Guild Wars 2

Finally beat the tower, and the feeling of achievement was pretty good.

But totally not worth the frustration of getting there. There’s a difference between “challenging” and “challenging for stupid reasons.”

The clock tower had a decent amount of difficulty as a jumping puzzle, and the speed aspect was pretty well done I think. But two things were huge issues for me in overcoming it.

First, the issue of being nearly unable to see what you’re jumping on because it’s a group event. I can understand mechanically why it was done this way, but I’m sure with a team of programmers a better, less obnoxious method could have been designed. This puzzle requires speed and precision, and the penalty for even small errors is failure; these things do not go well together with a mob of GIANT NORNS blocking 90% of the terrain you’re trying to navigate.

Second, the terrain collision made it difficult to determine where “safe” jumping spots were located and what features would block you. Some of the apparent ledges or corners on terrain pieces behaved as if they weren’t there, while others would block you. Once again, combined with the awesome feature of a mob of players blocking your view, several spots (in particular right after the “pause” near the start) were nearly impossible to navigate cleanly.

The idea of a fast-paced, difficult jumping puzzle was great, and in general this was well implemented. If it weren’t for the grouping issues and the terrain collision (also related to grouping), I’d say well-done overall. Because of those, however, it was a frustrating mess.

rhonyn.6810:

The issue is magnified atm, due to seemingly low WvW participation -especially in mid/low tier servers. Its been my experience that outside weekend primetime that I rarely encounter a queue anymore on the majority/all maps. As a numbers game, an influx of a large number of WvW participants to these worlds can have a dramatic impact to the servers performance, unbalancing current match-ups fairly easily.

This is really a shame, because WvW is some of the most fun I’ve had in PvP in a long time. The mass-scale combat and keep/capture dynamic is something that is rarely well-done, and GW2 has done a pretty amazing job of it barring a few minor issues (and the major issue of server transfers).

Dixa.6017:

redesigning won’t encourage more participation

the problem is the current generation of gamers are inherently anti-social. too many roam wvw alone or in packs of 2-3 and get frustrated/log as soon as they run into the zerg.

if you are alone in wvw, you are doing it wrong. if you are only in a small group you are usually doing it wrong depending on the current battle situations

and lastly, treating it like real battle or trying to institute sun tzu methodology in a game where your enemy just respawns does. not. work.

i’ve been on sea of sorrows since day one of this game. we have a lot of commanders, but only 2-3 that actually command. we have at least three commanders who refuse to actually help, going so far as to tell people to f off my group of buddies will do their own thing while the rest of us would try to take an orb keep. this, again is due to the anti-social and xenophobic-leaning views that are dominating our real lives creeping into social gaming.

wvw is designed very well, even better than vanilla daoc rvr once free transfers are stopped and server communities/pride/ego can be built.

I’d go so far as to say that your issue is server-specific. Try Maguuma, we have some amazing commanders and great teamwork, and plenty of fun times even when we’re losing by a 10:1 margin.

Kyrul.7681:

It’s this sudden shift in their WvW strength that’s caused them to dominate the matchup so hard… so the real problem is that the matchup was made based on their previous strength and not their current one.

This is going to continue until the issue of zero-penalty, low-cooldown server transfers is resolved.

As it stands, the entire ratings system is meaningless because there is a pretty sizeable population of players who are willing to transfer servers to win. When the strength of a server changes dramatically and unpredictably between one week and the next, it’s impossible to have any sort of a balanced system because there is simply no way to judge a server’s current strength and place it accordingly.

Fury.6248:

Who cares, transfers are just baddies looking for a ride.

You should care because they’re getting that ride, and they’re getting it at the expense of fun and balanced server matchups. Transfers are the reason that we’re 2 days into a matchup and it’s already so one-sided that the result is a foregone conclusion.

miya.5160:

While I am vocally against the reward system of dungeons, you can dodge most things.

I think people are having problems, because they’re attempting to react to the visible circles on the ground. But by the time you see the red circle, it’s a bit too late. At that point, you do need ridiculously fast reaction speeds.

However, if you are looking at the attack animations of the enemy or boss, they will have a “tell” that will indicate which move they are doing for you to get out accordingly.

This is coming from a squishy mesmer, who uses primarily melee and has mediocre reaction time.

So basically, it’s Mike Tyson’s Punchout but every fight is against the Champ and you can’t see his “tells” most of the time because he’s covered in spell effects from the rest of your group.