Guild Wars 2

Rehk.6574:

Chronologist.9782:

Thief = Can kill you while stealthed if you time it right with render lag

I think real culprit here is just that, stealth doesn’t break on anything

It doesnt need to break on anything when most stealth skills last 3-4 seconds tops and you can still be hit while in stealth.

If you made stealth break on Damage, you’d see the thief class numbers DROP to next to nothing, they would not be playable without stealth. It is the PRIMARY form of defense. Take that away and we might as well role warriors.

Do you REALLY want this game devolving into something where everyone is a carbon copy of everyone else?

Wow…you really ran with that one.

Damage breaks stealth => stealth doesn’t exist => thieves are the same as warriors.

So, you are going to fly over to the UK and then… ?

I mean, travelling the world is awesome and all, but can’t you just handle this via the internet or maybe a phone call or something? Send a fax?"

Everyone knows door-to-door canvassing is the most effective way to recruit guilds.

Don’t Warriors have an AoE with Immobilise on Longbow?
Bull Rush to charge and knockdown?
Shield slot 4 to charge and stun?
Hammer burst skill?

Infiltrator Arrow allows the thief to shadow step away but he’s still immobilised at the other end.

AoE with immobilize? No. They have an immobilize ability that last 3s on a 25s cooldown. Completely ineffective against infiltrator arrow.

Longbow has two AoE abilities (#3 and burst) but both have very slow travel times and a half way decent player should be able to avoid them pretty easy. (Not to say I haven’t hit a thief with them a few times…but I have to get pretty lucky).

Bulls charge, hammer burst are 600 range. Shield stun is 300. None of them are able to catch up to a single infiltrator arrow.

Thieves are annoying. It isn’t so much that they are amazing. I can usually kill them 1v1 on my warrior. But often times the fight goes a lot like this.

Me 80% health, them 40% health
Them: Invis
Reappear at 85% health
Fight
Me 35% health, them 25% health
Them: Run away Invis
Me: chase, immobilize
Them: Short bow…port….port….port

Me!

Tried just about every other class but can barely get them to level 5 before thinking, “this sucks, I’m going to go play my warrior some more”

Weekend has been a lot of fun. I’m on FA and I think more than anything we just have more coverage during the day than the other servers (with SoS having a lot more overnight coverage).

Maguuma fighting has been very tough on their borderlands but just looks like they don’t have the population to carry it into either the FA or SoS borderland. Same thing with the SoS borderland, they’re pretty tough there but non-existent on the other borderlands.

Hope they keep fighting during the week.

+1.

Had the same issue last night and decided to log off. Was in a group of at least 30 friendlies and couldn’t see a single one of them. Was able to finish off 3-4 enemies when I saw their downed icon but couldn’t see a single character model.

nvidia.3765:

Agree most of the match ups.

ET and SBi isn’t going to be that close. The #4 server has been getting 50-80 point boost for a solid win in tier 2 and SBi is going to drop a fair amount.

I think FC moves up.

Sorry,not sure how to do the reply yet in forums. Lappdancer said SB is gonna drop down a fair amount. According to the lastest Anet Glicko 2 rankings. SB is still holding second for overall score. I can see SB dropping a tier for a week, but a fair amount? I think not.

StormBluff for Life!

By fair amount I meant in points relative to ET and JQ. Guessing SBi will probably drop 50-75 points or so.

They’ll drop to #4 overall but there is no way they drop further than that. Next server down is like 200+ points away.

mangarrage.1062:

The only issue with FC jumping is 100 points is hard to make up. A +70 rating with a -30 rating still looks like failing short by a nose

My original thinking was that last week they were pretty much the same. This week BP moved up in rank and FC moved down so I figured similar performances would give BP more of a drop and FC more of a boost.

However, the more I think about it last week FC lost to NSP that was slightly higher rated (about 100 point difference) and this week BP lost to a much higher rated NSP (200 point difference). So I think I you are probably right FC is probably staying where they are at.

SBi will move to 4th (Tier 2) and ET will move to 3rd (Tier 1).

@OCDouglas

I think you are misunderstanding the chart that was posted. That was the results of the matches from last week (not the current match). I think you are taking the rating + the delta to get the new rating.

What the chart shows is the rating for this week with the delta being the change from the prior week.

I’m a bit confused. Is this saying that the system has no memory? A number one server could be number 10 and last can move to first?

I’m explaining oddly.

Every week (two weeks when it’s working like that), the system looks at the scores on all the servers, puts them through this formula and spits out ranks. Using those ranks, the servers are trebled (see what I did there?) up in groups of three. 1-3 are together, 4-6, 15-18, etc. The system doesn’t care (has no memory) of the previous matchups, it’s based purely on this match?

So what’s to stop a high ranked server from taking a dive one match to completely dominate a lower ranked server? Not saying that the fine players of GW2 would stoop to such nefarious deeds, but that would be possible within the system, yes?

The current match purely determines the change in the rating. The aggregate of all the previous matches is what the current rating is based on.

There is a natural limiting factor in how much servers can move up or down due to the fact that they are always going to be matched up servers at most 2 ranks away from them.

Even as we are seeing in some matches where a server is completely dominating, they are still only moving up usually 1 tier or at most two. You’ll never see a last to first or a first to last because the match ups aren’t set up that way.

Agree most of the match ups.

ET and SBi isn’t going to be that close. The #4 server has been getting 50-80 point boost for a solid win in tier 2 and SBi is going to drop a fair amount.

I think FC moves up.

Radiodread.8469:

Mid tier might be expecting a bit much. Currently we are in tier 7 of 8. I’d expect to be tier 6 next week. Maybe tier 5, but I hope not. Lets get their slowly and adjust as needed.

There is a chance for tier 5 if some of the mid-tier losers drop big (GoM, Yak’s). But still think they are going to be tier 6. Same win this week isn’t going to boost them as much since last week they beat the higher ranked Anvil (which is now ranked lower than NSP).

I’m on fort aspenwood and have no idea how squads work because I never joined one. There aren’t a lot of commanders on FA and the few that I see around are pretty terrible. I just run around and do my own thing.

Puddin Cheeks.8539:

I love the cowardly play from FA and BG, obviously working together on many situations over the past few days. They run right past each other both trying to hit us.

How is that cowardly?

I’m in favor of either moving it outside of WvW itself or just making it neutral.

My problem is that right now it’s a rich get richer type of things. Winning servers can control more jumping puzzles and obtain more siege blueprints than losing servers.

Halo.8976:

Neutro.3079
He is AoE engi, I think he alredy hitting everything around him.

From my experience being a Necro, I’m getting badges mostly from kills where I did decent amount of damage.

Problem is that enemies need to die. I see lots of people that seem very content to just force enemies to back up and regen their health instead of choosing one to focus down and kill.

I use longbow and axe/warhorn. Have 30 points traited in discipline.

Longbow Burst, #3, #2, #4. Swap, Axe Burst, #2. Auto attack till adrenaline is back or if I have to wait for swap cooldown.

Does really good damage IMO. But yeah…auto attack on bow sucks.

My opinion:

Axe/Warhorn + Longbow. Shout utilities + signet elite.

Gives you 100% uptime on swiftness (50% group swiftness, 50% self only).
Two ground target AOEs on longbow to defend and attack towers/keeps.
A root on longbow and cripple on axe to hunt down those that try to run.

I certainly hope they don’t do until they can start fielding some close match ups. Right now I haven’t really seen any.

There are 4 top tier servers right now. ET easily won last week. JQ is easily winning this week.

Probably going to always be that #5 & #6 are going to get dominated.

Just like it is probably going to be that the 3rd lowest ranked server is always going to dominate Devona and Kaineng.

I run a mixed build. Right now I use 30 tactics, 30 discipline, and 10 strength. Might move 10 out of discipline but it is working for now.

Mix gear between Bersekers (legs, shoulders, glove, amulet, earrings) and Knights (chest, head, legs, rings).

Gives you solid damage ability and some toughness from knights. From what I read about healing it isn’t really that worth it. Runes of the soldier give more vit and toughness.

I think my shouts heal for about 1200 each. With a little under 24k hp that is about 15% every 20-24s or so which IMO is quite a bit.

My calc using +50 points for a win. -10 for a clear second place (only for Stormbluff and Blackgate) and -45 for a loss (if both servers were getting beat badly both got -45 points).

1 Henge of Denravi
2 Stormbluff Isle
3 Eredon Terrace
4 Jade Quarry
5 Crystal Desert
6 Dragonbrand
7 Isle of Janthir
8 Sea of Sorrows
9 Blackgate
10 Gate of Madness
11 Fort Aspenwood
12 Tarnished Coast
13 Maguuma
14 Yak’s Bend
15 Ehmry Bay
16 Sorrow’s Furnace
17 Sanctum of Rall
18 Darkhaven
19 Anvil Rock
20 Northern Shiverpeaks
21 Borlis Pass
22 Ferguson’s Crossing
23 Devona’s Rest
24 Kaineng

Yahkin.1254:

The primary way to ‘win’ in wvw is by making sure you server has 24 hour participation. It isn’t about tactics, how many enemies you kill, or how many keeps you take or defend. It is all about holding your own until the other servers enter a dead zone in participation and you take the whole map.

:( It is frustrating to hear people say BS like this. I play primarily primetime and we are leading the per tick nearly 90% of the time. Most recently Wednesday night when it was quite clear we were being double-teamed. Good leadership and a sound “divide and conquer” plan was made and in an hour we owned 60% of the map including garrison.

Tactics matter and you are just making excuses. Starting winning in primetime, and people will come to cover your oceanic hours.

I play FA prime time. I would agree that we have been leading in per-tick most of the time and even during prime time I think we are the better server. However the difference is not huge. But the score gets drastically skewed during times when the other servers don’t have the population.

Yahkin.1254:

Also, raw data for us statistics geeks.

+1.

Archaeneoso.8461:

I agree with you there Monte,

But I think it still shows many times when they have server queues and we do not, across all BG. They have two gaps when they have noone queued for any BG, we have 4.

Agreed. During the weekend FA has a queue on eternal battlegrounds the entire time. There are times when the borderlands don’t have a queue but EB does. My guess is during those times FA has the borderlands a lot more full then SoR does.

albi.9518:

You argument fails because it’s obvious you see the score system as the only reward for playing 3W.

3W is not about the score, it’s not about who gets the more keeps, it’s about large-scale fights between organized huge teams for the control of a map. The fighting, the strategy, the defense and attacks ARE where the fun is, only the fact to have part in such a thing is a reward by itself.

Look at board games, like, for the most famous, Risk. When you play Risk, you have some losers and a winner. Well, despite that, everyone around the table will enjoy the game, will take pleasure by making long-term strategies, hiding his intentions etc. The game itself is enjoyable, not the reward at the end. It’s the same for 3W.

I may have to read over the rules of Risk but I don’t remember one person starting with 2x the army of everyone else.

WvW is a game. Games are only fun when they are balanced.

Apparently (as this thread shows) there are some people who love just stomping on their opponents with superior numbers. But I don’t think WvW is going to be successful if every matchup ends in one side destroying the others.

I personally don’t want the only way to achieve a decent matchup to be join one of the top 3-4 servers and have to deal with significant serve queues. I hope the matchup changes in the next couple weeks balance things out, but I’m not hopeful.

So I’m having a little trouble figuring out exactly what weapon I want/should be using in dungeons (I’ve done a few story modes switching through weapons but can’t decide).

Requirements:
1. One weapon will be longbow (Ranged and AOE seems useful, and I really like the weapon.
2. Current gear is crafted exotic (Boots, hands, shoulders, amulet, earrings = Berserker’s; Head, Chest, Legs, Rings = Knight’s).
3. 30 trait points will be in tactics for shout heals.
4. Gear has 6x runes of the soldier (shouts remove conditions).

I think my trait lines will largely be decided by what weapon would be most useful. Thoughts on the weapons:

- Greatsword: Probably highest damage but no defense, utility, and not sure I like standing still in a dungeon while 100blades goes off.

- Hammer: Best control but felt like long cooldowns on all the useful abilities. Could be traited to be lower but not sure how useful it would be.

- Rifle: Doesn’t really seem to provide anything over the longbow.

- Axe MH: I’ve been using this for PVE so far. Autoattack and burst are solid, but 2 and 3 abilities don’t seem to have a whole lot of value.

- Axe OH: Fury is always nice but generally have that through signet elite. Spinning AOE is nice but fairly long cooldown and seems like something that would get me killed more than anything.

- Mace MH: This is the only one I haven’t really tried out. I like the defensive abilities but can you get enough damage out of the autoattack since that seems like the only thing that does damage.

- Mace OH: Vulnerability doesn’t seem that valuable. Knockdown is nice but every 25s doesn’t seem that worth it.

- Sword MH: No condition damage on my gear so don’t think it would be worth it.

- Sword OH: One attack is a ranged bleed (once again, no condition damage) and one is a block. Don’t think the block seems worth it.

- Shield OH: Love the abilities but the cooldowns are way long. Even with traited to lower cooldowns seems like they wouldn’t be all that effective.

- Warhorn: I like swiftness but don’t think it is really needed in dungeons. The endurance regen ability might be nice. Could be traited to remove conditions but I don’t think I really need another two condition removals.

So I keep going back and forth between all the weapons. I have enough mats to craft a few exotics but don’t want to waste them on something I’m going to get sick of after a while.

What weapons have people been using in dungeons and liked/not liked?

Thanks!

While some gear does scale up, I’d say the majority does not. My experience as a 80 in the level 1-15 zones is at least a good 75% of the items are for the level of the zone and not my current level.

You expect 10 matches to be sufficient? It isn’t. There are 120 possible matchups among 24 servers.

Do you really think we need to see all matchups? I don’t think a HoD vs Kaineng matchup is going to tell us anything. Like I said, it is pretty easy with the current information to determine the few servers that you are going to be playing.

Also, the current data (from the 24 hour matches and the single 1 week match) used to determine matchups have all been obtained while free transfers are in effect. People are still server-hopping like crazy.

Which, in my mind as someone who has studied statistics at the Master’s and Ph.D level makes the data invalid for the purpose of matchmaking, since a good many people are changing servers based on the WvWvW score for a given match. They’ve got a confound in their variables; the IV isn’t independent.

Be that as it may, the data they have is insufficient at this time to produce stable matchups. And will be for some time. At a bare minimum, until several weeks after they disable free transfers.

Looking through the 24hr text file results posted and the post I linked earlier showing current scores, the current 1 week match seems to be very closely following the 24 hour format. I just looked through the current winning server vs the other two they are playing and there was maybe 2 results that differed significantly (one early Eredon got crushed but that was before a large alliance transferred there, the other being crystal desert getting beat by blackgate on the 10th).

Everything I am seeing is showing that the current 1week format is mimicking the 24hr format.

The transferring can have an issue, but I have no information to let me know the extent of this actually happening, other than posts by people saying it is.

mcl.9240:

There is a system in place to encourage balancing: The matchmaking system. It’s three weeks old, and has not had enough time yet to stabilize. It will need several months, most likely.

You’re demanding a fix NOW for something that is designed to work itself out over time, and most likely won’t be a problem once matches have stabilized.

I’m not demanding anything. Offering suggestions and opinions.

We’ve already had 10 iterations of matchmaking and the servers are no where close to balanced according to this thread. I don’t really expect much of a difference going forward. I’m sure pretty much every server can pick the group of 4-5 others that they are going to be playing.

Sky.9347:

I would like to see how things shake out when the queue system is fixed + transfers are closed + rankings are stable. Those three things together might actually solve this “problem”.

I’d agree, but I’m not very hopeful it will show anything different. In the 24hr matches I don’t think I saw any match that was fully balanced. It was always one side 100% night-capping everything. Every WvW score I see online seems to show the same thing for the 1 week matches.

Sky.9347:

I think:
Nobody should have their play time diminished by any system.
Nobody should have less access to W3 than anyone else, especially not based on time zone.
All caps (near 100% map control) SHOULD be very valuable.
All caps should be very difficult to maintain for long periods of time.
The system should offer variable (increasing) resistance to a server as it goes from 100% to 300% of their original holdings.

1/2: Prime-time players already do because of the queue.
3. IMO it should be impossible. It is no fun for anyone if one server can 100% cap against two servers.
4. Agreed. Evidence seems suggest that it isn’t as many servers can 100% for many hours.
5. Wouldn’t be opposed to it depending on how it is implemented. Still my ideal solution would be to force a balanced playing field (which really means population balance).

Sky.9347:

Lappdancer.4857:

Sky.9347:

Okay, so let’s leave the “demoralizing” out of my post.

Instead, let’s just call it “going to sleep”. My point stands. You are locking anyone who plays during off peak hours into long ques (possibly endlessly), and giving power to the tactic of “we’ll cap and then everyone leaves in order to prevent them from fielding much resistance”.

Why would you incentivize such behavior?

If they have a very large population advantages, yes there will be queues. Server transfers are free.

I think the leaving issue is solved solved by setting a floor that is enough that people can easily take unguarded points. Plus if you have enough people to cap a significant portion of a map due to population discrepancy, I don’t think it would be very easy to prevent everyone from joining wvw.

Server transfers are free right now, but what happens when they aren’t free and the server matches are reshuffled every 2 weeks?

What I mean is… say I am playing on my server today and I have a decent queue time. Tomorrow the match resets, pitting us against 2 new servers with new and different schedules, and all of a sudden I am stuck with 4 hour queues. Should I just transfer? What if it costs money, and I have a guild, and not everyone wants to pay money every 2 weeks to find a new server that fits their schedule?

I do see what you are saying, but I guess I’m going on the assumption that initial queues with server transfers would balance out the off-peak population. Then once it works out there should be similar populations on similar servers. Though that may be more optimistic than realistic considering the top server right now seem to maintain their population despite very long queues.

mcl.9240:

I will make the following statement: There is no server that has such a low population that it cannot reach the maximum number of players allowed in WvWvW.

However, there are servers in which so few people are playing WvWvW that it seems like the servers with more people on them always win.

The problem here is that the servers with low participation rates need to motivate more people to play WvWvW.

People play WvW or they don’t. I don’t think there is really any “motivating” people to play.

The system needs to be set up to encourage balancing. Without that it isn’t fun for anyone and it hurts the game.

Sky.9347:

Okay, so let’s leave the “demoralizing” out of my post.

Instead, let’s just call it “going to sleep”. My point stands. You are locking anyone who plays during off peak hours into long ques (possibly endlessly), and giving power to the tactic of “we’ll cap and then everyone leaves in order to prevent them from fielding much resistance”.

Why would you incentivize such behavior?

If they have a very large population advantages, yes there will be queues. Server transfers are free.

I think the leaving issue is solved solved by setting a floor that is enough that people can easily take unguarded points. Plus if you have enough people to cap a significant portion of a map due to population discrepancy, I don’t think it would be very easy to prevent everyone from joining wvw.

I think it is a good idea. I would say:

1. Floor of 50 people (don’t want one server having everyone leave to defend a lead).

2. Cap set to 20% over the next most populated server (I don’t really have a problem with two servers splitting the points if a third doesn’t have people. I think the issue is one server holding everything).

3. No kicks. (It should work itself out with people leaving and not letting new people in. There is potential for one server to keep over the cap on for a while but I’d think it should balance eventually).

JMO.

I’m starting to think that this is just going to be the nature of WvW scores. There just doesn’t seem to be enough balancing effects and I think the difference between even similarly ranked servers is large.

Tzash.5748:

Lappdancer.4857:

4B. Arbitrary limits? There are already limits during prime time on how many can get into WvW. Why are you so touchy about applying a similar process to off-hours?

There are already limits during off peak too. My server has WvWvW queues during US off peak. You want to make those queues even longer just because we may get matched against a server who doesn’t feel like fielding a sizable team?

As usual people want solutions that only impacts someone else’s gaming experience.

“does feel like fielding” :lol:

And yes I would. It would encourage the fewer off-peak players to be less concentrated on certain servers and would hopefully help with competitive balance.

It’s pretty obviously your not one to care about competitive balance though.

Tzash.5748:

Mara Gossep.2761:

I just find it silly that it is population which is dictating who’s on top of the ladder. And I am not alone with this point of view. Being skilled and coordinated during your prime time, means zip zero if noone is online to protect your structures at other hours.

If population is dictating everything then why is Eredon Terrace (medium pop during US offpeak) ranked #4 and currently kicking the tail of 2 unofficial Oceanic servers (both high pop during US offpeak). These are facts, not conjecture.

And if you don’t like losing things during offpeak then get your own offpeak players to do something about it. 3 medium servers and the rest high during Oceanic prime time proves that almost everyone has a healthy offpeak pop. Again, these are facts not conjecture.

Server population is not the same as WvW population. I would not be surprised if ET has 24 hour WvW queues which would make their WvW population as high as any other server.

1. How is the fact that you are fighting two servers unfair? All three servers are fighting two different servers. There is nothing uneven about it.

2. If off-hour players log in to find them not holding anything, then there was likely a large population difference at other times. This is the issue.

3. “how is it not possible that they organize a counterattack to retake some territory” They usually do retake some territory during prime time. Just about every match has been at least close in potential points during the day.

4A. I probably would care too much about getting kicked out.
4B. Arbitrary limits? There are already limits during prime time on how many can get into WvW. Why are you so touchy about applying a similar process to off-hours?

WvW is a game. A game with a score. Prime-time has a balancing factor of population limits. I really don’t think it makes sense for a minority of the players to dictate the majority of the score.

My class deserves to win every fight! Nerf all the others!

SirUrza.8067:

Curtis, multiple zones of the same level-range don’t help.

Leather and Jute are mostly gear drop base. Once you out level the zone the loot tables change and thus you won’t be looting gear that disassembles into jute and rawhide leather. Even the scrap we can dissemble changes.

The best we can hope for at level 20+ is a loot bag from select level 10 zone mobs and the loot bags have their own loot tables that doesn’t mean jute or leather every time.

Have you gone to lower level zones? I’m level 80 and clearing areas I haven’t visited while leveling. I’d say 75-80% of my item drops are for the level of the zone. I wish most of the drops were close to level 80 and I could have something worth selling.

Agree with the OP (Except that they get hosed at 375 for the rare equipment, not 400 for the exotics).

I didn’t notice a difference between the gemstones Jeweler needs and the fine crafting mats. You get some while leveling and progressing but you need far more than you find. TP prices on average are similar.

Ectos are usually the most expensive item I’ve needed for crafting exotics. (Blood vials were close, gossamer is also close but not as much needed for armorsmith).

I have a magic find set of rare armor that I carry around when doing events and such. I’ll stick with the 350 mithril magic find jewelry as the cost of ectos for crafting the rare items is far too much for what you get out of it.

gurugeorge.9857:

I must say I’m not a big fan of a 1c monetary reward for completing a zone (Lion’s Arch). Maybe that was just a bug?

Guessing it is to prevent people from creating a new character, getting zone completion in all the cities, deleting character and repeating.

Siad.3608:

This is how it is between Fort Aspenwood, Sanctum of Rall, and Sorrow’s Furnace.

http://i.imgur.com/hokHJ.jpg

It gets pretty competitive during peak times, and is actually quite fun, but it’s clear that SoR and SF just don’t have the numbers during the late hours to make it a contest.

I played on Fort Apenwood Saturday evening and it was fun and pretty well balanced between all three servers. On the FA borderlands we were pretty much trading the northern outside supply depot’s between the servers. At one point enemies even got through both walls of the garrison but we manged to group up and hold it.

After that though it felt like everyone from SoR logged off. We took their keep with them having maybe 10-20 people defending, then their supply camp and the tower by their spawn.

Seemed like it when from a very balanced fight to complete domination in a matter of 30m to an hour.

Exonfang.6784:

Leveling Jeweling is easy; Get about 250 ore of each tier, make settings, bands and hooks to discover rings and earrings until you can make filigrees. When you get to filigrees make enough filigrees to make 1 upgraded gem of every type of gem in that tier. Then make more settings, bands, hooks and chains to discover with those gems to get to the next tier of gems.

Remember that you can use Master’s Salvaging Kits to get back the gems in your crafted items if you find yourself needing more gems. It’s about 15 silver for 25 uses of this, and has an 80% chance of recovering the gem.

Hope this helps, happy hunting.

Not sure if that would really be worth it.

Most created items sell to a vendor for 50c to 1.5s and you can get most gems for 1-2s (even at high levels, aside from Rubies since people love their DPS).

So you are spending 15s for about 20 gems (25 * 0.8).
Missing out on vendor cash of at a min of say 50c per item.

So you are spending at least 1.25s (15/20 + 0.5) in order to get a gem back plus maybe some ore which I think if often going to more expensive than buying the mats on the TP.

Start a “tier” with a lot of mats and create all the base items you need. Ends up being like 28 total settings with 7 bands, hooks, chains, filigrees. You only get XP for those at the lower level of a tier and once you get past that you get nothing.

It does end up being kind of hard to maintain items close to your level but it beats having to create probably 3-4 extra items because you didn’t take advantage of the refining and base item xp.

Part 2!

Issues with AreanaNet Support team comments There have been some (although limited) comments on their enforcement and rules, however I would like to point out a few of them that I have had issue with.

• “The number of account blocks is miniscule: less than .001% of our total player base.” – ArenaNetSupportTeam (Reddit)

That number does not make any sense. At 5m copies sold it would be 50 people. At best an issue of innumeracy. At worst intentional misleading and huge lie. I have yet to see any correction or even acknowledgement of the error.

• “Those people are not telling the whole story. ^RB” On the official GW2 twitter account in response to a discussion on the naming bans I had been actively posting in.

While there certainly were a number of people claiming to be banned from their name when due to other issues, to call everyone a liar and imply that everyone who claimed to have been banned due to a name actually did something else is incredibly unprofessional.

• “Hey, we’re gamers, too. We generally won’t block for the occasional slip of the tongue. But you can read the responses right here and see the suspensions were given for some pretty nasty chat.” – ArenaNetSupportTeam (Reddit)

Although they have said it, that same account later uses nothing but a couple swear words (not directed at anyone) as the basis for a person’s ban. Either inconsistent messaging, inconsistent moderation, or another lie.

• .
  [quote=13764;GaileGray.9587:]Right. We have a lot of people who need help, but we should dedicate people to hand-holding with giving warnings? Really? The warning comes through the User Agreement, the Rules of Conduct, and the Conduct Breaches and Outcomes. Become familiar with them and the problem is solved.[/quote]

- I don’t see how warnings are any more work than suspensions (I guess it’s a little harder to ignore the issue when those people are still in game though).
- Problem with terms, rules, conduct and that is that they are the same as every other game. The REAL issue is that ArenaNet chooses to enforce them FAR more strict than any other company.
- I find it kind of insulting to call what is pretty much standard industry enforcement practices (forced name changes, warnings prior to “suspensions”) to be “hand-holding”

• “Each mark results in a temporary account suspension. Suspended account holders will receive an in-game message that explains that the account has been rendered inaccessible and also provides a specific reason for the account mark and the duration of the temporary account suspension. " – Guild Wars 2 Conduct Breaches & Outcomes

Presumably I have received a mark since my account was suspended and a forced name change when I was able to log back in. However, like I said, I have never received any in-game mail or any message at all (I’ll ignore the fact of how it doesn’t make any sense to use in-game mail to tell people how long they are locked out of the game).

Recommendations for changes

1. Borderline cases of language or name violations get a warning or a forced name change prior to any suspensions.
2. No change for punishment in clear cases of severe language, hate speech, abuse.
3. An email is sent out for all warnings and suspensions stating the reason for the punishment, the time it starts, the time they will be able to get back in, and the punishment for subsequent violations.

Anyway, not sure if anyone will even both to read the wall of text but it helps me get some things off my chest. I’m sure it’ll turn into the same argument of “I should be able to say whatever I want” vs “WTG anet for cleaning up the filth” argument that just about everything else has but whatever. This (and maybe some follow up responses) will probably be my last comments on this.

And for anyone wondering, I got suspended for the character name “Lappdance” (as you can see, similar to my display name but I don’t have the ability to change that). The reddit account responded to me (3 days after my suspension was over) saying “You’re back in the game now, with a request to rename. The name is, imo, clever given the context, but when people can’t see/don’t know the context, I guess it’s a little over the line. Thanks for understanding!”

I just wanted to write out a few the issues I have with ArenaNet’s policies regarding the account suspensions (obviously mine in particular). It is really too bad that they have decided to push this agenda how they have, it really is a decent game. But I will say their actions have certain made it so I will not be purchasing any gems and certainly will not be speaking of the game in the same light as I use to. I’ve always been helpful in games, never (IMO) done anything that would offend anyone. I’ve never even gotten a warning in any other game I have played (despite using the same name that gave me the suspension in this game). Nothing in-game has changed with how I play due to what happened, but at least for me the support and enforcement of these policies has eliminated the reputation that Anet could have built with this game. They definitely have my money, so I doubt they really care, but I thought I’d say something in the almost non-existant chance that it does something.

Note that I said “inappropriate”. That is how I feel, that is my opinion. I recognize Anet’s authority to do whatever the heck they want. I’ll list my reason for disagreeing with it. I almost went with “unethical” but thought that might be a little over the top.

General Issues with ArenaNet’s rules, punishment, and enforcement.

• Rules are not as black and white as Anet seems to claim. It’s been said multiple times that the rules and terms are their “warning”, but those comments do not make sense to me. Reading through the rules it seems pretty obvious there are a number of areas where reasonable people could disagree as to what violates the rules and what does not. I’m not sure if they simply don’t see the subjectivity in them, or just don’t care, but it is there.

• One size fits all punishment is ridiculous. Calling people extremely offensive racial terms, hate speech, abuse should not be met with the same punishment as things that are “slightly” over the line. They say that a real person reviews all reports before a suspension is handed out, I see no reason why they can’t use reason and discretion in handing out varying lengths of punishment. This is the case in the enforcement if just about every set of rules everywhere, I do not understand why Anet feels they cannot handle this.

• Unprofessional Communication: They have made some progress here with the error messages that are given providing more information, but it is still terrible. At the time I got a “suspension” the only message I ever got was “Account blocked due to unacceptable behavior. Please try again after block as expired.” And a forced name change when I got back in the game. No email, nothing from two customer service tickets, no in-game mail once I got back, no notification about when I could get back in the game. It is unfortunately that reddit seems to be the only way to get any sort of information, and that is if you are lucky enough for the one person to respond to you.

• Pointless Appeals: According to the “Conduct Breaches & Outcomes” document, I’m allowed to submit an appeal for my inappropriate name. Problem is that it took 2 days to even get a copy/paste message back from customer service and over a week since then. Regardless of appeals a full suspension will be applied no matter what nothing is going to replace the time you could have been playing the game. I have filed an appeal, but with the message that is being sent by AreanNet’s customer service people I’m doubtful anyone is going to take the time to read and consider the evidence that I have provided in my ticket. I’m pretty sure I’ll just an “Appeal denied” message at some point.