want balance? sPvP” argument has been trumpeted to death (are you a Dev?). If you need enlightenment on various mechanisms for how balance could be promoted, feel free to peruse every page of this forum from the last year and a half.

With respect to the OP, I almost wrote the same thing yesterday. There’s a clear disparity in communication here. With respect to the “the wvw community is mean, so why should the dev’s respond?” lines of thought above…we’re customers; when I or anyone else have clients who throw verbal or written barbs my/our way, you generally suck it up and move forward, because they’re your income. How often would it be acceptable in business to stop talking to clients because a few hurt your feelings?

It’s not pandering to hope for updates to issues and developments which have been acknowledged by the Dev’s themselves. It goes straight to the question of whether I as a customer should bother spending more of my time and money with a game that may or may not reach a potential beyond its current problematic state.

Honestly I think the biggest failing here was realizing that wvw could have been a gateway to promoting their spvp plan. Instead they took a combative stance with the community and shot themselves in the foot. I was gonna try out spvp more until it began to feel as if I was being forced out of wvw through deliberate neglect.

Have played against NSP a lot. They have some of the best roamers/roaming groups I’ve gone up against, as well as their guild groups (mentioned in OP). They have a strong EU slot and a consistent presence through the week, often making strong pushes late in the week.

IoJ saw a bounce-back in its population following the season 1 gauntlet and I’d expect NSP is poised for the same.

If you’re looking for a transfer to mid-ladder and a server in it for the fights, with a strong veteran presence, they’re worth checking out.

Strever.8764:

snip

You do realize though that the negative commentary in this thread is pretty one-sided. Our experience with Mend has been that the vast majority of them stay off the forums, stay out of the drama, and show up to play every night. And that’s been through some bad times on the server.

We’ve had people on our server criticize the general play and leave for different reasons, like every other server. Despite a few exchanged words on our private forums, we did what any adult should do and got over it. The borderline obsessive commentary in this thread doesn’t do much to support the idea it was them who soured the situation on your server. Neither does the incessant, weak trolling of our server, which was unprovoked, unless people are planning on playing the Mend card again.

I’m not gonna take the low-road and offer opinions about what I’ve seen so far on the field. But, people are stretching it pretty far with some of the above laughable statements.

Best of luck with the rest of the week.

Solstice.1097:

i don’t know exactly how its calculated but it is not based on PPT.

My understanding is that the GW2 API doesn’t allow access to population statistics. Anet does not want us to know those. The only things the API provides 3rd-party apps access to are information about scores (total and per map, per server) and the states/ownership of objectives. So, it can only be based on PPT.

What it’s doing is taking the PPT on each map, per server, then summing it. The gw2score site determines what percentage of the score is objective-related (i.e. non-bloodlust and yak related) by requesting this sum (per server, per map) from the API, and determines how much is non-objective related by subtracting the total tracked objective score from the total current score (that’s how they do that other pie chart). The Borderland Focus is then calculated by dividing your objective-related score per map by the your total objective-related points. I think it’s safe to assume they’re not dividing by the total score, because there doesn’t seem to be any way to know the source of non-objective related PPT on a per-map basis within the API.

More info on what stats can be accessed via the API by 3rd-parties here:

Guild Wars 2 Wiki

Under ‘Responses’ you can see the data that can be collected. ‘Scores()’ is what they use to generate that chart.