Guild Wars 2

I personally don’t think dagger storming a group of two bolstered 80s is very interesting. I would suggest Thieves Guild for small group/solo roaming unless you’re consistently running into zergs. And judging by you having three orbs and 600+ points potential, you didn’t have to contend with many zerg groups.

There are a significant number of issues with WvW, and most have been addressed. However, one of my biggest problems at this point, which is something that just isn’t going to change because of how the game is designed, is the detachment of WvW from the rest of the game. It’s something I’ve been aware of, but hasn’t really been at the forefront of my opinion of the game. It’s been settling in lately, and I miss PvP aspects being integrated with the rest of the world. I miss random natural PvP and the excitement of knowing you could get jumped at any moment.

Don’t get me wrong, I do enjoy GW2, but I can’t help but yearn for the integration of PvP in the natural explorable world. I find myself already looking to future releases of games that may or may not offer it. I particularly look at a game like TESO that’ll have three factions and natural PvP, and seems it’ll be closely resemble DAoC than GW2.

I just think that ArenaNet tried too hard to appease all crowds without stepping on any toes, and it leaves the feeling of detached and separated features. I’m not gonna quit GW2, but I don’t feel compelled to spend as much time in it as I did in the first month because WvW from a larger picture is kinda broken, and it feels inconsequential to the rest of the game aside from PvE style bonuses. It doesn’t help that the zerg mentality plagues WvW, and not only that but it’s an effective and rewarded style of play.

I can’t predict the health of the WvW aspect of the game, but it’s not looking to great at this point.

nidwin.6731:

Forgive me my ignorance but what’s Eve?
As for having fought Maguuma you’re right.

back to topic.

@OP
get 2-3 Memsers, real ones, chain feedback + all the needed goodies.

You can’t feign to have any knowledge of Goon without knowing what EVE is. I never played EVE and know about Goon there. That said, I have seen Goon’s laughable efforts in other games and my experience with them in other games doesn’t come close to what I’ve heard about their EVE division.

Nabrok.9023:

Any multipliers based on population are a bad idea, you’re forgetting what the purpose of the score is.

The score is not primarily to determine a winner. There is no prize for first place.

The score is to determine a ranking to match you up against similar servers. Granted, this is currently compromised by the free server transfers, but never-the-less it’s what it’s for.

That’s like saying that a breathalyzer isn’t to determine who’s drunk, it’s to determine who’ll spend the night in the drunk tank.

jayderyu.3751:

There is no such thing as Night Cappers. Keep in mind that the HOURS it took for the players to take during the day are all gone in the morning. Now I could be wrong, but I believe the planet Earth is round. apx 1/2 of our planet faces a star that we call our Sun. That means when the server during the day takes the map, they will then lose the map at night.

It doesn’t matter where you are on the planet. There are no Night Cappers…. actually that is not entirly true. There are those players who do stay up all night, but they are small minority.

You’re making an irrelevant point. Night-capping is a term used to describe taking objectives during a server’s off-hour time. Regardless of where you are in the world, each server has its own local time in relation to the userbase it represents and holds. Using the term night-capping as it pertains to a server’s local time is a relevant application of the term and accurately describes what it is. You’re basically making a point on semantics that isn’t even relevant.

jayderyu.3751:

However, I do understand your plight, but as a few others have made good points. If you take the map during the day. Then the next day you log on AND the map is still all yours. Then what are you going to do? stand at there spawn points. Siege there unconquerable home base? Is that what you really want to play?

If transfers were mitigated and the match-making system were working as intended, then what you describe here wouldn’t be as likely of a scenario. They wouldn’t just own almost everything all day and then keep it throughout the night because they’d be pitted against servers that can push back in one time zone or another. Actually, what you’re using to make a point is actually what is happening from servers that do have a strong off-hour presence, because each subsequent day, less and less players are willing to log in and recover all the ground gained by an off-hour crew facing little to no resistance, especially against fully upgraded objectives.

They’re still free because guesting is more important than WvW according to ArenaNet.

Are you trying to accredit TC for something that has been happening for quite awhile now?

Kerri Knight.3168:

How is the night-capping team’s time somehow not equal to your time?

You realize it is night for them while you are capping their stuff, right?

They aren’t night-capping, they are capping during their prime time, just like you.

This sounds somewhat like a “we’re joining a bandwagon” in disguise.

Just about any server with a decent night presence is either high tier or on it’s way to high tier because of a coordinated bandwagon of transfers. You will probably either have high queue times (2-3 hours) upon arrival or find that it becomes so within a few weeks.

Everyone would be doing themselves and others a lot of favors to just ignore the total score screen and focus on the play that happens within a single session.

I didn’t really read it that way. Realistically, the real problem is that the time of those who play during the primetime of the server’s local designation is worth less than those who fight in off-hours, especially when it comes to servers who lack off-hour coverage. I say that because the points earned from the objectives is worth the same whether there is opposition or not.

Time zones are not equal, off-hour coverage is more important than any other coverage unless the servers are roughly equal throughout time zones.

I think the ultimate fix is to not care about your kill tally. Chances are you won’t get a badge of honor for it anyway. Just write it off as a victory and move on. I’ve had people port/log out on me, but I just shrug it off. Cowards will be cowards.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Just wanted to quickly add we’ve got people working on fixing issues with free server transfers as well, its proven far more complicated than we originally intended/expected to get done but is absolutely being built and is coming as soon as we can possibly get it in and bug-free.

We’ll also be working on a number of other WvW features we’ll talk more about in the coming months once they’re closer to being implemented!

Thanks for that tid-bit of information.

I could go for that, as long as they remove death shroud, clones/illusions, and retaliation.

Psy.6153:

Ah cool, so while he stealths, hits a 15k backstab followed by 2 spamseekers to 3 shot you, i can stand spamming my autoattack.

Genious, why didnt i think of that.

This thread is about issues pertaining to stealth, so lumping everything you think is wrong with the thief as one giant issue is a little bit of a clouded perspective. Not every thief is a HS spamming thief – it’s just the default cookie-cutter set for players that would otherwise be bad. Even the player in the video isn’t an HS thief, he’s sword/dagger.

I have a pistol/dagger thief myself, and agree that HS thieves need toned down a bit, but stealth can’t be balanced around one build/weapon set. The primary problem with stealth is culling, as far as I know. If the mechanics of stealth were working as intended, then it wouldn’t be such an overblown problem.

Spawn-trapping is the more appropriate term, but even then that doesn’t happen often and doesn’t describe what most people are experiencing when they use “spawn-camping”.

Nokaru.7831:

Nevron.9413

There was so much bad in that video that I found it hard to even focus on what the thief was doing.

You say that, but there is no other profession that can just troll a large group of bad players toe to toe, exploiting their inexperience in WvW. Any other class which is in that situation would have to run (or die in <30 seconds); not a thief. They just abuse the fact that Stealth lingers for 1-2 seconds after it’s actually over.

I agree, but there was still an extreme amount of bad in the video. At one point his stealth fails and he’s still able to finish someone, beyond the point where the culling problems would have prevented being visible. If even a small handful of those players were relatively competent, he would not have been able to get away with it as long as he did.

There was so much bad in that video that I found it hard to even focus on what the thief was doing.

Nice post, and accurately addresses a lot of the issues. The game is still young, but I can only hope that they’re working on major fixes before a significant portion of the population decides the game isn’t for them due to the listed issues. Some of the issues seem minor on their own, but they very heavily compound each other when looking at them all, and there are definitely some pretty big design flaws that counter the intent and enjoyment of WvW.

Actually, Daish, the weaker servers more often than not seem to fight for second place, especially given the current imbalances.

mcl.9240:

Banono.4597:

Am I the only one who hates Reddit’s format? Makes trying to glance over things almost impossible.

Nope. I’ve always boggled at the fact that it’s so popular. It’s like mid-90’s forum design never improved, and became hugely popular. I can’t stand to use the site, even though it occasionally has good content. It’s ridiculously difficult to navigate and hard on the eyes.

Yeah, it operates and looks like something that would’ve been popular when Napster was.

I remember when that one happened. Things are quite a bit different now. It’s easier to answer questions about intent than it is about actual outcome. We’ll see, though.

“Can’t answer that” “We’re looking into it” “We’re working on it and can’t comment at this time” “Working as intended”

I haven’t seen that, but I have seen emote spamming by BG players. I wouldn’t put so much weight behind it. Judging maturity and sportsmanship off of a few emotes by a small handful of players is a little bit of a stretch. And it’s ironic that you’re talking about sportsmanship pertaining to emotes against players that were spawn-camping.

As far as the courtesy cap thing goes, don’t act all tough and haughty just because your server is doing well in a bracket it doesn’t belong in.

Lord Awesomeness.1804:

That’s the only reason HoD was #1, because they had enough people to completely dominate between 3am-9am.

To be fair, if the scoring system was locked to NA primetime, HoD would have still been number one due to beating out every other top server during NA primetime. The only chance other servers had was to double-team and/or night-cap. They obviously couldn’t night-cap, so they double-teamed, and the dominance of HoD coverage over the other servers rendered the NA double-team efforts futile.

If Anet was looking at the bigger picture, free transfers would have been disabled before WvW match-ups started, in my opinion. I think their failure at looking at the bigger picture is what led to the current mess.

But it’s the one thing we can see in WvW with any consistency..

Nabrok.9023:

I fail to see how paid server transfers which will likely cost about the same as 1 (maybe 2) month subscription for any other MMO will make the slightest bit of difference if WvW is not also locked out for the duration of the current match. That is the problem.

Locking out servers completely is not an option. Again, not everybody plays WvW.

What you say is the problem is a problem, but it’s not the only problem. If you fail to see how taking something free and applying a cost will mitigate the problem then I don’t know what to tell you. It’s pretty simple, really. You take something free, apply a cost, and a percentage of players will opt out of using it.

You do realize that free transfers are how servers got overpopulated to begin with, right? You’re basically saying that free transfers are alleviating a problem that was caused by free transfers in the first place.

It’s good that some people are spreading out, but it’s generating other problems. Certain servers are receiving a higher influx of players than others, so while they’re spreading out from HoD and ET, and maybe some others, they’re still somewhat centralizing on a small handful of servers. The bigger problem it’s generating is that the recipient servers are dominating their current match-ups due to the influx, making the current server ratings completely irrelevant in the determination of the match-ups.

To me, zerging is only a negative connotation when applied to how a guild runs. A zerg guild is a guild that needs numbers to compete. When it comes to PuGs, especially with the size of WvW maps and how the game is designed, the zerg is simply the primary numbered melting pot force on the map.

Aeden.5896:

Nevron.9413:

Aeden, during that last BG/DB/FA match, didn’t a significant handful of DB WvW guilds jump from DB to BG mid-match? Maybe it was a herculean effort to a degree, but if your primary opposition jumped to your server, allowing a surge in points based on the shift of opposition to your side of the fence, then that kinda paints a bit more of a picture.

If that’s true, they had low visibility. Afaik there weren’t any guilds added to the Blackgate war council and I saw no new guilds making things happen in the field ([Urge] and [RQ] made the big plays, though obviously most players contributed). At least when I was on, it was the same guilds/people the entire match. That rumor would have some modicum of credibility if the names of these guilds were mentioned, but, interestingly, they never were (in these forums or guildwars2guru).

Guilds may have left DB (not my server so I wouldn’t know). That would have helped BG nearly as much as getting new guilds.

The DB guilds that jumped to BG had someone state that they were staying out of WvW for the remainder of the match-up, so that’s probably why they had low visibility. I was merely pointing out the impact of having your primary opposition move to your server in the middle of match, whether they stay out of WvW or not. I’m not placing any blame or complaining about it, was just adding a little perspective to it from what I saw on Guru.

Aeden, during that last BG/DB/FA match, didn’t a significant handful of DB WvW guilds jump from DB to BG mid-match? Maybe it was a herculean effort to a degree, but if your primary opposition jumped to your server, allowing a surge in points based on the shift of opposition to your side of the fence, then that kinda paints a bit more of a picture.

You can have your HS thief. I’ll stick to p/d. Also, most thieves that just run in and dagger storm are terrible and incapable of doing anything but the FotM button mashing. I personally enjoy curb-stomping HS thieves.

Nokaru.7831:

Transfers are open until they get their Guest feature working.

Yep, jumping servers to say hi to a friend in ‘pixel-person’ is more important than WvW as a feature.

They’re going to leave them open until most of the WvW population fades and the remaining WvW population is centralized on three servers so there’s only one perpetual match-up. That’s the only reasonable explanation I can think of as to why they’re letting the disaster continue.

Curious to see how TESO RvR will pan out.

Well, SoS did have a surge of NA guilds jump to the server to take advantage of that off-hour coverage without having to coordinate it, so it should be jumping up tiers to fight other servers with an off-hour presence.

Welcome to the pains of being number one, I know how you feel. With free transfers still open, this will be a recurring nightmare. We started off with little to no queue on HoD during head-start and launch, and as we drove ourselves to the top, the queue got bigger and bigger as we got loaded down with bandwagoneers.

I made a thread about wanting one day matches back for a week upon closing free transfers. Needless to say, I agree with needing one day matches back for a week, but only once free transfers are shut down.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Free-Transfer-Closure-and-24-Hour-Match-ups/first#post424137

Setch.2398:

You can always queue for another borderlands/EB while already in a borderland/EB. The post by Anet referred to queuing for 2 things at once would actually only put you in the queue for the last thing you queued for. You would not be in a queue for both things.

Like I said, I queued for two maps at once. I got a pop for one, accepted it, and then 15 or so minutes later I got a pop for the second one I queued for. I did not requeue for one while in WvW. Both pops were from queuing at the same time.

Setch.2398:

When was it proven false that you can’t queue for more than 1 map at a time? 100% of the time when we queued, it would put is in the last thing we queued for. Are you saying that is no longer the case?

I’ve personally queued for two maps, gotten into one, then gotten a pop for the next without requeuing for any other map. There might be an order of precedence but the bottom line is that you can indeed queue for two maps.

Setch.2398:

It is not supposed to be a ‘lottery’ but people have been spreading that around as fact when they see their friends get in before them. Last I read Anet was looking into that issue.

Yeah, that was the same ArenaNet post that stated that you can’t queue for more than one WvW map at a time, which has also been proven false. The players know the game and their systems better than they do. Also, that statement is almost a month old, so they must be looking into it extremely hard.

Yes, I’m being facetious, but if the queue has been ‘bugged’ like this since launch, why would anyone assume that it’s not a lottery system when that’s how it’s been working?

They can’t implement a counter or timer with the current queue system because it’s not first come first serve, it’s a lottery system.

When the chips are down you’re at more of a disadvantage simply due to the winning server likely holding all three orbs. Not sure what part of the outmanned buff is supposed to offset a 15% increase to maximum HP and 150 point increase to all stats. PvE incentives to offset population imbalance and orb disadvantages simply will not work.

The bonuses that the outmanned buff provide are irrelevant to its purpose in a PvP setting.

Alumisoul.9072:

Just wanted to add something about our (BG) queue times. I have rarely had to wait on any of the borderlands, and if I do it’s only for 10-20 minutes. I usually only have to wait to get into EBG. We aren’t as jammed packed as you might think.

We had a similar effect on HoD closer to launch when a match outcome was all but determined within the first couple of days. WvW queues would drop off as people were less obligated to partake, especially when a majority of the map is already owned.

epics.9310:

why do you all keep posting this? This is intended by Arena Net, i really dont get why you all think it would change.

Because it should change, and maybe if it gets enough attention, it will.

I don’t think the circle is as important as you think. I can be part of a siege that gets repelled, and get full gold credit for it when the server takes it later even if I’m no longer on the same side of the map.

Macallan.9270:

For the EB, a few people on TC have indicated that we made a deliberate effort to leave FA alone, as BG will have a harder time owning the map against 2 teams than 1. With that effort made by all of TC, it is disappointing to see FA not understand this dynamic. In reading their posts about their past experience with BG, one would think it quite simple to figure out.

TC was pushing up into FA pretty hard last night while BG was doing the same, so not sure what you were expecting. We understand the dynamic, but when you push up into our territory so heavily while BG does the same, we’re not going to sit there and allow it.

As a point of reference..

Now I wasn’t a huge fan of 24H match-ups, but I am less of a fan of the impact free transfers are currently having on WvW. Yes, I agree that some positives have come out of it, like the dispersion of competition among some of the other servers. However, it’s become quite apparent that there are a couple of servers that have benefited from it more than most and it’s causing some crazily skewed match-ups.

That said, I personally think that free transfers should be closed ASAP, and that there needs to be a week of 24H match-ups so servers can resettle back into brackets that are more befitting to what they bring to the table due to en masse transfers.

Is this likely? Probably not, but I think it’s something that should be considered. I realize guesting was a promised feature and free transfers are there in lieu of it, but WvW is suffering too much to warrant the ability to jump to another server to say hello to a friend.

Opinions?

I wasn’t meaning to imply that you were ‘having’ them move to your server by any effort on your part. You got back up to T2 with your off-hour coverage against servers that had little to none, and then you had an alliance move from Dragonbrand, the second largest NA TA guild, and the largest NA AA guild. So it’s going to become another bandwagon server.

I’m not trying to bash BG by any means, simply saying that your climb back up was part your effort, and part the numbers and coverage provided by the transfers that BG has singularly benefited from more than any other server.

I think the best solution would be to disable free transfers. If guesting as a feature and free transfers in lieu of their failure to implement it is more important than WvW as a feature, then I question the direction of the game.

Basically, they’re sacrificing WvW balance and stability for the sake of people being able to go to another server and say hello to a friend in ‘person’. That right there is ridiculous.

pot.6805:

BG has been through a lot and never gave up. We were very high in the tiers in the first 2 weeks of the game and then we got matched against hOD for like 3 days straight. Alot of people left and BG got bumped down to something like 5th tier. We worked our way back up and tried our best to recruit more guilds to our server. We never gave up and alot of guilds came here for that very reason. BG is also one of the first servers to do heavy recruitment threads on other forums to get more guilds over. If our hard work paid off, good for us. You can do the exact same thing. BG went from the top to the bottom and is now working our way up again.

To a degree you’re right, however one of the issues is that BG is getting transfers en masse from servers it’s been pitted against. So on one hand the resident guilds did their part putting in work, but on the other hand the NA transfers have both depleted some of your former competition and centralized it to a single server. On one angle you’ve been working your way back up, but on another you’re also gobbling your way back up by eating up your competition by having it move to your server.

Here’s to why I’ve been holding off on 100% map completion.

I honestly don’t think hacking and cheating has had enough of a score impact to skew any scores far beyond what they would be without it. In turn making it largely irrelevant to the actual ratings, in my opinion.