Running around WvW for years and since the past two years since gliding was annoucned, I do not think I’ve ever heard anyone mention the thought of gliding or mention wanting it.
Remember that it’s just a test, if people don’t end up loving it then it’ll be removed
Desert BL still exists.
I rest my case.
Deleting worlds and redistributing players is something that has been considered and discussed. In the way described it is not an option that we feel works to solve the complex issue of world population balance. There are many factors involved many that are not immediately obvious without the data we have access to.
Let’s see some of this data please.
Mounts or violence?
I choose violence.
How many still run vanilla builds? Yeah, thought so. You’ll line up to pay just like every other WvW player.
Still vanilla here.
If I buy HoT then I am rewarding Anet for Desert BL. Not gonna happen.
Best time for EotM these days is in the hours leading up to reset once people reach the point where they realise they won’t get anymore tickets that week.
The reset queue itself only lasts a couple of hours before it clears itself.
So maybe 4-6 hours per week on Fridays it’s still playable.
We need degrees/stacks of outnumbered. +5 for hugely outnumbered is fine, but there should also be +4 for slightly less outnumbered, +3 for slightly less again and so on.
This binary state of “nothing if not outnumbered” / “+5 for outnumbered” is just silly and just encourages map hopping at the end of each tick.
Balance.
Transferring up has been destroying WvW communities.
FYP.
If you can’t get into WvW it’s because your server is too fat from everybody transferring up over the years.
Try going the other way for a change, the lower tiers aren’t as dead as they used to be since the update.
In keeping with the theme of encouraging last ditch defensive fights in the lord’s rooms, PPK has to go. I’ll happily go back to the days of throwing myself into the fray time and again to try and save a keep, but not if it just means feeding points to the enemy every time I die. Better for my team to just recap later instead.
My top 5 from Ehmry Bay:
Jamaz [SM] – first commander whose guild I joined. Most skilled tag I ever followed.
Goldiy [GH] – legendary pugmander extraordinaire for what felt like forever.
Noice [FTF] – leader/driver for FTF, another of our “big 3” guilds from the glory days.
Crosius [CoT] – very chatty, often hilarious to listen to on TS even when not following.
Khalamity [Woe] – another calm, skilled commander in the style of Jamaz or Noice.
Honourable mention to Waveofbabies [GH] – the first tag I ever followed as a pug. We died a lot, but laughed even more.
Man, those were good times…
Add:
- limits on the number of catas/rams that can be placed within range of a wall/gate, and limits on how many golems can exist across an entire map.
- mechanics unique to the servers winning/losing a WvW match. For example, 1st place servers see no white swords on their own structures, while 3rd place servers have a map-wide enemy radar instead of just around sentries.
- a hard limit on the amount of time players can have stealth and swiftness when in combat, to prevent easy disengaging from fights.
Fix:
- Transfer costs. Double them for transfers to T1, halve them for transfers to the lowest tier, free to servers that exist in name only.
- HoT skills. Most HoT builds can’t be countered by vanilla builds due to power creep. For as long as this exists, GW2 is effectively a pay-to-win game.
- The ability for attacking servers to clear defensive siege from the outside of walls. AoE should not spill over the tops of walls so easily.
- Dailies. Monument, land claimer and caravan killer are too easy, while keep capturer can be impossible on a losing server. SM should also count as a keep for daily purposes.
Remove:
- PPK. What’s the point in throwing myself repeatedly into a losing battle if I end up just handing more points to the enemy?
- Points per cap, because it discourages defense in favour of k-training. Defense should be encouraged as it requires two sides to directly engage each other, while k-training doesn’t.
- DBL. This map is so horrible for WvW that I had to quit the game during the time it replaced Alpine entirely. Even now I avoid it for anything other than easy dailies.
TLDR: Anet have ruined their game so terribly since HoT came out, that I’ve had more fun losing weight in RL during that time than continuing to play GW2.
Full version:
In October 2015, Heart of Thorns was released. For a WvWer like me, it was a time of dread. All the feedback about Desert BL to that point had been that it looked pretty, but was horrible to actually play. And since it was replacing my home BL, a place I had stoutly defended for 3 years up to that point, I felt I simply had no reason to play GW2 anymore. So I quit.
But what to do with all my newfound free time? While I also enjoyed a little Elite Dangerous now and then, it wasn’t going to replace GW2 completely. I felt no other game could.
Luckily, conveniently, a solution appeared outside of the online world. I stumbled upon a diet that took me some convincing to try at first, but the results came straight away. It meant spending more time in the kitchen learning to cook the right food etc, which in turn meant time spent researching and so on. It was plenty enough to keep me occupied in the evenings, and I really wasn’t missing HoT at all.
Fast forward several months into 2016 and Anet finally had to concede the general awfulness of Desert BL and brought back my dear old home BL, now known as Alpine BL. So I returned, but somehow it wasn’t the same. Everyone was playing these new elite specs that as a vanilla player, I couldn’t seem to counter no matter what I tried. Guardians that can burn your face off via traps? Thieves and warriors with even greater ability to run away? Rangers that literally couldn’t die? WTF?
Sure, I could have just caved and bought the expansion like everyone else. But why should I have to, just to be able to compete with everyone else? I used to be able to compete just fine. And what else would there be in it for me? I’m not a major PvEer, so the new Maguuma maps held no interest to me. It felt like nothing more than a blatant moneygrab, but for as long as Desert BL wasn’t around, I had admittedly thought about it.
Then, not only did they bring Desert BL back, but in a futile attempt to address the ongoing server population balance issue, they started linking servers. Not “merging” of course, because we can’t all be seen to be playing a dying gamemode, but linking. In a matter of weeks, what was left of my server was swiftly gutted. Our TS emptied, our forums died, our very identity disappeared. Everything was gone.
So rather than reward Anet for utterly burying any reason for me to continue playing, I decided to step back once again. While there are still a couple of Alpine maps I can still at least get my dailies on (sometimes), that’s pretty much all I’ve been able to do in this game for the last few months. Beyond that, no urge to play whatsoever.
Throughout all of this though, my RL health has continued to improve. It’s now been 15 months since I began, and during that time I have lost a total of 50kg, or 110lb. I am literally 60% of the person I used to be. And while it wasn’t exactly because of Anet’s incompetence, there’s no doubt in my mind that Heart of Thorns – and everything else Anet has done since its release – has helped to enable my journey.
Sooo… thanks guys. :P
Everything since HoT.
It’s too easily exploitable if the scaling is applied at the individual match level. As others have said, you can establish a lead then get all of your friends to quit WvW while afking their alts on the other servers.
So it would need to be applied at a gamewide level, i.e. reduce scoring based on total game population across the board during the night hours.
This should have happened right at the beginning of the game of course, but even if it happened tomorrow, it would be way too little, way too late at this point.
Never transferred. Never will.
We need fewer worlds, not more. Merge the smallest ones together and be done with it.
Then, set transfer costs to be relative to each server’s active WvW population.
Bam, done.
Here are all the things Anet could be doing to fix this:
- Weekly relinks. Screw the “inconvenienced TS admins”, it’s either them or the rest of us.
- Free transfers to the lowest ranked pairing of the week.
- Mechanic buffs for the losing side, for example instant white swords, 100% sentry reveal map coverage, deaths don’t give points to winning sides etc.
- Mechanic nerfs for the winning side, for example no white swords, no sentry reveal, no PPK etc.
Here are all the things Anet will do to fix this:
Free transfers to the lowest ranked server pairing of the week.
There is already a solution that really addresses this problem, it’s called transferring down.
Prime Time would be universal per datacenter. For example, all worlds in NA would have the same 6 hour period (of highest activity) as their Prime Time hours. All EU woulds would have a different 6 hour range for their Prime Time.
Dev post of the year so far.
Anet has finally taken a few steps in the right direction with this update. It’s nowhere near enough to offset their several years of moonwalking of course, but it’s a start.
Somebody call me when they bring back Alpine BL.
Two weeks ago we polled the WvW community about Desert versus Alpine borderlands. The majority of players asked us to bring Alpine back. We’ll do that.
This is not the only thing that needs to happen, but it is at least the most important thing that needs to happen.
I’ll be waiting.
Factions can’t make me quit the game because HoT already did.
WvWers have been asking and suggesting changes on this board and in game forever. However, What is ironic about this is that when they do something that changes things alot we behave terribly.
That’s because a lot of the changes they have made have been terrible.
I liked the second one, when they had that event in the Plains of Ashford where players faced off against Kralkatorrik’s minions, and whoever died actually became a minion themselves. It was like GW2’s version of the zombie apocalypse…
Oh you mean this weekend? Most of the time I was in WvW, lamenting at how much the game is turning into nagware for this kitten ed expansion.
Existing borderland maps are being replaced with a new and exciting desert borderland map. It’s new and exciting, we promise!
Or you could just save yourselves the transfer fees and wait for guild halls in HoT?
OCX is already bloody ghost town outside of T1, this change literally screws over every new OCX player looking to play in WvW that actually has enemies to fight.
THAT is what we are complaining about.
Speak for yourself.
I’m an oceanic too, only I didn’t fall for the “hey guys let’s all stack on like 1-2 servers” attitude that many oceanics have had since before the game was even released.
If oceanics truly want more enemies to fight, then maybe they shouldn’t be so consumed with their need to have so many friends first.
This stupid way(blocking to transfer) is not solution for dispersing wvwers
Who want to play on dead Tier(like tier345678 servers)?
Your “dead” tiers (345678) are the only ones I’ve played on. And like it or not, this change will make them less “dead” now, which is definitely a good thing for the WvW game mode as a whole.
It’d be nice to toss in a discount to kick this all off. The gem store often offers discounts on items, so why not here to promote it?
With the return of High and Medium servers, the discount is effectively already happening. It’s just not for the stacked servers that everyone wants to keep bandwagoning to.
If you have transferred to T1, then you have gotten exactly what you deserved.
I’m not planning on getting the expansion, but I had already decided that well before last week’s shenanigans.
Basically, I don’t think Anet deserves my money on the basis of their constant neglect of WvW for the last two years. Hell, if the new BL is as horrible as I’ve read, that might be the tipping point to finally get me to stop playing altogether.
This is a step in the right direction.
Indeed it is, though without a change in the transfer costs, it still does nothing to prevent server stacking on its own.
I can understand why they’re doing it this way though, as it will give them a better idea of exactly how the transfer costs need to be adjusted. I just hope that it doesn’t take them another two years to figure that one out. :P
CD only seems to focus EBay because CD is much bigger than EBay. We did get second place against them just last week, and the battle for second is not over this week either.
They are in serious business mode this week though as Anet RNG continues to deny them their rightful place in T3, but afaik that’s all there is to it.
the original intention for EotM was for it to be a place a player can go if he can’t get into WvW. but ANet made blunder by allowing players to get directly into EotM without all their WVW borderland queued, hence reducing the numbers of player that would actually fight for a server, but go straight to EotM instead.
This is pretty much what I said about EotM when it was first introduced.
EotM is the precise opposite of what the WvW population ever needed. People on top tiers should have been encouraged to transfer down, not be rewarded with another map for their stubbornness.
HoT Price Feedback + Base game included [merged]
in Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns
Posted by: Grav.3568
While I’m unhappy about the marketing surrounding HoT, I think peeps saying a lack of response from ANet for 3 days equates to ANet doesn’t care is, I think, a bit unrealistic.
Given Anet’s continuing inability to address issues from two years ago, are you really that surprised?
Q. Why should I give Anet my money?
A. I know from experience most people pay gems for outfits, finishers, dies, etc…. The reality is you can have a friend “help” you with the gold (300) or $20.00 on a VISA Card. Its sacrificing a hot date for two at McDonald’s if one splurges on past the $1 menu.
No.
I would rather stop playing the game completely than give Anet any more money at this point.
No server population balance leading to stale blowouts week after week.
It’s not like Anet don’t know about it, the very first CDI was on this very topic. But they’ve done literally nothing with that feedback in the years since, and they’re doing literally nothing to address it in the expansion either.
So why should I care about a game mode that the devs themselves plainly don’t care about either?
I think Anet gave up on this problem long ago.
It’s not a problem in Anet’s eyes because people are still paying to transfer. They don’t care where the players go, as long as they are still prepared to pay to transfer, which clearly they are.
WvW has no future. We know this because it has no present either.
Anet is oblivious to the damage being done to wvw.
Not necessarily. They’re just as likely to have concluded that any balance improvements they make in this area will mean less transfer $$$ for them, but since they know that would go down with the playerbase like a cup of cold sick, they’d rather only serve us half a cup by not saying anything at all.
I’ll keep this simple.
When I tag up, I see my name “Commander Grav” when I mouse over the tag. I would like the option to be able to add some other custom text when creating my squad, that would also be seen in the commander name tooltip. So people would see “Commander Grav – join Channel Name on ts.server.com”, or whatever I wanted.
The text would also need to be saved as a default somehow, so I wouldn’t have to type the same thing over and over every time I tag up.
Anet, please make it so. Your time starts… now.
I have been in SBI when it was at and near top. I left and came back to an abandoned WvW server, relatively speaking. Tried to stay with it but people at bottom usually aren’t ambitious enough to move up ranks.
Not quite true. The lower tiers simply recognise that WvW is just a game of numbers x coverage. You can’t expect people to just stay online longer and burn themselves out for the “reward” of an even harder matchup next week. The only way a server can climb the ranks these days is with a transfer bandwagon (see: Maguuma).
Or you could make a real difference in the world and NOT join any server that is already stacked.
Oceanics who join servers that already have too many oceanics are doing it wrong. You will never learn anything beyond how to PvDoor. You will never get good.
(edited by Grav.3568)
I think it’s important for every guild to be having fun in their own way.
During 2012-13, my server used to try really hard to assign different guilds to different roles to ensure that everything was covered. “X will be on this BL, Y will be on this BL, Z will be in EBG” etc. The problem was that since every guild is different, not every guild would be happy with where they might end up being assigned, and that would breed resentment.
In 2014 it became a lot more casual as many guilds transferred away. In time new guilds emerged, again each with their own preferred playstyles. But as a server, we don’t try to organise ourselves so much anymore. We have skilled small roaming guilds, we have EBG guilds, we have home BL defenders, and we have larger guilds who love their zerg fights. Each is already good at what they do, so we no longer saw any need as a server to try and change that. Consequently, everyone is as happy as they’ve ever been, doing what they enjoy most.
More recently, some of us are actually learning to communicate with each other for a greater good. If I’m at home and see a large enemy zerg approaching a keep, I know who to whisper to get another guild of our own to come help defend. They’re happy to come when called since they get the big zerg fights they love, and I’m happy with the end result that the keep is saved; it’s a win-win.
The moral of the story is that for the sake of long-term server unity, some people just need to get over themselves, accept that everyone is different and let everyone play the way they want to.
(edited by Grav.3568)
Given the choice, people will always transfer to the highest ranked free option. We’ve seen this in the lead-up to previous tournaments.
Therefore, the lowest ranked server should be the only free transfer option, week to week.
This problem would not exist if everyone who has ever transferred up, had transferred down instead.
This is a silly comment. Then the servers would just flop around again. Temporary imbalances can’t be cured by a mass migration to low tier servers. They can be cured by migration between near-tiers.
The ideal Glicko ramp is gradual and smooth. We have too many cliffs. That’s why it seems so pointless.
The players created the cliffs by transferring up.
Double transfer costs to any server ranked above the player’s current server, halve it to any server below them. Transfers to the lowest ranked server each week are always free.
White swords behave differently depending on the tier you’re in. Bronze = instant white swords as they used to be, silver = delayed white swords as they are now, gold = no white swords.
Similarly, have orange swords also scaling by tier. Bronze = 10 people, Silver = 20 people, Gold = 30 people.
Remove EoTM as an overflow option and alternate it with EBG every second week in regular WvW. The new overflow option would be to send the player to the T8 server of their colour.
Lower total map player capacity across the board, just enough to force zergs to break into smaller groups to be able to cover everything they want to hold.
Finally, have Anet actually take hacking/cheating/exploiting seriously.
This problem would not exist if everyone who has ever transferred up, had transferred down instead.