Guild Wars 2

If you look in the pinned forum about temporary glicko adjustments, you’ll see the latest from Gaile Grey that says

3/17/17 Adjustments:
NA:
• Fort Aspenwood: +20
• Sea of Sorrows: +20
• Tranished Coast: -100
• Maguuma: -100
EU:
• Baruch Bay: +50
• Riverside: -150
• Kodash: +50
• Piken Square: -150
• Ring of Fire: +25

The current matchups are deliberate + RNG.

Hear me out on this. Everyone is complaining about the way the linking has failed to address the problems of the WvW game so far. Whether it be server population balance or the other issues that linking has brought to the game.

Currently we clearly have 4 T1 servers. We clearly have 4 T3 servers. It seems pretty clear YB are desperate to PPT their way back to T2 at least, which suggests that we might even have 4 T2 servers rather than T3 servers.

But we also have a lot of little servers that are feeling really hard done by, because they’ve been thrown into a link with a higher tier server and forced to play a style of the game they absolutely hate. For example, a lot of the servers with lower populations prefer the smaller ( < 15) zergs and havoc play style, as opposed to the blob that is basically every server from T3 and up.

The game clearly cannot sustain 8 tiers again. That is absolutely the case, but I think it would be absolutely viable to add a 5th tier back to the game to allow small servers to have a competition they enjoy, without the fear of a big T3 server dropping down and squashing them constantly. And it would open more space up in T3 and above. At the moment, it really feels like T3 and up is bursting at the seams and there isn’t really a viable way for those bigger servers to move between the upper tiers. Which is causing some pretty major imbalances in the lower tiers, despite the linking.

What do people think?

Short answer… OH HELL NO!

Seriously? Consider a dead mesmer in a keep. Dies in a corner somewhere because they were hiding in the first place. Waits till everyone forgets they’re there, pops a reviver orb and ports a couple in to sniper the keep.

No, when you’re dead in WvW, you WP and run back. That’s how it should be. You die, you reset.

Your suggestion would completely screw the barely balanced game mode so far out of balance there would be no way to recover for the duration of that experiment. Trolls would have a field day. We’re already struggling with the balance problems as it stands, and you want to make it worse? Some of us actually want to enjoy WvW. Not spend our time babysitting corpses of mesmers every 5 minutes.

I am sure I’m not the only one to notice this. Presence of the Keep is not providing the full +5 supply or other buffs (toughness, vitality, etc…) it is supposed to, which is further exasperated by the Guild Claim Aura also not providing the +5 supply or other buffs (toughness, vitality, etc…) it is supposed to. Frequently neither shows up at all but should. The keep is definitely claimed and the upgrade applied when viewing the keep details.

This can sometimes be mitigated by leaving the area of the keep to a location that is not affected by a claim aura and returning, however this is inconsistent.

This has only started happening since the 23rd August patch when the desert borderland was added back to WvW.

Don’t agree. Even a little.

There are Always groups running around in the borderlands lately. You try flipping stuff and watch how quickly you get a response. May not be the case for other tiers, but in T3 we’re having lots of fun. Always people around to fight. Always groups running around. Lots of zergs. EB is blob central, but the borderlands are far more fun if you want smaller fights between zergs <20 people. There are many small havoc groups and you can even go roaming in the borderlands at the moment, get duels and have fun.

The BLs are definitely not empty. They may not be queued as often as EB, but that doesn’t make them dead by any stretch.

There is very little you can do against this. SBI going down was a deliberate thing, just as CD going up was also deliberate.

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

Hey everyone,

After reading through the comments and feedback, and some deliberation among the team – we have decided to adjust Crystal Desert by +300 for this match only, making them more likely to advance out of tier 4. Next week we will adjust them to +200.

ArchonWing.9480:

I know some people are gonna kill me for saying this but….

SBI seems pretty PPT focused to me. Yea, the most popular commanders tend to not PPT too much, but in general there’s an emphasis on defending stuff (but only on EB) and there’s also a super serious bunch of on the borderlands that are hardcore PPT.

I don’t think that’s the case. It’s not about the PPT, it’s more about just having fun. HARD, for example, aren’t PPT focused, we’re casual. We’ll take a fight if we come across it, otherwise we’ll just keep flipping stuff till we run into resistance and get the fights.

And I think that is true for most of SBI. It’s not about PPT. It’s just about drawing people out and getting fights. Which is something T4 doesn’t offer us at all.

For the most part, my experience has been that SF and DH will go behind SBI groups and just backcap things. Otherwise they’ll stay inside walls trying to defend until the objective is opened up, then they’ll WP away and start backcapping things. Some die in defence. We found the best way to get fights was to wait till they’ve dropped siege on a tower or keep and then initiate a fight.

ArchonWing.9480:

There aren’t many “fight” guilds either and a lot of it is really a guild leading a blob, running like 30-40 deep. And of these, the ones that look to optimize their builds or scrim/gvg are a small portion of that small portion if they do exist at all. And those tend to leave.

Again, that’s only really the case in EB. People go to EB because thats supposed to be where all the action is. But the majority of SBI are casual players, so they’re just going to look for a tag and join it. Thus, you get a guild group of 10-15 that turns into a zerg of 30 or more in EB.

It does happen to a lesser extent on the borderlands, but those that generally hang out in the BLs (such as HARD, Hate, ORDR, and a few other regulars) tend to pick up Pugs as we’re going. But theres far fewer Pugs so it’s not quite the same.

ArchonWing.9480:

To this day, many on SBI thought that rolling onto a tag in EB with 60 people (Anet plz increase limit) was what fite oriented WvW’ers do and to this day that’s what many people consider actual fights. I just pat them on the head and smile.

Way to be condescending to your own teammates :-P I think you’re completely wrong here, but meh… Whatever.

We have a lot of Pugs on SBI that don’t know how to play WvW beyond getting behind a tag and doing whatever they see the rest of us doing. The number of people in TS is small compared to the number of people we have in a map at any given time.

Now… given how long its been, can people please stop going on about Bannock? SBI today is not SBI as it was then. There are a lot of different people on the server now.

ArchonWing.9480:

OTOH, when you’re against servers like Yak’s Bend our efforts can seem fairly paltry.

No, they’re not paltry. It’s simply a case of YB/SoS have had greater numbers in the past and been able to do to SBI what we’re doing to T4. We beat YB and SoS on the week Season 3 released. It’s as if everyone in SBI completely ignores that fact and still goes on about beating SoS/YB because of some great rally.

ArchonWing.9480:

Anyhow, I’m not here to diss PPT’ers as they do keep the server running and will ultimately drag us out of this mess. There are some really great folks from HOD that also defend extremely well, so props to them as well. We have been rather fortunate with the linking since CD and HOD were really great. I will however say that the PPT’ing will be more intense due to the situation.

Actually, I am not so sure about that. I think a few will PPT, but most were completely bored of this match by the end of the first week. The amount of frustration I heard from people after reset when they saw it was the same match for a second week in a row… I expect SBI is probably going to gain a few fairweather players, but those that play most often are likely going to do something else for much of the week.

Even I spent the last half of last week, and will probably do it again this week, playing with trash builds and taking the opportunity to learn classes I’m less familiar with.

What we’re doing in T4 is exactly the same thing Mag did to SBI/SoS before YB dropped to T3 and let Mag finally move up to T2 where their coverage and numbers should have them. We hated it when DB did it to us. We hated it when Mag did it to us. We know how DH and SF are feeling because we’ve been there, done that.

ArchonWing.9480:

However, I will have to disagree with the inital assesment that SBI is a PPT machine. A Karma machine or a synthesizer gathering machine though….

Something we absolutely agree on. It’s all about those nodes!

ArchonWing.9480:

Finally, I’m not sure what’s with the SF bashing here. They seem to be fighting rather hard even though they are clearly outnumbered. Someone must have faceplanted to that open field ram.

I still want to know what’s up with all those rams. Seems like every time theres about to be a fight, SF drops and builds yet another ram.

To the DH and SF folk that are peeved off in this match up, we do understand how you’re feeling. SBI has previously been in exactly that position you’re in when it comes to unbalanced matches. I really am sorry that you’re in that position and that Anet artificially screwing with Glicko is just compounding it yet again this week.

If it makes you feel better, most of SBI is not having fun with this matchup either. It’s not fun dominating so much with just sheer population that your opponents don’t even bother trying to face you head on. We know you don’t want to face us because we felt exactly the same way when DB and then Mag were doing that to us.

All I can say is it’s not personal. Don’t take it to heart. Hopefully when the server links are re-evaluated again in the near future the T4 populations will be evened up. The population imbalance in the current links for CD and T4 is just stupid. Anet should know better, but apparently not.

Got to agree. This is crazy. Ever since server linking started, Glicko has been worthless. There is no value to the scores and the matchups are completely random.

Either extend server linking to a decent period such that glicko makes sense, or remove glicko entirely and base matchups on something that actually makes sense to the game now.

There are some of us that do actually play for PPT and do enjoy winning. But the perpetual k-train? Might as well go to EotM for that crap.

Buy leather gear, throw it in the forge, salvage the results, profit.

And lets call it …. Kittens in the Mists.

You realise that this is what EotM was originally supposed to be? An overflow map for people while they waited in the WvW queue? Why create yet another map? Just squad up in your guild hall, then go to EotM while you’re queued for WvW.

You realise that the matchup is based on the Glicko score right? That it’s not entirely a random change, but actually performance based with a bit of RNG thrown in for funsies?

So a little query that would make life a lot easier and reduce the calls made to the API.

When a user quits the guild, or is kicked from the guild, the username of the user that has been removed/left the guild does not show up in the logs at all. The only way to get an idea of who it might have been is to go and check the v2/guild/:id/members list and then compare to a previously cached version of that list. If you’re dealing with a rogue officer that’s gone off the deep end, this can be a tedious problem to manage.

If a user /gquits the guild, then there is simply an event that looks like the following.

[{"id":xxx67,"time":"2016-xx-xxT12:55:04.096Z","type":"kick"}]

If the user is kicked from the guild, then the event does include the "kicked_by" property with the name of the officer or person that kicked them.

[{"id":xxx63,"time":"2016-xx-xxT14:40:08.081Z","type":"kick","kicked_by":"xxxxxxxx.xxxx"}]

If you later invite a person that was kicked/gquit then you can see both the "user" and "kicked_by" properties without issue.

[{"id":xx77,"time":"2016-xx-xxT22:55:11.096Z","type":"kick","user":"xxxxxxxx.xxxx","kicked_by":"xxxxxxxx.xxxx"}]

Is there a way we can get the full details of the user and kicked_by properties for all instances of this event? It’d make managing a userlist a lot easier. Wouldn’t have to go pull the members list just to see who gquit/got kicked. Just update the already-cached members list locally.

Sviel.7493:

This is pretty depressing. I’m really sorry to hear it.

Things are looking up in T2, SoS. We’re still hurting bad but we’re starting to see more and more people playing. I think we’ll recover, but it sounds like it might be the end to lower tiers.

Yeah, I think the lower tiers are effectively being killed off at this point. The population just cannot sustain WvW as it exists now.

The community we had on our server allowed us to weather most of the previous upheavals and we punched well above our size for quite a while. The new mechanics have ended that for us now.

Phlogistn.7893:

Running a havoc guild previously. Anet has destroyed WvW for smaller guilds. We can’t take objectives because we can’t hold enough supplies, which we can’t upgrade because building a guild hall takes large guilds with multiple players working constantly. No one enjoys playing in the borderlands, EB is queued ridiculously. Did any of the Anet developers run with any smaller guilds while “testing out” WvW ? Or was it all zerg. I mean…even pulling the repair merchant from the EB keep and making us go to spawn.

gg

Yeah, it feels like they never actually played WvW themselves before they implemented the changes. Or if they did play, it was solely in blobbing zergs rather than havoc or roaming. The new changes are clearly designed for at least 10 to 15 player groups or bigger. Can’t speak for other servers, but on ours, most of our groups were rarely above 5 people.

It just seems like Anet went “This will work on the big servers” and then ignored the lower populations and how this would affect them. Which is depressing.

Worse yet is the complete silence from Anet since HoT release regarding any of the issues that the WvW community has brought up. I’ve been checking every day hoping for at least a simple acknowledgement that they’ve heard what’s been said. Not action, just an acknowledgement. It has now been 3 weeks and the best we’ve gotten has been the harvesting nodes being nerfed? Wow… Priorities.

If they just said something, anything, that suggested they were at least considering the issues, that’d make a HUGE difference for a lot of people.

coglin.1867:

I don’t know about that. I literally took every keep on the BGBL last night with a 5 man team. They eventually brought their EB force over to try to take it all back.

If you will post a video of your group failing to take a keep, I will post a video of us taking that very same keep. My experience suggest it was an issue with tactics or player skill, and not the maps or mechanics, as I haven’t had issues with my group doing what your claiming cannot be done, and we did it just last night.

How long did it take you to get a fortified keep? I have done many 5 man attacks of fortified keeps with these changes.

You drop 1 superior ram at outer, finish it. Leave one person to start hitting the gate while the rest resupply so you can build a second. When 2 rams are hitting the gate, the 3 not on rams resupply to make sure you have enough to start inner. It takes you about 10 minutes to get through the outer gate with 2 superior rams. Once you’re inside, you have 4 people with 60 supply total, so you can build another superior ram. Leave one person hitting the gate while the other 4 go resupply to drop a second ram and build it. Thats another 10 minutes or so before that gate goes down.

In that time, chances are a defender has shown up to investigate, and either built defence siege, or are attacking from a strong upper position (the causeway by inner supply at lords room of Fire keep can drop AC fire on your head at the gates and walls, but you have to get to a very specific spot to fire back with a longbow ranger.) If you lose just one ram, you’ve effectively doubled the time it will take to get through that gate. More time for more defenders to answer the call.

Your alternative? Once every few hours (if you’re lucky enough to be on the map at the time) you might get to PvE your way through the Oasis event which might knock the gates down a bit and reduce the time it takes to get through them. But they’re still fortified and you’re still 5 people with very little supply.

At least with +5 you might have had a chance to get a superior and a paper ram built without having to run and resupply.

And the most annoying part? Chances are the borderland was absolutely empty for hours prior to your arrival. Chances are no one had been near those keeps since they were flipped and they simply auto upgraded. When you have a low population and can’t cover both BL and EB maps 24/7, a 2 hour gap is enough to lose your entire borderland and have it fully fortified against you when you do get the opportunity to play.

Yeah, it is possible to 5 man a keep. But stop being spurious with your facts.

I remained hopeful. I tried to be positive. Tried to keep the morale of my server up. But it wasn’t enough. We were a low pop server to begin with, and now the HoT changes it’s killed us.

Just after release of HoT, we lost a significant guild to a higher tier server. Saturday we lost our largest guild to a higher tier server. Sunday another guild plans to leave. Next weekend, the second largest guild is voting on leaving. Yet another guild has started deliberating on leaving and we expect them to do so.

The new maps and the changes to WvW as a result of the HoT expansion have killed us. The new auto-upgrade mechanics have decimated the borderlands. We were a low pop server to begin with, the new borderlands made that almost impossible to hold the borderlands objectives for any period of time now. We just don’t have the coverage.

With the departure of all our larger WvW guilds to higher tiers, looking for larger populations to help fill the maps, those remaining are completely demoralised. From tier 5 a few months ago, we’re about to hit T8.

Combined with the absolutely ludicrous changes the Guild Hall has forced upon us which are clearly disadvantaging smaller guilds, we’ve practically given up on WvW. The Guild Hall alone is so expensive that those of us in smaller guilds are never going to be able to gain anything that would help us in WvW as we did before. The ludicrous level 37 requirement for +5 supply? Are you seriously delusional?

Today one of the co-leaders of my guild informed me that he is not playing anymore. He’s not interested in PvD and hates that we’re being forced into PvE. He hates that the maps feel so completely empty. With the departure of the larger guilds, and the descent to lower tiers, that’s only going to get worse.

Being curious, I checked the guild roster. There are quite a few players that haven’t logged in to the game in between 2 and 3 weeks now. Our guild is dying. Our server is dying. Our community has given up and is either moving away, or quitting the game entirely.

So thank you, Anet. Thank you for destroying the game I enjoyed. I never played PvE or PvP. It was WvW I enjoyed. The chaos of unstructured skirmishes. Not blobs, but skirmishes. And now you’ve destroyed that for us. My server is a ghost land and WvW is merely where you go to get your dailies now.

Previously you needed level 80 centaurs to get these. Those were only in the Alpine Borderlands given the Harathi Hinterlands is mid 40s.

There is currently no source for the heavy supply bags needed for the War Room supply drop upgrade. Thus the reason the price was over 10g each last I looked.

My guild has given up on the war room at this point. For what it offers, the returns just aren’t worth the effort and cost. Pretty much focused solely on the Arena and other useful upgrades for the time being until the costs become more reasonable.

Oh yeah, forgot to add… Ranger Pets at the Fire Keep will burn to death while you’re at the outer gates and walls, even when not actually in the lava.

Have a few others to add to that.

• Citadel supply bugged. Currently shown as red. If you are blue or green team, cannot access supply dropped from EotM
• Siege placement at the north inner gate of SM is completely bugged out. Cannot throw rams on the right side of the gate. Have to stack them all left of the centre. Good for defenders with disablers, otherwise not so fun.
• T3 tower walls glitching out often. For example, a T3 Anzalius tower only has the front wall to the left of the gate that can take damage. Bravost doesn’t have any walls that can be damaged. Veloka only the side wall under the lords room can take damage.
• No ruins not a big deal, but update the Veteran Creature daily please. To my knowledge, only the Wyverns in the North East corner of the Borderlands map now count, and that was only accidentally discovered by a guildmate.
• Fire Keep turrets will still fire at attackers even if all 3 shrines have been flipped before attacking the keep.
• Air keep centre outer gate siege placement is bugged. Go north or south or through a wall, but the front gate will do your head in before you can get through it.

Have to say, I’m really disappointed in general with the HoT changes. As someone that is in a WvW guild, the Guild Hall changes and costs of upgrades have essentially destroyed our guilds ability to function at the level we did previously.

We’re a small guild with quite a few roamers. Those roamers are now penalised for not joining a group of at least 10 or 15. Supply costs have destroyed the value of guild siege. Making the guards more difficult isn’t a big deal, but auto-upgrades of objectives really hurts small groups.

Further, the need to have Scribes and the cost of some of those upgrades… +5 supply is now the 3rd to last upgrade of a War Room and requires a guild be level 37? WTF? Seriously?

It’s almost as if Anet were deliberately trying to destroy WvW in every way except for the massive blob zergs.

Smoaking.6125:

jeez are there any guilds that DON’T require teamspeak or ventrilo? some of us have nosy families and can’t do any voice chatting…

You don’t have to talk on TS or Vent. You can just listen.

On Anvil Rock we ask people in WvW to join us in TS so they can hear the commander. We don’t require they participate in the conversation with us at all if they don’t want to. But we really want people to be able to hear the commander’s calls so they know what to do and don’t end up on their own in the middle of the opposing blob. :-)

I don’t want to see EotM taken out of the game. I like it. Like a lot of people, I use it to level up new toons before I take them into the real WvW. Nothing worse than an uplevel running around EBG, weakening the home team.

But what I would really like to see happen is for EotM to not accrue WvW badges or WXP ranks. I think this is the biggest ripoff. There are Diamond Legends in the game that have never set foot in WvW. Never had to defend their garrison or other keeps. Never flipped SMC with just a small group while the zerg keeps the opposition busy at their keep.

The whole point of the WvW badges of honor and WXP Ranks was to demonstrate experience in WvW. EotM completely destroys that notion.

Other than that, I have no problem with EotM. It serves a purpose. Many people that play there are not likely to play WvW if it went away. They’d just go somewhere else for their karma or leveling. For example, I’d probably end up going to HotM to level my toons instead of EotM.

This is not just EU. It’s happening on US servers too! I was doing the Teq event at daily rollover on 64.25.38.161 (12am GMT 4/Nov/2014) and got disconnected twice from the event. The entire map was screaming about lag.

Average lag to the server in that time, about 2500ms. It wasn’t even so much network latency as it was server unresponsiveness. It felt like the server just wasn’t responding at all. Pings were around 200ms to 300ms, averaging 230ms latency, but the time between pressing a key and it actually registering was about 3 seconds.

This has been happening a lot lately. And its significantly worse since the September Update.

I’ve kind of lost my groove in the game. I’m a casual solo player. I have a life away from my computer that requires more attention and effort than trying to keep up with a game.

I loved Guild Wars, all 3 campaigns. I liked the way the story was fluid and you could progress through it at your own pace. I really like that about Guild Wars 2 as well. Except, its just one story. I am not in anyway trying to diminish the epicness of the story as a whole. But after doing it at your own pace, it suddenly ends and you get thrown into this enforced race to keep up. But you’re not keeping up with a single cohesive story arc, you’re chasing a series of short stories with no real cohesive back story that feels rushed and ad-hoc.

3 Guild Wars campaigns, an expansion, the books, the wikis, the community, all built this massive backstory of lore that could have some kind of impact on the current history of the game, and you throw us the Aetherblades and Scarlet?

I’m not a hard core player. I work 6 days a week. But I like good stories. I will play good stories. The game doesn’t even have to be a great game if the story is good. I play solo because I can’t devote honest time to a guild. I played through Guild Wars because the stories in the game were fluid and made sense within the lore. There was also a personal sense of being able to achieve something on my own, even if it took me longer than people that were progressing through the story far faster than I ever could.

The time limit on the Living Story, and the sense of missing out on bits of the story, frustrates the bejeebuz out of me. I don’t much care for the trophies or even the achievements. But I’d like to be able to follow the Living Story at my own pace, feel like its actually building or fits within the lore of the game, and get a sense of achievement for playing through a complete story.

(Secondly… Completely off topic… Can we please get rid of the RNG for things like Black Lion Chests or Mini packs. I don’t mind buying the outfits, picks/axes/scythes, other goodies and more. But I like to know what I’m getting before I buy it. Not get a half dozen of the same item that everyone else already has multiples of. If you’re going to have RNG items like that, make it worth the cost of entry and stop putting anything less than Rares (or something) in them.)

I love the game in most other respects. I love the Hearts, map completion, daily and monthly achievements, the scale of the game for different sized groups, the leveling system, world events/champions/dragons/bosses… Hell, I even love the gem store a little too much.

But I have hardly played in the past couple of months because I just simply cannot devote the time it now requires, just to keep up. Let people fly through the stories and get the achievements and the titles and the items associated with those stories, but unless you make it possible for someone like me to keep up, you’re on track to becoming that game I play on my day off when its raining and I have nothing else to do.