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WvW and the Heart of Thorns Release

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

Hello All,

Launching a game is an enormous undertaking and our teams need time to address any issues that come up. Therefore after launch we must move WvW reset to Saturday. We will keep resets on Saturday to address issues and once we are in the clear we will evaluate the best time for WvW reset both for us as a company as well as for our players.

Since it is clear that we cannot pick a time that will work for everyone, we will be maintaining our original plan of shifting reset by 24 hours, to Saturday evening. That time was based on data for when prime time occurs in each region.

Thank you,
John

WvW and the Heart of Thorns Release

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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Hello All,

There are a couple of reasons for the change to reset time. One is for the overall quality of the game. The last few years we have been careful to not disrupt the WvW reset time but this has at times made it difficult for our team to address issues during reset day. This change will give our team an extra day of the week that they can use to respond to issues that may occur with WvW or any other area of the game if it is necessary. In the early days we wanted reset to be during a weekday to ensure we had people available to monitor the game at reset time, but at this point we have seen the ongoing stability of World vs. World and resetting on a weekday is no longer necessary.

Another reason is the emergent gameplay that has come from reset. It has become one of the most exciting times for WvW and we would really love for more players to have the opportunity to experience it. We have many more players logging in on Saturday than on Friday which means with this change many more people will be available to experience the rush of claiming objectives for their world during reset.

However, given the concerns posted here we will be moving the Saturday reset to earlier in the day to give most players the majority of the day to enjoy the start of the new match. Immediately after launch the new time will be 11am PDT / 2pm EDT (6 pm UTC) for NA and 11am BST / 12 pm CEST (10 am UTC) for EU. Keep in mind that the following week with the end of Daylight Savings Time / Summer Time the reset times will be pushed even earlier to 10am PST/ 1pm EST and 10am GMT / 11am CET.

Thank you for your feedback. We realize that no time we pick is going to work for everyone but this change is going to benefit even more players overall while at the same time giving us a little more breathing room to improve the quality of the game during the week.

Thanks,
John

Patch added queue preferences (update: gone)

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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This is a work in progress and the UI for it made it out on accident today. We have corrected that.

Since we spilled the beans on it, I’m happy to let you know that this feature has come about from the feedback we have received from our community during our Stronghold Betas. We hope to be showing it for real in the next test we do for Stronghold.

John

Test Season Feedback: The Good, The Bad etc.

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John Corpening.9847

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Great feedback! Thanks for putting this together.

I literally cannot play right now.

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John Corpening.9847

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Thanks for this thread guys. Just chatted with the programmers and getting specific information like this is helpful to them in tracking down the issue.

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

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Hello Again,

I wanted to give you an update on some more changes that are coming out as part of the feedback we got during the Adopt-A-Dev program.

Siege disablers are getting their radius reduced from 450 units to 300 units. The skill recharge on siege disablers are going up from 5 seconds to 45 seconds and the duration that siege is disabled is going down from 45 seconds to 35 seconds.

The first change will make it harder for siege disablers to take out siege that is sufficiently spread out. The second two will guarantee a window that attackers can use siege if there is only one person disabling siege at an objective.

These changes are going out with next week’s build. Thanks again for all of your feedback!

John

New Leaderboard Match-Making System

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John Corpening.9847

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Justin O’Dell is driven by making match making better and improving how the leader board works. Check out his blog tomorrow for all the details

Oki doki new game mode - dev confirmed false

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John Corpening.9847

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Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey Guys,

Just a quick update on some changes I shared with you in a previous post. With the build on Tuesday build site interacts will have text better describing them, the arrow cart and ballista build sites will now have a smaller footprint and the siege disabler has a more visible projectile giving you a better chance to block it. We look forward to seeing how these changes improve the WvW experience.

Happy Halloween!

John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

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Hello All,

There was quite a lot of discussion around the proposal of removing white swords from objectives in WvW. We understand there are concerns about how this change might work in practice or how player behavior may change as a result of it. We felt like the best way to understand fully the impact, and give players a chance to see for themselves how it directly changes the WvW experience is to let people try it and see what they think.

We have decided to run a special multi-week event in WvW where we’ll be changing some of the “rules” of WvW for a limited time. This event will feature two major rule changes while it is running: we are planning to remove white swords from objectives, and add points per kill in WvW to the over-all score for the duration of this event. We are currently targeting December for this event but will keep you posted when we have dates nailed down for certain. If this type of event is successful, we may look to do more events like this in the future where for short periods of time the rules of WvW are changed to different rules, scoring and scenarios to help both keep the game fresh, as well as to change up the experience and try new fun things for WvW.

We look forward to your feedback once the event begins, both on the temporary event only changes, as well as the concept of these special events in WvW.

Thanks,
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

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Hello!

The adopted devs got together again earlier this week for a lunch meeting to bring feedback from their guilds and discuss their observations. The team has already begun addressing some of the feedback the devs brought back as well as some of the issues that you have brought up on our forums.

Coming with the build next week, build sites for rams will be trimmed down in size. This is to reduce the visual clutter with build sites, since rams are often built very close to each other, and make it easier to tell a ram apart from other siege when you are building it. There are also changes coming later to label the build interacts with what you are building. So you should see “Build Ram”, “Build Catapult” etc. instead of just “Build”. These were suggestions taken from the discussion on siege trolls.

We are going to make a balance pass on Siege Disablers. This was one of the most common pieces of feedback both from our adopted devs and from the forums. We really believe that Siege Disablers were a great addition to the game. They gave defenders a better chance of holding off attackers, they created new strategies and they created some fun fights outside of objectives by buying some time. But we agree that they need to be adjusted. We will be looking at things like radius, cooldowns and duration of the effect.

There were a handful of other tweaks brought up in our discussions that we are planning. These include reducing the number of people who can rally off of a kill. Removing white swords from objectives to give defenders a stronger role in alerting their team as well as giving attackers more of a chance to get through having their siege disabled. We are also going to test out awarding points per kill. PPK was part of the scoring discussion and something we wanted to try. We will be looking for your feedback on that change after it goes live.

Some bigger issues are factoring into longer term work. For example, we have been discussing what we have learned from our conversations on the forums as well as the feedback our adopted devs brought back from their guilds on the topics of population imbalance and scoring. These are bigger changes and are factoring into longer term solutions that the team is working on.

The team has a lot to chew on but some areas that I’d like to discuss more with the community in the near future are rewards and supporting some vital roles like scouting and defending. I’ll kick off some discussions on these areas in the next couple of weeks.

I was happy to hear from the devs that they would all love to do this again and felt it was a very fun and valuable way to spend their free time. Many of them have made some great new friends and they all felt like this was a great way to really connect with the community by playing side by side with new faces and getting new perspectives on Guild Wars 2.

Thanks again to everyone who signed up for or hosted a dev! We had a great time!

John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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Hello Again,

With the WvW tournament drawing to a close, I’d like to thank everyone who participated in the Adopt-A-Dev program both as hosts and to the devs who volunteered their free time to make new friends and play with new guilds and worlds.

We collected a lot of valuable feedback. Some of that has motivated the discussions I’ve been having with you on the forums. I’ll be having another group discussion with our dev volunteers next week. Once that is complete I’ll get some notes posted on this thread.

It’s been both insightful and a ton of fun for me. My new guild DmD is full of dedicated WvW players, interesting characters, crazy stories, exotic beverages, fun-loving nuts, a pretty amazing guild leader (or three) and a guy who talks like a duck. I couldn’t have asked for a better group to get another perspective on WvW and GW2 with. Thanks for having me guys!

John

Scoring Discussion

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey Guys,

So from reading through the posts by far the most common proposal is to create some sort of scoring periods. There are multiple different approaches that have been presented but it’s clear that winning scoring periods and tallying up those wins to determine who wins the match is generally accepted as a good way to improve scoring.

Several people suggested keeping the map state across scoring periods so that the investment you make in upgrades and effort you take in conquering objectives but the scores will have far less of a chance of running away when the victory points come from the scoring period not the PPT.

A few other suggestions that came up a bunch were additional scoring opportunities, special goals for servers that are behind, increasing the importance of the outnumbered buff and points per kill. Points per kill had quite a lot of discussion around it.

The video from TeamBattleAxe was also brought up by several people. If you didn’t get a chance to see it, it has some great suggestions about how to create teams that share scores across their matches.

There were a bunch of other really interesting ideas that can’t easily be summarized so if you get a chance you should peruse this thread. It’s full of good suggestions.

A couple of people have said that this discussion is falling into a pattern of general consensus. It certainly does seem like a few good ideas have emerged from this. I’ll keep my eye on the thread a little longer in case anything else comes up.

Thanks for taking the time to engage in this discussion!

John

Farewell Chap

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey All,

I wanted to ask you to join me in saying farewell and wishing Jonathan “Chap” Sharp the best in his new adventures. After eight years of life in Tyria, Chap has decided it is time to pursue some new dreams with his many talents. Chap has been a driving force on our team, in the community and part of our family at ArenaNet and he will be sorely missed. I have worked side by side with Chap for many years now. He is like a brother to me and as much as I know how deeply he cares about GW2 I’m happy that he is taking this opportunity to take on new challenges.

Hugh Norfolk will be filling Chap’s role on the PvP team. Many of you already know Hugh from his involvement in the community, on Ready Up and in the game. As we say good bye to Chap, please also join me in extending a warm welcome to Hugh. He’s got some big shoes to fill but Hugh is full of fire and ready to roll so I know he is up for it.

Good Luck Chap!
John

Scoring Discussion

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John Corpening.9847

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Ha! Phys beat me to it and made a post while I was typing

Scoring Discussion

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John Corpening.9847

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Great start guys! There are a lot of good ideas already.

Here is a high level summary (not a proposal) of what is currently being discussed:

  • Some sort of point scaling based on population or prime time hours
  • Break the day into scoring periods. The match is decided on the scoring periods not PPT.
  • Consider score for taking objectives either in conjunction with or in place of PPT
  • Add score for kills
  • Boost the outnumbered buff (in a number of ways)
  • Consider adjusting score based on placement
  • Adjust score of objectives based on upgrade level
  • Create special objectives/achievements that occur when you are behind that give you a special reward for completing them

Someone had a question on this one from Phys that I wanted to answer:

  • Break the day into scoring periods. The match is decided on the scoring periods not PPT.

Doing this would greatly buffer runaway score. If it is off hours and one world can cap most everything because of greater coverage they still just win the scoring period rather than rack up triple score all night. It means off hours play time still has value without creating blow outs. In conjunction with some of the other suggestions it has potential. I thought that was a pretty interesting suggestion from Phys.

Lots of great ideas guys, thanks for getting this rolling!

John

Scoring Discussion

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey Guys,
I’d like to kick of a discussion on scoring in WvW.

Here is a summary of what you guys have brought up in our previous discussions:

  • 24 hour coverage
    • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?
  • Snowballing
    • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
  • Stagnation
    • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
    • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

These are all very much related and solutions are not just in one area but I’d like to keep this discussion focused on scoring. Also, if there is another aspect to scoring that we should consider that I’m missing please feel free to bring it up as we kick off this discussion.

We’ve had some great discussions so far and I want to thank you for keeping it constructive and friendly. I’m looking forward to what you guys bring to this discussion too.

Thanks,
John

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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Hey guys,

It’s been an incredibly busy week for me and I’m not fully caught up yet but I am noticing patterns in the posts that I have been able to read. A lot of people are also saying that they can’t keep up so I think it is a good time to close this discussion out.

I think we have some good general ideas for me to take back to the team and discuss their feasibility. Thanks again for another constructive discussion. This has been incredibly informative!

I agree with those of you who have pointed out that population imbalance is just one aspect that needs to be adjusted and that the overall solution isn’t just in one area. So I’d like to kick off a discussion on scoring next week.

See you then!

John

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey Guys,

Just a quick note to let you know I’m not dead I took a day off to celebrate a birthday for a special little dude in my life. Now I’m back and waaaaaay behind!

I’ve had some thoughts based on some feedback you guys have given on the proposal I posted. I’m going to try to get caught up on this thread then see how we can adjust things to cover some concerns.

John

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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John Corpening.9847

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Yowzers that was a lot to read! You guys have been busy. I dropped that line that I needed to get caught up and then the size of this thread more than doubled! I’ll apologize in advance for not calling out who some of the ideas in this post are coming from but there were too many posts to keep it all straight.

There are a number of great ideas circulating attacking the problem from different angles and with varying levels of magnitude of change. One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

From reading through this thread I think we can agree on the following goals:

  • We want a thriving and vibrant WvW community in each world. That is to say, we want people to play with and against.
  • We want to continue to play with our friends and the communities that we have developed already.

There were a number of other goals but I think those are the two big ones. I’m going to combine a number of your ideas to attempt to address this problem with a proposal and see what you guys think.

First off, as many of you have pointed out, it will be impossible to create equal populations without moving people around. As several others have pointed out we don’t want to break apart communities. This has been a really tough one for all of us. I know all about server pride. At the risk of having people scream “MATCH THREAD” and red card me off the forums, I’ll let you know that I have been known to pipe up in meetings with “SBI TILL I DIE” because it’s where I play with my friends and family members. So I’ve had the same reaction that many of you had when merges have come up in discussion. Through Adopt-A-Dev I’m now repping the DR crowd and I’ve learned that these guys on DR don’t all have three heads and eat puppies (unless they are really cool) and while it did feel a little dirty to fight SBI last week it was still great fun.

Anyway, this discussion made it clear it is who you play with that’s important and a number of ideas in this thread preserved that without restricting the number of people who could play at a time. These have had a number of names but for the sake of discussion I’ll go with Alliances. The idea that I liked for Alliances is that it is a group of guilds and people that are guaranteed to stay together no matter how things are rearranged. There would probably need to be a size limit on Alliances and several of you pointed out that whatever limits are put in place it should be based on WvW participation.

A few of you noted that things will always be changing over time so the system would have to be dynamic. There are a couple of ways of addressing this discussed in this thread. An idea that would be a small incremental change to how the game plays would be to create a new set of worlds then fill them up with our Alliances of guilds and players that are guaranteed to always play together. This would happen at regular intervals, the intervals were all over the map as were the size of the worlds in this thread so I will propose this cadence:

  • Off Season
  • Tournament
  • Restructure
    • Create new Worlds
    • Redistribute Alliances

This cycle would take a few months given the cadence of tournaments we have had which is about the time that we would want to rebalance populations. After the restructure, players could transfer like they do now if they so desired.

Alliances would provide continuity for the community. I see the server pride of today becoming Alliance pride because of that continuity. But I also see the off season as a time for the newly formed world of alliances to develop their own identity as they head into the tournament. Keep in mind that if an alliance was big enough to fill a world that mapping becomes one to one. If that became the case maybe the world could just take the alliance name. It’s interesting because that time together gives everyone involved a chance to see if they all want to ally together to truly solidify into a world. If not, you are still playing with your community for the glory of your alliance in the next restructure. But your community would be playing with other communities new to you and maybe this new bunch is a better fit for you and an opportunity for your alliance to grow.

The pieces for this idea comes from a number of posts in this thread. There are also some thoughts in there from some discussions I’ve had with several guild leaders. I just glommed it all together into something that I think could be a workable solution. I do want to emphasize though that this is all brainstorming

Let me know your thoughts and thanks again for all the great and constructive discussion!

John

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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John Corpening.9847

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Hey Guys,

Normally I like to summarize the discussion as it is happening but today I’ve been away from my desk for most of the day and just popped on to see that we are at 6 pages! YIKES! It’s going to take me a bit to catch up because I read every post in a thread that I’m engaging in. I’m making this post to let you know that I am reading this thread but I’d like to absorb everything everyone is discussing before I make my next response.

Thanks,
John

[Suggestion] Rid all worlds

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John Corpening.9847

Associate Game Director

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Ok, I probably should have locked this thread so I’ll do it now. Let’s take this discussion here so we can keep this in one place:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Solution-to-fix-the-population-imbalance/first#post4437596

Thanks,
John

[Suggestion] Rid all worlds

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John Corpening.9847

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You and I were writing at the same time. This sounds like an idea to take over to the population imbalance thread I just posted on.

Solution to fix the population imbalance

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John Corpening.9847

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You guys beat me to it. After last week’s positive discussion on siege trolls I wanted to bring up the topic of population imbalance and ideas that you have on it.

There are a couple of ideas already going in this thread:

  • population caps
  • merge servers
  • Battle Groups

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

For Battle Groups, Asglarek mentioned more details are on the way. I’d love to hear more.

I’m approaching this as a brainstorm. The topic is “Approaches to correcting overall population imbalance”. I know there is a related topic of 24 hour coverage but I’d like to keep that as a separate conversation for now.

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

Adopt A Dev

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John Corpening.9847

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I have asked our devs not to show their tags while participating in Adopt-A-Dev. The tag can become a big distraction and I really want them to be treated as regular players.

That said, we are not enforcing that request, it’s just my preference that they refrain from doing it.

Siege Troll Discussion

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John Corpening.9847

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Thanks for the continued discussion. At this point, I’d like to shelve the exhaustion idea. I completely agree with many of you that it has hit a point of being overly complicated especially for the size of the problem. Also I feel it will only address a few tactics that trolls employ. We did get a lot of great discussion and spin off ideas out of it though.

Zui had an interesting thought that the system could detect a pattern of behavior rather than specific instances of bad behavior but others brought up real fears that no system should be given to players on any scale that that has the potential of being abused or produce false positives.

Pandaman had some interesting ideas about siege slowly returning to their original orientations. I think maybe it could return to the orientation that the owner last set it at. Also some good thoughts about interact precedence.

A couple of ideas that seem to have consensus are some sort of labeling or filtering of siege interacts and reducing the footprint of build sites.

Dismantling siege seemed to have a lot of support but there didn’t seem to be good agreement on who can dismantle whose siege and a lot of defensive players brought up concerns about the defenses they build on objectives and fears that it might get dismantled by others who didn’t see the defensive potential of it.

I’m going to ponder what we discussed here and chat with the team about it. Thanks again for a great discussion!

John

Siege Troll Discussion

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Thanks Tekyn! I will say that this thread has had sooo much participation that it has taken a lot of effort to keep up with it but most people have been really constructive, open and honest so it’s been fun!

I also meant to say in my last post that I’ve been riffing on the exhaustion idea because a lot of people have said that they think it will work or that it’s close to working. I’m not trying to push it as the solution just trying to see where it could go. I’m also taking note of the more straight forward good ideas that don’t really need a lot of discussion to hammer out. It’s also led to a bunch of spin off ideas that I think stand on their own and are great so I’m hoping to hit jump until the mystery box is out of coins

Siege Troll Discussion

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A general note, when we are kicking around ideas like this we try not to get bogged down with numbers. 5 minutes, stacks, players etc. can easily be 1, 10, 100. That’s all balance and tuning as Tekyn pointed out. The question is if there is any number that would make it work. If there isn’t we can eliminate that idea.

What I’m really looking for is if the concept works and if there are other ideas, thoughts or perspectives that can spark or refine other ideas and that has certainly happened a few times already in this discussion. Many times you follow a path of thinking that then spawns a completely different idea that works out great.

Thanks a ton for your continued input!

Siege Troll Discussion

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What if the players could vote to add exhaustion onto another player? Similar to the report function, but community monitored. Players could call out a troll in map chat, confirm the troll, and add exhaustion points to that account. As a result that individual can no longer lay down siege, or pick up and spend supply. Perhaps increase the exhaustion based on number of players reporting. If an account has frequent reports, an automatic email could generate to the devs and they can take whatever appropriate action. This way, legitimate players don’t get penalized and only the trolls get affected. It also allows the community to police itself.

I was about to toss out the exhaustion idea altogether because of the legitimate concerns of small groups that a good number of you have brought up but this post gave me another perspective on it. I’m going to merge some of the ideas you guys have put forth into a new iteration on the design you and I have been working out.

Here is the new proposal based on your ideas:

  • Siege Dismantling
    • You DO NOT get exhaustion from placing siege
    • If you own a piece of siege:
      • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Dismantle” that will drop the timer down to one minute
    • If you do not own a piece of siege:
      • There is a skill on the skill bar called “Vote Dismantle”
      • If a piece of siege gets 5 votes:
        • The timer on the siege drops to 5 minutes
        • The player who placed the siege gets a stack of exhaustion
          • In this proposal this is the only way to get exhaustion
    • When a siege timer is reduced to 0 it is dismantled
      • All siege that is dismantled drops 25% of the supply it took to construct
  • Exhaustion
    • A player who has 5 stacks of exhaustion can no longer place siege until they have 0 stacks of exhaustion
    • A stack of exhaustion is removed:
      • After 5 minutes
        • For commanders this time is reduced by 2 minutes for each member of your squad for up to 20 minutes
      • For each enemy player defeated
      • For each objective taken

This proposal has these properties:

  • Play is not affected at all for anyone unless they repeatedly place siege that is repeatedly voted down
  • Players are encouraged to clean up their siege to get a refund and to prevent their siege being voted down
  • Players can police themselves by voting down bad siege
  • Players who get exhaustion incorrectly can easily remove it by playing WvW normally
  • The more siege that gets placed that is left unattended the easier it will be to lose the privilege of placing siege.
  • Commanders who actually have people following them can bypass the bulk of the penalty and should easily remove the rest through normal play

For other topics, there seems to be general agreement that some sort of labeling or filtering will help with siege that is dropped onto the area you are trying to build in. Also, I agree that build sites could have a smaller footprint.

Again there were a lot of really good suggestions! I am reading every single post in this thread (and you guys are keeping me busy ) so I really appreciate those of you who have stayed constructive, on topic and within the guidelines that were set down. It is really helping us think out possible ways together of how we could address this problem in a way that would work for everyone.

So now…

ROUND THREE … DISCUSS!

Siege Troll Discussion

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Great discussion so far! I came back from a couple of meetings and was blown away to see so many excellent ideas and constructive posts.

A couple of ideas seem to be taking root in the discussion. One is the idea of voting to dismantle siege. We were talking about that one while reading this thread and think a version of it might work. Straight up dismantling siege will probably lead to a different type of griefing or even a legitimate group deciding that they don’t like someone else’s legitimate placement of siege so they dismantle it. However if a piece of siege gets let’s say 10 votes we could drop the timer on it to something like 5 minutes. That way one group could not simply remove another groups siege if they are manning it or planning to man it. We would probably need to make an exception for Golems.

A number of people talked about having the dismantled siege go back to nearby supply depots. One idea we kicked around was dropping a portion of the supply that it took to build the siege as a one time pick up.

There were a number of suggestions around labelling dropped siege to allow players decide which siege to build. I like the idea of filtering dropped siege. Maybe you could have some of the following settings:

  • Show my Commander’s siege
  • Show my Squad’s siege
  • Show my Guild’s siege
  • Show my Party’s siege

If siege dropped doesn’t meet one of the settings you pick, you won’t get an interact for them.

The exhaustion idea that I kicked out there has had some mixed responses. There were some amazingly good ideas to make it work a whole lot better. For example, I really liked the suggestions that the cool down time is reduced for each member of your squad. I am really concerned though about the affects that you guys brought up on small havok groups and defenders. There were some suggestions that I think would make it work. For example, a couple of suggestions were along the lines of if you are actively playing it will clear your exhaustion. So if you down an enemy, break down a gate, destroy enemy siege etc. your exhaustion would be cleared.

If we tweaked Exhaustion to this would it work? :

  1. When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
  2. A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
  3. If a player has five stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege
  4. If a player downs an enemy, destroys siege, breaks down a wall or gate their exhaustion is cleared
  5. A commander’s exhaustion is reduced by 30 seconds for each member of his squad

We aren’t tied to this idea at all. I’m just collecting and shaping some of your suggestions on this idea in large part because a lot of people seemed to like it. I’m wondering if there is a version that would work for everyone.

Some sort of community policing also came up a bunch in this discussion. I think there were some great and promising ideas there. But, generally the concern with that comes down to a few things. How many people would be needed to get a person banned? What if not that many people are on? At what lower number will we have to start worrying about groups kicking members of another group because of petty arguments?

Finally, regarding swinging ye olde banhammer, that’s an option but if we can make some reasonable adjustments that greatly reduces the need for that option it will really be the better way to go. I would very much like to steer clear of falling back to that option in this discussion.

Thanks again for all the great suggestions!
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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John Corpening.9847

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Colin and I were having lunch a short while ago. During lunch we were sharing experiences from Adopt-a-Dev. He started talking about this amazing moment he had while on scouting duty where he spotted an attack on Stone Mist castle that was happening from the inside and was able to call in reinforcements in time to thwart it. Halfway through I stopped him and cursed his name. He was confused at my reaction until I told him that the attack he stopped was the one from my guild, DmD and I was part of that attack. He correctly guessed that we snuck a mesmer into the castle after IOJ took down one of their walls.

We would have gotten away with it too if it weren’t for them darned kids scout!

Siege Troll Discussion

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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John Corpening.9847

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Let’s talk about Siege Trolls and what we can do about them. The problems that have been brought up are:

  • Creating Siege to hit the siege cap
  • Creating the wrong type of siege to hit area siege caps
  • Spending supply on needless siege to drain supply depots
  • Dropping siege on top of legitimate siege build sites

Here are some parameters and questions we should consider:

  • Can we come up with a system that doesn’t involve constant policing from GMs?
  • What are the characteristics of bad behavior that are different than good behavior?
  • How do we prevent bad behavior without making too big of an impact on good behavior?
  • What restrictions might we be able to live with as good players in order to prevent bad behavior?

To kick off the brainstorm I’ll throw out this idea:

  1. When a player places a piece of siege they receive a stack of “Exhaustion”
  2. A stack of “Exhaustion” expires after three minutes
  3. If a player has three stacks of “Exhaustion” they can no longer place siege

We are just brainstorming here so I’d love to hear alternative suggestion or whether or not this would work for you.

I know there are other threads on this but I want to start with a clean discussion and focus on how we can realistically address this issue. Let’s keep this constructive and focused.

Thanks,
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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To the members of Helioz,

I recently received your application by mail. Since Chris Whiteside was adopted into your forces I framed the adoption certificate you sent and presented it to him this morning. He was most excited.

Thanks!
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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I was indeed part of that! At first I was part of the squad creating a distraction. Of course I managed to create a distraction by losing that squad and getting a half dozen of you to chase me for a couple of minutes while I ran in the wrong direction.

Later I was in on the golem attack. At one point though I stopped to res a fallen ally and ended up spending the next few minutes staring at the cliff that someone banished me over! I swear no good deed goes unpunished :P

It was great fun, nice to hear from someone on the other side of it!

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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Hi Harris,

Most of the devs participating have found a new home at this point. I’m keeping sign ups from devs open for a few more days in case there are any stragglers. A couple of devs were out last week but let me know they want to sign up as soon as they get back. I’m sorry if you don’t get matched up this time around. We had far more sign ups than we have devs available.

Thanks,
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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Wanted to make a note that not everyone will be posting in this thread. Some people are happy to participate with a guild on a personal level but would like to maintain their privacy in public and we will be honoring that.

A couple have asked that I post a greeting for them:

Zach Stiers will be screaming “Not in the face!” and will be running for cover…I mean Zach Stiers will be ferociously fighting for the honor of Unbreakable Dynasty on Black Gate. :P

JoAnna Frazar will bring devastation and tears to all who oppose her and her new guild Midnight Mayhem on Gunnar’s Hold.

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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Hello Tyrians!

Another big thanks for signing up your guilds to host a dev! We had far more guilds sign up than I could possibly respond to so please accept my apologies for not individually responding to each sign up. We are really excited and humbled by the tremendous amount of enthusiasm we have received from you.

Everyone from the WvW team has found a home. Several devs in other areas have also jumped in because they wanted to be part of the fun. I’ll keep sign ups going for the next few days in case we have other late comers looking for a new home.

Finally, I wanted to give a big thanks to my new guild. A kind soul (who likes soul-reaping) saw me in the window and took me home to the kind folks of DmD on Devona’s Rest. I had a great time playing with my new family and I’m really looking forward to the weeks ahead!

Thanks!
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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Just a quick update, some of our devs have started contacting guild leaders to work out details and make sure that play times will work for everyone.

Thank you guys so much for the warm welcomes and the overwhelming response! We’ve had so many invites from guilds that it’s been a struggle to keep my inbox from filling up

Thanks Again!
John

Adopt-a-Dev for the WvW Fall Tournament

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Hello Tyrians!

I’d like to announce “Adopt-A-Dev” for the upcoming WvW fall tournament. The WvW team got together and decided to volunteer our play time to get out of the comfort zones of our own guilds and worlds and offer to play side by side with you for the duration of the upcoming tournament. We want to fight by your side, experience the ups and downs, have fun and learn together with you how to make a better WvW experience.

We are going to be looking for guilds in different leagues who wish to host a dev. They will participate in your activities and fight for the honor of your world and guild!

To make this work we need to establish some ground rules:

  • Have Fun!
  • Be respectful of the devs as people
    • If a dev is made to feel uncomfortable in any way, they are free to stop participating.
  • The devs are volunteering their free time.
    • Please understand they have other personal obligations outside of work and may not be able to join all of your group play sessions.
    • Also consider that we are located in the US Pacific time zone so we will need to factor that into matching up with your guild play sessions.
  • The devs are here to experience the WvW tournament with you.
    • They are not doing this to handle complaints, take bug reports or give information. Treat them like any other player and remember they also want to have fun.
  • Devs should not be taking leadership of your group
    • Just because they are devs doesn’t mean they are in charge

If you are a guild leader and interested in hosting a dev, please PM me with this information as soon as possible:

  • Your in-game name
  • The Guild name that you are a leader of
  • What world you are on
  • What region you are playing in
  • What times you typically play
    • Please let me know time in US Pacific time or at least include your time zone

We will be trying to spread our devs out as much as possible. I will be matching guilds up with devs based on what the dev tells me they can swing and the response. I will let everyone know when the devs have all been adopted and will post the assignments once that happens. I’m making this thread sticky for the duration of the tournament for us to post our experiences together.

I look forward to finding a good home for all of our dev volunteers and I’m excited to join you in the upcoming tournament!

Thanks!
John

(edited by John Corpening.9847)

Commander Tag Changes Feedback [merged]

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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John Corpening.9847

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I would really like to direct the thanks to Zach and Tyler both of them came in over the weekend to make sure the change got in on time in order to stay on schedule with our QA test plan. I greatly appreciate the work the team put in to make this happen on this short of a time frame.

Commander Tag Changes Feedback [merged]

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Hi Guys,

Just wanted to clarify that we did indeed change our plans based on your feedback. What was said during the interviews at Gamescom was correct at the time but after listening to what you had to say we decided to make a change to the feature be in line with what you felt was a more balanced approach to the change.

Thank you very much for your feedback and we hope that you enjoy this upcoming change.

Thanks,
John

Thank you from Digital Professional Sports!

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Thank you guys so incredibly much for jumping in to support this community. I can’t even begin to tell you how much we appreciate everything you did to make the Tournament of Legends a huge success and a ton of fun for everyone!

Intro PvP Workshop hosted by The Ebon Banner

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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John Corpening.9847

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Thanks Sulecen! Workshops like this is where a lot of top players got their start.

Did arah storyline, path not unlocked

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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John Corpening.9847

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Thanks for the report. We are investigating this now.

Thank you so much for the Feature Pack!

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Thanks DanyK, I’m glad you are enjoying it!

Tournament Of Legends: Signups and Dates

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Posted by: John Corpening.9847

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I want to give Blu and the guys from Mistpedia a huge thank you for organizing and hosting this tournament. I also want to give a big thank you to all the members of the community who stepped up to volunteer to help out. This tournament was able to expand from 16 to 64 teams per region due to the efforts of Mistpedia and these volunteers. Helping each other out to make events like this even bigger is what community is all about.

As much as we all wanted to accommodate all of the teams that signed up, the logistics of handling a 128 team tournament, when we originally planned for 16, would be too much to execute within such a limited timeframe. We will be working to make sure future events are able to take into account sign-ups of this magnitude.

Thanks again Blu and crew!

John

Forum Etiquette

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John Corpening.9847

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There have been posts recently aimed directly at members of the team. This forum is a privilege extended to the community to allow you to interact with and give feedback to the developers. While we both strive for a positive environment as well as allow members to vent their frustrations about the game, posts that include personal attacks or harassment towards members of our team will not be tolerated and actions will be taken to remove forum privileges. Harassment that occurs within the game can lead to a ban.

Please refer to this post for additional information:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Update-on-Forum-Moderation-Enforcement/first#post3036871

Let’s keep this a constructive environment.

Collaborative Development: Ladders & Seasons

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Thank you all for making this a great CDI. In this round we talked about league structure, season duration and rewards. There was also discussion on how to get more players involved and how to better incorporate guilds not just as participants but as fans and supporters of PvP.

Additional discussion came up on how to handle balance patches in conjunction with the season. There were also some great suggestions on including an end of season tournament as well as many other great ideas and suggestions.

The team has been following the thread and the ideas we have brainstormed here have become part of the discussion in the studio.

Thanks again for your participation in this CDI. I had fun bouncing these ideas around with you and I look forward to our future discussions.

John

18. March Glory Question

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You will keep already earned glory and pvp crafting materials for now. You simply won’t be able to earn additional glory.

Communication in game

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In the “Competitive Casual Gameplay Options” thread a really great discussion got started about improving communication in game. This topic became big enough that I really felt it deserved its own thread. The topic was started especially regarding Solo Arena but we can open it up to other areas of PvP here.

This is just a discussion to kick around some ideas on ways the game could improve communication.

So, here are a couple of questions.

What can the game do to improve communication between teammates in-game through the UI?

How much of an impact do you think the mini-map overhaul we did last year had on communication in game?