Guild Wars 2

Yuffi.2430:

I think it would be a good idea to bring this discussion back to the key points of my original post:

• When one server (any server) is so dominant that other servers actively change their play so they won’t be in the same tier then this means less fun for everyone.
• There has been more than enough time and opportunity for players to voluntarily spread out and avoid a permanent dominance. This has not happened. If we as players won’t fix this then we need help from outside.

This thread was intended to open discussion of solutions that would help promote a more healthy competition in WvW. At present Blackgate has been the most dominant server in NA for a long time. They have nowhere to go, and face no new challenges.

All of the solutions suggested so far require outside intervention by Anet, and that’s really my point. We need help here. If we offer constructive suggestions then perhaps we can be part of that process, however it is worth remembering that server linking showed Anet are prepared to sacrifice a smaller number of players interest for the greater good of the majority, and we would do well to remember this.

What you’re talking about is dismantling a server because they win too much this is very different from linking servers due to low activity.

Furthermore I reject one of what appears to be your fundamental premises about why Blackgate wins every week. They don’t just win because of numbers and coverage. They win because they try harder than any other server to win. They are also extremely well organized compared to every other server in the game. These are good things that other servers should try to emulate. The thing is that no one cares enough to do the work necessary to make that happen. I’m no exception I really don’t have the willpower to do the work I know I’d have to do to try to beat Blackgate. But it’s ok because they’re fun to play against win or lose.

TL;DR: stop whining and get better or accept that Blackgate is the top server in WvW.

Swamurabi.7890:

It would show that Anet is interested in making WvW a competitive game mode with equal chances for success for each side instead of a casual game mode filled with disgruntled players who think WvW is a competitive game mode.

You and I obviously have a very different idea of what “competitive” means because to me competitive just means people compete not necessarily that everyone has the same chance of winning.

The reason why no one’s beating BG is because the game has become so casual that players just don’t care enough to do the things they’d have to do in order to have a chance of beating BG. Everyone just wants their participation and their tickets and an easy win. That’s garbage. BG deserves what they’ve got and if no one can take it from them then they should get to keep it.

Breaking up BG would set a disgusting precedent; if you win too much Anet will come in and dismantle whatever you’ve set up. That’s such a weak and pathetic way to beat BG or any dominant server like Blackgate I could never support it and I don’t think anyone else should either though I have no doubt that many will.

In my mind the primary issue is that almost all the big OCX guilds have quit the game and BG has the last two good ones. BG can be matched during EU, they can be matched during NA and they can even be matched during SEA though they have some very strong SEA guilds/pugs. What no one can match is their OCX and that’s the timezone where they’re resetting their opponent’s objectives while simultaneously upgrading their objectives. This then feeds into SEA where they’re able to play extremely aggressively all the way into EU where they can just tread water until OCX rolls around again. BG cannot be beaten until this problem has been neutralized.

There’s nothing wrong with excluding people, particularly obnoxious ones.

They don’t really need a justification. It’s their TS they can run it in the way that they see fit. You don’t really have to like it you just have to decide whether or not you’re willing to play by their rules. If not then don’t use their TS. Simple really.

OP, I think you’re asking the wrong question here.

To me the correct question is: “should you personally be playing online games with such a thin skin for criticism?”

How are you ever going to survive being a commander if a few mean whispers effect you this much?

Klipso.8653:

they did in fact advertise as a ‘no-grind game’ and a time-gate on tickets means you cant grind them. so they’re sticking true to their word.

I think they just meant that we wouldn’t have to kill the same mobs over and over to level up or obtain mats like some other games. The word “grind” has such a broad usage now people call any sort of long term goal a “grind.”

So in the first sense I hate grinding the same mobs over and over for levels and/or drops but I don’t mind a long term goal that I can work on for weeks or months to achieve so long as it doesn’t involve extremely repetitive behavior like “kill 50k moas to receive xyz” sort of thing. I don’t think it would be so bad to just leave the ticket gain open ended so that people could choose how much time they want to invest in the game mode and still be able to work towards their ultimate long term goal of legendary armor or the backpack or whatever.

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

I thought wvwers play for fun and not rewards? who cares about tickets right?

I played this game mode for 8 hours a day back when the best rewards available were soldier’s exotics so I can appreciate a decent reward system.

I like that the memories are a little scarce so there’s actually some strain from demand and I can make money selling them. They’re still farmable though unlike tickets.

Blades Of Fatalis.1279:

you can cap the tickets in less than 24 hours without being diamond or mithril. i rarely ever play after reset on fridays and im only platinum, yet even when i was gold i finished tickets for the week between logging in on saturday morning and going to bed at 11 that night. I know someone who finishes tickets early saturday every week and hes only gold rank as well. The key is not following a huge zerg around, just going to an outnumbered map. which most servers have access to for a large portion of most days whether theyll admit it or not, even when i was on bg they generally had one map outnumbered for most of the day except during na prime. The point is, its very easy to finish diamond in 1-2 days, or very early in the week if you play less than some of us do, but the rewards for repeating it are very… unrewarding, for the entire rest of the week. and honestly its quite saddening. Even if they wont give us more tickets for repeating it, which i honestly wish anet would do, i would hope that they would make looping the diamond chest at least nearly as profitable as going through the earlier reward chest in the track. looping diamond gives less gold per loop than any of the mid teir final chest which give mystic coins or the rare materials packet. a mystic coin or two per repeat wouldnt be asking for very much but it would reward people for continuing to play.

I like the mystic coin idea, I think it would be nice if they added marks for the first time through and then mystic coins for subsequent repeats as well as tickets.

Vegetation.6419:

I just hate being time gated, and not rewarded properly for the effort I put..

Agreed.

Baldrick.8967:

You don’t need repeatable. You just need to get out more. Finishing in two days means you are stuck in front of your computer gaming for waaay too long. Find something more constructive to do with at least some of your leisure time.

I like gaming. I definitely think there should be a repeatable.

Strider Pj.2193:

Tickets are fine.

It’s interesting to note you cap it in 2 days, meaning you are likely either mithril/diamond rank, playing on a server that is consistently outnumbered on at least one map, or playing an amazing number of hours each day.

Either way, you are playing the mode extensively, so the comments of ‘play the mode you’ll get there eventually’ are less influential in your case.

But it would be good if the mystic coins from the last diamond chest were repeatable for the last chest.

Yeah I’m mithril I dunno how many hours it takes but it’s usually about two days of play.

Thanks for increasing the ticket cap per week but it’s still ridiculously low and the pace of acquiring these is still ridiculously slow and I’m still usually capping tickets in two days.

Please for the love of god add some kind of repeatable diamond ticket chest so that the entire week can be rewarding instead of just the first two days.

Djamonja.6453:

When you have enough people to dominate every timezone, why would anyone on BG complain? There might be a couple of timezones where you (BG) have some competition numberswise, but when BG has everything tier 3, and the other servers have most of their stuff paper, they’ll never win a skirmish.

I’m sure your community is fantastic as long you have the numbers to steamroll every other server.

This is accurate in my experience.

Beating BG is pretty simple, just follow the Mag blueprint from a few months ago: You cannot give BG a single empty timezone to PPT in and you have to farm them constantly. This means stacking everyone who knows how to fight onto one server and making sure you have 24/7 coverage of people who just love to fight. BG’s militia is simultaneously BG’s greatest strength and their greatest weakness because they’re well trained but mentally soft. They don’t like to lose which is why they’re on BG so you have to make sure to mercilessly farm them for several weeks. Winning the PPT will be their only solace and once that starts to slip they’ll no longer have any reason to play. Eventually their pugs will fairweather because BG vets create a “coddle bads” sort of environment where everyone’s a special snowflake and no one ever knows what it’s like to actually lose. Once their fairweathers are gone you’ll just be left fighting KnT and they can’t carry an entire server’s PPT for long. Get ready to be bored though because one BG goes into “hibergate” mode they’re basically gone until they can either buy more guilds or until their competition gets bored and transfers off. The latter happened to Mag after several weeks of BG no showing and thus Mag could no longer keep the 24/7 pressure on BG and BG was able to farm empty timezones again. The real question is: does anyone left playing this game actually care enough to try to organize just to beat BG? I doubt it. There’s no extra reward for beating t1 and you can still finish your tickets in two days so what’s the point?

Eater of Peeps what class/build do you play?

OP, I’m gonna go out on a limb and say that the reason no one wants you in squad is because you’re a whinging terribad and no one likes to try to carry whinging terribads. Get better at the game and you’ll be able to get into any squad or guild you like based on merit, coms or not.

The fact that you think that your special pleading here has merit as an argument is evidence of a larger sickness I’ve observed in this game where scrubby players think they can come into the game and demand things from veterans like they’re owed something. No one owes you anything, not a spot in a squad or a spot in a guild. Nothing. You either earn it like the rest of us did or you uninstall the game and go play pokemon go or something.

I feel like the raiders who are complaining are really missing the point here. Fundamentally what they worked so hard for was a set of skins for their armor. The prestige value offered by these skins is not going to be diminished in any way as raids will still be the only means of acquiring the shiny transforming armor skins. The only thing WvW and PvP players will have is the functionality of legendary armor which, while a wonderful convenience, is presumably not what raiders spent so much time raiding to get. This game is Fashion Wars 2 after all. So as long as WvW players don’t get the same skins I don’t see why PvErs should take issue with this change.

Technically the guys who paid the Abjured to play for them are the ones who cheated by hiring ringers.

The Abjured guys enabled this cheating by agreeing to play for someone else under a false banner.

They also allegedly accepted real money to do this.

At best this is still incredibly poor sportsmanship and fundamentally displays a complete lack of respect for the game and the company running it. I only wish they’d taken a harsher stance sooner on this sort of thing.

GG Anet you finally did the right thing.

Zero tolerance policy is the right way to go. It sends the right message to anyone who even thinks of doing something they know they shouldn’t regardless of how well known they are or what they’ve won. Keep it up.

So what happens when you’ve gotten all the rewards in WvW? Do you stop playing again?

Dear Anet,

TY for letting me use my Proofs to skip Hero Points during Map Completion.

Can I ask that you also add an item that lets me trade Proofs to skip Hearts as well?

Please Anet, I can’t do anymore hearts, they’re soulcrushingly boring.

Thanks.

Would personally prefer to see them all banned.

This route seems too light a punishment to me.

One can only hope that the design model for WvW gets integrated into the other game modes so veterans get more than relatively new players in all areas of the game.

That being said I’d also like to see repeatable diamond tickets as well.

It would make more sense to me to reward long time players in all three game modes rather than give no advantage to anyone in any game mode.

One could argue that things like ATs favor long time pvpers because they’re going to be the ones winning every single one, particularly the monthlies.

For PvE maybe add several levels of challenge modes to all the instances that offer increasingly better rewards than regular runs for anyone able to complete them.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

I’m not an anet employee. I can’t tell you why we have time gates in this game.
I can take some guesses at it, but that’s all. It’s not my job to justify them.

edit: also, you just justified it yourself

I think I know why Anet likes time gates. Time gates artificially extend the life of game content. They know, for instance, that it will take at least 14 weeks for anyone to finish the Warbringer precursor. If they had repeatable ticket chests then someone could theoretically get it in far less time and the life of the content would be diminished.
Time gating makes sense from a game development perspective.

But that’s not the rationale you seem to be using here. You seem to be thinking that new players will be discouraged from participating if they know that there are people out there who will be getting things faster than them? But then you’ve already acknowledged that’s going to happen anyways. So what’s the line of reasoning here?

Ok let’s for a second grant that my goal is to vastly outpace everyone, what is wrong with that?

As you’ve already pointed out I’m already going to do it eventually, how do you logically justify this seemingly nebulous sense of exactly how long that process should take?

What does it matter if it takes me six months or six weeks?

Artemis Thuras.8795:

That isn’t logic, that’s just greed. “I want more money in case something comes along that I want”. You simply don’t like it because you, with your huge free time investment can’t vastly outpace everyone else.

First of all, I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with being greedy. But that’s not what this is about for me. For me this is more about input/output. You put the time in you deserve something better than people who don’t. Equalizing output regardless of input is never a good idea.

But if I were greedy I’d want to keep things exactly as they are because as it stands there is no foreseeable future path for anyone to ever catch up to me unless they started when I did. In this way I stay ahead as long as I continue to show up and get my diamond chest, which is easy for me to do. Before you mention the finite number of things again, might I remind you that at present we’re talking like two years to finish everything. Two years. And they can always add more stuff.

I’m going to get my shinies unless I’m too sick to play or I quit. The only thing repeatable tickets would do is allow me to get them faster. But it would also give anyone who didn’t start right at patch a path to try to catch up with me. To me this is clearly the superior option as it allows for disproportionate output for disproportionate input.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Israel.7056:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Israel.7056:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

In your opinion. Which is already there with bonus pips via rank as it is.

Reading is hard. See bold part. Also see preceding sentence for additional context.

Yes in my opinion I think old guard should have all the best stuff because they’ve put the time in. In most games the best stuff would also be superior stats and the new players would get bodied for months until they caught up gear wise. In this game it’s just aesthetics.

With the current system there’s actually more of an uphill struggle for the bunnies to get their carrots than there would be with uncapped repeatables. If a bunny hops into WvW six months from now then they’re exactly six months behind everyone who’s been getting their diamond chest every week since the patch. They can never catch up unless the people ahead of them stop playing the game and let them catch up. If anything this current system will disincentivize future bunnies from trying WvW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6g33ji/here_is_the_time_you_need_to_get_wvw_skirmish/

you’ve still missed the point I originally made. Most people aren’t going to finish the 6th chest each week in the first place.

Also, the bonus pips for rank already provides the old guard with more value for their one hour tomorrow than it does for new players. That bonus is already plenty high enough.

not to mention the number of rewards to spend tickets on is finite, so “catching up” is irreverent in the longest term.

But I will. All my friends will. We will finish diamond every single week we play this game unless we are either too ill to log on or quit the game. Many of us do have the time and the will to do so. Already there are people two weeks behind in terms of tickets. In a few weeks I’ll have my first t2 set and in some amount of time after that I’ll have my first set of t3. Someone entering the game at that point will be so far behind me that they’ll never be able to catch up. This does not encourage new bunnies to try the game mode in the future. Basically we’ll get whoever we get now and maybe keep them. Get in now or forever be behind. That’s not good for bunnies they don’t like that sort of thing.

Again.. Reading is hard. I see why you have so much free time to play wvw.

I don’t think that that rank bonus is high enough I’d personally give higher ranks even more. But this is an argument of taste neither of us can logically argue a preference.

The word btw is “irrelevant” and you added that part in an edit.

This is not a well thought out objection though as there are an infinite number of potential carrots that they could add in the future. The sense of a finite number of things to get is always illusory in an MMORPG.

This is how Anet can create a “gear treadmill” without actually adding statistical benefits. They will wait until a certain percentage of the population has finished t3 and Warbringer and then they’ll just add more time gated stuff. Then we’ll get a new wave of bunnies and the cycle continues ad infinitum.

Reading may be hard but it appears logic is even harder.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

Israel.7056:

Artemis Thuras.8795:

In your opinion. Which is already there with bonus pips via rank as it is.

Reading is hard. See bold part. Also see preceding sentence for additional context.

Yes in my opinion I think old guard should have all the best stuff because they’ve put the time in. In most games the best stuff would also be superior stats and the new players would get bodied for months until they caught up gear wise. In this game it’s just aesthetics.

With the current system there’s actually more of an uphill struggle for the bunnies to get their carrots than there would be with uncapped repeatables. If a bunny hops into WvW six months from now then they’re exactly six months behind everyone who’s been getting their diamond chest every week since the patch. They can never catch up unless the people ahead of them stop playing the game and let them catch up. If anything this current system will disincentivize future bunnies from trying WvW.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/6g33ji/here_is_the_time_you_need_to_get_wvw_skirmish/

you’ve still missed the point I originally made. Most people aren’t going to finish the 6th chest each week in the first place.

But I will. All my friends will. We will finish diamond every single week we play this game unless we are either too ill to log on or quit the game. Many of us do have the time and the will to do so. Already there are people two weeks behind in terms of tickets. In a few weeks I’ll have my first t2 set and in some amount of time after that I’ll have my first set of t3. Someone entering the game at that point will be so far behind me that they’ll never be able to catch up. This does not encourage new bunnies to try the game mode in the future. Basically we’ll get whoever we get now and maybe keep them. Get in now or forever be behind. That’s not good for bunnies they don’t like that sort of thing.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

In your opinion. Which is already there with bonus pips via rank as it is.

Reading is hard. See bold part. Also see preceding sentence for additional context.

Yes in my opinion I think old guard should have all the best stuff because they’ve put the time in. In most games the best stuff would also be superior stats and the new players would get bodied for months until they caught up gear wise. In this game it’s just aesthetics.

With the current system there’s actually more of an uphill struggle for the bunnies to get their carrots than there would be with uncapped repeatables. If a bunny hops into WvW six months from now then they’re exactly six months behind everyone who’s been getting their diamond chest every week since the patch. They can never catch up unless the people ahead of them stop playing the game and let them catch up. If anything this current system will disincentivize future bunnies from trying WvW.

Well I like your attitude keep at it.

If you’re playing healing druid then you’re competing with ele for the same job. In most cases ele is more effective because the healing is more consistent and ele pumps out auras.

You can try to plead your case to the random pug pins or guild leaders or whatever but I think most of them are going to tell you the same thing: play ele.

Artemis Thuras.8795:

you are already rewarded more than most will have the time to earn, simply be reaching the end of the non repeatable diamond chest. Stop QQing for greater class divides between old guard and new wvwers. You’ll just neuter any incentives to get into the game mode with too big of an uphill struggle to get reasonable rewards for time investment. WvW is part of a video game, stop expecting people to treat it like a full time job in the military.

There are supposed to be divides between old guard and new players and in most games it’s the quality of the gear not just how shiny it is.

There is no uphill struggle to get into the game mode other than learning how to actually play it.

I don’t understand why this has to be such a huge issue. Just get on something the commander wants or do your own thing. You’re not entitled to a spot in a squad, no one is. Commanders have the right to kick whomever they want for whatever reason. If they don’t want you on ranger of thief, get off your ranger of thief or just make your own squad.

I understand why commanders would kick people who won’t get in TS. They should just go find a commander who doesn’t care.

The problem as it occurs to me is that this new system does not incentivize winning but rather just participating. As long as people can get their rewards by doing nothing why would they do something? I recognize there’s no perfect solution to this problem but I guess the question is: what problem do we want to have? People AFKing for participation or the winning servers getting their pips and the losing servers struggling to get anything? I think I’d prefer the latter because it would at least incentivize winning.

The threshold is arguable but I’d say it has to be at least 4k. I’ve been playing since launch but I’ve taken extended breaks from the game and I’ve still gotten to 4.6.

I agree about the rank requirements I just think they should be a lot higher. 2k for t3 seems way too low to me. 4k at least.

Meta wise I dunno I’ve been playing it so long I don’t have much of a problem but I can imagine if you go from PvP to WvW it might be kinda startling.

You see Arenanet? These casuals will never get the armor if you put it to 6k. Never.

And that’s how it should be.

Like full disclosure I’m rank 4.6k so I wouldn’t even be able to get t3 unless I played a lot more.

miguelsil.6324:

Are you insane? Everyone s conplaining about wvw lag ,queues and godawfull time to get the rewards in a game that has no new content that justifies 2more years of this.

The queues and lag can be fixed by removing links and potentially adding more servers though there’s humor in this obvious solution evading people. We haven’t had the problem of the game being too populated for a long long time.

Uncapping the tickets would leave the time required open ended. It could take 2 years or conceivably a month or two depending on how much people play.

Trice.4598:

Don’t forget we want new players to join the game mode, not set unrealistic goals that would discourage them.

They’d still be able to get t2 at 2k. They might never get t3 but that’s the point.

The threshold for t3 has to be high enough to shut out a certain percentage of the population from ever obtaining the gear. In this way the gear gains prestige points so to speak.

If everyone can get it no one cares.

This is my open letter to you Arenanet developers,

So I have to say I’m impressed with this patch. I think it’s a huge step in the right direction and I thank the Arenanet devs for finally trying to do something interesting with WvW. That being said, this current iteration contains what I feel to be half measures towards making WvW truly compelling as a game mode and I would like to propose the changes that I would make:

1.) Uncap ticket gain, increase ticket costs of t2/t3 items.

2.) Raise rank requirements for t2 set to the 1500-2k mark that’s been set for t3.

3.) Raise rank requirements for t3 to 3.5k-6k territory, turn t3 items into precursors for WvW legendary set.

4.) Add collections quest for turning t3 precursors into legendary gear a la envoy set.

5.) Add t3 weapons, make them precursors for WvW legendaries, give them their own collections quests as well.

The whole idea here is to create a grind that incentivizes investment in the game mode as a primary game mode and reward those who have already invested time into getting high ranks by making them eligible for something really awesome. It would also prevent a lot of people from ever obtaining the gear which would finally give these items something that almost no other item in the game confers: PRESTIGE.

Arenanet, if you’ve ever wondered why people don’t care about the ascension or the ascended pvp gear it’s because everyone can get it. If everyone can get it then no one is impressed when someone has it and that defeats the entire concept of prestige items that Guild Wars 2 is based on.

Time gating alone doesn’t confer prestige, everyone has time until they don’t. You need to make the set truly difficult to get, make it a real open ended grind that is only limited by player investment. You need to make the items truly promise prestige for anyone able to obtain them. You need to make sure that a lot of people CAN NEVER GET IT. Do this and you will see a continued resurgence of enthusiasm for WvW that isn’t just people logging on for a day or two to finish their skirmish track once and then going back to PvP or PvE.

Ty Anet devs, you’re finally on the right track, you just need the conviction to really do something amazing. Hopefully this letter helps that process along.

There’s no real reason for people to join guilds anymore imo. They could work really hard with some guild trying to make the latest and greatest variation of the melee ball. Or they could just transfer to Maguuma and have a great time pugging.

Cerby.1069:

Israel.7056:

Sounds good to me also get rid of dire/trailblazer/minstrel etc

I kno right. Let’s just have 4 playable builds instead: range/melee/caster/support. We’ll remove conditions altogether….too confusing for many players. SIMPLIFY MAAAAAAN.

Infact why even have 4 battleground to begin with? Why even allow people to have more players on one team vs another. Let’ just give it the snowball winter’sday minigame treatment. That way everyone can be unhappy, and the drop in and out noobs can have 10-25 minute sessions where they don’t automatically lose for lack of skill.

I mean all the real players have given up on making WvsW post due to censoring and lack of listening from anet. So now the intended audience, the mindless pve zerglings, are flooding the forums with their “make wvsw zerg friendly again……again.” mentality. God forbid a solo player can take on more than 2 others and win. Let’s just whine till the things we refuse to learn go away. The people who learned everything and realized how stupidly one sided it is and how to fix it……those people don’t complain anymore cause they know ALRDY KNOW how pointless rationale thought is in this game.
sO mR op. WHY DON’T YOU GO DO THE PROPER RESEARCH AND LEARN EVERYTHING BEFORE YOU COMPLAIN! Then you can see how misguided your posting is, and you can join the elite “I don’t care anymore” segment of wvsw.

What a delightful straw man rant.

Sounds good to me also get rid of dire/trailblazer/minstrel etc

Hexalot.8194:

“you’re enabling weak minded players”

LOL… way to win over your argument with the Devs. They probably look at that statement and think. “Oh so you’re THAT kind of player. Moving on….”

Yeah one of those 4yr veterans who actually still kinda enjoys the game and takes it semi-seriously. Crazy right?

Deli.1302:

Dunno why you took the time to type this. I already told you it is completely irrelevant to the topic at hand.

You’re wrong. It’s completely relevant because it shows the actual effect of the current policy and how easy it is to work around and how it really just ends up negatively effecting newer players anyways.

Deli.1302:

We know. And anet has already explained why they won’t do it. Want your squad markers, put up a tag. Don’t want randoms, don’t use a tag. Simple.

Well if Anet’s goals are what they say they are then they really need to reconsider this decision because all they’re doing is annoying veteran players, the same people they seem to want to motivate to be more inclusive. It doesn’t work like that. They give us what we want and maybe some of us actually decide to help newer players learn the game.

We should be able to have private tags. They’re just shooting themselves in the foot yet again on this because of their sentimentality towards the “casual player.”