Guild Wars 2

Good job transferring to the most stacked server 3 times?

Four months ago, arrow carts were buffed to obscene levels with the introduction of WXP and Arrow Cart Mastery. No one ever asked for a buff to arrow carts, but we got it, and I want to have a real discussion on the now long-term effects on WvW and the community.

I think that the recent popularity of GvGs in NA is in a large part due to ACs. Taking keeps used to be fun, and two groups could fight in them on relatively even levels. Arrow carts, ballistae, even cannons, were rarely a make or break feature of defending a keep. In order to keep your keep, you had to fight, and those fights were good. Look at youtube videos posted before May, many of the amazing fights would happen in keeps, towers, camps, and would involve siege, but they weren’t the main focus. Now look at highlight videos recently. Almost every single good fight occurs in the open field and contains zero siege.

Fighting in keeps almost always goes to the defenders, and if it doesn’t, it’s because the attackers have such ridiculous numbers that they can overwhelm the siege and defenders. Hell, 2-3 superior arrow carts can keep 20 people off of rams, to the point where golems are the preferred unit of choice for taking out keeps or towers, eliminating most of the finesse and strategy that used to go into a good keep take. It’s gotten to the point where if my guild raid of 25-30 is spotted at all, and one or two arrow carts are built, we will just abandon the siege completely, because once our rams on outer are destroyed, we will have to use our remaining supply to build a few more, and then have no supply on the inner, where more arrow carts await us.

I guess it’s just not fun anymore. Taking keeps and defending them are both so mindless now. It’s either build golems or have a 3 hour long treb siege with a siege farm awaiting us in the lord room. Joy. So we take keeps quietly now, not to find fights as we used to. We look for fights actively in the open field. If we see another group staying inside of their keep, we get bored and leave. The only good fights are the ones where there is no siege involved, because siege has been buffed to such a ridiculous level that it’s interferes with almost any skill involved in fighting. That’s why we open field, and that’s why we GvG.

We GvG because it’s the only place we can be assured good fights anymore, uncorrupted by siege or hordes. I don’t agree with the people who say they only play to prepare for GvGs. We GvG to be better at fighting. We GvG because we want to have fun, and playing the game properly just is not fun anymore. This has somewhat split the community, in my opinion, because the organized guilds want to have fun fights, and the pugs want to play for score. The GvG guilds at this point are very jaded about fighting in or over keeps and towers because it’s not fun for them anymore, and they just want to have fun in good open field fights.

This game has a very high skill cap for group combat, and it’s completely accidental. The diversity of builds, boon and condition management, micro and macro, bombing and regroups, it’s all very fun and engaging. It takes a lot of work and dedication to be good, and it’s completely 100% ignored by the devs. They made this amazing PvP mode that required real work and skill to be good at and then just completely marginalized those groups by playing to the lowest common denominator.

Arrow carts take no skill to use properly. 30 supply, press 1-3, get bags. That’s all that the PvE players who don’t understand why they need armor, stunbreakers, stability, condi-clear, mobility, and focus see. They see that if they leave the keeps, they die for some reason, but if they use the siege, they get bags and win. It’s conditioned the new players since April to be very bad players, objectively. They don’t know how to PvP, just how to either follow a blob or man siege. And why should they? It works for them, and they think that they’re making a difference. And maybe that’s the point, to increase WvW’s appeal to the masses, but I really feel like it’s watered down the long-term playability of the gametype.

WvW has always been, in my opinion, the only true end-game to GW2. It has a pretty high skill cap and enough variety to allow for some really interesting play. However, if we keep getting changes that marginalize the organized playerbase, I feel like this will no longer remain true, and WvW will just turn into an arcade game for PvE players to do in between living story releases, and I really don’t want that to happen.

I think that arrow carts should be reverted, and a real dialogue between the devs and the players should occur, because there is a huge disconnect.

Devon Carver

Holding a tower against all odds with some smart siege placement and a bit of luck may be one of the most fun things I’ve ever done in a video game.

Maybe for you, Devon, but not for all of us.

I know I shouldn’t have expected this, but why can’t we trade badges for ascended items yet?

I know I probably seem entitled, but I personally hate fractals, and refuse to do them. I also don’t really enjoy dungeons. I know a lot of people who are the same way, and WvW most of the time instead of run fractals/dungeons. I feel like those people are treated much worse than PvE players.

There are currently only three ways to obtain ascended rings in the game: drops from fractals, pristine fractal relics, and laurels. Meaning that two out of the three ways are only obtainable through PvE. Laurels, as well, while obtainable in WvW, often require you to do PvE.

It takes 10 days of fractals to be assured one ascended ring. It takes 35+ days of WvW to be assured one, and we would like to be just as competitive as PvE players.

Are WvW players time earned in badges not as valuable as time earned in fractal relics or dungeon tokens? On a good day, I can get maybe one stack of badges (and that’s probably 8 hours of work). With that, I can get 1-2 exotic pieces, and I have the pleasure of losing 1 gold per item. If I was running CoF, I could do 3 paths in less than 1/2 hour, gain 180 tokens, get an exotic piece from it, and MAKE 2-3 gold.

One hour of PvE and one hour of WvW should reward you the same amount. Stop treating WvW players less than PvE players.