Guild Wars 2

Primeval Armor – Head: Glint’s Gaze – Corrupted Blade – Braham’s Shield – Dyes: Abyss – Glint’s Sanctuary

Last year they had bobbleheads on April 1st, short after you could buy the bobblehead laboratory on the gem store. I guess the aviator cap on the gem store will be updated to cause this years april fools effect when wearing. There you have you reason. Just advertisement.

Dear Anet,

as you might have noticed, players are not happy with this years april fools joke. Here are some ideas how to improve it while not depriving us of your incredible comical ingeniuty:

1. Provide an option to turn off the april fools effect after a certain amount of time
2. Make the game run normal after the second login of this day
3. Make the april fools turn itself off after a certain amount of time
4. Make the april fools only active in the city areas

Otherwise it will result in players not playing the game on april 1st, which I think is not the point of the joke.

Also it might help to reconsider how april fools jokes are normally done:

Step one: make a joke
Step two: after everyone goes “whaaaat”, tell them “April fools”
Step three: the joke is now over

How to not do an april fools joke:

Step one: Annoy people a whole day with a joke, they had enough of after 30 seconds

I can’t believe, that most people here are complaining. What is wrong with a new WvW map that brings two strengths of Guildwars 2 together: Threeway WvW and dynamic events. Seriously, this map looks like a lot of effort has gone into it. Anet wants to tell the players: “look we do really care about WvW” Even if it is broken or unbalanced, it still is going to be awesome to see something different than the old Borderlands.

Same here, have been wating for 15 mins now, just to make sure. Its the part were Fenris is supposed to blow up the gate. But he doesn’t. There is nothing more you can do than talk to him. But this doesn’t trigger anything,

Spurnshadow.3678:

Alright, so to summerize (by all means, if i’m forgetting something, correct me):

THESE THINGS ARE NOT UPDATES, THEY ARE FIXES TO THE GAME:

Culling
Skill lag
Orbs (putting this in both)

THESE ARE THINGS THAT YOU THINK ARE UPDATES, BUT REALLY ARE NOT

EotM

THESE ARE UPDATES

Orbs
Que interface
Badges Vendor (Worthless now)
Tournaments
Obsidium Sanctum (super minor)
Arena (small, but an update, none the less)
WvW Progression
Siege Abilities

So, looking at that list above, seems pretty paltry, huh? Now, compare that to Living story updates. Think about the effort and money that goes into that. Voice acting (there’s a lot to that). Programming all this stuff. Dungeons that were only out a month or less. Tons of instances. Major, huge, map updates. Tons of new skins. Writers. Lots of new monsters with brand new mechanics. It’s just really hard for me to imagine all the time, effort, money, personell, etc. that goes into all that, compared to orbs, que interface, and badges of honor vendor.

Updates.

That’s an absolutely valid point. I think nobody can claim that developing new content is easy, although many do in this thread. But if you for once compare the effort put in Living Story updates and the effort put in WvW updates you just don’t feel taken serious as a WvW player. Especially if you realise, how much living story content is only temporarily available.
Probably Anet underestimated from the start how many players were attracted by WvW since this game mode was pretty unique back then. Hence they never planned the resources for WvW. And now they keep loosing those WvW players every day.

You can auto-stack all items by using the “compact” command from the bag options several times.

Phoebe Ascension.8437:

Topic Summary for Mark Community coordinator to relay to wvw devs:

1) The earlier people completed the meta achievement, the lesser chance they had to get chest. I might have a correlation with the bug.
2) Some people have the wrong tournement place achievement. The zero point AP to show where you ended in wvw spring tournement, is wrong for some people, and almost all of those people didn’t get a chest.
3) Some people who never/very rarely transfer, also got no Chest.
4) People that completed the meta last week/even AFTER the tournement ended, have a very high chance to get the chest.
5) People that transferred seems to be affected a lot also by the bug.
6) Dolly finishers seems to be missing.

Especially point 1 is very pronounced. It seems the server lost track of people who got achievement very fast (1st 3 weeks of tournement). You should start investigation there.

And don’t say we don’t have positive attitude. I just spared you, Mr CC an hour of work. That’s 50 dollars given to Anet, so to speak. The community wants the game to get better. We just need a little cooperation from the other side as well.

I want to make sure this gets the Anet staffs attention. Important posts tend to get lost in the flood of complaints here.

Forzani.2584:

You think it is griefing or trolling …others think it is funny. Just depends on your perspective or opinion. Anet gives a lot of leeway to griefers/trolls. Especially since many things that Anet have put in the game are in my opinion trolling and griefing. they get a good laugh out of it. So again …perspective.

Perspective you say? I wonder in which game the “fun” one person has trolling, would make up for the anger of all the other players trolled.
The problem is the insufficient report system. I don’t even think that those “reports” are ever reviewed, even if multiple reports of the same kind are filed in in short time.

Scouting is one of the most important roles a player can have in WvW imho. Yet it is terribly difficult to find scouts and most of the time it is one small group of players who end up scouting for hours, instead of being replaced every 15 minutes. There is one commander on our server who asks players to send the scouts gold or items for scouting, but it is just this one commander. So here comes my suggestion for a scout reward system:

Gates and walls have alarm bells that can be rung. Ringing the bell while enemies are close, attacking a wall or gate, shows a map marker, even if the number of enemies is below 25. If the bell is rung and the subsequent “repel the enemy attackers” event succeeds, the person who rung the bell gets an extra reward. Some silver maybe. An Achievement track rewards players who are especially active as scouts. All commanders who tagged up in one of the bl or eb get a notification if the bell is rung and enemies are close, specifiying how many enemies are attacking, where and what is the upgrade level of the objective being attacked, even if they are not on the same map. All players on the map where the attack takes place should get a notification as well. The bells should be destroyable, an upgrade that needs to be purchased at the Quartermasters and rebuildable with, lets say 10 supplies. Of course scouts will still go unrewarded if enemies are not attacking, thats the downside.
This is just a very rough draft of such a system, of course it has to be thought through entirely but I think the basic idea of alarm bells is not so bad after all.

Legendary defenders should come with lasercannons and handheld nukes, riding on twoheaded dragons breathing the very essence of death!

I also think greenVSredVSblue is totally imbalanced. Green always rules the map, on every overflow. Instead of this, the system should place players always in the team with the least players. That way EotM would become more balanced. And I think removing the supply delivery to the homelands citadel won’t hurt anyone.

DevonCarver.5370:

We’ve been discussing this a lot recently and we agree that something needs to change. When we have a change that we are ready to talk about we’ll make sure to make it known to everyone.

Please don’t change the reviving lords mechanic. I think it is one tactical element of WvW and adds a lot of thrill to battles in the keep lord room. You should rather fix the lord leaving its place and running all over the keep. Everyone who asks for change of lord reviving should think about how this has saved T3 keeps for their server before.

loquacious.2915:

I would like to see them add server chat so people could still coordinate things for WVW in PVE.

THAT is a really good idea. I don’t see any problems with identification due to megaserver technology. That feeling of identification with my server was build in WvW and not in PvE. All servers are the same in PvE, not regarding population, but WvW really gives you this community sense. Serverchat would be great for withdrawing new soldiers from PvE for your homeworld or organising events without the enemy knowing.

Nothing has changed. The hotfix didn’t work. Lag is horrific.

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

I always run Tome of Courage in sPvP, I love it. My only problem with this elite is that moving interrupts the skill you’re using and it’s kind of unfair. For example if start to cast my favourite Pacifism and see someone trying to interrupt me and I dodge or just move a bit, this interrupts me anyway. If I’m allowed to cast my elite skills while moving it will be perfect.

Yes, casting while moving would be really nice.

Don’t forget that healing power and vitality are pretty poorly scaled on a guardian. Healing power is generally too weak on all classes. If you want maximum survivability go for equipment with toughness as main stat, toughness is best on guardian.
I got 0/10/30/30/0 Traits and altruistic healing (of course). Gear is half sentinel, since I still need a little vitality, and half knight. Trinkets are knight rings + soldier accessory, amulet and backpiece. Im pretty much always one of the last people standing but still have decent damage, in relation to being so tanky, and can use crit related sigils since I have 30% crit damage and 44% crit chance. In wvw I use omnomberry bread and master maintenance oil. Always include buffood as part of your build and not just as a nice little extra.

Renewed focus? I think it is useless als long as you not try to enter a sieged tower. For getting into a tower it is awesome. But on my server, commanders count on guardians having equipped tome of courage. Under heavy arrow cart fire, a guardian with tome of courage keeps the people at the rams alive. Tome of courage is incredibly valuable to the zerg. Unfortunately there are very little guardians who equip it.

Yes Anet always builds up a lot of hype around things that should have been in the game since release. Yes I am also annoyed by those self-congratulatory announcements. If they just cut out the parts where they sing their own praises, the announcements would reduce to a couple of concise sentences. But you have this stuff with every company in every industry. It is called marketing. They have to do it.
So just crossread their announcements or go to one of the various GW2 fansites, where the announcements are published, stripped of the marketing part.

Delta.2093:

[…]
Also Skill Lag was better about a month ago – since code improvements were announced, things get better and better, than drastically fallen back (around the Save 1200 Lion’s Arch citizen patch) to almost pre-optimizations values. This should give a clue, to look at what changed at that time, code or hardware (or both).
[…]

Definitely yes, you should start searching with the changes that have been made around the battle for Lions Arch release, thats when Skill lag got out of hand in WvW

Thank you, thank you, thank you Anet for finally adressing this issue!!!

What kind of issue are you specifically having that could be related to lag?
Skill lag and condition lag. Skills are not cast, if the lag is very bad not even autoattack works. Conditions don’t dissappear after their time runs out. Also the “Repell the enemy attackers” timer seems to be different for players. Mostly it stops at 0:00 and stays there for another minute, if there is a big fight in a keep. Also passing through the portals at a gate is lagged. However movement, dodging and chat are not lagged.

What server are you on?
Elona Reach [DE]

Has there ever been a time when you or a friend are experiencing lag, while others in your party are not
No, Skill lag always affects all players in the area, but not on the whole map.

Has there ever been a time where one party in a map is experiencing lag, while other parties in that same map are not?
No, Skill lag always affects all players in the area, but not on the whole map.

Do you experience the lag at very specific times?
Skill lag occurrs explicitely when there are 60-80 people infight. It is often the case during threeway battles for Castle SM or the Garrison on the BL. The skill lag also scales with the number of players. The more players, the laggier. Also the area where skill lag appears seems to scale with the number of players. The more players fighting, the bigger is the area where players have skill lag

Forget this post, Anet is already collecting information on the problem!

Purr Kitten.8731:

Making wvw completely annoying to play. I doubt they are working on a fix anytime soon either.

No they aren’t working on it. Support says it is not known among the developers. I wrote a ticket specifying very clearly that everyone in the whole zerg has this problem whenever I have it. Despite of that they assume it is my specific problem. I think we need more tickets to raise awareness. There is also an official sticky thread for this. I think that is were we should give feedback:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-state-of-skill-lag-and-server-optimizations/page/6#post3819247

I could imagine that they will never implement such a thing. Because it would contradict their: “no-farming-policy” Just like they don’t want you to too often run a single dungeon in a day, or kill more than 10 enemies of the same kind in a row, they don’t want you to buy thousands of bags at the tradingpost, open and sell them for profit, because that is “too easy”.
But if there was someone who wanted to make life easier on themselves, one could come up with the idea of using makros. Most gaming mouses offer programmable makros and the option for a standard delay of 1ms between clicks so you can theoretically get a doubleclick every 2ms, but I think that would overflow the input buffer so you wouldn’t be able to open 250 bags in half a second. But you for sure would just have to click once for opening them all.
I have never ever used anything like this, because there is for sure some rule that interdicts the use of makros. So please ignore this post because it is against very necessary and absolutely logical rules.

Skill lag makes WvW unplayable in big fights. As soon as there are more than 80 people fighting, everyone in the area gets skill lag. The skill lag gets worse, the more players fight. It also affects conditions. If you have skill lag, conditions are not removed after they expire but their effect remains, usually until you go down bc of kitten of bleeding.
It has gotten worse in the last two weeks. I’m glad I finally found the corresponding thread for this. Please check the WvW forum, where you can find lots of posts about skill lag.

kribre.9683:

Skillag is also something that wont be fixed in gw2 to due to Anet have said before they dont have the foundings to buy/upgrade their servers.

If that is true and there has been made such a statement, which I can’t believe (you maybe got a link or something? Are you 100% sure?), some question emerge:

1. I’m not very into how financing in gaming industry works but I think money comes from NCSoft which made decent profit in 2013, so I don’t understand why there should be no additional funds for servers. (check their homepage for the earnings report)
2. If it is only a problem of server capacity I don’t understand why only skills and conditions are affected by lag while all other aspects are unaffected. So maybe it is not server capacity per se but some kind of not effectively using or shifting this capacity
3. Skillags were a big problem while fighting worldbosses a year ago. I haven’t had such problems with worldbosses in the recent time, not even in the battle for Lions Arch where loads of players swarmed the Assault knight, before they introduced the Buff counter(only 50 players per knight) So this means those lags are fixable.
4. The problems have gotten worse in the recent past so this would mean server capacities have been cut down very recently, if it is really a capacity problem. But what should be the reason for it?
5. Those skillags are a real financial risk since there are a lot of players who only play WvW and those might get so frustrated they quit Gw2. So you only would save money on short terms, but on the middle term you might even loose more money.

Players, including me, are helpless and confused regarding this issue and this means a lot of speculation about the reasons of skillag. I don’t think that helps in any way. My questions and conclusion of this post are also highly speculative.
We really need an official statement on this issue.

TerrorFee.9012:

Krumbotors trait is about GW2 and not ESO!

Yes. Please lets just focus on the issue and forget about possible alternatives to WvW. Yesterday evening I was playing. We had to defend the Garrison on our homelands and both enemy zergs were inside. I ragequit after 10 minutes, due to impossible skillag.
But before that I noticed something about conditions: They seem to last unusually long, if you have skillag. For example I got crippled for about 30 seconds. The thin white line around the condition symbol which indicates the remaining duration was gone after 5s or so but the condition symbol stayed there as did the effect. I don’t think there is any skill that can cripple you for 30s.
Anyone has an idea when all this started? I think it must have been 2 or 3 weeks ago.

I’ll cut this point out of the list, if it is not true for everyone.

Hi Everyone,

I think I am not the only one, that has been experiencing frustrating skillag. Here is information we could collect in the forums and in Ts on my server so far:

1. Skilllags or even total denial of skill-usage make big WvW zerg-fights unplayable
2. The issue frustrates many players out of WvW
3. It is a server issue and has nothing to do with bad internet connection or graphics
4. The skilllags got very heavy in the recent future
5. The issue also affects lower tier servers with relatively small zergs
   #The Zerg is part of WvW. If you design a gamemode and allow so many players on one map, your servers should be ready to take the load
6. Some people even get DC’s along with skillags
7. Anet does not seem to put as much effort in WvW as they do in other content
8. Anet needs to fix this and we need an official response, whether this problem is being worked on or has at least been acknowledged

I was being outright sarcastic, when I was praising the effectiveness of this system. It is absolutely over the top and exaggerated. I don’t see any reason for it.
I see even a major design failure in the whole structure of the game, with such a spamblock system: This is a MULTIPLAYER game, multiplayer means that people have to communicate. Anet does not offer any other mean of communication than chat, but the chat… I think we have discussed this issue thoroughly.
Here a suggestion for a better system: If someone spams, you can report them. Too many reports, in relation to the number of users on this map, and spamblock strikes. That would be an effective system. But having a simple algorithm decide what is spamming and what is not, that is not effective. I mean: spam is spam, when the majority of users feels that it is spam. So the users should be the ones to decide what is spam. A commander giving commands in EotM, that is for sure not spam.
Anet would not even have to go as far as changing the system, the idea of just slightly raising the spamblock threshold for commanders would be a good solution and would not mess with their anti-spam policies, in my opinion.
I have two pleas to the readers of this thread:
*To players: post any occasion where spamblock hindered gameplay or communication in the game. I’m going to make a list.
*To the developers (if you even bother to read this): Can we please have an official statement on this issue? Have there been similar forum threads? Is it maybe NCsoft policy that is the reason for this unnecessary mutilation of cooperation and communication?

Caedmon.6798:

Just say the necessary things

And
Dont
Type
Like
This
Because
supressed

But instead type like this;

Stack up and Buff – Push after Veil infront in 1…2…
NOW

Also,switching from Say to Teamchat alot helps in reducing this,since your not “spamming” one channel.

That is indeed a good tip, but believe me I tried everything to avoid spamblock and you won’t work your way around, no matter how. Of course I can reduce communication to an absolute minimum, but then again, this makes my role obsolete, we are back at the stupid, brainless farmtrain, who behaves like a flock of hysteric chicken in battle and not like a raid.
The biggest problem is the blacklist feature of spamblock. If you got spamblocked once, you will much more easily be spamblocked in the following hour or so.

That’s exactly what I am talking about!!! Anet makes caring for the community, explaining things to others or organising the headless masses a pain in the … oh wait hopefully I’m not getting forum-blocked for using swearwords.
The problem is: I don’t see any reason for these spam restrictions. There has been no excessive spamming or chat abuse ever in this game that would justify such harsh and “draconic” chat restrictions. They have been in place since release. And if you now say, those restrictions justify themselves by having almost no spam in the game, you are making it very, very easy for yourself.
The current anti spam system is in fact very effective, as effective as hunting a mosquito in your own bedroom with a flamethrower. I don’t understand how the programmers have not come up with an “intelligent” way of spamreduction, instead of counting just messages per minute. I could program such a spamblock, seriously…
Can everyone who reads this and agrees please /sign that something has to be changed with the spamblock system?

Dear Anet team,

EotM is a great feature, but as we all now a good lead is essential for wvw to be fun. Since there is no such thing as voice chat in the game and there is no official TS provided for EotM (which would make little sense, since colors change weekly), chat is the only way for a commander to lead. The problem is the spamblock, which makes it almost impossible to lead in open combat. After STACK, MIGHT, 3, 2 there only comes your message was suppressed due to excessive messaging. This means not the quality of the commander, the skill or the discipline of the players is what turns the tide in battle, but only number. This is very sad and makes EotM a dull, stupid farmrun all day long, where 2 of 3 colors won’t have fun, since players get demotivated by the mass of one color, and their zergs shrink.
And yes, it is in fact possible to lead decently, make clever manouvers in battle and win against an enemy that outnumbers you 2 to 1, but only until spamblock strikes the commander.
This issue limits the fun of this game mode and keeps it’s potential at bay. So please dear developers, remove the spamblock for commanders in EotM. Do it at least for the first commander that switches on the commander badge, so poor players won’t be exposed to the terrible “risk” of spammers. I think taking such an outrageous and keen risk in changing your absolutely genious and necessary spamming restrictions for EotM commanders will be worth it because all players who play EotM will benefit from it.

To make my post more precise: I’m talking about 1:00 am to 6:00 am CET. That’s when most of your keeps and towers fall to the enemy who has overwhelming presence in WvW during the night. Gw2 is a game and it should be possible for normal people with normal schedules to have fun during normal times, to build something up. Who the kitten sits in front of the computer all night, to raid the enemy? And don’t come up with the “don’t play if you don’t like it or deal with it”, that’s just lame. I love guildwars, but I hate anet for limiting the games possibilities.

Hi guys,

The 24/7 concept of WvW has ever been a big design failure. There will never be any balance in WvW, as long as servers are able to dominate their bracket during the nighttime, while they constantly loose during daytime.
You crush an opponent during the daytime and win every zerg-fight, build up your T3 Towers and Keeps, spending tons of gold on the upgrades. And then you come back the next day, and everything is gone, because there is always this one server, that has zergs of 60 people on every map, whereas your server hasn’t 60 people on all maps together, because there are no no-livers on your server that can play all night long. The nightshift server only wins the bracket because there is no one from your server there, to fight against during nighttime. (yes, I’m looking at you, Vizunah Square)
I don’t know what anet’s definition of balance is, but this system is far from being balanced. And it has been for over a year. Enough time to really look into the problems of their content, which they obviously didn’t.

Best,

Krumbotor

Hi folks,

I killed the toxic hybrid at least 4 times, though I won’t get the “Tower Hybrid Slayer”-achievement. Anyone else with this issue.

Krumbotor

Same Problem
Country: Germany
Build: 16845
Server: Elona Reach [DE]

Yet again, technical issues. Anet should really rethink their contracts with their server provider. I cant log in, but I dont get an error code, I only get the “unable to gain access to a login server” screen.

Server: Elona Reach [DE]

I’m getting a totally different error than most people here: “Transaction in progress” I hope this doesnt mean anything particularly bad for me. Anyone else getting this error?
Code: 34:4:5:920
Build:16732
Server: EU Elonareach