Guild Wars 2

Hawkian.6580:

Hix.8925:

- At which point, due to “horizontal progression” there is nothing left to do other than go for specific gear items which you think look good, or enjoy playing for the sake of playing since there are no rewards left to entice you

The mind boggles at this absolutely unfathomable concept

The mind boggles that you stopped there and didn’t read the very next line which discusses why that concept isn’t enough, with regards to MMOs in particular.

- You don’t need to grind to get full exotic gear once you hit 80, you can do this in a day
- At which point, due to “horizontal progression” there is nothing left to do other than go for specific gear items which you think look good, or enjoy playing for the sake of playing since there are no rewards left to entice you
- Many people play this genre of game specifically because it is a loot oriented genre – the euphoria of getting gear is the entire point of the game for them. Why do you think Diablo 1 sold a billion copies? People like getting gear.
- Every single piece of cosmetic gear is a horrific grind that makes anything in say WoW look hilariously casual
- The common defense seems to be “but you don’t have to grind, there are tons of other things you can do, you don’t need that gear”
- But remember that cosmetic gear is the only reward that this game offers at level cap due to “horizontal progression.” Getting gear is the primary motivation for a large pool of players, especially PVE only players. And the only way to get cosmetic gear is to grind

So OP is right, Anet has completely failed in its design goal of “no grinding” or, like communism, their ‘horizontal progression’ idea is something that works in theory, but when real humans and their actual wants and desires are involved, it all falls apart.

Do I have to be handheld to find the fun? Well pretty much every Sandbox MMO failed other than Eve so apparently I’m not alone in this.

You need to combine things like robes, not cloth

One of the funny things I’ve noticed on TC, at least on EB, is that when no commanders are on, anyone who suggests attacking any target other than retaking something in our part of the map, people won’t do it because “we can’t hold that.” But when commanders are on, they repeatedly attack things we can’t hold.

I also think that people who aren’t solo players like me should but play off-peak should probably form a new guild and decide on a commander because IMO the biggest problem with the times when there is no known commander on is that there are various competing strategies being discussed, usually more than 1 have viable reasoning behind them, and no one can convince a critical mass of people to follow them so we end up unable to do anything even when we don’t have outnumbered buffs.

Reality struck for FA cause right now playing again legit 24/7 coverage black gate, it’s black gate +580, TC + 60, FA +55 after it being virtually tied during prime time. Being on TC is fun because of the community, but it’s clear that we are too strong in primetime for tier 4 and too outnumbrered in offpeak for tier 3

This is the inevitable result of the emergent meta, and Anet says “working as designed.” There’s no incentive to stay, much less go to, a low pop server if you are a WvWer, and huge incentives to go to a high pop server.

Maybe people tired of huge queues will come down to your servers? You can hope.

I can see why people are saying TA are upset about the chest pounding since other servers are just now catching up on the meta (24/7 full queues) and just as their numbers are starting to solidify, TA is claiming victory and leaving. Reminds me of the old Simpsons episode when Bart was beating Homer in the boxing video game, and the second Bart realized Homer would soon surpass him, Bart retired undefeated.

But on the other hand TA is the one that saw the huge flaw in Anet’s design and exploited it the best, far better than any other alliance, and so they definitely deserve credit for defining the meta.

I couldn’t figure out how TC is winning this week till I played this morning. Even with at least 2 to 1 numerical superiority in EB, SoS couldn’t take SM or VK. Heck, they lost Anz and WC while I was on (though we couldn’t hold). I think they did manage to take Quent for 10 minutes though.

Good luck with breaking the top 5 though.

If SoS truly does not have numbers during NA primetime, then SoS would benefit from nightcapping fixes, because pretty much every proposed nightcapping fix is based on helping underpopulated sides. So if SoS truly does not have NA numbers, then at those times that they lack numbers they would be protected the same way as NA servers w/o Oceanics would be protected when those NA servers are undermanned.

Do you really think the hardcore pop that aren’t on a server with 24/7 coverage are going to stay?

We had queue metrics after week 1, where are the week 2 queue metrics?

lollie.5816:

Hix.8925:

Also think it’s funny that the same people arguing that NA servers should just recruit more Oceanics also say that Oceanics can’t be put in their own 3 server group cause there aren’t enough Oceanic players to spread around 3 servers.

You realise you also have nightshift workers and etc to bolster up the “NA nightcrew”? Half if not more of Oceanics would likely play on the NA servers voluntarily, just to be around more people. That would leave a three server group pretty much dead (really doubt we’d have three full servers, there’d not be enough for decent sized DEs also across 3 servers).

Well lets do the math here. Half the Oceanics could not fill 3 servers, according to you. Lets assume that half the Oceanics could fill 3 servers. Then that means all the Oceanics could fill 6 servers.

That’s still not enough Oceanics for the “go recruit” option to be a real solution.

I think it’s funny that what was being argued as a worst case scenario (3 Megaservers, all other servers dead) is now being proposed as the solution.

Also think it’s funny that the same people arguing that NA servers should just recruit more Oceanics also say that Oceanics can’t be put in their own 3 server group cause there aren’t enough Oceanic players to spread around 3 servers.

TC and GoM have strong NA teams and non-existant Oceanic teams. That’s the point. You keep dancing around it by implying that your Oceanic teams are better rather than simply more numerous, or this fantasy that your server is not full queued at NA primetime.

In Cloud’s world, SoS took over the whole map because of superior tactics that just happened to kick in at 5AM PST

Barro, SoS took the whole map at around 5AM PST when even the people staying up late had to pass out.

Ask Anet, it’s their policy not mine

Big NA presence on Euro bracket would be working as intended. The entire WvW setup is designed to inevitably concentrate all WvW population on 3 servers per bracket.

Iollie you’d have a point if they didn’t release queue stats showing that Oceanic heavy servers have 24 hour queues and other servers don’t, but all NA servers have queues during NA peaktime.

If people on nightcapping servers were capping against even numbers then no one would care. It’s because you guys are nightcapping vs air that people care. You cannot turn around and say “hey when I go to sleep and it’s NA primetime we lose stuff, so that’s nightcapping too!” because when your server is losing stuff during NA prime time then they aren’t pvping against air, they’re pvping against your NA players.

Anyways clearly the situation is working as intended. Instead of whining, people should just stop playing if they aren’t having fun. If enough people stop playing Anet will change things. If not, then Anet is right not to change things.

Rich Orichalcum!

People play games to win. You have created your own definition of winning (I’m going to cap some bases and consider myself a winner!) but that is not the definition of winning that the game itself, nor very many players, have of winning.

Another thing is that making the game as war-like as possible is inherently bad for the game as a whole.

The reason why a game must be fair, while a war must not, is because the goal of the game is to have fun, which is a completely different motivation than why nations go to war. In a game, you want the losers to be able to say “well we lost this time, but maybe next time we’ll do better and win.” In war you want the losers to say “I am never going to fight against the winners again.” If the losers in the game end up with the mindset of the losers in a war, then the game dies. There is nothing that will kill WvW faster than the majority of the players to realize that the game is fixed against them and that they can never win, especially when the reason why they are losing is something so far beyond their control as “inability to create, literally, a worldwide army”.

Someone talked about SWTOR and Ilum. Ilum died specifically because of population imbalance. No matter what Bioware did to try to balance Ilum, it always came down to “Imperials have overwhelming numbers, Republic can’t leave the base.” Bioware never did anything to fix this core issue. When people realized that, Republic stopped going to Ilum. Do you think that Imperials celebrated this? Maybe for a day, before realizing that without Republic, there was nothing to do on Ilum. That’s exactly what’s going to happen in WvW if Anet sticks with this stance they have taken.

It’s painfully obvious what is going to happen to WvW in the long run and you can already see it happening.
If you are a serious WvWer you want to be on a competitive server. The minimum characteristic of competitive servers is “full queue 24/7” which means that your server is never outnumbered. Anything less than that means you have already guaranteed that you will never be on a top ranked server. If you are a serious WvWer you are not going to transfer to a server that does not have that minimum requirement. So in other words people are greatly incentivized to transfer to already full servers, because anything else means that no matter how good you are at WvW, you can’t win.

Meanwhile, non-full servers will continually bleed population, because some of their population will be hopping to minimum competitive servers, and others will get tired of losing and quit the game outright. I would guess that as time goes own and huge pop servers become bigger and bigger, and queue times longer and longer, more people are dying servers will opt to quit than to transfer.

Eventually all the WvW population will be concentrated in a few servers that will all have insanely long queues. All other servers will be WvW ghost towns. And a TON of population will simply evaporate and playing a different game.

It’s impossible to recruit people to low pop night servers. What is your recruiting pitch going to look like? “Hey, are you tired of winning? Come to our server and turn our 200 vs 10 battles into 200 vs 20 battles!” Yeah that’s not going to work. If that worked then people would be flooding out of HoD to go to Devona.

In wars, they end when one side gives up, and then that side the loses ceases to exist. Is that your endgame here Anet? Making it so that everyone on a server with no nighttime pop gives up and those servers die?

Small Mag groups going for supply happens to TC too. This happened so much on Tuesday that TC retaliated by forming a golem army taking Mag’s keep and all 4 towers while Mag was fighting in Ogrewatch, solely to troll Mag.

Make the orbs give your PVE realm a ton of bonuses. Put the orbs bonuses on the Overpowered buff. A lot simpler.

If you want to see what even the rumor of a server alliance does in real life, look at the TC-Mag-EB thread.

TC was winning when the numbers were even, except for the first night. From what I can tell, our numbers aren’t overwhelming overall, except for in EB and our own borderland. We definitely had more numbers in EB at offpeak from Monday onwards. For most of the week we had almost no presence in either of the other two borderlands during the off peak hours, at least as far as captured points go. I don’t know what happened last night that allowed us to take the entire WvW.

I’m not in right now but I’m guessing that they didn’t take anz cause anz cannot be held.

Earlier today when you guys were fighting in Ogrewatch, we took the keep and every tower so it’s not like we’re doing nothing.

There was no exchange of assets between TC and Mag because TC kept fighting Mag off

That’s allowed, right?

Why don’t you look at EB right now and see what the so called alliance is doing

200v200, one army loses, 125 die and 75 teleport to way point.

All 200 end up at the way point.

Alternative scenario: 200v200, one army loses, all 200 die

All 200 end up at the way point.

So with regards to large scale battles, your change does nothing to alter the outcome.

Lol I was on in the early afternoon when TC took the points lead. I posted about what happened earlier in the thread.

The new theory is that Mag thought that there was an alliance but TC ate Mag. But then Mag continued the alliance while TC continued to eat it. Or something.

We held SM fine for bout an hour with both teams attacking it, and we didn’t lose any other part of the map other than our supply camps during all that.

A 200v200v200 map definitely needs to be balanced around 1v1 encounters.

Well having just been in eternal bg for the last 2 hours, I gotta say EB doesn’t know wtf they are talking about. Lost SM because Mag took both our supply camps then cut off our reinforcements coming from keep, and then EB attacked N SM at the same time as Mag attacked S SM, resulting in a 3 way battle in the castle lord room. Then EB took Wildcreek while Mag simultaneously attacked Klovan, and we only saved Klovan by getting a treb up in our keep.

Also on TC we can barely communicate with each other, much less somehow coordinate with Mag.

Time – 12:52PM Pacific
EB – 27,839
TC – 26,707
Mag – 20,675

How is EB in solid last place?

Transfer to a less populated server

The queue data is out so now everyone can see the proof of why Dragonbrand is winning.

Most solutions are talking about populations and not time zones. They are not framed as “when it is x time” but rather as “when the population on the lowest populated server hits y level.” You can easily avoid the negative consequences of most proposed solutions by transferring to less populated servers.

What kills a game faster than anything is when a game stops being fun. This game stopped being fun when the sole determining factor for success turned out to be “how many Aussies are on your server.” It’s not players’ job to give Anet time to fix their game (especially when the last official post on this issue was that this situation is working as intended). It’s Anet’s job to give us a game that’s worth playing.

Spending more than 20s for 2 rams is overkill when the tower is outnumbered that badly.

At night (right now) pop of Dragonbrand is more than the combined pop of Maguuma and Tarnished Coast.

When the teams are even Dragonbrand gets pushed back to their original positions and then Maguuma and Tarnished Coast start trying to eat each other instead of wiping out Dragonbrand.

Then night comes and Dragonbrand takes everything again with their overwhelming numbers.

There are plenty of ways to design a game to support 24/7 WvW, where having 500 people awake at all times is not the most important factor in the game.

If Anet wants “has 500 people awake 24/7” to be the single most important factor in WvW, then they should say it so that the rest of us can quit now.

It’s funny that they wasted all that money on golems to take a practically undefended tower

If WvW is supposed to be about skill and tactics, then Anet will change stuff. If WvW is supposed to be about how many Aussies you beg to join your server, then Anet will keep things the same.

The thing that doesn’t make sense is that at peak time (when all 3 teams are populated), Maguuma and Tarnished Coast attack each other, instead of completely wiping out Dragonbrand.

This is a game, not a real life war. Begging Australians to play on your server is not “skill” and having to go to sleep/work is not a lack of skill and dedication.