Guild Wars 2

Siege despawns automatically if not used for 30 mins(I think it’s 30). This is to help alleviate the problem of someone putting down kittenloads of siege weapons the enemy wont destroy and blocking all other siege from being placed due to the limit.

I almost always notice culling, so it’s worse in the way that it’s more consistent, but the effects of skill lag once it’s there is way worse for me personally.

Long post inc:

The people in charge of GW2 had a vision of GW2 becoming a massive E-sport. I’m guessing to them it was a matter of pride and to some degree also money.
They seem to have decided at some point early in development that trying to amalgamate the MOBA style gameplay, that has gained massive popularity in the E-sport scene thanks to DOTA and LoL, with classical MMO gameplay and with a dash of FPS was a good idea. Despite multiple GW1 guilds involved in alpha telling them it was a bad idea (according to what I’ve heard at least) they continued with it until release. As predicted the GW1 sPvP never really picked up speed and is now just another (probably the smallest part) part of the game, instead of one of the main draws.

The consequence of this frenetic focus by some of the leaders on making GW2 sPvP an e-sport, has lead to WvW being added as an afterthought. In many of the pre-release interviews they talk of it as a way to “bring people who wouldn’t normally do PvP into it”. The main task of WvW as far as these people are concerned, is to get people to do sPvP. Or at least get them interested in it. Whenever they mention PvP they actually mean sPvP. WvW is never really considered PvP by the developers. It’s to them a place where casuals go to mash the keyboard when they get bored of grinding dungeons.

HOWEVER several guilds disagree with the developers of GW2. They enjoy the basic framework provided by the game, (the mobile combat, the synergy of combofields, etc.) but dislike the “arenas” in which the game is intended by the developers to be played. For this reason they have decided to take matters into their own hands and fight each other under pre-determined conditions. The developers fail to provide a service, but at least allow the customers to provide it themselves, so to say. Given the option, I feel confident any of the guilds doing “GvG”, would do it in an “arena” separate from WvW, however that option is not there and thus the second best thing is chosen.

It’s a fair bet there is a decent amount of resources required to provide this “GvG” arena which is probably why we don’t have it yet. Just as we don’t have a proper Raid UI. It’s just not something Anet prioritizes.

The command tag is usually used because of culling. A commander whose squad you have joined is less likely to cull out.

I fail to see however how you “Can’t play WvW” just because some guilds are “GvGing”.

skatz.3127:

erm what now?

@topic prolly the NA would tip it, too much coverage for even VS to cope with

Probably some american that watched private Ryan and thinks the war against germany was won on the western front.

NA would win probably.

Raptorious Big.5416:

I’m trying to grasp why guilds think the fights have to be 20v20 or 25v25, this only results in culling and lag. 10v10 and 15v15 shows what real skill a guild possesses.

If it actually only is 20vs20 or 25vs25 and not 20vs20 or 25vs25 + 30 spectators, the game actually runs fairly well. I know, because we did a few of these in T3 and it worked quite well. (read: no skill lag and basically no culling)

I do think the 15vs15 format is the most enjoyable though.

ethier.3417:

http://imgur.com/2FqAQOG

Dat VZ spirit, There are 3 arrow carts below the stairs as well out of the shot, Not mentioning Inner defenses.

Must be legacy from Napoleon. Them frenchies love their siege :P

Thief is only class in game that has a blast finnisher not restricted by cooldown. Then obviously also Daggerstorm and top tier mobility.

Burnfall.9573:

Thank You! Anet for standing up for us. I’m a bit worried by this statement though, “(except those using invisibility skills, of course)” Will they make adjustments to Stealth,Decoy? Mesmer stealth is only 3 sec, would greatly hurt us.

He’s just stating something obvious. It’s just a poor attempt at a joke. Calm down :P

I predict a flood of QQ when people suddenly realize how insanely CPU intensive this game is when they turn of culling and their game grinds to a halt. Personally I expect to play with nameplates only or maybe fallback models if comp can handle it, with no culling limit. Still enjoyment of any large battles will be hampered by actual lag.

Still, a step in the right direction to at least give us a choice.

tom.7468:

MiLkZz.4789:

People running around in WvW without stunbreaker or stability are hilarious.

I’m one of them and guess what? it works. I got tickled by 1 sec aoe fear by a necro yesterday. No reason to bring any defense to this. Those who run full bunker in wvw well yea they are hilarious. take a little longer to kill but is also no threat at all. So can let them live until the big guns is taken down.

Works if you solo maybe, not in a large fight where getting CC’d likely results in death a few seconds later and there’s a million different CC abilities being cast.
Also, zerker players, omnomnom.

Genev.2450:

Wolbryne.4037:

I don’t want to ever see RG whine on the forums about blobs anymore. you’re running with 5 guilds and pugs atm kinda hypocritical considering all your QQ’s about that exact thing

That’s funny, I was playing against them for a while earlier and they were running solo almost the entire time even though we were outnumbering them (GH+DeX + assorted puggies)
And not because there was no other SFR group on that BL.

I only saw 30 people tops…
In all seriousness though, we did blob them. They were jumping outside our keep for a few minutes so we thought we’d help them get back on track with making sure Deso doesn’t fall out of T1 instead. They are obviously not interested in fighting with equal numbers anyway. Apparently they logged instead

Masori.3528:

I’ve seen your GvG action – i know you guys are good at it.
But in openfield action – not as good, not bad either

There is no difference in how we run or for that matter perform in openfield action compared to GvG, except that GvG is always equal numbers, both teams are aware of each other (although we rarely get surprised by anyone because there is usually a noticeable drop in performance when large numbers of enemies are nearby) and everyone I’ve done so far have been way less laggy.

That said the recent week has been absolutely horrible in terms of skill delay/lag. It also seems to be serverwide, especially when large fights are happening. My guess would be that the server is choking because it suddenly has to send 120^2 pieces of information instead of 2*60^2. Why this is happening now more than before(apparently) I have no idea.
I’m not a network engineer though, so I’m just guessing.

Personally I like them, because they mean I have to spend less time killing a static object with a bunch of HP and have more time killing players.

That said I can see where you are coming from in that you can rush an upgraded keep fast if you get the timing right. It does kind of require you to get everything done properly and be a bit lucky though. If you get scouted early on you’re probably gonna get kitten . If there is someone scouting in the keep, you might make it through first and maybe even second gate, but you’ll probably have an enemy force there to stop you. It’s also a heavy investment in terms of supplies, so there is definitely a fairly large risk involved.

Troma.3250:

Awesome bloody battle at SFR garrison west with LP+Fureur+Vizunians versus RG+few siN/VcY. I had a lot of fun.

Action’s been pretty awesome throughout the night. RIP+ PuGs doing a great job at holding hills while we were fighting Viz in north.

Twinklefairy.6739:

Heru.5427:

You are aware that the times you open your map, except while Deso was still in the zone for the first hour, Piken has close to 2/3 of the zone?

You’re aware you’re no longer on Piken right? =)

FML, it was late and I was tired :/ Thanks for pointing it out.

NoXsNoNo.9348:

This record, without any editing (video doesn’t lie), will show you how a Vizunian guild hold/camp/pull 2 SFR guilds on a particular spot of the map, while another VS guild is capping keeps and towers.

The action takes place during prime time, with a double cap of both Bay and Shadaran on SFR map, that’s maybe why Vizunah is still in T1 since the beginning, and not any other server.

dailymotion
Youtube

You are aware that the times you open your map, except while Deso was still in the zone for the first hour, SFR has close to 2/3 of the zone? Consistently hold two keeps and most of the northern towers/camps. It’s not like you had less players in the zone either. WL is a good guild and we had much fun fighting you, but stuff like this makes me wonder. Do you seriously think that the short farming session you let us have on you somehow massively contributed to your realms advantage?

At last, 3 hours in you manage to take Bay from RG with WL+LP+other Viz and a few seconds after that you lose hills because sIN took it while we kept you busy. Sure, if we would have played better we might have been able to hold you long enough, for sIN to come help us def, but at least we don’t think it was a major victory for us to die.

Nice to hear the OP enjoys WvW. They said they will be introducing more options for the stat distribution on WvW armor, so If I were you I’d probably save those badges and see what the March patch brings. As for ksill vs gear and such, I’m surprised by the fact tha noone seems to acknowledge the role builds and classes play.
Assuming two players of equal skill level, class and build is probably the biggest determinant for your success. To a certain degree it probably even matters more than a discrepancy in skill.

Kingface.9781:

And btw Sacrx, how It feel when each time you tried something against VS to get it down is an epic fail? I hope for your sake the next MMORPG will be based on GvG because right now RG is just a mid-low guild on the current WvW system… Fortunately, you have your count.

What you on about? You mean the fact that RG doesn’t play 24/7 or what? From the point we start playing, around 19 GMT+1, to the point we stopped playing, around an hour after midnight GMT+1, we held the majority of our borderlands together with sIN or PuGs. At best we held all three keeps, but most of the time only two simultaneously. This was despite having WL+LP+some more Vizunas which I can’t remember(sorry ). Desolation basically left the zone for a large amount of time.

Obviously one guild can’t win against an entire server, especially when the guild members have real life obligations and can’t play 24/7. But I guess in the Viz world only the unemployed make T1 guilds, in which case I guess you are right.

Turbofan.4569:

The Thief skill Caltrops is severly bugged making it extremely over powered.

Bug #1. When cast from stealth this skill does NOT reveal the thief. They remain stealthed.

This isn’t a bug. Stealth in this game is only broken when you deal direct damage. Since Caltrops only deals condition damage, casting it does not break stealth. This is the same reason you can for example poison people with poison arrow while staying in stealth.

Everyone posting in this thread could do with watching this video: http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php
There are some misconceptions in some of the posts here.

Start by turning of auto targeting in the options.

Join a proper guild with a WvW focus.

./ignore
Problem solved.

If you are a PvEr I’m sure you have lots of money, why don’t you just transfer for a week or something?

I heard RG cannot into keeps…

EasymodeX.4062:

And you can only get Pvt in WvW.

QQ.

Don’t the Orr karma merchants sell Pvt gear too?

Fuzzion.2504:

https://twitter.com/GuildWars2

“WvW updates will not introduce new skills. Will bring passive abilities aimed towards group play eg. Extra supply #foodwars”

:/ Hmmm

Good, last thing needed is even more power discrepancies between new and old characters.

vespers.1759:

is this really fun for people? a mess where no one can see wtf is happening. everyone just spam whatever they have and hopes they hit something.

It looks a bit worse and more confusing in the fraps than it does in game. The particle effects in this game are certainly over the top and get annoying in larger battles, but it’s still doable. The more experience you have, the more you learn to disregard the unimportant visual noise and spot the important circles.

Just use unofficial forums? My guess is they have to try and keep a certain “standard” on their official forums or something.

There have been several threads about increasing volatility of the system to allow for faster shifts, corresponding to quick changes in population. This would allow for tiers to adjust faster, but also mix matches up a bit more. In their latest big patch that introduced the fallback models and reintroduced the “new” culling system, Anet stated, in their divine wisdom, that there was no need to change the rating system.

There are very good reasons to run in a compact clump without culling as well. Are there any particular reasons why you feel the culling patch changed this tactic significantly?

Listen to commanders in Zone. Escort Dolyaks is never bad. Stay at towers and keeps and call out if enemies attack. If you do, try and give numbers and guild. You should play to have fun though. The best way IMO is to join a guild that does WvW together.

Going back on a major change, which probably changed how many people played the entire week, one day before it takes effect, without any real major changes having happened, is really poor leadership. Indecisiveness is the only thing worse than making a poor decision.

While the outcome of this change is better for me personally, it leaves me with a feeling that the people making these decisions have no kittening clue what they are on about and make rash decisions based on whims. This is not the way to build respect and trust with your community on a long term basis.

I’ve never had a problem with it, just because you can’t see them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. That said in comparison to Mass Invisibility, for the purpose of WvW the ability is somewhat OP.

Junkpile.7439:

It’s much better now than before so why revert?

Obviously a fair number of people disagree with this. My biggest issue with the new system is how random and unpredictable it seems to be. Sometimes it works amazing, but just as often it’s way worse than the old system. The old system was at least predictable and you could plan around the eventuality of there being more people on the screen than you could see. With the new system it might just suddenly decide to stop rendering all your friends mid fight making it harder to keep cohesion within a group.

Just thought it was worth pointing out that Anet some time after the launch of GW2 posted statistics on WvW queues for all the different servers. It’s hardly farfetched to assume that they very closely monitor population in WvW at all times (the queue system does after all need to decide when to create a queue). Creating a system that sets a gem price for transfer in accordance to these numbers should not be a major hassle for them.

If they want to go even further, one could imagine setting individual prices to encourage people that play during a certain time of the day to transfer to a server that lacks WvW population during this timeperiod. If this is suitable or not can be argued, but the tools are definitely there for Anet.

I do feel that basing the transfer prices on a part of the game which they don’t affect to any greater extent, while ignoring parts of the game that they do, does seem like a very illogical idea.

The new system definitely allow you to see enemies from further away from my experience. It doesn’t really seem to render more enemies though, so you are just as clueless to the actual size of the enemy as you were before. The cost of this “improvement” seems to be however that rendering of allies is much more “random”. The system might be rendering all your allies one second and the next 50% of them suddenly disappear. It also seems to dislike Golems, since I’ve been standing literally right next to some and they did not render.

Before the patch, our guild would deal with the issue of enemies not rendering by always assuming we were running into massive numbers. By the time we hit the first people many more had rendered in if they were there. This pretty much “solved the issue” to a certain extent. Guildies in our group not rendering rarely ever happened.

Since our play revolves around moving together, not being able to see half your group at times is quite detrimental to our teamplay. I can imagine that PuG groups of 30+ find this update beneficial though, since they don’t stay on top of their teammates, nor move around particularly much in cohesion, but rather play as a number of solo players working towards a common goal.

For reference, we run around 30 players in WvW most of the time.

Reslinal.2359:

Just wondering are you guys going back to Euro servers from the sound of it? If it’s true sad to see you guys go, you will be missed.

RG is back on Piken. Had a good time in America, but wanted to transfer as many as possible to EU before payed transfers. Perhaps we will be back on NA servers at some point.

Indo.8629:

To start, you should fix your invis abilities. Lot of the complaining is coming from when mass groups of players are able to invis from a couple spells(or in the mesmer wall case, there is no cap to the number it can invis) and then even though the invis effect may wear off after 3 seconds, for whatever reason it takes an additional 3-5 seconds for that person to load on the enemies screen. Players are abusing it and I think most of the vocal complaining is coming from this more than anything else.

Actually the low res models fix should help alleviate this problem. Or so I would at least assume, since it seems to me that the game is having to reload the models once they go “visible” again.

Churros.7196:

Btw, how does the potion affect culling? I’ve seen a whole zerg on SOS BL all using the ghost tonic and I saw them fine from far away.

It probably doesn’t but apparently saying that RG is abusing veil isn’t enough.

Nice, hope we get to fight against you again in the not to distant future.

I personally don’t like them. I think it ruins the viability of some builds, making healing power even more useless, since you get more healing from critting/doing damage than actually trying to heal. It further helps reduce the amount of useable builds, making the game shallower and less interesting. The fact that it would somehow be equal for all classes isn’t true either, since some classes or builds benefit way more from it, due to their high crit chance.
In the end though, Anet seems to be of the opinion that WvW is a place where people go to mash 1 and don’t care about stuff like this, unless it’s completely breaking the game.

It’s what happens when Anet equates WvW to PvE rather than PvP. Hopefully this gets fixed asap, don’t get your hopes up though. Maybe they even thinks it’s a good idea, who knows.

I agree with OP, but unfortunately I have little hope. From what I’ve seen and heard so far, Anet atm seems to be more inclined to focus on the positive feedback from the yay-sayers.

killimandros.5087:

Do you all use skale venom? Just curious as we havent decided wether to risk it or not

We do, even though it’s not a huge thing, unlike some other things I’ve heard off. Personally I really hope that Anet get the thumb out of their kitten and removes this kind of kitten from WvW. WvW despite what Anet may believe is actually also PvP and IMO these PvE items were definitely not designed with any consideration to balance. They shouldn’t be there at all.

Before you read my post, I would ask that you try to somewhat take it out of context, so that you can at least follow my path of reasoning without bias at first. I know this is incredibly hard, but I would ask that you at least try.

The fact that sPvP requires more individual skill than large scale fights or more twitch skills is an illusion created by:

a) Not having done proper large scale fights
b) A preconception that just because the outcome of an individuals action matters more, it takes more skill.
c) There is no competitive scene, no true competition, no time commitment. Large scale fights atm lack the community and the competition. We are nowhere near the “skill-cap”.

Point a) probably matters to some degree but point b) and c) are probably the main reasons for your flawed reasoning. I certainly agree with you, that when you are playing with 19 other people instead of 4 it’s easier to get carried and the actions of a single individual matters less to the overall outcome, but the outcome is still a summation of all the individual plays. If you have 20 perfect players, do you not think they will wipe the floor with everybody else?

Let me elaborate what I mean with point b)
Let’s take a sport as an example. I’m swedish so I’m gonna take football(that’s soccer for you americans) as an example. In football you usually play with 11 people on the field in each team. Passing the ball in a certain way or going around a defender is equally difficult no matter the number of people on the field(well mostly), but the effects of these accomplishments vary greatly. If you are more people, then the defender who just got rounded may very well have a teammate who can cover his mistake and take the ball from the attacker. If you are less people, let’s say only 5 on the field, then there probably is no defender to cover his teammates mistake. The effect of the attackers accomplishments matters more as he is now much closer to accomplishing his final goal of scoring a goal.
In the same way using the right ability at exactly the right time, not being tricked into using your stunbreaker, and so on all take the same amount of skill, (if not more due to taking more variables into account) in large scale fights that it does in sPvP.

Point c) refers to the fact that even the best and most dedicated WvW guilds (one of which I would probably consider myself being part of), are not close to skill cap.
Why is this then? The main reason IMO is very simple. TIME. All the people that play tPvP (or any serious E-sport, just look at pro koreans in SC2) at top level, play all day. It’s basically like a job for them. They are not born with the ability to be awesome at all computer games, they reach the top by training and they stay there by constantly training. Those who do WvW do not have the same luxury. First of all you basically have to have 10+ people that are online and want to play at the same time, all the time. Second of all, the people that do sPvP constantly fight (thus training and improving). WvW does not work like this. Because of the way Anet intended it, WvW play consist to probably 70% of running from point A to point B. This means that at most only 30% of time spent playing can only be considered training. In addition to this, much of the time (at least for RG), you just end up facerolling PuGs, or lesser numbers or bads, reducing these 30% even further. The time spent improving is thus much lower than for those doing sPvP. In other words, even the best among the WvW guilds aren’t that good(in relation to the “skill-cap”)

@Jackiepro: sPvP conquest doesn’t work because it doesn’t force direct confrontation the same way that Dota style maps do (Assuming this is what you meant when you said MOBAs, even though there are MOBAs with different game types). MOBAs have a direct goal which basically requires your opposing teams destruction. Conquest doesn’t as much in the same way. At least that’s my take on it, but I haven’t bothered with it to much.

@pedrst: Your melee train could easily be kited. A Staff necro with wells/corruption does wonders against guardians, so no I don’t think your " 4 guardians and 3 warriors and at least a mesmer" would work out too well. It’s all solid classes though and by all means feel free to prove me wrong. RG is usually up for some good WvW fights.

Moddo.7105:

lOKI.8152:

Dont know why people on this forums insist on attacking each other personally just because someone has a different opinion.

It is a condition of those people being what some view a typical game as. A basement living sub human nerd who have very low self esteem. So inorder to compensate for that condition them call others bad etc. What is funny is they don’t even know kittenhing about that others players skill lvl at all and are just assuming it because it fits into their little fantasy world of them not being the true loser who needs to insult others to feel better about them being failures in the game of life.

It’s funny how you are doing pretty much the same thing except in reverse.

1; Burst damage is high if Zerker player fires at zerker player. Jackie has about 20k hp on his warrior, which is about right for someone wearing at least a few pieces zerker gear. Thieves have almost 50% less HP when wearing zerker gear compared to Invader gear, not to mention no toughness. I think eles are at similar numbers. The burst damage is definitely not too high between two invader geared characters. It’s an active choice by you to allow the burst damage targeting you to be so high. If I remember correctly, VotF like to run zerk builds in their warbands. You also have to remember that in this video, you have several people hitting the same spot. The people dying in 2 seconds are doing so because each of them are being hit by multiple people. (The only exception to this rule are some Thief abilities like Backstab which is stupid high even in full invader gear IMO, but they are all single target and rarely matter in larger fights.)

All classes have either a Stun breaker/teleport or some kind of damage invulnerability button. Anet has given you the tools to avoid burst. If you don’t do it, then it is your own fault. If you watch the video you will see that almost every time Jackie uses all of his utilities for the initial burst. Frenzy to get the high damage, Endure pain to counter the drawback of frenzy and to stop the vast number of enemies whose attention he just got, from killing him, and balanced stance to prevent CC from countering him. Many of his teammates probably do similar things. Had his opponents popped their damage immunity/teleport and just kited him for 5 seconds they would now be 2 utility cooldowns up on him. Had they equipped invader gear they would not be dead but just on low hp. If you know what you are doing, burst isn’t hard to counter.

You argue that the burst is to high, I would definitely say no. To allow a character to do the high burst you give up way to much survivability and utility for something that is countered so easily. In the end it’s mostly subjective though. I don’t think a TTK, for 3 people hitting 1 guy who isn’t defending himself, of 2 seconds is a long time in a game with so much damage avoidance.

2; As for the culling issue, yes sometimes it does suck, but it hits organized guilds as well as you can see at the end of the clip. Go back and look at the video. In every situation they are hitting enemies, where at least one person is aware of them, indicated by the fact that they are being attacked before they hit the main group. Now this person probably does not relay the information to the others, because they are fighting PuGs, but that’s because of lacking communication on the PuGs part, not because of culling. In several instances they are also on top of people dealing damage for 2-3 seconds without these people reacting. They keep on running while dieing. If they were any good, as soon as they took damage without seeing the source, they should have dodgerolled, teleported or popped a cooldown. But they are bads, thus they do not react.

3; The amount of scrubbery in WvW is staggering. These scrubs come to WvW excpecting to win, even though they have little clue about the game and have no intention of improving or realizing their flaws. They then lose over and over and instead of finding a solution, they come to the forums and blame their defeats on the game or cheap tactics.

They are the worst kind of player, not beacause they are bad, but because they refuse to improve.
Instead they want everyone else to become as bad as they are. They usually also refuse to accept the fact that they are bad and comfort themselves by saying that everyone calling them out on it is a no-lifer that lives in their parents basement.

Playing purely for fun with no intention on improving is perfectly fine. I do not have a problem with that, I even do it myself in many games. But don’t come on the forums kittening and moaning because you got beaten by someone who plays to win then.

Congrats on being the best server at gathering points.

Jackie.1829:

Ehh not sure you are really correct there. I think people would prefer to watch 5v5, there is a lot more skill demonstrated in those game formats, as someone who has played both spvp and wvw. WvW is interesting for those involved, and it can be fun to watch zerg busting, but I dont think it could ever be something competitive or worth observing. There is a reason why almost all spectated game modes in all of gaming are 5v5 to 8v8. Spvp does actually have strategy whereas WvW not so much.

Don’t know why people are under the impression that there is more “skill”(extremely dodgy word to use btw) in sPvP than in 10v10+. The only thing your really lack in large scale compared to sPvP is the requirement of good map awareness and being able to “read the game” so you know where to go. IMO large scale combat makes up for this with it’s requirement of good positioning and the greater amount of coordination required.

The reason IMO that smaller formats are preferred is for the sake of the spectators. As a spectator it’s hard to follow the game when there is a million things going on at once. The individual actions get obscured by their combined effects and the focus get’s shifted from how a single play effects the game, to how the combined effect turns the tide of battle.
The fact that it’s much harder to organize a group of 10-20 people rather than a group of 5 and prevent one or a few groups from recruiting all the good players and becoming completely dominant, is probably also a reason.