Guild Wars 2

Same issue with my Necro. After repeating i unsummoned all minions and she progressed fine.

To all the people complaining about queues on reset after a big WvW shakeup, lets allow a week or two for things to settle. You can’t say reset night after the changes made will be indicative of every night and the future of things to come. Reset is ALWAYS packed at T1 end on reset. Its totally normal. The last time the lower-tier servers might have been queue’d could have been the last WvW season, or hell, 2012 launch!

There is alot of renewed interest in WvW right now. Alot of people are jumping in and checking it out again, especially with the reward changes. Lets wait a bit and let things settle.

Also, even on T1 end, not all maps are permanently overstacked. Its quite rare for ALL 4 MAPS to have a permanent 50+ queue. If you are trying to get on EB on reset right now, that is your problem. However, borderland map queues tend to have a high turnover so sit in queue, have a tea, relax, and do a fractal or something, the rewards are great!

We should be ecstatic there are queues at all. This is a GOOD problem to have for WvW!

Malediktus.9250:

Since you are saving 3*4 map servers this way, will you use the server resources you save by this to make t1 fights less laggy and increase the max amount of players per map?

Thats not really how it works. You can’t just ‘throw more resources’ at the problem of lag. Lag is caused by fights, and is a local issue to that map. You can’t throw more resources at the problem to make it go away. Fights create massive but short spikes in processing and data communication to all the clients involved. If they could solve it by throwing server infrastructure at the problem, they would have done imo.

Blockhead Magee.3092:

RNGesus was looking down upon you

Even RNGsus himself doesn’t have as much luck!

I for one, welcome our new Vabbian underlings. They shall be used as glorious front line meatshield fodder to gain Deso’s the advantage to press against the Eternal SFR’ian foe.

TexZero.7910:

this should answer your question

https://youtu.be/jZWOzwVlacQ?t=8m3s

That makes me sad but also was pretty much what i expected.

Non-descript under the hood ‘engine improvements’. I really wanted some beefy “This is what we are doing and this is why it will make the game run better.” “Largescale battles in WvW will improve roughly %5 because of x.” 5% would be huge!

Many times have patch notes included something along the lines of “optimization improvements in the client” and stuff like that. But its all so imperceptible. Just what is improving?

I’d love to hear some feedback on what is being done to improve engine performance for HoT.

We all know GW2, beautiful as it is, chugs like a mule when it comes to performance, especially in CPU intensive scenarios such as blob-vs-blov in WvW. Great strides were made to improve the situation back in 2013 with the WvW and PvE player culling update (probably the single greatest engine improvement to date?)

I’d love to know if we can look forward to any significant improvements in this direction for HoT as we haven’t really seen even any hints drop as yet. But im hopeful. Im not looking for any new API support or any of that jazz, that would be a dream come true but unlikely. But surely we are going to move with the times even a little?

“Runs better than ever!” isn’t a tagline you can market to hook new players. But certainly puts a big smile on the faces of current players who have played the game in its current state for as long as they have.

Thanks!

Magnosian.8750:

Stephen, before anything, I’d just like to say that I greatly appreciate what you’re currently doing. You’re communicating with us, on a Saturday, about something that has largely been ignored previously. Great job!

Stephen ClarkeWillson.1802:

The silver lining as they say is that the perf counters are more accurate than they were and I think I see the problem now; it’s going take some engineering to fix properly but I have a band-aid in place now that reduces the occurrences (at least as I perceive them via my graphs).

What do you mean with “some” engineering? Is this something you believe can be fixed in a short time frame, or is it something that will likely take months?

One of the first thing software developers learn…is never put a timeframe on ANYTHING.

Nieny.9418:

Ok i have only one more question , why only GW2 have problems like this, any ESO or other mmo… only we have skill lags, lags and others things..

Because GW2 actually has players that play it.

Its fine, EU EB T1 will continue to faceroll each other with unresponsive utilities and skills. For science!

Id literally pay merchants to take them off my hands asap so i can have my bagspace back.

Yeah. I think Anet are entitled to a clause that says “This is all subject to change” because that is the nature of software development. They didn’t promise a thing and they shared what was cooking up at the time. Some of the cookies need to go back in the oven a bit longer or the recipe needs to change and started all over again. But they didn’t promise you’d get them. For the record we saw pretty much EVERYTHING else on that list in 2013.

Can we please get off the “Anet promised and never delivered” bandwagon. Its probably the #1 reason we get so little communication about future projects nowadays.

Im talking about greys. Broken claws. Spikes. That sort of thing.

What is the design rationale behind having these in games? MMo’s and GW2 in particular. Its always a bit of a bitter taste when they drop. I’d argue that it would be better for these to not drop at all rather than have the inventory space be wasted while I find a vendor to Sell All. They just feel like hastle.

I appreciate that over a long period of time, yes, the junk items probably do add up to a significant amount of gold you wouldn’t sniff at. Maybe John Smith could chime in and maybe tell us the total value of junk items sold by your average veteran player with say +1000 hrs? That would be interesting.

The precursor crafting/scavenger hunt was never a promise. It was on the table, they were working on it, then at some point it went off the table. But it was never promised.

Ayrilana.1396:

Have players stack on commanders.

Yeah this is kind of the main issue. They wont do that if you ask them. Doesnt matter how nicely you plead. Actually getting people to do what you need for the event to succeed is very hard. Thats why I suggest an ingame representation of it so the game mechanics do the work. Not the commanders.

@GoA

Yukk i didnt think of the newbie ‘flood highest countered lane’ thing. But maybe with enough education in our lovely mapchat they could be persuaded that the goal is actually to get the #’s to be roughly equal.

I do whisper people. I do preach in mapchat as often as i can. Sometimes its just not enough. We really need a game-mechanic to assist us with this. Otherwise…

MORE
COMMANDER
FEATURES

My point is that commanders shouldnt have to do this level of busywork. Its essentially playing the game for people and thinking for them.

Please for the love of god Anet, provide an in-game counter or representation of players on at events that require balanced splits of players.

We are getting the same “Lane 1 syndrome” as marionette. More than half the players flood the bottom lane of the Vinewrath event and the middle lane is left with less and the top lane with less still on pugmaps. The encounter requires an equal split of players on the map by design, so help players out and give them a representation of what is at each lane. A little ‘Point capture’ circle such as those in sPvP that counts players that stand in it at ‘Choppers inbound’ phase and shows this number on the Metaevent UI.

Players at bottom: 44
Players at middle: 20
Players at top: 8

As an experienced commander of Triwurm and Tequ, I am well aware of the difficulties commanders face in coaxing players into creating balanced and equally split groups. This system need to be in place for Triwurm as well to be honest. It should be the commanders job to explain strategy and recommended skills etc. Not to type /supplyinfo every 15 seconds and update /map with their playercount.

Please stop making me the commander that is kitten on for failing the event when the #1 problem I faced was actually getting players to assist me with the event.

“Lol top commander sux, bot and mid did fine”

I have never been a huge mono-gamer. But GW2 has taken over my gaming life for over two years now. I have played it almost every day for that entire two years. It frightens me to be honest. But I have enjoyed every minute of it. The art. The music. The world. All fantastic. GW2 has the highest quality polish and the most solid base game of any of its peers. The combat system is a delight in particular. One of the best £30 I ever spent on a game.

In two years there has been %99.9 uptime on the servers. I remember WoWs ‘patch days’ where you might as well go do something else for that day.

I have been a believer in the Living Story ever since i felt they really started to hit their stride in the Tower of Nightmares release. And it continues to get better and better imho.

That said i have been everywhere. I have seen everything. I have collected pretty much all i want, and i have done the same content enough times to squeeze every ounce of enjoyment I can out of it.

Anet…please…I have money in my wallet, its yours if you want it, you know what you need to do…

EDIT: I forgot to add the most important thing of all. Community.GW2, on the whole, has one of the friendliest and most helpful communities of any game on the market too. Its in the design of the game to be that way i think. The community is active, its invigorating, it challenges my perceptions and understanding of the game. It makes me a better player. Its so so important to foster community and let it grow. And i think Anet understands this. Hell, they are part of it too! You see their passion for the game oozing out it in every direction! Especially Gaile, she is fanatically obsessed. I worry sometimes…

Ok i am %100 certain the BLTP has just swallowed a stack of Superior Ram Blueprints i listed a day ago.

There is no stack of rams sold in my history tab. I can see the histories of the mithril and elder wood i bought to create them so I know where in my History i should expect to see them. They are nowhere to be found. Im aware the BLTP sometimes has a lag on the history and transactions tab and sometimes listings dont show up straight away. But it has been a day now. What gives?

Has anybody had any experience with the BLTP seemingly swallowing items?

So either you guys just started working on this and got the ball rolling…

…or you have been making next to 0 progress for 9 months.

I dunno which is the worse idea.

To be fair, I can deal with lag to an extent. Even crippling >3 seconds lag i can anticipate and compensate for my skill use fairly well if the fight is large enough scale. I have been forced to learn to do so.

But the framerate lag in large fights is ridiculous. Even with low-detail models and ALL other graphical options on their lowest graphical settings I get horrendous framerate on a 3.8ghz OC’d 5930k and GTX 980. This is a computer that plays Crysis 3 on max and almost never dips below 60.

What gives? Draw me freaking stick-men on the screen and dont render ANY spell-effects aside from AoE fields if it lets me maintain a smooth framerate in zergfights.

@Op

So counter it with strategy. Slow down and don’t run 20 feet in front of your zerg all the time. Position yourself in the middle. Actually have a stun-breaker or cleanse somewhere in your build (i know! Shocking! we should require such a thing in WvW!). Make sure you have a party with a stability bot guardian or two.

I have even seen good pugmanders in EB represent 3 different dummy guild’s so their guild tag switched up from time to time just to keep the enemy snipers on their toes.

Use your brain and think of counter-tactics and strategy. Don’t call for Anet to dumb the game down for you.

OP, please don’t speak for me. I am more than satisfied with the latest Living World installments. I’ve been a ‘believer’ pretty much since the Tower of Nightmares. That was when it all started to feel really click and feel cohesive for me.

An expansion would be icing on the cake. But I really couldn’t care if they didn’t add a skill, a race or a profession in the next 2 years. I will still be playing. GW2 is one of my games of the decade so far and I will be more than happy to experience what the developers are cooking Living Story-wise for the forseeable future without the anticipation of an expansion. I do believe there is one in the works however, I just dont need it to enjoy the game as it is right now.

Please keep things in perspective…

Guild Wars 2 is a buy-to-play game. The fact they are even developing the content they are at the rate they are purely off of box sales at release and gems is a minor miracle imho. No other MMO on the market is really offering what Guild Wars 2 is doing. Many have promised a ‘living breathing world that develops as time passes, as you play’. Many have failed. Asherons Call and Runescape ‘back in the day’ are the few MMO’s that succeeded in creating a living breathing world that devloped story-wise at the rate GW2 is doing.

Blizzard would rather have us buy their boxed expansion and pay a sub-fee to keep us on a gear treadmill in perpetuity. With their infinite pool of money they could be doing so much more. Anet is proving that.

SW:TOR, Lotro and many others chase the F2P model which no-doubt keeps their studios alive but imho steals the soul of the game when everything is behind a pay-wall. Unlocking dungeons by literally throwing money at the screen doesn’t immerse me in the game world.

EDIT: Hypothetically, if an expansion was to be announced and the internet gaming consciousness passed their ADHD-like gaze once more over GW2 even briefly, I believe that GW2 could gain a huge resurgence of popularity and players. The game and its community are very much alive and kicking. Which is more than can be said for recent MMO releases that people thought threatened GW2’s very existence. We have arguably one of the best fantasy MMO’s on the market and it only gets better by the week.

Now im not saying Metacritic scores are the be all and end all of opinion, but with a current Metacritic user-score of 7.9 what do you think we would have now if all those reviews were re-reviewed? I assume that most of them were made at release (as is the case with most metacritic reviews, they are mostly knee-jerk imho) so what does that score look like now?

Why do players just expect to jump on a map and for it to just be ‘organised’ for them?! This grinds my gears to no end. Put some actual EFFORT into organizing a map yourself before jumping on the forums and complaining about lack of organised maps.

Use the LFG system. Join a guild. Explain what you want to do in mapchat whether its farming or legit structured meta event completion. Dont just whine that everything wasnt put on a platter for you when you joined the map. The organised maps didn’t just get organised by themselves. Players put in effort to explain their intentions, explain the mechanics and get everybody on board with them.

You need to put things into perspective. What reason is there to to any map? World completion? A Guild Mission? A dungeon entrance? A world boss? When you really think about it there aren’t too many reasons to go to any map in the game just to ‘play’ in the map. Thats why most people are hanging out in LA and to a lesser extend the major cities, all the services we need on a daily basis are there.

I would be quite alright with them adding the PoIs, JP’s and Skillpoints to the world completion mechanic to be honest but I dont know how the playerbase at large would feel about that.

I would argue that DryTop and Silverwastes are an evolution of what we have had before and potentially have more longevity than any other map in the game. They both have a unique mechanic that is map specific and includes unique rewards (ambrite skins and Sinister stats for ex.). The gripe for most people is that there is a barrier to entry in that to get a good map you need a modicum of organisation and understanding between players. They are not too solo friendly if you want the best reward. But then again, thats pretty much how it should be. Its viable to do DryTop and collect every ambrite skin completely solo, it will just take alot longer.

TL;DR Orr and Karka are no less occupied than other maps in the game. DryTop and Silverwastes are more engaging and therefore will probably last longer than other maps

Frequency of Disconnects is increasing.

Its even worse when you DC 10 seconds before your party kills Mai trin in a 49 fractal after 1hr of playing.

I am obviously kitten by the unfortunate timing of my latest DC but i can say that connection to GW2 has been objectively flaky for the past 2 months or so. I cant really remember it ever being this unstable. I dc while afking in Lions Arch, i DC at Tequ, I dc in sPvP games, I dc in WvW its ridiculous. I think its about normal that i DC at least once per 4-5hr session now its getting really boring and is killing my motivation to play the game at all.

For the record, I have an extremely solid connection and have no issues with other games. I dont even notice lag in twitch based stuff like starcraft 2 games or LoL.

Fix your game Anet. That is all.

I’d like to start off by saying TTS’ suggestion for more tools to help organisers have control to open and close maps is a great one and I’m %100 behind it. In the following post ill expand on the idea of ‘more tools’ into aspects of the UI that I feel are lacking. I also want to quickly self-plug two other posts I made on similar topics. Here and Here

Proposal Overview – More UI assistance for organisers + Metaevent Information
I personally feel the UI doesn’t assist players enough with the more technical detail’s of the ‘mega-organised’ events. We need to UI to give us more information in a concise and clear manner. How many players are on each wurm ‘stack’? What is the role of these players? Is amber Wurm burning right now? How many turrets are manned at Tequatl? How many are defending the Vigil Megalaser?

Proposal 1 functionality – Expand Squad Functionality
The commander’s need advanced functionality to designate roles to players that all players map-wide can see. Think of WoW-style raid icons. For GW2, im thinking of a buffs commanders can apply, (self-removable by the player if they want of course) so players can see “Ok, this guy is a Condition Dealer and he kills husks”. “This guy is the turreter”. We can restrict this ability to players only within the commanders squad. Also, put the number of players in the squad inside the commander pin icon. This number is readable by all players not just the commander.

Additionaly, think of commander placeable in-game markers, for example, to show players where to stand or where to put their damage. There are currently basic map markers but in-world markers would be so much more useful and immediately apparent. Green arrow – Move here. Red arrow – Attack here. I think WvW commanders should be excited about this. These icons would be visible and contrasting enough to stand out amongst a large group of players.

Proposal 2 functionality – Event specific information
Make the meta-event widget much more useful and give players more context of whats happening. Turn the wurms healthbars red when they are in their burn phase. Keep an active and dynamic count of the current turrets manned in the Tequatl meta-event UI so players know this is important. If it is pivotal to the success of the event, it should be in the UI.

Associated Risks
More UI clutter can make the game feel even more confusing and daunting to players who don’t know the ‘raid icon’ meta. This is somewhat mitigated by the fact only members of the squad can see this additional clutter. Those that joined the squad in the first place would be assumed to be invested enough to want to learn this aspect of the game.
Adding aditional information to the meta-event UI causes the same ‘information overload’ problem. The trick would be to do it subtly but smartly. Changing healthbars to red when burning. Showing the running count of players manning turrets. The running count of players present inside each Tequatl Battery Defence event circle. Things like this help players alot to understand the bigger picture around them.

In the same place it is now.

Another case of “woops added a few too many zeroes after the decimal” guys. Move on. Will be patched later.

There was the ToN Toxic Krait mini from the reward chest
There was the Mini Monkey + Tonic from drytop
There was the brokenly low Chaos of Lyssa recipe drop rate during pavillion

This is just off the top of my head i think there are quite a few more.

Im inclined to believe that this sort of thing is deliberate to get the richer players to blow their load on bags, draining your money from the economy. Then they just stealth-patch the drop rate like nothing ever happened.

Either that or someone isn’t learning from their mistakes…

Well I can guarantee you that I’m not a part of this increase. I’m boycotting gem purchases until the UI is in such a state that I’m happy with it and I believe again in the good intentions of Anet/Ncsoft.

Desolation represent!

I asked the question in the last POI twitch stream about how the devs can “Teach players about how the metaevent works”. They answered it in the context of dry-top but I meant it in a more broader sense. They said that “if you watch mapchat, veteran players will teach newbies” and that the community does this kind of thing organically through guides and
That is great and all, but the devs could assist us alot more in helping each other. Mapchat is just one way to explain and demonstrate the events. Im all for more ways to do it and essentially roleplaying the events are a really cool way to do it.

What do you guys think of a Triple Touble Wurm tonic?

The way I think alot of communities are successful in the Tri-wurm is in alot of pre-event preparation. Explaining whats going to happen, what to expect what do do in certain situations etc. We call these ‘Dryruns’. Its basically a simulated run of the event.

Wouldn’t it be cool if we could have a reference of what we are actually explaining? We already have the husk tonic and this is cool as players can demonstrate where the husks are spawning and what they will do.

However, you could argue that Phase 2 of the Tri-Wurm event it is even more important for players to understand whats going to happen. Its important players know what the attack animations ‘look’ like and understand the singe-target nature of its AI in which it will target a random player and charge towards them. Of course there are videos and stuff of this online but i think an ingame representation of it is more fun and engaging. It could also lead to more successful pug-led Tri-Wurm kills.

I suggest a decapitated Wurm head transform that has the 3 basic abilities/attacks the Decapped wurm can do. ‘Flop’, ‘Charge’ and ‘Thrash’. I have no idea if these are what the actual abilities are called but this is a good description of their animation.
The tonic could come in the usual semi-commonly dropped single use variety from the Tri-Wurm event and an extraordinarily rare Infinite variety as this tonic would be quite unique in that it can demonstrate attacks and animations.

I am obviously not suggesting this tonic be the same size as the actual ingame Wurm heads but a scaled-down version would still be useful for players explaining and demonstrating the event.

I feel that 1 precursor of every Legendary, 1000 Black Lion Tickets and 10k gold is a fair compensation to Seka for the inconvenience of having her account suspended for a few days.

Seems reasonable no?

Behold! Desolations new SUPERWEAPON!

SFR shall crumble under the weight of crippling mapwide lag! SM fights shall last to infinity.

Don’t mess with us!

<3 Mkkoll

What makes GW2 players relatively unskilled compared to other games? I think it’s pretty stellar that a Tequatl kill these days is almost a sure thing on most maps. This was unheard of at the release of Tequatl Rising. Players complete hard group content despite the lack of information given to them.

This was a problem at the Marionette event too. the number one burning question on every players mind was “How many players are attending the lanes next to me?” But there was no good way to know this unless you had a dedicated commander using /supplyinfo and reporting the number constantly.

Yes the fight’s mechanics are actually very simple. So simple in fact a 5-year old could competently do them. The difficulty comes in organizing a large set of players and synchronising their play to fulfil the mechanics.
You know what to do. But do you know where and when you do it?

Yeah, to be honest, I think ive worn out a few mice by now just clicking that skip button.

Problem 3: Other time-critical information is hard to communicate without the use of fast comunication like VOIP. The fact that another wurm is in its ‘burn phase’ is critical for players on other wurms to know. But they have no idea! They have to hope and pray the commanders are doing their jobs well and are synchronising the final burns behind the scenes.

Solution: Show that other wurms are burning, mapwide so all players know. Change the healthbars to red or something.

Risks: Again, information overload. However, you can be smart about how you convey the information. A block of text that flashes up “Amber is burning!” in the middle of the screen is jarring and crude. A changing healthbar colour is subtle but enough I think.

The manifesto said the game “doesn’t make you spend hours preparing to have fun rather than just having fun”. I always thought that pertained to the hours of preparation leading up to raid content. I HATE that in mmo’s. It is a fundamental problem of organising large-scale raid-like content. But this game can do so much more to assist its players.

Tequatl could also benefit massively from UI assistance as well. Its always pretty unclear whether you have all your turrets manned at Tequatl. Show us in the UI! 4/6 turrets manned. Show how many players are attending each battery during the defence phase. If these events are supposed to be the next-level open world content then they need some next-level ingame UI. A healthbar and a timer just doesnt cut it for the amount of information that the player actually needs to do these events successfully. They are so much more complicated and they need to convey the information required to complete them.

Hey there,

My name is Mkkoll and I come from a large PvE community in the EU. We have regularly scheduled Wurm and Tequatl kills daily with a high rate of success. Most days we achieve 3 Tri-wurm kills and many of the commanders and organizers in the community work very hard to achieve and maintain this rate of success.

It takes alot of effort. 30+ minutes worth of effort making players wait around.

However, some of us feel that the game could help us more to organise these events. I will use Tri-Wurm as an example of what I mean by listing the problems we encounter during setup.

Problem 1: For Tri-wurm, it is very important to get a large group of dedicated and willing (i.e on VOIP) players into a map. We solve this by organising a ‘mass-jump’ into Bloodtide Coast at the same instant in order to force the server to pop a new megaserver map. Commanders then scout out for this new map and announce that maps’ /ip in the the Teamspeak. This is clunky, doesn’t always work, is confusing for new players to ‘mass-jumping’ and is essentially gaming the game in order to get the ideal circumstances for our kill attempt. This shouldn’t need to happen and is a time-consuming and un-fun but necessary part of the event.

Proposed Solution: A few things actually. Guild-spawned World Bosses should have the option to create a new map regardless of the populations of current maps. Then all players have a selectable list of current open megaserver maps from the UI so we can communicate better which map we are on. “We are in Map 3, please jump there”. This is an elegant and more easily communicable way to fill a map with participating players. The map is of course fair game to any random player that happens to pop up in it as other maps may be full. Guilds etc will just have to accept this.

Risks: Problems I can see with this of course is that your average pug might never get to see these events in action as all the big communities/guilds are off in their own private instances doing the content. I have a workaround for this that might just work! (see below) Players clearly not participating, i.e doing world completion on a ‘guild spawned’ map may be shouted out by the guild or community on that map. Guilds and communities may get a “this is our map! get out” mentality. Personally i’d say to them, “This is everybodys map, get on with it”. We need to pull together as a community and stamp this kind of thing out if it was to ever happen.

Problem 2: We have our new map, but now we need to accurately balance players accross all 3 wurms. Generally we feel an ideal number is 35-40 players per wurm + the outlying jobs such as condition dealers and egg reflection (5-6 players depending on what you have available at each wurm). This by far takes the longest amount of time to setup our kill attempt. Commanders have to be in constant communication with each other and the group as a whole. They have to report their playercounts and ask (usually begging) players to move between wurms to achieve a balanced playercount. This stems from the fact that individual players cannot actually see what the count of each stack actually is besides their commander telling them.

Proposed Solution: Players need to see at a glance just how many are with them on their event. Each wurm should have a circle drawn in the game world that counts players standing within it and shows this count in the event UI, the same idea as Siegerazer.
It could say:
Amber: 35/40
Cobalt: 45/40
Crimson: 43/40

Ok its pretty self evident there that the game is suggesting that cobalt and crimson wurms and overstacked and a few players need to move to Amber wurms circle as it is lower on the player count. The beauty is this can happen without input from the commander/organiser. The players can be self-organising and take the event into their own hands. They don’t have to be spoonfed information they need access to. This information should persist through the whole event, a continual running count of the players participating at each wurm that can be seen by players map-wide.

This could have the interesting side-effect that pug maps could genuinely have a shot at completing the event on their own backs. There should be nothing stopping PuGs from self-organising without the need for an organisational overlord who micromanages every player for 30 minutes before the event starts. Commanders are nice to have to maintain cohesion and teach the event to an extent, but the game can do alot more to provide the information players need to play efficiently.

Risks: Overcomplicated or information overload for new players. However, i’d say if the event UI shows 3 playercounts for each wurm and its confusing then the event isn’t for them anyway. Player’s shouting at each other to ‘MOVE!!!’ to balance the stacks is also a possibility but our commanders have to do this at the minute anyway in Teamspeak, so no real difference there.

Felkes.2759:

Telling someone to just join a group as a way to ignore the problem is like saying to just pour some vodka on a slashed artery.

Woah. Over-dramatic much?

If the problem is bothering you so much, then take a simple step to alleviate it. ALOT of players asked for this. The problem will sort itself in a few days. In fact it pretty much already is back to the way it used to be before patch. If seeing a few little coloured icons on your map is enough to cause this much angst you have bigger problems in your life.

Lets face it, keyfarming was pretty niche and was an unintended side-effect of giving a key at such a low level.

I don’t believe they explicitly set out to kill it, they just wanted to restructure and solidify the early game personal story across the WHOLE level range. They didn’t just put the early game PS in their sights. They didnt set out to kill your fun. Keyfarming just got caught in the crossfire of the changes they were already going to make to personal story. The change overall was good imho.

I say this as someone who has farmed my fair share of keys in my day.

Please note there is also a part of the patchnotes that says leveling from 1-15 is now faster. Id be interested to see how fast this is. Sure, keyfarming might be slower…but will it still be quick enough to be viable?

Guys, we asked for this remember. Did you not think about the consequences of your actions?

No but seriously, just /squadjoin on one of the commanders and you will only see that one tag. This will also die down in about 2-3 days once the novelty wears off.

A race to the bottom…

If you can tank NOW and end up placed lowest in the league, you can then start ‘winning’ all your matches stomping low tier servers and gaining max reward.

Its only 4 weeks, you may never come up against the true T1 gold servers. Deso, SFR TC BG etc.

smithkt.8062:

Commanders on low pop servers will often map hop, playing all roles from offense, defense, havok and pugmander. In these cases I would rather a commander pick a color so I can stick with them regardless of which map we hop to. Sure, I could join squad, but honestly I like to be able to see when there are multiple commanders on a map.

This is a fantastic point. Commanders roles change constantly on the fly at any given moment through necessity. It could come to be that comms just use different colours so not everybody is blue and it ends up you start following the other commander because you waypointed and got confused.

If this turns out to be a stupid idea thats fine. I just think it would be cool if there was a structure to the tags rather than just ad-hoc tagging and explaining “By the way im the yellow commander today ill be purely focusing on hills.” Not that this would be a ‘bad’ use of the tag. Ad-hoc style may be the way to go.

Ok, now that we have the Commander tag colour thing cleared up…

Im a firm believer that the WvW community should try to get the most out of these tags. We shouted loud enough at Anet for the change to be made. Now its our job to use them in the best possible way rather than allow them to become irrelevant. I’d hate for them to just be used by the commanders as which ever colour is their favorite on a particular day.

There is obviously huge potential around how the coloured commander tags can be used. How does the WvW community at large feel about establishing an organisational meta around it right now? Should we set in stone what tags are for what, or should we let the aspects of their use evolve naturally over time? It could come to be that the Red tag on SFR means a different thing to a Red tag on Desolation. Would that be a problem? Should we establish it now so all servers can say “The red tag means this” to new players and maybe WvW can be more accessible overall?

We currently have a Blue, Red, Yellow and Purple tag.

There are obviously dozens if not hundreds of potential uses for these tags. But what are the most upfront and straightforward ones we could use? Red = offensive and Blue = Defensive seem reasonable. But is that something players would actually do? Being a defensive commander could be particularly boring on any given day. Might as well have everybody rolling red tags.

We could also use the tags to designate player roles on an individual basis. How cool would it be if every scout had lets say the yellow tag and you could see at a glance how many towers are currently being scouted. (lets face it most scouts have a comm tag i think?) Maybe we have a meta in which all scouts just automatically tag up yellow and go watch naruto on their second monitor while the gate is being rubbed infront of them. Maybe thiefs can pop a yellow tag which would basically say “I am scouting and following an enemy zerg here.”

Maybe all havoc teams have a player which runs a Purple tag and the ‘main’ offensive commander for the map can see and understand where camps are going to be flipped at a glance.

The possibilities are endless. I strongly believe there is potential for a meta-shift here. The addition of the siege disabler and the coloured tags is Anet trying to push us in a new direction. We have wanted it for a long time and they are trying to deliver. “Break up the zergs!” we have cried. More and smaller groups could be the way to go.

However, all this could potentially be confusing for new players. How do we do this in the best way? Maybe we just let whatever happens happen.

Please discuss =D

Here is a reddit thread discussing the very same thing.

Thank you!

Now guys! Time to show them the power of multiple tags in WvW! This CAN change the meta if we allow it to!

Thanks John! And extra special thanks goes to Zach and Tyler for working their kitten off to make this happen.

It reads for me like all tags will be unlocked as soon as you buy the first commander compendium. However, I can’t wait for the ingame kittenstorm on the 9th if this turns out to be untrue.

LionZero.3479:

Am i the only one who expected the blogpost to say something about upgrading the radius of things like /supplyinfo and such, missed oppertunity there imo.

Sure there is definitely a whole lot more functionality that can be added to the Commander system, but baby steps for now I suppose. I actually think there was probably quite alot of backend work that was involved in even making the coloured commander tag thing a thing! Previously, the server probably just told the client “This player is tagged” and the client would just know to render the standard blue dorito. However, with the new system, the client has to tell the server which colour is selected and then the server has to then distribute that info to all other players.

Something as simple as “Add more commander tag colours!” may not be as simple as you may first initially think. My hope is that they done alot more backend work on the commander tag system while they were doing this to make it a hell of a lot more flexible in the future.

I can get my necro to hit a gate for 700 with Lifeblast. Albeit with a really wonky build that is practically useless in a proper WvW fight. Rams aren’t everything. Just sayin.

Meta-shift incoming! Necros are the new rams!

This could work on the forums too!

If enough players ‘attack’ the thread. The thread is deleted. That way the community can remove troll posts, clutter and stupid ideas.

Let’s start with this thread…

Haha. A good interview for once. The questions were okay and Devon responded the best he could. Many of them were questions that Devon would probably love to have an answer to, such as the “Rewarding scouts and defenders” one, but they are very difficult problems to solve.

Quick! Buy Sup rams, sup acs and Sup golems NAO!

I promise i do not have a 50k supply of these items I am sitting on in preparation for the next tournament.