Guild Wars 2

I mean its one thing add one or two small things and fix a few bugs but something like a tournament is overdue or at least another new map/overhaul.

Bitterfrost Frontier has a traversal issue. There are too few waypoints and not enough other means for getting around. The leyline track is limited and hard to access (for some reason the updrafts under it don’t go high enough to let you link in) and the tube network doesn’t do a good job connecting the whole map (the entire right side is basically segmented off), and also neither of them is accessed particularly accessible from either waypoint.

Bloodstone Fen and Ember Bay were both very easy to traverse, with easy routes around the map and well spread out Waypoints, so you could come in where you wanted. The relatively low number of waypoints was not a major issue, because everything could be reached fairly easily. Bitterfrost Frontier, however, is hard to get around, in particular as the left and right sides of the map are almost completely isolated from each other. Neither leyline gliding nor tube travel provides an adequate transit system. I wouldn’t be surprised if, outside of people doing the story, right side side of the map rapidly becomes underpopulated, with most sticking to the still inconvenient but relatively more traversable left side for their dailies.

Travel needs to be fixed on the map. More waypoints, more tubes, and/or more leylines to bring it all together. We need to be able to get around, one way or the other, or the map will fall out of favor.

Enjoy. NSFW

( this was made by a guildie of mine )

Make sure to tick each Guild name’s box in the drop-down menu accessed via the arrow next to ‘Guild’ in the Chat tab you wish to see Guild chat in..

Good luck.

WORLD LINKING POLL

Dear Anet, In the poll just posted to ‘approve’ world linknig, you indicate you have seen a big increase in WvW participation. As Alpine and other WvW changes (reward track etc) were released at same time, how do you know the participation has increased from world linking?

Long term I can world linking destroying the game mode – communities are struggling to hold together. withot a World to fight for anymore, its not really World vs World?

Just perma merge the servers and allow them to recreate their communities…… don’t shift and swap every 3 months its just silly and promotes all kind of system gaming and loss of community identity.

Queen of FA.7398:

Terrier.8732:

Yes.. move them to the guild halls!

That is an even better idea, oh my god =) that would be amazing !

For the low price of 3000 good each…

Now that there is queues sometimes in wvw can we please move the crafting stations to edge of the mists instead or the pvp lobby? When you have big fights going on and your back up is stuck in a big queue and you see 20 people at crafting stations this isn’t cool =(
( Especially on reset night ) No offense but crafting stations shouldn’t be in wvw or if it is it should be in EOTM where it won’t count towards server population numbers on the map.

I really hope this beta linking ends soon. I think enough time has passed now to know how people feel about it. For me it feels like our wvw community is dying or maybe already dead. Some tried working with our host server, it seems to be a struggle. We have tried to group up with players from our server but face so many enemies we are lucky to be able to take a camp. I used to play in wvw every day all day long. lately I have been playing a lot more pve than wvw. WvW just seems pointless. Please end this linking now. It feels like a slow painful death. I am glad some are enjoying the linking but for some it is awful.

As we get further into the beta, I thought I would like to report on the current state as viewed from a lower tier server.

1. We are seeing more of our folks who are refusing to play in WvW.
2. We are seeing some increased strain on those who do want to play. We cannot group up and play together due to the queues. We are lucky if we can get half of our group into the same map during prime time (8:00 p.m. – 11:00 p.m. eastern time) We are badly outnumbered to begin with as our guilds are smaller, and many people are not playing wvw due to the changes, so only having half our numbers makes us extremely vulnerable.
3. It is harder to recruit and harder to solicit funds for our website and teamspeak server.
4. Our guild is seeing folks drop into inactivity again after we had worked very hard to re-engage our members. Eredon Terrace had worked hard to rebuild itself and was doing so successfully. Its difficult to tell where we stand as a community at this point, but I would bet we have far less folks in WvW. Even some of our members who would only play WvW are simply not showing up now.

In short, all of the objections the lower tier servers expressed from the very beginning are very real concerns. They are not abating or resolving. Instead of balancing anything, I think this is simply killing the lower tier servers and the overall GW2 community is going to find this is going to accelerate the decreases in actual players which is what is causing this issue to begin with. This is not a solution.

Thank you for listening.

please give back our server and our borderlands already so we can play again!

@Dawdler

I think you’re missing what Mistress Collisto is trying to say.

Each tier had its own culture & sub-cultures unique that made WvW fun for them.

ANet merging things forces 1 culture & 1 way to play WvW to dominate.

WvW sometimes isn’t about wanting to be Ranked #1.

It’s not possible for everybody to be Ranked #1 either.

We sometimes just want a place to play…where sharing struggles with friends & “family” that you recognize & feel comfortable with…give meaning to play time.

A place where you have identity & fit in…a place you can call “Home”…even though we’re not Ranked #1 & we’re not running Elite Builds.

It may sound silly to you, but it’s not for others…imho.

Yours truly,
Diku

p.s.
It can bring tears to a player’s heart…to realize their “Home” is gone & replaced by something else.

To be a Refugee in WvW wandering around without a place to fit in.

I’m done! WvW will no longer exist in my life. This is possibly the dumbest thing done to date in this game. People in less populated tiers where there for a reason. We all get merged into high population, not only do we have to contend with queue but now we have to deal with all the broken builds, the hacks, those that manipulate any little advantage they can find with a broken system to troll people. I have been trying to give this a chance since the start of this beta, I have been in T1 before being from SoR… The game was newer then, we didnt have the the balance issues to the extent they are now from the introduction from HoT. You mix this all together and in this tier the only thing you can do is 1) Join the Blob…. 2) drop to the same level and run the same dumb few builds you find on metabattle that are all bases on HoT classes, or 3) run a havoc group and have the blob hunt you down every few minutes. There is no skill in these tiers, its all about your blob out lasting your opponents blob or running a hack of a build and targeting randoms for giggles. I’m no longer posting here, I’m done with WvW.

I’m from a lower tier (6 I think) – BP … I do love the big action that I have now being grouped with the higher tier server.. BUT.. It has simply become a place for me to come and fight if I want to. Taking, keeping, towers, camps, keeps, etc is no longer something that’s really a big deal other than the blobs looking to attract people to fight it seems. Nothing wrong with that of course. But I am BP.. and right now BP doesn’t exist in any represented way other than me saying it out loud. Fort Aspenwood is the world I’m hosted on and I have nothing to say against the people there. They do things their way and that’s all good. After the dust clears and I’ve had a few hours of intense blobbing I would really love to just go off and see what BP has done. I would love to go off with a small group of my homies and brand a bunch of stuff with our BP colour of the week.. But I can’t…. and THAT is where this thing is a fail for me. If it becomes permanent and if it turns out that BP will no longer even exist then it truly would cause my engagement in WvW to drop off even more than it already has. The reset night was awful of course. The next two days/nights were quite fun. But the novelty of the fights has worn down for me at least. I will go in a couple times a week I guess to have a little blob fun, but the days of going in every day and reclaiming things for BP and running havoc on other maps “for The Pass!” don’t exist anymore ( at least not right now ). When those days are possible once again then my WvW presence will go back to daily.
In the meantime I’m happy for those who really like this set up. I hope it makes the majority happy ( if it does ) because at the end of the day ‘majority rules’. For me, I won’t cry and whine about it all.. I will just change my play style and find things to do that I like 2nd to WvW but still like to do with friends.

I think your “merge” or “linking” or whatever you’re calling it or going to call it is just another way of adding nails to the WvW coffin. I say that because it’s NOT a permanent sustainable FIX to the core issue of the “population balance” or “server stacking” issues at hand!

People are going to come and go from WVW no matter what. You need to develop and implement something truly dynamic that will “adapt on the fly” to how many people are playing this game mode. Otherwise, what are you going to do next time you have a huge wave of people quit this game/game mode? Go from 8 > 4 > 2 tiers? Keep “merging” or “linking” until we’re down to 3 servers or 1 tier?

Now maybe you can see why I say we NEED a permanent sustainable FIX to the “population” issue. I cannot proclaim to know the answer for sure – but I did start a thread trying to seek out possible answers; sadly I think I’m still the only one that put even a “thought” of an “answer”…

Here’s what I have posted previously on this very subject matter:

sparc.3649:

Okay, so I guess I’ll be the first to start >.>

Angel Heart.6739:

Maybe there should be different map-instances for GVG apart WVW (from the ppl that like playing all aspects of the WvW game)? That way they do not interfere with eachother and do not diss on eachother. Is that an option?

I think this is actually may be not an entirely bad idea! And in direct relation to my post about “problems” I think there’s a perfect possible “resolution” that COULD work for all of this!

I would have normally likely been against such thing, but I have a vision that would permit ANet to always change stuff like this up if they/we wanted to!

ANet would have to get pretty creative, BUT, they would first need to create three factions. Lore or none, doesn’t bother me. For sake of conversation we’ll call them FACTION1, FACTION2, FACTION3. Players would then have to chose to be in ONE of these three factions. This would be 100% PERMANENT! If you wanted to change your ‘alignment’ or ‘alliance’ you’d have to delete the toon and rebuild it (or just make a new one w/o deleting if you have enough slots) to chose a new faction for said toon!

Then the “servers” themselves could become “campaigns”. Or, if you rather think of it this way – eliminate “servers” and make “campaigns” in THEIR place. Or you could of course call them whatever you want, but they’d still serve the same purpose, the “mission/campaign/server” would be the “battle/war” and each one could and would be different. Or, for example, be different maps even (as in different campaigns can carry different maps). Which would be PERFECT for all the people “fighting” about ABL vs. DBL. Some of the “mission/campaign/server” could be ABL, some could be DBL, or as this other guy asked for – more specifically – GvG type maps, or even more! They could keep all 24 “servers/campaigns/missions”. They should keep these so that they can be added/removed/changed “on the fly” however. They could add or remove as they see fit, or maybe even dynamically. They could do whatever they wanted w/ this part (think, ‘the sky is the limit’). They could have all 24 campaigns/mission/server be the same maps and whatnot like it already is right now. Or they could make 1/3 of them be WvW w/ ABL maps for BLs, 1/3 of them WvW w/ DBL maps for BLs, and 1/3 of them be more GvG oriented/focused. etc.etc.etc… Maybe even better to develop a dynamic system that would start out with just 3 server/mission/campaigns and dynamically create/remove more as needed.

So, the new system would work as follows. PLAYERA would pick a faction say, FACTION2. This would be a decision this player could NEVER “go back on”, the ONLY way to participate on a different faction would be to roll an additional toon or re-roll. This would/should make WvW recruiting MUCH more effective since people will be from one of three factions, rather than one of twenty four servers! Then, you could pick your “mission/campaign/server” based on whatever criteria you see fit, whether it be population, certain maps that it’s running, etc… Right now our “war” lasts a week, they could keep it that, or up it IMHO to 30 days. Every week (or 30days), at the end of a “match” you can chose a new “mission/campaign/server” (NO CHARGE) if your hearts desires have changed (say, you want a new map, or higher or lower pop play style). Switching before a match is over, NOT ALLOWED – PERIOD. So for a few possible examples of my system as visioned:

PLAYERA joins FACTION2. This week PLAYERA decides they want maps so they join the campaign “Darkhaven” for the maps it’s running. The enjoy the week, but figure they want population (higher/lower), so at the end of the match they chose the campaign “Jade Quarry” for the higher/lower population. The next week they join " Borlis Pass" for the maps and population! And so on and so forth. So no matter what, PLAYERA can NEVER chose anything OTHER than FACTION2, if he/she wants to that badly they can roll another toon, or re-roll. Otherwise, they’ll ALWAYS be FACTION2; and able to chose new campaigns every time one (match) ends.

Now as far as GW2/WVW and how we have RED, GREEN, and BLUE (At least in terms of how Eternal Battlegrounds is not synchronous) – the faction itself would NOT represent a color, because then you would ALWAYS “be one color”. Rather, keep the current type system or implement a random system to chose “color” for a “faction” for the “battle/war” (whether it remain a week, or be increased).

Additionally, FACTION and / or CAMPAIGN would need HARD caps (unlike the current server system). They need to find a way to keep things in balance so they don’t just stay like they are right now with people stacking to one side of the bus! Any “HARD CAP” for FACTION (difference) numbers would have to be planned and implemented VERY carefully to accommodate for people inactive, or that leave permanently. So I could live without any such FACTION “caps”. However, even “campaign/mission/servers” need HARD caps! And I strictly insist, based on how many people chose it, not how many happen to be on at that exact moment. Especially with them lasting only ONE WEEK, even an “abandonment” wouldn’t mean much as you’ll just be picking a new “campaign/mission/server” the next week again anyways! So have HARD caps that CANNOT be worked around, based on how many people chose that campaign for that week, even if they’ve been offline SIX POINT FIVE days, “sorry for ya”, once that hard cap is reached – wait until the match is over, then everyone re-chooses anyway! This would also be the perfect place to have a dynamic system designed and implemented. Once a “cap” is reached, GW2 can create additional campaigns as an option to join…

I don’t know, but it sounds like a very plausible solution to me! Better than what we have right now where everyone is sitting on one side of the bus, so it’s leaning like all crazy about to tip over. Not to mention the side it’s leaning over is about to experience a blowout because that’s the side that has the tire that has already gotten several nails in it, but all anet keeps doing is “patching” it, and not actually taking the time to pull over to change the tire out for a NEW one! So pretty soon we’ll get a blow out and fall right over the edge of the cliff when that happens! UNLESS ANet; STOPS, takes a minute, and CHANGES THE kitten TIRE!

But seriously ANET, I implore you to pursue an actual FIX to this problem, not another bandaid that is only going to wind up another nail in the WvW coffin in the long run!

I personally like the server linking but I am from a host server. The problems I see so far are
1. Guest servers lose their identity.
2. It’s a hassle switch teamspeaks
3. Queues are to big

The only 1 easy to fix is the queues – add one more tier.

I’d say the biggest solution to this is to have 5 tiers, make all new worlds and give everyone free transfers. That way we all start fresh, get to reunite with everyone who has transferred up since hot, & everyone gets screwed equally :-)

Yeah, last thing I wanted to see when I logged in was AR getting tossed in with T1. Time to hang up the bow.

So, I woke up this morning to see…my community was gone. The place that I happily had called home, Devona’s Rest had been demolished. In the place of my sleepy yet thriving little village, was a cold characterless T1 city, where every coffee shop was a Starbucks, and every restaurant an Applebees.

ANET – Why in the heck would you gentrify entire guild communities, when what you should want to do is increase your games population and exposure to all types of WvW gamer’s?

In one move you have destroyed entire Guild Wars 2 gaming communities, people who have invested time and money to organize their groups into legitimate guilds. To those of us who were just fine with your previous round of changes, those of us who were able to evolve, survive and thrive in the Desert Borderlands without whining about how hard it was…you have rewarded us with…T1 blobbing and social mendacity.

I understand that as developers, you will never be able to make everyone happy, but how bout you try to find a nice middle ground? Not everyone likes to play in armies of 60 or more mobs, running over the map like a pack of rabid hamsters. Some of us like to use finesse, and strategy. Oh! And some of us aren’t living in our parents basement with all the time in the world for a game queue.

100 queue = 100 people had to log out of wvw before you can get on
so if they stay for 4 hours , then you wait for 4 hours

Who spent just a “few minutes in queue”?

Regardless queues of 50+ on all the bls and over 150 on eb combined with the later reset times is an issue. I waited for 2.5 hours and went from 146 down to 99ish before having to log out. Yes, queues are normal but not that large that late.

It seems pretty clear that server identity needs to be better retained and possibly that different game styles be more respected ie players on lower level servers have to a certain extent stayed there because they like the more casual small scale combat.

This comes back to the fact that this server linking is a dynamic server merge that does nothing to fix the inflexibility of the server model and arguably introduces more problems in terms of mashing together players with incompatible motivations and the lack of respect being shown to the identity of the smaller servers.

Virtute.8251:

Essays aren’t changing the fact that stubborn small town pride is misplaced in this, here and now.

If anything, the responses here are a great indication the community ties and server identification are still incredibly important motivators as to why people still play.

Mistress Collisto.1546:

If there is one thing this test has done, it has brought all the lower tier servers to agreement. Just last match up myself and a few in my guild where cursing the guild of the gentleman/woman I am quoting and today I am standing in full agreement with him/her I am one of the last remnants of SoR’s old T1 days, there is a reason I am still on SoR and have not left for the imagined glory back in the top ranks.
I think many of us are in agreement, this is beta testing, we know our servers have died and needed some changes, but to this? Here are a couple of my thoughts for what they are worth…
Lets see how a couple weeks of this plays out, Queues should come down, but I fear game play is forever changed by this for all of us that enjoy small scaled fights and tactics on taking objectives.
Rest of my T6-T8 friends, that are not pleased yet, lets give the beta some time, but know we are together on this.

Thank you these great insights – yep, gentlewoman here and Owls salute you (I had a good laugh from your second sentence – we take this as a compliment and you all put up great fights!) We’ll stick it out and hope that our feedback is heard.

Essays aren’t changing the fact that stubborn small town pride is misplaced in this, here and now.

Server pride is unique to this game mode. I think it’s especially strong on the lower tiers, where you develop really strong bonds over the years and have had to fight against wild odds and put up with a lot of guilds coming and going. So, I don’t think it’s misplaced at all – I think it’s important and it keeps us coming back to this particular game over others.

I’m sure you and your playstyle wouldn’t want to be forced to join a lower tier community (as you described) just as many of us from lower tiers don’t like being forced into the higher tiers (where we are losing our playstyle). Most of us are working to play with the higher tiered servers (Maguuma has been great on the BLs so far), but we enjoyed our 5v5 and 10v10 fights over the 50+ vs 50+. Playstyles differ, that’s not a bad thing, but it still sucks to deny us the choice.

Thank you, exactly! Also Hi from Owls, GIT!

I think we’re ALL in favor of better population balance, but this beta may eradicate two unique WvW aspects: identity/community for many servers, and smaller group playstyles.

Thanks for the feedback, all.
Nanesh (Kaineng Forever!)

Kanebrake.6192:

Virtute.8251:

then that is how it should be, and you should be moving your guilds to the bottom of the board.

The reason a lot of us moved off of the lower tiered servers is because those servers made it very clear to any and all guilds/players that were wvw focused that we had no place there as part of the larger “community”. Especially if we had a desire to be competitive and win the matchups. Servers like BG, JQ, TC, YB, etc are the servers that welcomed the people who wanted to win and play on a more competitive level.

So unless those lower tier servers have a change of heart and want to be competitive and want to climb the ladders or stay in the top tiers why would we want to move back down and deal with all that frustration? Why would we want to hear how our “elitist” attitudes (aka competitive attitudes) aren’t welcome?

I’m sure you and your playstyle wouldn’t want to be forced to join a lower tier community (as you described) just as many of us from lower tiers don’t like being forced into the higher tiers (where we are losing our playstyle). Most of us are working to play with the higher tiered servers (Maguuma has been great on the BLs so far), but we enjoyed our 5v5 and 10v10 fights over the 50+ vs 50+. Playstyles differ, that’s not a bad thing, but it still sucks to deny us the choice.

Chris Barrett.3280:

Virtute.8251:

Okay. How are Glicko ratings for individual servers being calculated during linked matches? Some of us are wondering what the trick is to separate the linked worlds during Glicko rating calc, so that new (different) pairings can occur at each (for now 3 month) pairing interval.

Linked “host” worlds have their Glicko data updated in the usual way. Linked “guest” world Glicko data isn’t affected. It’s not yet determined what approach we’ll use for Glicko data for guest worlds when world links are changed, in the case that a guest either becomes a host or goes solo.

Wow, so you just negated the contribution of the “guest” server. If the lower tiers felt like they didn’t matter, this would prove that point.

Should just open alpine borderlands up with desert and have 7 maps. This que is ridiculous. Good luck getting all your guild together to play. Thanks Maguuma for their hospitality but I’d rather roam on an near empty map.

Wait, so those of us who intentionally sought out low-tier servers to avoid zergs/queues are going to be paired with the highest population servers? I paid money to transfer servers to avoid exactly that.

EDIT: I should say that I do like the overall changes to WvW, and I see the necessity of some sort of server merge/pairing. My specific concern is that for those of us on lower tier servers there is going to be a rather large change in the game experience; once that most of us will see as a negative (not to mention the reaction of the higher tier servers suddenly finding their queued BG’s full of solo roamer types from their partner server). If we wanted to be on the highest tier servers we would have transferred there.

Obviously it is too late to change the design for the first round of the beta, but perhaps a system where the lowest tier servers are rolled up together into linked servers to provide a moderately populated lower tier environment may be worth testing?

Hello,

This is year 2016, 09/02 and we are now several month after the HoT extension that everyone paid.

Why don’t we have the Autoloot available YET in WvW ?
Despite it’s a WvW’s community request ?
It’s already in the game, we’ve all seen that IT IS WORKING, so why can’t we access that option?

As a WvW player, I feel like ArenaNET is forgetting the WvW in EVERY UPDATES.

Please ArenaNET, play your own game.
Thanks for reading.