One idea would be to lower the map cap. This would have two desirable effects – reduce lag during fights and encourage people to spread out to avoid the larger queues that would result.
Oh I hate having to do adventures for masteries or important content. I will never get Glint’s Bastion because of Sanctum Scramble. Ditto for the mastery associated with it.
I don’t understand the point of having them, either. If I want this sort of content I can get it in all sorts of places. It doesn’t advance the GW2 story at all, it breaks the narrative and diverges from the greatest strength of GW2 – ad hoc cooperative game play. It simply just does not make sense.
But to be fair I don’t care if there are adventures in the game so long as I can get everything in the game without having to do any. Otherwise I’ll be unhappy.
if you consider it takes, say, 30 minutes to decay down to zero, you can’t forsee things like outmanned buff, or skirmish rank, and therefore, you can’t anticipate the amount of pips you’d get.
Yes, that occurred to me. However I’d be willing to forgo the possibility that the outmanned buff would occur, and just accept an extrapolation based on the current skirmish score.
Once you are ready to leave WVW for whatever reason you generally have built up a fair amount of participation. To take advantage of this you need to lurk somewhere in WVW for 10-15 minutes while it decays.
This is unfortunate because quite often the servers are queued and people want to join in.
It would be nice to have a way to fast forward through this wind down in some manner.
The lag isn’t fixable until they reduce condition and boon applications and durations and passives. The WvW team has no control over profession changes, ridiculously.
I’m not convinced that lag isn’t fixable. After all we can get search results for the entire Internet in a blink of an eye which is surely a bigger problem. The question is does ANet have the resources and is it willing to use them to fix this problem. Fixing it would be huge for the WVW player base.
As far as gliding, I’m willing to give it a try. But I surely wish other things had gotten fixed first. For example I’d dearly love to be able to switch characters without having to leave a map queue.
Perhaps Anet should consider going back to polling its user base to set priorities for these development priorities.
can we have free gear stats reset after every major balance patch ? this is so unfair to those who spend so much on gearing only to be nerfed to the ground by Anet …
In this case I agree. This is a quite major rebalancing and I’m sure that many of us will have multiple characters, food, sigils and runes and so on that need to be re-evaluated for the context of the new methodology.
In addition there is of course the expansion that will introduce additional need to rework.
For somebody that has an extensive inventory of gear it is a daunting prospect.
The last time I ran into something that is potentially this drastic was the Southsun introduction. I was pretty annoyed, and ended up leaving the game for a year because of the impact of the changes. Even with the conversion methodology that was provided.
To me this suggests that there needs to be some thought put into tools that will cushion the impact of the two stages of this process.
With the LS3 episode 6 expansion the Living World Portal Tome was introduced. This was great for me because I was carrying the LS3 portals in my shared slots. All of a sudden I have some empty shared slots which I value a lot.
BUT – when opening the Portal Tome from my inventory the Portal Window opens BEHIND the inventory window.
Surely that can’t be intended. It certainly is inconvenient.
It would be much nicer if the Portal Tome Window opened on top.
Does anybody know how the ranking for 1-up 1-down is determined? According to http://mos.millenium.org/na/matchups/history/534, Jade Quarry had a lower final score than Yak’s Bend but YB moved down. Either that site is wrong or something else determines the ranking. Is it victory points instead of warscore?
MOS Millenium’s data has problems on a regular basis.
1. Time spend on the top server’s BL adds a pip bonus to the other servers’ players.
2. Remove the pip bonus for the 2nd and 3rd place server. This will increase the incentive to attack the top server.
I’m doing local tests for a change to 1-up/1-down on the other monitor now. No exact date, but we’re aiming to send it toward Live and turn it on when it’s ready.
I don’t know if it will be better that what we have now, but I do know that some of the matchups we have been seeing are Kitten Kitten Kitten and it’s worth a try.
An alternative to one up – one down would simply not have the baloney where a T1 server gets put in a T3 match or a T4 server gets put in a T2 match. Just restrict the mobility to one tier.
Either way a reduction of obvious one sided matches is needed.
Permanent Black Lion Salvage Kit please. They never drop for me in the login chest. And I certainly DON’T want it in the Black Lion Chests which I’ve totally given up on.
If you want to charge some silver for each use fine. I just want a perm BL salvage kit PLEEEESE.
I like the map quite a bit, and the rich collection of achievements to work on. I really like the Druid backpiece. I’m one of the people who liked Tangled Depths as well.
Glad to have storage for the LS4 map currencies.
The first part of the LS episode was good, but I found the ending with the 3 levels of shields to be pretty weak and repetitive.
One thing I don’t like is the way the renown Hearts seem to take 24 hours to reset. I think they should they should reset at server reset.
Considering how difficult it is to craft the legendaries, I think it should be little more rewarding than just being able to change stats and awesome looks. How about 1% movement speed bonus? What do you guys think?
I’m of the opinion that 5 is more than enough. Being used to only belonging in 1 guild, even 3 would have been fine.
Then don’t buy more slots. Maybe we could have a feature that lets people like you sell off their excess slots on the TP. Personally I could use at least 3 more.
Rewards are tricky because they could encourage behavior like tanking to get a more favorable match, and/or server stacking.
Even skirmish rewards would likely result in this behavior.
The first thing that should happen is adding stuff that would encourage more participation – an ascended equipment vendor and better WVW specific skins.
Please how about working on fixing the disconnects. I’m not able to stay logged in for more than a couple of minutes and there are a bunch of reports on Reddit saying the entire eastern part of the US is having this problem.
Over the last several months, Anet has made several changes to glicko and to scoring that greatly increases the chances of having more variety in matchups. The downside of this is that it can lead to lopsided matchups with a dominant server rolling a matchup with servers from a lower tier.
The problem with the matchup variety is that the server populations and coverage are terribly imbalanced. The result is half the matches (or more) are complete face stomps.
If there was decent population balance the matchup variety would be a good thing.
I have two suggestions that are small but would be helpful.
1. Loosen message suppression filter for mail sent between two accounts that are mutual friends. I have a main and an alt account that I often exchange materials between. It is incredibly aggravating to become suppressed after sending just one or two mail messages.
2. In the squad grid view make the current user, the leader and lieutenants different colors so they can be easily identified. It can be a chore to try to figure out what’s going on when the names are truncated and it’s a large squad.
There are players who don’t give a hoot about balance, they just want to be on top with the biggest rolling server.
I am sure there are. But there are also a lot of players who don’t like being constantly rolled over. These players will get tired of it and leave. Many already have which is why we are down to 4 tiers. The ultimate evolution of this will be one stacked server and 23 empty servers.
The problem is not the scoring system. It’s the mismatches. Look at this week – every tier is a runaway match. Instead of groupings by server scale and coverage we have mismatches in every tier. Simply the servers are not balanced. Until this is fixed it’s worthless to experiment with scoring systems.
As a TC player, its pretty freaking boring either getting rolled by BG/MAG, or rolling YB and SBI.
Exactly. We need more servers with more evenly balanced populations. The current stacking meme needs to be blown up. It might even be worth introducing some sort of scaling effect that discourages super blobbing. Something like a 20% damage penalty if more than 30 players are within a certain distance. Number of overlapping AOE rings limited to 5. Etc.
Of course the amount of wins required to catch up to nr 1 would be the same but visually it would seem scores are closer. Its basically 3-2-1 for dummies and giveruppers. so it has “better” impact
The thing that hasn’t been touched on here is the interaction between this and Glicko. I’ve heard that 3-2-1 results in a bigger percentage difference between winner and losers, thereby causing more extreme swings in the Glicko scores. 5-4-3 will of course result in smaller percentage differences.
I’m not sure about this but it seems possible that 5-4-3 will reduce Glicko volatility.
90% of NA servers are not dead. About half of them are.
I play on a server that bounces between 2-3-4. It’s fine except when we get matched with one of the servers that is currently locked in ‘full’ status. Then it’s horrible. We get rolled all week. No chance to be competitive because they bring massive numbers to every scrum 24×7. Even to take camps.
What needs to be done is to merge the dead servers until there aren’t any dead ones left. Eliminate linking.
Then add major incentives to encourage people to move off of the full servers.
JQ will get run the heck over when we get to T1 again. Just the way it is. We have too much for T2, and not enough for T1. Locking these servers is not going to spread the pop to T3/4; the population moving is just going to land collectively with a thump onto a server that will make it to T2 (or 1 with a crazy roll), knocking someone else down to T3/4. There aren’t enough people still playing to have everyone getting what they want. Even if you gave incentives to move…. the prospect of missing out on good fights/being away from friends/shaking up your guild/potentially getting your guild split once anet senses the moves/etc. makes it not worth it. If you don’t think this is a concern, you don’t really understand that guilds need 1) people to play against and 2) guilds to run WITH on a map. Plonk too many onto a server with these super crappy ‘lower’ population caps, and guess what happens?
If you set the population cap to a reasonable level people will simply not be able to land with a thump on another server. Once enough go, it will close.
Once a server closes guilds will not be able to find new people. Some people will take advantage of the transfer offer and these guilds will shrink. Ultimately the guilds will have to move to stay viable. That move will be encouraged by rewards.
As far as bandwagoning linked servers it’s simple. Merge them to the point where their population is competitive and eliminate links.
Also there was a suggestion to reward people on low pop servers on a continuing basis. I think this is an interesting idea. A free transfer and then rewards ongoing.
I play on one of the T3/4s. When in T3 or T4 have different types of play depending on the time of day and where you are on the maps. I really like it. The variety make for a lot of fun. And yes we often do get small queues even outside reset, typically evenings. The populations are there for large fights from time to time.
But if we get ‘selected’ for a T2 match – it’s a form of punishment. Then there is no variation in play. Every day all day consists of getting rolled by blobs. Result – no fun on WVW and I’m playing other game modes.
Simply there needs to be an end to the current extremes in server population imbalance. The extension of full status to 4 servers this week was a great idea.
The next step is needed – actually doing something affirmative to reduce the population of these 4 servers.
As far as some servers being empty – I am not against the idea of doing server merges to bring their population up to T3 and T4 levels.
Right now we have a serious issue with server population balance. Their are 4 full servers and if you are on a lesser population server in a match with one of these forget it. You will be lucky to win one or two skirmishes all week. Since there are only three slots per match this makes tier 2 very unpleasant. Look at this week – JQ has won all but 2 skirmishes. This morning EB was completely green for a while. SM has not flipped since reset. Total bullkitten balance.
It is this that is destroying WVW.
Locking these servers was a good first step. More steps are needed.
One of the things that I think should be done is to encourage transfers from full servers with fairly rich rewards. Like 2 gems per WVW rank to a medium population server and 4 gems to a low population server. Plus throw in some ascended armor chests. Once this offer is accepted no transfers to a higher or equal population server for several months.
Why should there be an incentive to play for second? That leads to 3rd place server being focussed. As for spending time I agree so then why whinge about it.
The scoring change did not change the incentive or tactic for farming 3rd place in any way. Farming the weak server in the match is often the way to win a skirmish. Efficiently execution this is often the difference in a match where the first and second place servers are evenly matched. In fact the 2-1-1 system increases focusing the third place server because of the need to finish first.
Simply put the scoring change does not improve the game. The likelihood that 2nd and 3rd will cooperate is small and the downside of loss of incentive to compete for 2nd in a lopsided match is outweighs this.
Yuck. No really interesting items like Permanent Contracts or Harvesting Nodes, both which seem to have recently been nerfed. To the point where prices on these are now stratospheric.
It’s worth a try. We seen one proposal – 2,1,1 and experienced it’s failure.
How is it a failure? I would argue that from a T1 POV it is actually a success as the top server is actually focussed more. Players not liking it does not make it a failure.
I’ve gone through matches with the new scoring system playing as both the top server in T3 and now am playing bottom on T2. I didn’t notice any particular focusing on us when we were on top, and now when on the bottom the 2nd place is showing no interest in cooperating with us against the 1st place server. Furthermore the 2-1-1 scoring eliminates any point incentive to try to finish 2nd in a skirmish – the first place server is so dominant first place is not likely ever in any skirmish for us this week.
Spending time on this approach is a failure – it is simply not addressing the real issues of population balance and population decline in this game mode.
How is 5, 4, 3 any different from 3, 2, 1? In the end, the server in third place will be 2 points behind the server in first place, and 1 point behind the server in 2nd place for every skirmish in those positions. After 10 skirmishes with the same results, the third place server will still be 20 points behind the first place server.
How is this any better than 2, 1, 1?
1st doesn’t get 3x as many as 3rd place and 2nd doesn’t get 2x as many as 3rd place. Seems good to me.
It’s worth a try. We seen one proposal – 2,1,1 and experienced it’s failure.
However really this is not addressing the real issues – population balance and lack of rewards for playing this game mode to attract new players.
For population balance reasons, we’ve lowered the population thresholds for a world to be considered ‘Full’. This is to keep the population disparity between high pop and low pop servers more similar.
That’s a step in the right direction. However it needs to be further supported by merging lower population servers to enliven the play and increasing rewards in WVW so people will actually profit from that play rather than it being a gold sink.
There are all sorts of good ideas including a Legendary WVW backpiece, being able to purchase ascended items using WVW map currencies, achievement points for WVW ranks etc.
Otherwise WVW will have a continual problem attracting and keeping players. It’s a shame that Arena Net seems to be throttling what is otherwise an innovative and interesting game mode.
I think scoring in WvW is mostly pointless but 2-1-1 is just dumb. The dominant coverage ends up winning the round and the two less populated servers go into a why bother mode since 2nd is as good as 3rd.
If they want more score competition make the 1st place server objectives worth more loot.
I think skirmishes are a great idea. It gives you a short term goal to work for even if you are losing the match. It does keep matches closer that the old way of just adding up warscore because it it doesn’t result in a big warscore point deficit accumulating overnight when you have no coverage and lose everything. You just lose the 1 point, same as if you lose the warscore by a small margin.
Even better would be some sort of reward tied to the skirmish win. Extra tokens or some such.
I don’t think we’ve found the best scoring method for it though. 2-1-1 is too all or nothing. Really 2-1-1 is the same thing is giving everyone a participation point and then just one additional point for a victory. You would get exactly the same result with 1-0-0.
It does push people harder to go for first. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they will attack the first place holder harder. It may mean they will farm the 2nd or 3rd place team harder.
In order to REALLY encourage people to attack the first place team you have to make more rewarding – which is why I think the idea of increasing the ppk or point reward for hitting the first place team could be a really good way of doing it.
