Guild Wars 2

Just a call-out to the community regarding Commander Tags.

Anet has kindly provided us with an icon to identify Commanders in a variety of colors, and most recently a second style (Catmander).

Seeing a Commander/Catmander tag allows players to have an idea of where to go.

I suggest that we (the community) set aside specific Commander and/or Catmander tags to identify specific roles. We could add this to an existing thread (or create one) to help out players participating in WvW (especially those new to WvW).

For example, we could set aside a color associated with each borderland(BL): Red for Red BL squads, Blue for Blue BL squads, Green for Green BL squads, and Purple (or some other color determined by the community) for Eternal Battle Ground. If you see a Blue Commanders tag on the Red BL, players would know that that commander has come to help out on that BL, but will be returning to Blue. Maybe assign White for a constantly roaming squad. Leave the rest of the colors for ad hoc groups.

While it may be difficult to initially get people to agree to use the tags for specific uses, if the community works together on this, we could have a simple tool to help identify roles at a glance.

PoF is a standalone expansion pack.

Arenanet announced that HoT can be purchased as a combo along with PoF, at a reduced price.

You just need to pick which version of PoF you want, then during checkout you can add HoT (I believe the price for adding HoT was $20 [US]).

“TBH, I don’t see anything wrong with larger guilds being able to do more things? Just don’t make small guilds/group obsolete.”

My apologies, I too do not have a problem with large guilds. Just frustrated that small guilds frequently seem to be on the short end.

Before I hit my observations, here’s a little background on my play experience with GW2:

I have been playing GW2 since it’s release, actually started with Guild Wars. I am primarily a PvE player, but spend a bit of the time I have to play in PvP (PvP Rank108/League Skill Rating 1040 [Silver 2]) and WvW (WvW Rank 375). This just follows the old adage, “jack of all trades, master of none”.

When GW2 was initially released, it was advertised as “play as you want”. Having come from Guild Wars, I appreciated that they had attempted to move from classes having specific roles (e.g. War=Tank, Monk=Party Heal, etc.), and invited us to choose a character to play as we wanted and ENJOY the world they had worked so hard to create.

Having started with PvE, I came late to WvW (at first just to get Map Exploration achievement) and later to PvP.

Onto my Observations:

Server Combinations:
Being on a smaller server (IOJ), we constantly find our server allied with a different larger server. So once we get used to playing with a larger server, our reward to to be given to a different larger server. The problem with this is that it makes it difficult to establish a lasting relationship, since we have no control over who we will be allied with next, nor exactly when that change will be. Relationships work in two directions, so it is difficult for a larger server to know who they can depend on. All in all, it is hard on alliances.

Small guild vs. Large guild and WvW guilds vs. non WvW guilds:
I am primarily from a small guild, and am the most experienced WvW guildmember. So, when I go WvW, it is usually on my own and I tend to roam, but have joined squads and participated with ad hoc groups in accomplishing objectives. I try to call out situations as I see them, but apparently lack the WvW credibility to be taken seriously (yes, I know the difference between map chat and team chat, and try to use them appropriately). Frequently, I see someone who is regularly in map/team chat ask why no one called out something, which I HAD called out.

Regardless of environment, small guilds are at a disadvantage and GW2 seems to favor large guilds, which translates to WvW even more so along the line whether one’s guild is more WvW focused (advantage again to larger guilds, who statistically can have more WvW-focused members).

Playstyle/Participation:
Recent changes to WvW now punish players for their playstyles. Gone is the ability to Roam. Gone is the ability to participate outside of a zerg. Builds are also important, but when dealing with a zerg, builds don’t matter – ganked will always be ganked.

The biggest impact to this comes from changes in the decay timer and what counts as participation and how it is valued. In the grand scheme of things, one can argue that this is not true. One can still play the way one wants – which is true, however the perception is not.

Anet has introduced a system of measurement/feedback that informs players that all they have done doesn’t count, because their participation is either at ZERO due to decay or because they are below Tier 3 (also due to rapid decay) from not being in a zerg and/or on a winning server. So instead of feeling like one is helping, one feels like “what’s the use?” – and leaves.

So the current system of measurement/feedback discourages players from participating (or even try WvW for that matter) instead of encouraging them. And every five minutes in WvW we are reminded of how we are not participating.

By definition, this is a punishment, not a reward.

IF you have a guild hall.

My guild is too small and too casual to acquire one – an issue we have had since HoT released. Another instance of feeling punished for trying to play GW2 our own way – how silly of us to want to do that!

We had a guild hall in GW1, and enjoyed being able to meet and socialize there; but apparently GW2 requires either a larger, active guild and/or specialized builds. It has been recommended that we employ mercenaries (i.e. pay other players to help us) to acquire a guild hall, but that kind of defeats our sense of ownership/accomplishment.

Thanks for taking the time to read and comment on this topic!

I get it – the update wants to push Heart of Thorns, but why do I have to be punished to achieve this?

Level 80 booster – thanks to Scrolls of Experience and Tomes of Knowledge I used my two new character slots and boosted them to level 80 when HoT came out. All eleven of my characters are level 80 (2 boosted, 9 worked their way up from the bottom). I still have to use 3 slots for Tomes of Knowledge (2 at 250, 1 on its way up) and 3 slots for Experience scrolls (2 for boost to level 20 – that will not stack, 1 for boost to level 30) in my bank and now a slot with a level-80 boost in my inventory (do I get a 12th character slot or simply open it and be done with it?). While the thought is nice, the timing is awful – it should have come out when HoT was released – not six months after the fact. I am sure that this is useful for players new to the game who are eager to get right into the action before making sure they fully grasp what weapon combos and traits to use. After all, simply mashing the buttons gets the job done (sarcasm intended = si).

Dailies adjusted to push content in HoT. So, PvE dailies are adjusted to push players into HoT. Why did they not simply add a tab with HoT daily options like the tabs for PvP, WvW, and special events? I own HoT, and was disappointed to find that the new area caters to the concept of Jumping Puzzle the Game. But wait, before I can even attempt to play Jumping Puzzle the Game, I MUST gain levels of mastery in several areas to be able to move (gliding, mushrooms, etc.). Needless, to say I have not done a lot in HoT, but because I own it, the dailies now try to force me to go there. Also, has anyone else noticed that since the release of the update, there hasn’t been a gathering daily associated with the major cities? So much for using my home instance as a quick method of getting part of my dailies done. How foolish of me to purchase/acquire nodes via the Gem Store, Trading Post, and Living Story, much less to even think about utilizing them for that purpose (si). I understand dailies are optional, but they have been the main reason I try to play GW2 on a daily basis – I don’t always have a great amount of time to devote to the game, so being able to accomplish something relatively quickly was a nice way to keep my attention.

WvW – merging worlds is supposed to help. Now, I have to wait in line to get into WvW. Why would I waste my time doing that? I NEVER had to wait in line before – I guess my server was one of the lower tiers. Now when I do get in, it’s a zergfest – let’s just brute force this because that’s always enjoyable (si). Wait, there’s more – because my world is not the home world the only waypoints we get access to on the Borderlands maps are the three main ones – no access to the waypoints in the keeps [EDIT: I just played WvW and was able to use the waypoint at our controlled Center Keep, West Keep was in another world’s control – so no waypoint icon, East Keep was contested. So, apparently when I first tried after the reset there must have been server issues with keep waypoints, because I never saw any of the keeps’ waypoints icons during the entire time I spent there trying to get two WvW ranks for the daily. My apologies for jumping to the wrong conclusion]. Plus, the server is not constant, so I keep finding that I have lost contact with server and must restart and log back in, which puts me back on the PvE map and loses any distance I may have managed to cover from the SINGLE waypoint I have access to on the shared borderlands map. That will certainly encourage me to go WvW or even consider trying to get TWO ranks for a daily (si).

On the bright side, it seems they fixed the east and west keep waypoints so they are not contested unless some part of the keep is actually under attack. Adding the reward tracks to WvW also seems to be a good idea.

I have not ventured into PvP since the update. Changes in PvE and WvW have me concerned about what may have been done there.

Vayne – thanks for the correction. I must be recalling something when questions were asked about GW2 before its launch.

TyPin – excellent points. Good luck with your 3 man guild’s securing a guild hall!

Znake – When we checked out our options for Guild Missions, the PVP Conquest was the only one unlocked.

To All: Thanks for your replies! They give me hope that we may yet succeed.

I’ve been playing Guild Wars since Prophecy, having purchased and played all the expansions for the original game. In that game, acquiring a Guild Hall was a part of the base game. It became more refined as the game developed, and expansions brought more options for Guild Hall locations. We enjoyed our Guild Hall as both a starting and end point for our excursion out into Tyria. Certainly, we had to pay a price for services provided by our Guild Hall, but it was in a form of currency to which we all had access. Our Guild Hall was an excellent point to meet and greet, show off new acquisitions and styles, make plans for our activities, and review our most recent adventures. Be aware, we have a small guild in Guild Wars – mainly close friends.

When GW2 was announced, guild members were excited about the prospect of starting our adventures anew in the Tyria of tomorrow. Guild Halls were announced as being part of GW2, but were absent at launch – with a promise that they would be forthcoming.

Three years pass without Guild Halls being introduced into GW2. The expansion Heart of Thorns is announced and states that it will incorporate Guild Halls. Here lies the problem – why does it require ownership of an expansion (yes, I know the work around that the expansion includes the base game) to have a feature promised with the base game?

I understand the concept of having Guild Hall related items associated with the expansion (including locations), but why is it SOLELY in the HoT? After all, it was meant to be part of the base game.

Our GW2 guild, like our GW guild, is small – still mainly close friends trying to share some time together. It seems ArenaNet disapproves of small guilds (remember, actions speak louder than words) – Influence (easily accomplished through game play) replaced by Favor (requiring actively seeking out opportunities for Favor, with the advantage being given to larger guilds since difficulty is dependent on Guild size – requiring 3 for “Easy”, recommending 10 for “Medium”, and 15 for “Hard” missions).

This past weekend, myself and two guild-mates attempted to acquire our Guild Hall. 100 gold – not a problem. 150 Favor – problem number 1. First, could not find the NPC to trade Influence for Favor. After several searches, found a reference that NPC might not spawn if not enough Influence was available to trade for Favor and that the trade off might be 10,000 Influence to get 50 Favor. We had 4000-ish Influence – what’s the point of leaving that Influence with us when we cannot use it for anything? Also, such information in the wiki would have saved some time and effort.

It turned out that the only way that we could gain Favor (as a small guild with three people) was to do the “Easy” PvP Conquest. Okay, so we went to do that only to find out that Conquest maps are not available in PvP until Rank 10. So we were forced to do Stronghold until my two fellow guild-mates made Rank 10. Then when we did our first Conquest map, we scored more than was need for the “Easy” goal – 330, 240, and 175, but failed to be awarded the reward. One guild member offered that maybe we had to wait for the mission timer to expire, so we played anther Conquest map – not as big a score as the first time, but still well over the required combined score of 300. During that map our timer expired, and NO reward was given.

After further research, we discovered that in addition to being in the same party, we needed to create AND party as a Guild Team in order or get recognized for doing the activity as a Guild. Of course, by this time dailies had reset, so we had to participate in two Conquest maps to get our combined score (PvP is not something we enjoy doing).

Fortunately, all three of us had purchased HoT, so now we could secure a Guild Hall. Did I mention that there were only three of us? We are not die-hard/hard-core players.

SPOILER ALERT: If you have not tried to secure your Guild Hall yet, take some time and watch some of the videos from the Internet about this.

The bright side of trying to secure our Guild Hall – the number of Maws/Knightwraiths is scalable to the number of players in the instance. We had done some research and found this out.

Everything else about this endeavor falls into the dark side. First, the map is HUGE – not just in two dimensions, but in three – requiring that players have at least a minimal level of Mastery in Gliders. Second, you are on a timer of 3 minutes, 30 seconds to find a Maw’s location, defeat its two vinetenders (while contending with the rest of the mob), AND defeat the Maw. Third you need to do this FIVE times. Fourth, the Maws locations are random each time. Sixth – well let’s just note that we never got that far.

All told we spent over 10 frustrating and fruitless hours trying to do this – six getting the Favor, the rest attempting to secure “our” Guild Hall. We read about players claiming to have done this in small group (even a reference to someone solo-ing it). Our hats are off to them on their accomplishments!

Some have suggested that the LFG tool should be used. I understand that help is available, but why should a smaller guild need to have to use non-guild members to acquire a Guild Hall?

Now we find ourselves having to research how to optimize our builds so that we might have a chance at success at a future date. GW2 is a game, and should be played for the pleasure one can derive from their in-game experiences. References have been made to being able to enjoy some casual gaming, which is possible as long as you don’t want to acquire a Guild Hall.

My apologies on the longwinded-ness of this post, but this experience has made me question how ArenaNet values smaller, casual guilds. It seems that they simply suffer our existence.

FYI – I just logged in and the 2-week Golem banker was in the Promotions tab for 0 Gems.

Thanks for the freebie!

Now the question becomes, at what time does it reset? I figured that it would have reset with Dailies; but apparently not.

In my opinion having different reset times seems to be a confusing way to do things.

Previously, this was not a problem. I could make dye, equipment, outfit and wardrobe changes and see the full model of my characters in the Hero panel (except my Charr – which was cut off from left to right from the very beginning, which I figured to be a price to be paid for having a Charr character; also, I could rotate the view from left to right to see what was cut off).

Now, all my characters are cut off at the ankle or higher in the Hero Panel – even my Asuran character (you know, the race that enjoys a superior center of gravity [at least from the Asuran viewpoint, other races may find Asurans to be vertically challenged]).

I do not understand how NOT being able to see all of my character when applying dye, equipment, outfit, and wardrobe changes is helping me.

This feature did not seem to be broken until after an update “fixed” it.

Please, return to the previous view when people had a full view from top to bottom of their characters in the Hero panel.

“There is a different free item in the promotions tab of the BLTC every day this week, so don’t forget to get yours.)”

Thanks for the Dye Pack from yesterday; however I just logged in today and nothing free in the Promotions tab.

I shared the news with my guildmates, and now feel like I gave them bad news, as “every day” seems to mean only one day.

RubiBayer.8134:

Hi all, just a quick note on this: Behellagh is correct. Updates like this are just part of that team’s normal schedule.

Different teams do different things, so it’s not a matter of “We can work on the Black Lion Trading Company or we can work on something else, but not both”. The update today is just Evon Gnashblade’s team doing their thing. (Speaking of, did you catch the end of today’s update? There is a different free item in the promotions tab of the BLTC every day this week, so don’t forget to get yours.)

I’ll bet that it reset with the monthly reset; still VERY frustrating. It’s difficult to get anywhere since you need to be with a group to navigate the tower, and there are hardly any groups going into the tower.