Guild Wars 2

Nay of the Ether.8913:

But there is a genuine concern about the balancing that keeps putting these servers with 24/7 coverage against servers with less constant coverage overall throughout the week. I added the week part because something most people don’t realize is even those smaller servers that don’t cover all day usually come on later in the week more frequently and make large pushes and earn lots of points. The reason it’s so disheartening in the smaller servers is you spend all day or night building, fortifying, spending untold amounts of money, only to come back and find it all got wiped away in an hour or so because no one was left to defend it. That’s pretty disheartening to many of us. Had it been taken in active combat and they were just better, well thats WvW and kinda the point lol. That being said, letting us know that the balancing and matchmaking is being looked at seriously and solutions in the works makes many of us feel better already. I know it’s gonna be a long road to get the right fix, and may be a neverending procedure, but I ask everyone in the community to give it some time, and if you have actual constructive ideas to put them up but all this QQ and trolling really doesn’t help. We’ve already established the problem, let’s establish a solution.

Totally agree with all this. It’s silly to match 24-hour high pop servers against small, peak-centric ones and expect anything different to what we’re seeing. I’ve said all along that scores and rankings are meaningless without population and coverage taken into account.

Whiteside Ridge, you might have seen our ads for night crews and new players. Being fourth from the bottom of the EU table seems to make us a hard sell, which is a little unfair because our experience, burgeoning organisation and solid all-in community isn’t represented by our table position. We will never get higher because all our hard fighting and shrewd strategising is meaningless when we get capped at night and end up 100,000 points behind after 4 days with nothing we can do about it.

The only people who could help us get through that wall of night-crewed servers probably look at our ranking and dismiss us as a ‘noob server’, even though we’re pretty strong when, y’know, we’re not asleep.

Guild Wars Fan.3249:

You could help (yes, you…instead of moaning and wailing, you could do something too) by either encouraging other players to move to your server, or moving yourself and guesting back to hang with your buddy(s)…or not, thats entirely up to you.

I’ve already invited you to our server. We get night rolled very regularly but we’re pretty strong during our primetime and you’d have constant action with plenty of opportunity to improve your WvWing. We’ve got some great guilds, some great players and apart from a few cracks showing due to our days being wiped out at night, we have a great attitude across the server.

If you want to play with friends or your guild, bring them too! The more the merrier. We could probably even help your guild get all its influence back by joining and repping for part of our days.

It’s a great deal and with nightcapping being a minor issue as you’ve explained so well what’s stopping you?

Guild Wars Fan.3249:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

Two-thirds of the customers are unhappy. How many businesses stay in business that way?

You can use what ever kitten scoring system you want, but until servers with an active off-peak population are matched up against each other, two-thirds of the customers will remain unhappy, or perhaps go find something else to do.

Piano lessons are looking good.

which 2 thirds of people in the world are you talking about sorry?

don’t forget that this is a thread about night-capping, and funnily enough, the posts from people who have issues with it, will generally outweigh the people who don’t (and can’t be bothered responding).

The two thirds estimate would be the two servers in each match that are wildly outscored and outcapped at night. To be fair I think the estimate is way over the real number but I would say there’s a significant minority who are increasingly unhappy with the way things are.

You should pop over to Whiteside sometime this week. You sound just like the stoic unflappable kinda guy who could help make the difference here.

nidwin.6731:

You peeps should stop to look at the scores as you shouldn’t care. We should just focus to farm Germans over and over again. More badges, more loot and more fun. We also have plenty of maps to ninja stuff but keep focussing on one all together. Make groups of 5 and farm boys and gals.

I don’t care too much about the score and I’m starting to look at the nightcapping as a game mechanic that resets the map each day. My biggest concern is for the players who (perfectly understandably) get demoralised and stay away from WvW.

I love being up against it, its a far more intense and rewarding experience than winning off the back of nightcapping, and I love seeing the same people in the fight against insurmountable odds and overwhelming points differences.

Limli.9501:

Grevane.6570:

This is the current score my server match-up has after just under 12 hours of the new match.

Please tell me this isn’t intented, that one server can get such a huge lead just because they had a force present in each map where the other two did not. I hardly played the last match we had because over one night we went from 10k points from first to 20k. To have such a huge point disadvantage has taken out what little motivation I had to play this broken mess.

Please, to keep WvW enjoyable for all, make point gain scale depending on the population of each server throughout the WvW maps. If server A has 20+ people on each map taking everything and the other two have no presence, server A should gain a tiny amount of points to reflect that.

This is getting ridiculous as I’m sure like in our last match up we will do great during prime time, yet lose overall because the top server takes everything at night with no opposition.

I really, really want to enjoy myself in WvW and while the large scale fights are fun, seeing this when you log in after just 12!!! hours is a huge disincentive to play.

Our match result has all ready been decided and nothing we can do will change that. Any effort we make during the day/evening will be erased by a night zerg taking everything back, leaving them with a nice +20 points overnight.

Well un update on this matchup. Seems we are a little better at holding our own in the night then Vabbi is. This is going to be an “interesting” week. Anyone wanna lay down some bets on the standings on friday?

Yeah, meet the new week. Same as the old week.

I don’t doubt that we’ll fight on though. Drakkar really aren’t that good in a straight fight. We can fight them at 2-1 in their favour and we’ll win most of the time. It’s their mass zergs and night capping that’s winning it for them, especially the latter.

Ilesyt, at the moment Drakkar are 50 or 60k ahead of Whiteside Ridge and Whiteside is about 1k ahead of Vabbi. It’s far too early to call 3rd place yet but unless something surreal happens you guys should be clear of German servers next week.

Mattress.3629:

Whiteside Ridge isn’t reasonably high pop at all, our WvW is deserted most days until 2pm + in all honesty, we just got beat by Millers Sound and we beat Dzangur, Dzangur gave up in the last couple of hours, guess their back for vengeance, just think yourself lucky that you weren’t facing 2 German servers on the national holiday…those few days were rough for us. I do feel your pain though, were holding our home Borderlands pretty firm but everywhere else is either Vabbi or mostly Drakkar lake there just aren’t enough of us.

We do put up a fight though, but that tends to flake out after the second or third night of being nightcapped into oblivion simply because it seems so futile. I’m not massively hopeful that we’ll get much going on this week given how the map looked this morning, but we’ll see what happens.

BTW, great job on leading the Friday night fightback in our borderlands yesterday, it was a pleasure to be part of it.

Bit disappointing to lose two places due to having no night crew but there’s not much you can do about that.

arcdash.4039:

So you want A-Net to force other players on to your server? Even though they can still switch back for free? Actually, how would you keep these players when players can move from server to server once per day for free? Do you just want the servers locked so that people can’t leave? Do you expect A-Net to remove player’s choice of server?

I’m pretty sure the OP meant none of those things.

The table rankings don’t mean much without 24-hour population coverage per server being taken into account.

I bet those transferrers don’t go very far down the list, though.

To be honest, I’m not sure how welcome a big guild would be on our server especially if it comes along thinking it’s going to take the place over and ‘make it competitive’. We’ve had a few people scout out our server for their guild and they’ve told us we should be doing this and should be doing that without realising that those things are already happening simply because people take it upon themselves to get those things done without being ordered to.

The smaller servers’ biggest problem is numbers and getting rolled during off-peak hours, both of which hurt morale, but having some guild from one of the easy mode servers try and take over without taking the time to know how the server runs, or which people are reliable and worth listening to, or where the strengths and weaknesses lie is just going to create bad blood and undo a lot of the work that the “natives” have done over the weeks.

All are welcome to Whiteside, especially those who are able to play during the EU night, but please don’t come here like Hitler into Poland. You’d be doing more harm than good.

My biggest problem is being the slowest class in the game. It’s harsh in so many ways. You get chased down by everything, you can’t hold the range that you depend on for damage and despite being RANGERS we’re always the last to get to wherever we’re going.

The obstructed thing is annoying too and so is having to rely on flimsy pets for so much of our DPS.

Oh and Vitigis, you’re right about the reasons for the obstructed thing, but given that pretty much everything else clips through everything without issue (including people through people, people through siege engines etc) it seems a little uncharitable that our arrows don’t do the same. It’s not as if they’re particularly dangerous when given a clear shot on account of their slow movement speed.

Protip: Catapult shooting your enemy’s own tower door getting you down? Simply place your ram with the green placement circle just touching the door, then relax as it smashes the door to splinters unAoEd.

Protip: Communicate, always. Wherever you are, whatever you’re doing alwas report enemy sightings. Location, number, server, direction of travel. It gives everyone better battlefield awareness from commanders down to scouting groups, yakslapping teams and POI taggers.

Man, I love the attitude you Kaineng guys have. If it ever comes to the point of loking for a server to transfer to, yours will be first choice. How’s the teamwork there? That’s the main thing for me in these games, winning or losing doesn’t matter really, it’s that buzz you get from keeping someone covered while knowing someone is covering you that counts.

Elthurien.8356:

If stonemist wasnt so easy to capture it would be the ideal position for a portal to another underworld dungeon such as this.

The entrance to Darkness Falls was in a PvE zone and was locked until your side gained access to it. That was a big part of its genius.

Population levels over 24-hours should be one of the main things that determines match ups. Doing it on points alone isn’t working, and neither is using points to create some kind of crazily lopsided league table.

The way the match system works now, it’s going to be months before the 24-hour servers finally get into the same zone on the list and they’ll be working their way through the smaller servers on the way.

It’s getting hard to keep morale up on my server. For the past three days we’ve woken up to four blue maps, making all our hard fighting pointless and our WvW population smaller by the day, which makes it less likely that we’ll be able to compete in any meaningful way next week.

Anet, you guys should stop playing on the top tier servers and come see what it’s like on the smaller ones. And while you’re down here you can try keeping server morale up for a week.

Not that I expect you guys will be reading this thread anymore.

I’m with you Kyus. Whiteside is currently matched against two German servers and we were last by a large margin by Saturday evening. By Sunday we’d fought up to second place and on Monday were within striking distance of first place.

Then came two nights of frantic, unopposed night-capping by Miller’s Sound and now we’re 60,000+ points behind with two days left to go. The scoring has to change and it has to change soon or too many people are just going to give up on WvW altogether.

Me, I love being outnumbered, outgunned and out on a limb (WW2OL is a brutal teacher) but most people don’t and whether Anet likes it or not, those guys are the backbone of WvW on any server.

How about you stop using the catapult exploit on your gates? It’s not like you didn’t roll all four maps two nights on the trot and don’t outnumber us on the field without having to cheese the game as well.

You can still come out of this with some respect. It’s your call.

Yeah, rangers are actually laughable when it comes to moving. I love mine and have learnt to live with his comedy slowness, but what were ANet thinking when they designed this class?

I am now convinced that Lord of the Rings would have been a 120 page paperback were Aragorn not leading the way.

MagnusLL.8473:

The huge design problem, as I already said, it’s that nightcapping is not simply a valid tactic or a strong tactic; it’s THE ONLY tactic. Nothing else you do, in or out of the game, will result in the same point swing as a few hours of unopposed capping.

Brilliant pincer movements to wipe out enemy zergs? Useless.
Perfect choice and positioning of siege weapons? Useless.
High coordination and continuous inter-team and inter-guild communication? Useless.

I wonder if Oceanic players feel the same way?

Think about it.

Grevane.6570:

1pm – Whiteside Ridge/Miller’s Sound/Dzagonur.

The fights are fairly even during prime time.

Not too bad after the start we had Yesterdays 8 hour running defence of SM with 2 walls down and reds and blues double teaming us was day of legend for us!

DavidMonthen.4398:

We do try to get things organised in the Augury Rock Borderlands.

Our success can be measured by how we kept AH against a continuous attack by Arborstone yesterday evening starting at about 1am (GMT+1). Oh and we still had AH when I left for work today at 6am. That’s right. 5hours straight defending and we managed. I have no idea how things went afterwards, as I had to leave for work, but i would imagine we will have lost the keep eventually. It was an epic battle and great fun!

- Bloodsteel

I’m on the outside looking in at this Consola- sorry, Desolation thing, and speaking from a low ranking server that gets rolled during night and pushed during peak due to numbers, I want to say that you’ve got exactly the right attitude, mate.

WvW is a long game, played over many matches and the most important factor in a server’s ability to respond to adversity and adapt over the long term is morale. Sure it’s tough getting beaten by “nightcappers” and coming last by wide margins, but moaning about it just breaks all pride and resolve in your server and encourages your enemies.

You guys need to tighten your sphincters and take the losses (and have fun doing it) otherwise in a few months time you’ll be passed by the likes of Whiteside and Surmia who are toughening up and not giving up even when things are bad. If that happens it won’t be Canada’s fault, it’ll be your own.

Communication.

Everything else is gravy.

Nightcapping is just a symptom of a lack of 24 hour coverage. The problem is that such coverage relies heavily on Oceanic players who aren’t numerous enough to warrant their own servers but are expected to balance out non-peak populations on every server in the world. I think that’s the crux of all these problems.

Yeah, the invisible zerg thing is gamebreaking.

Perhaps they could minimise the problem by setting door’s collision point an AoE’s radius distance from the actual door model. I dunno, I guess they already thought of that.

@OP

If you’re looking to transfer, come to Whiteside Ridge. No queues, plenty of non-stop action, servermates who absolutely will not stop – and we’re looking for more players, especially for our non-EU night crew. A week on Whiteside will toughen up your flabby Denravi backside too.

I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate Underworld on their breathtaking overnight victories against no opponents. I’m man enough to admit that I’m sitting here, weeping into my morning tea over the staggering display of martial skill that this morning’s map shows. No guts, no glory right?

“Sorry, but RoS is the total top of the servers here in that prospect and our queues are non-existant”

It’s good to hear Surmia’s not collapsed and given in. I know you guys have it hard with numbers and you’ve had a couple of rough weeks, but in the end that’s what makes servers stronger. It’s not the victories that make strength, they just swell server numbers with weaklings from servers like yours and ours who can’t take the punches. It’s defeat and how you rise to it that makes strength.

Steel is forged in its own destruction.

Just to underline what I said about Whiteside Ridge in my first post, tonight we took Stonemist back from Ring of Fire (2 orbs) and are currently holding off an attack by Underworld (1 orb).

Smallest server in the match, fewest points on the board, biggest nuts on the field.

We do very well with what we’ve got, we just need more of everything. We fight hard and we’re picking up experience and toughness that bigger servers only think they have. Witness all the complaints from the top ranking matches and the total lack of whining from Whiteside Ridge if you want proof.

But yeah, we need more primetime players and a night crew. We’ve got loads of potential as we stand, and if we can get more players whose idea of fun is hard fighting and real challenge, the kind that don’t buckle and sulk when times are hard, we’ll go far. So far we’ve stood where others have given up and we continue to fight after we’ve already lost.

And as for having a full map at primetime, we rarely have the luxury of having capped out our population.

And just to clarify, if any EU players are bored of their flabby faceroll servers with massive queues and no opponents, Whiteside will welcome you too. Our queues are short, our action non-stop and there’s loads of opportunity for leaders and soldiers alike.

Moloch.8013:

so… you want oceanic/us player to join your guild to ninja everything at night… players that will never play with you during your primetime… lol what a whine

No we just want people to defend what gets taken from us on an almost nightly basis. Would it be more acceptable to you if we just laid down and took it? If so don’t ever think about joining us, we’ve got no slots for you. Move along.

First, let me explain a bit about Whiteside Ridge. We’re a small server that rarely has WvW queues even during our primetime and we’re currently matched up with a couple of large, organised servers and are under constant pressure from both. We don’t back down though, and we absolutely will not let them keep anything they take from us. We regularly beat back zergs twice our number (even on open ground), routing them and chasing them down to extermination. We have some superb players here and I love them all – we’ve taken Stonemist from the winning server during primetime with fewer attackers than defenders (Ring of Fire ninjad it from us before we had chance to consolidate but we knew we couldn’t hold it), we’ve held out against superior numbers on multiple fronts and we’ve only grown stronger and harder because of it

If you scored points for testicular fortitude and sheer bloody mindedness, we’d be way ahead on the board. I’d take 10 Whitesiders over 50 of anyone from any of the big servers any day of any week.

Anyway, we’re looking for people from other timezones who can do the same over our night time. Come join Whiteside Ridge, come join the Spartans.

Tak.2659:

If you play WvW for fun and challenging fights, you won’t regret the move. Taking and holding a keep from a server that has you outnumbered is much more fun and rewarding anyway.

Absolutely!

SoPP.7034:

Cause the underlying issue is not ‘night capping’ it’s just a symptom used by people to describe why it is they are getting their kitten kicked.

The problem is that if you can’t consolidate what you cap due to it all being ninjad away while you’re asleep, then you’re obviously going to get your kitten kicked. Anyone who hasn’t experienced this doesn’t know what they’re talking about and I suspect they are confusing easymode for skill.

Crypt.9062:

Gibbonici.9437:

Middle-to-low ranked servers haven’t got much chance of recruiting nightcappers, and those servers seem to be low because of lack of manpower in the first place. Everybody wants to join Persia, nobody wants to join Sparta.

Our server ends up on the sharp end of the nightcappers on a regular basis, but we suck it up and win everything back once we’re out of bed and back from work. It would be great if Anet did something to balance the night time populations but I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, we just see it as a target rich environment when we log on.

Pretty sure I’d join Sparta if i wasnt already in Sparta aka HoD. (Spartans> persians)
Plus I don’t see a problem with night capping, Happens in Ps2 all the time and it doesn’t bother me. Although the problem imo is that upgrading keeps costs alot of money, and if you lose a fort you just upgraded while you were asleep that money just went to waste. IF only they had a wvw only currency instead of actual game currency people might not care as much

You’re kidding yourself about Denravi being Sparta. You want to test yourself against the odds? Come to one of the small, low ranked servers where your 300 will die every day and you’ll log in having lost everything to night cappers all over again. Or maybe you transferred from one of them because you couldn’t hack it and couldn’t be bothered helping turn it around, I don’t know. I’ve got more respect for those who stay on the likes of Surmia than for Denravi, and nothing will get me off Whiteside Ridge.

You’re not wrong about the upgrades thing though. We rarely upgrade anything we can’t defend or reliably supply, its a waste of time and money. Rather spend the supply and money on siege.

Middle-to-low ranked servers haven’t got much chance of recruiting nightcappers, and those servers seem to be low because of lack of manpower in the first place. Everybody wants to join Persia, nobody wants to join Sparta.

Our server ends up on the sharp end of the nightcappers on a regular basis, but we suck it up and win everything back once we’re out of bed and back from work. It would be great if Anet did something to balance the night time populations but I’m not holding my breath.

In the meantime, we just see it as a target rich environment when we log on.

@Gomly

Yeah, we don’t have a lot of coordination between the different maps at the moment, mostly because a lot of the time we’re flying on the seat of our pants in this match. It doesn’t take much to put us on the backfoot due to population etc, but it’s all good experience.

We know we’ve got a long way to go and have a lot of lessons to learn, but I’m proud of the progress we’re making. We’re tougher, more organised and (dare I say it) more bloody minded than we were a week ago, and if we keep it up and backfill our weak spots I reckon we’ll be a decent little server going forward.

We’re always going to struggle for numbers I think but we’ve got spirit and guts, and that’s worth more than points.

@OP

If you have any lingering doubts about Whiteside’s reliance on night-cappers, check the map this morning. We’ve got nothing again, it’s all blue.

We’re last, we get wiped out every night, but it didn’t stop us taking a fully upgraded SM off you Underworld guys during prime time yesterday, even though we knew we couldn’t hold it against Ring of Fire.

The fun is the reward.

Anyway, my ranger levelled from about 25 to (currently) 75 purely through WvW, he gained a couple of gold without even trying (spent it all on siege and upgrades, but whaddayagonnado) and a large wedge of karma to go with it.

That’s all gravy though, for me the meat is the WvW itself.

Yeah, get a longbow and target the AoE casters with it on at a time. Shoot them a few times and they’ll fall back. Also, communicate with your group; get all your melee players to rush them all at once. AoE duels are a pointless battle of attrition and the best way to break them is to break the other team’s resolve to stand. That’s where massed melee rushes come in.

I was in EB for about 5 hours tonight, not sure how many kills I got but I got three badges. Two of those dropped from an NPC guard if I remember correctly.

Shintai.5618:

Basicly the OP asks for the server to be only up between 18 and 22 when most people can play. We dont want to have a minor population somewhere!

Don’t be daft, he’s asking for nothing of the sort.

Revenant.2691:

Not living in ’Merica… exploit o.O

Whiteside Ridge and Underworld are EU servers.

Anyway, there are some interesting views in this thread. Taken under advisement.

@OP

I’m pretty active in Whiteside WvW and as far as I know we don’t have much of a night guard. I think what you saw was a weekend all-nighter.

If you want proof, check out the maps this morning (Monday). We’re outmanned and outplayed most of the time in this match, but this weekend we spent loads of time and gold securing places and sapping your supply, all so we could mount those attacks on SM on Sunday evening and get set up for the week. This morning, despite having locked down our vital towers and camps by midnight Sunday, we’ve lost everything bar a few places in our borderlands. It all happened overnight.

Generally speaking, Underworld is way, way ahead of Whiteside and you will be for the whole match. We know we’re not going win this round, and I think we’ve pretty much reconciled ourselves with the fact that we’re going to be last, but we’re using it as a learning experience. We had it easy last week, holding SM and dominating lower-pop servers for all of it so it’s a welcome, if slightly painful opportunity to pick up some of the strategies we didn’t need in the last round.

Anyway, region locking would be a good thing. It’s a no-brainer really.

“If someone picks the ranger with the intent of dealing damage they should be able to choose if they wanto focus on ranged damage with a bow or melee with a sword without feeling they got the short end of a stick if you ask me.”

I’m totally with you. I get the reasoning behind the down-balancing, but it’s done in such a way that everything feels weak when you go up against other classes in WvW. As a ranger it feels like you’re just playing a normal guy in with a bow and arrow, and a pet for company. There are no killer combos to pull off, no significant survivability skills, no tricks up the sleeve, nothing that other classes seem to be able to pull out of the bag when necessary.

I do like my ranger and he’s great in PvE, but in WvW it can be frustrating.

The movement speed thing is really odd as I always thought of rangers as being quick movers in the countryside and generally very fit, and archers were always light, fast-moving troops in medieval times. It’s one of the things that’s always drawn me to the class in fantasy games.

Another thing that doesn’t feel right is the way rangers’ damage is balanced. They’re a ranged class so their melee is lower than a melee class, but their damage is ranged so it’s balanced down which makes sense. Thing is there’s no big hitting damage in the bow skills (and longbow doesn’t even apply condition damage), so every player’s self-heals take many seconds worth of DPS off your damage output – with nothing to balance it against.

I think the ranger is great in PvE, but in WvW I dunno. I’ve put in a lot of hours in the Eternal Battleground and I’m beginning to think that rangers aren’t suited for it outside of a zerg. Which is another oddity for me, as I always considered rangers to be more self-sufficient and solitary in nature, neither of which are particularly viable in WvW.

I dunno, maybe I’m missing something and just need to tweak my build and playstyle. Or maybe I should’ve made a straight up warrior instead.