Guild Wars 2

McKenna Berdrow.2759:

In the next release, a 6th pip is being added to the provision master ability line that allows you to buy HoT recipes, sigils, and runes from the heroics notary vendor.

I appreciate this greatly but I feel that this is incomplete.

The greatest issue is the lack of ascended trinkets of the HOT stats which are currently locked behind raiding. Trinkets are the highest stat weight of all the gear and not having those available is a huge setback for WvW.

Similarly even if we do get the recipes most of them require HoT exclusive items to craft which are completely unavailable in WvW solving only a tiny fraction of the grind for those items in the first place.

A step in the right direction though

The Population issue is not related to lack of worlds and the ability to transfer off to low tier servers, its an issue of how the most active players stack on the most active (and usually winning) servers. In fact the population imbalance was caused because there were TOO MANY servers with too many tiers which allowed stagnation into defined playstiles for each tier (rather than one compeetitive mode where all servers could complete) and spread the population thin except for the top tier servers.

There is absolutely no guild in any of the t1 servers that couldn’t transfer off to the current bottom tier servers as a whole if they wanted to. They dont do it because THEY DONT WANT TO and thats simply because the lower tiers dont pose any challenge, reward or benefit to those guilds or individual players. Even if they manage to claw their way to the top that could take months of facerolling the other servers to even get into that t1 spot (thus having boring fights, no challenge and just karma training); and those months of work for what purpose?being at the top they already were at t1 before the transfer?

Truth is that its very likely that what needs to be done isnt server linking, its server elimination and population reasignment. Instead of linking the servers and trying to keep a balance the lower tiers should dissapear and a special transfers should be allowed to the server of their choice -as a guild and as compensation. (this would require manually moving those guilds to avoid the server being full all of a sudden). Those random players not part of a WvW guild who get affected just get free choice of what ever open server is available.

Transfer costs should also be removed, instead of a monetary cost server transfers should have a CD period. Simply let people move where they want to move if the server space is available and let the population spread itself as it sees fit.

All Good ideas, ill add my 2 cents:

1. Capturing t0 structures (no upgrades) should award NO POINTS otherwise you incentive mindless karma training by rewarding the constant flipping of undefended, vulnerable structures. *Flipping heavily reinforced structures of enemy servers should count more than holding the objective for tick should. *

2. Action Level has to be dynamic and not preset. There are servers who dont have NA Prime there are others who have that and more; there are cases where during the weekend there is a large presence but during the week this isn’t a thing. The Multiplier has to change actively with what is actually happening not with that someone believes it should be. The Multiplier also has to be server based and not globally set (based on enemy server activity compared to yours), if your heavily outnumbered server actually manages to win a skirmish you should be rewarded for your achievement not feel bad because the multiplier is 1 because someone determined its “off hours”.

3. Last Stand is a good idea in concept but probably will be terrible in execution. From the start it will negatively affect reset (since reset is no longer important in impact) and second it will benefit only the servers who can stack players during the last stand day (punishing those who cant). Further there are potential of abuse with the Action Level system: whats to keep an already winning server to log off so the multiplier is lowered assuring their victory through inaction. All of these have to be answered before this can be applied.

As and additional idea id like to propose that destroying enemy siege should award points to tick (similar to ppk) that way giving repercussion to servers who just like to siege hump all day. Change also benefits attackers who manage to break in heavly defended structures and break the 1001 arrowcarts, trebs and ballistas some people like to build inside keeps.

Heimlich.3065:

I disagree completely. WvW is a free-form sandbox gamemode. There are a great many mechanics that developers never intended which are used in different proportion among servers. Some servers have large population, some servers have talented spies with accounts on other servers, some servers have crass spies & meddlers that destroy supply and waste tactivator cooldowns, some servers have crafty and talented use of siege.

Everything you compared the spawn siege with from the spies, to the griefers, to the siege troll, to the tag watchers,s to the insurmountable blobs are examples of things that players would like completely removed from the game mode

An exploit by definition is an exploit because it abuses bugs/glitches/loopholes in the game in order to achieve benefit not intended by the game developers. The spawn siege clearly falls into this because the clear intention was for there to be a lock in the spawn/invulnerable area; this lock is present in EBG and in DBL so its quite clear that spawn siege should not be happening. Lets get this out of the way: there is no such thing as a “good exploit”, anyone debating for it is simply doing so because they clearly get benefit and don’t want to lose it. No different from when dungeon skip exploits had to be fixed despite how elaborate some of those where, if its unintended then it should be fixed.

On the topic of the siege being counterable -and more importantly if it was viable: the answer is no. Yes the siege was technically damageable but it was also ridiculously easy to defend, the counter siege was even easier to counter with the same spawn siege and even if it was destroyed it could easily be rebuilt again because home server can easily accumulate supply thanks to their spawn being right there. Trying to “counter” the spawn siege is an exercise in futility and a battle you will lose because you have so many factors against you. The counter is not a solution if it is defeated easily by the same thing its supposed to counter in the first place.

Now theres the topic of “spawn camping” which in the alpine borderlands citadel is impossible as there are 7 exit points from where a group can exit the citadel and avoid this evil “blob”(more if we account the fact that you can jump from plenty of the ledges towards north camp. This is way more than the 2 exits the Desert Borderlands spawn had and the “defensive” buffs you claim the shrines gave you worked against you if they were in such a superior position they were spawn camping you. Anyone that claims you need the spawn siege to prevent spawn camping is simply making up situation to justify their abuse.

Finally as mentioned in other posts this exploit was often abused by the home server to maintain a stranglehold on their side of the map -often times when they didn’t deserve it and prevented legitimate captures/holding of objectives by enemy servers. WvW is a competitive game mode and there are times when simply you wont win and you cant prevent your stuff from being taken over. If the intention was for the enemy servers to never take your structures, be able to upgrade them and properly defend them then the structures would be invulnerable in the first place and the mechanics would be removed (the siege spawn effectively made the towers impossible to hold and defend for enemy servers)

In the end im glad this is getting a fix -same way i hope all other exploits across all game modes are.

Heimlich.3065:

Build an arrow cart, treb, or ballista to destroy the offending siege. It isn’t an exploit, the siege is vulnerable to destruction, just like all siege is.

It’s no more an exploit than building trebs on the upper floors of Stonemist or building trebs inside towers to hit keeps (and vice-versa).

My argument is precisely that it’s not an exploit. How on earth could I be arguing that “[I] get an exploit if” when I don’t agree with the premise?

This is players from large population blobby servers arguing to change mechanics they they don’t like in order to adjust balance. It’s obvious why “most” disagree when it’s popular with blobfolk.

Its an exploit because its in an area where you CAN NOT access as an enemy. It is an exploit because it was caused when changes made to the “determined” buff area you get at spawn during season 2 and it was never fixed.

You say build siege but guess what you can position the trebs OUTSIDE SUPERIOR BALLISTA OR SUPERIOR ARROW CART RANGE and even set them up so that counter trebs cant hit them (they can be set behind walls or the random houses that are in spawn). That doesnt even account that any and all siege that would get build to try counter them is even easier to counter with those same trebs or the fact that with shield generators they are even more invulnerable now.

Its not even about being able to build easily defensible siege near spawn: go ahead and build 1000 catas and trebs and arrow carts from the ledge right under the invuln area to easily take the north towers at least that would be counterable

In theory this was supposed to get fixed at some point but didnt.

Simply put siege shouldn’t be able to be placed in areas where the enemy cant destroy/damage it or even get to it somehow. The fix is as simple as disabling siege use if you have the “determined” buff that makes you invulnerable or even adding an invisible wall that would block the spawn treb shots.

The spawn trebuchets in the Alpine borderlands are the most egregious of these exploits since it makes taking and holding the north towers impossible for enemy servers. You simply cant counter these trebs: They are built far behind max arrow cart range in a area that gives players “Determined” (it still counts as spawn), they are high enough that counter trebs shots wont hit and they are built behind walls/houses/ledges so that ballista shots cant reach.

Please fix this exploit, it was the one thing I wanted changed with the Alpine Return and the one thing that didnt happen. Sorta ruins an otherwise awesome update.

The change has been positive.

What I would look into is the boon up-time people have which leads to a long stab uptime and other things like near 100% damage reduction + 100% resistance (durability runes).

In the end probably giving more sources of boon strip could likely give a nice counterplay to this. There are very little boon strip options and most of them are slow/unreliable (null field/well of corruption), single target (corrupt boon, spinal shivers) or put you into a very dangerous position to pull off (Nothing can save you, unholy feast). All of this works ok for PvP but for WvW boon strip just isnt good or reliable.

Liston.9708:

but many of the players on the lower tiered servers WANTED that style – some even paid to move there. If they wanted the bigger pop they have had 3 years to move. Now they have no choice and no identity at all.

In a perfect WvW scenario there are no tiers and no difference in play style between servers. What we know as “the lower tier servers” should have as much a chance to compete with the “high tier servers” and the matchups would vary on a weekly basis as a result.

There should have never been a “choice” in how to play wvw; that there was just hints at the imbalance issues that are the exact thing they are trying to fix.

Mind you this doesnt mean there isnt any variance in the game mode: T1 for example has its blobs of course but it also has its small 5-10 person guilds that do their own thing and cap objectives away as well as the groups of roamers; and its not an issue of how good/useful those people are in fact often times those small guilds can be the most skilled/useful.

BlackDiablo.3972:

Why do you think it’s a good thing that we lost the ability to chose how we play?

Ranking, skill level, community thrown aside. All feelings of how you want to play thrown away.
How can you call it a good thing, that a way of playing the game, available for years now is shoved aside and removed.

We had the choice how to play. And now we don’t. I can not think of a single reason why this is good. Not as a player, not as a consumer and not for a company.

You want to know why it has to happen? because the devs have to focus on something to provide the necessary changes to a dying game mode. The game mode has to be homogenized to a single experience in order to balance it properly when it comes to rewards/skill balance/map design, otherwise its a mess that ends up in a waste of resources.

Im sorry to tell people this but the 4 WvW maps were not designed to be the personal playground of a 40 man group like it was in the lower tiers. The “low tier” playstyle was a result of heavy population imbalance were there were more tiers than realistically the WvW population could use. And while there are quite a few number of people irritated by the change you also have to know you are the vast minority, the game should never be balanced after the minority. Your “choice” on how to play was never supposed to be a choice in the first place.

Let me just make it clear im also sure T1 probably isnt the poster child of how the game mode should be either but im sure its closer to the intended way the game mode is supposed to be used than whatever the lower tier servers had.

Ahoskova.7014:

Greetings Blackgate!

Let me preface this by saying I can’t speak for all of ET but I do believe it’s the general sentiment.

Yes, there was much frustration and salt yesterday night. Some of it had to do with queues but most of it was on other issues. We knew full well to expect queues, we just didn’t expect then to be that big and from what I’ve gathered it was unexpected for you guys as well. We were all ready to go and very excited at reset; you guys were just quicker on the draw and that’s fine haha. Seeing as we probably wouldn’t get the chance to play we decided to take our zerg to EotM where we ran into some BG that didn’t leave the best first impression but then again, being a frequent EotM myself I understand they do not represent BG.

Some of us stayed up very late and played heavily (I went to bed at 4am and got up at 7am so I could play with you guys again). I wanted to shave off that first impression and get to know you guys and see how you work. Some of our regular commanders and some irregulars, like me, had the chance to mingle and talk to you guys and I really liked what I saw. From what I can tell with the commanders I’ve followed, we seem to share similarities in style and strategy so I would guess it won’t be too hard to work together. I cannot deny that there are some concerns about playing with the top dogs but you have made us feel very welcome and I am grateful for it.

Blackgate seems to have the same “issues” with your matched server that we had with ours, so familiar ground for us … just bigger, much bigger haha The blob-y but rather squishy server, the pest guilds, etc. Sure, this is gonna require us to make changes to our group compositions and probably the builds we run as well but I’m sure we’ll manage (Those condi blobs doe O.O). I, for one, am liking what I’m seeing and all for building bridges and to the very least give it a chance! While being in your TS we’re already coming up with names for our alliance haha! (Black Eredon or Team TeBG anyone?)

While ET doesn’t bring a huge amount of people to the table (maybe ~50-60 regulars; as in people playing at least once or twice a week), we are persistent, determined and generally good at what we do and we had to. We are accustomed to being outnumbered; after all, it’s one of our motos … “Outnumbered? Yes please!” Most importantly, we are fun loving people who are looking for a fun time in WvW but winning is also nice! Most ET guilds have rallies on Mondays and Tuesdays nights (not counting reset night) and we also have monthly rally weeks where we focus on WvW. We also hold regular PvE, PvP and WvW events that we would be very happy to have you join!

See you in the breach!
Sincerely,
[RZH]Ahoskova (Ahos or Ana)

Glad to see positive posts like yours and im glad you got positive experience out of it.

Something that I can tell you is that last night was a bit problematic because we didnt really get a chance to organize and count ET into our reset plan. Friday reset is the only day of the week were you see most of BG log in and play at the same time and as such we tend to mostly queue all maps. To best avoid guilds groups getting split off and giant queues we plan ahead of time so that we have the most even distribution possible and arent fighting for a spot on the map. Lets hope that next reset is much better as we will definitely take you guys into account.

For the rest of the week most of BG’s comunity play on alternating days usually our forces can maybe queue one BL map if we stack but rarely two so you should have more than enough chances to play. The one exception is EBG which always queues during NA prime and we have little control over since its so popular with random pugs so that is something people will have to regretfully deal with if they love EBG. That said the BL get plenty of action so even if you didnt get into EBG there alsmot always something to do.

It goes without question that if you want to organize something with BG you should go for it. Im sure that plenty of BG guilds/players out there would enjoy some PvE, GvG, PvP or WvW fun.

Dominus.7013:

Had ArenaNet chosen instead to merge servers on the lower tiers, Eredon Terrace would have been on equal footing with our new servermates. We’d have had an equal say in the direction of the server, we’d have welcomed our new friends, and we’d have worked with them as allies. We had hoped to do that with Blackgate as well, and Eredon Terrace met to discuss this a few times this past week. Last night, however, 95% of the comments we saw from Blackgate players mocked us and the number of people we were able to contribute to the WvW effort.

Really do you have any evidence of Blackgate mocking you or anyone from ET?

I ask because the server as a majority has been waiting for the link so we can cooperate with the linked server (we frankly didnt care if who it was). Most if not all of our guilds are willing to share builds, resources and even open recruitment for people in ET if they wish to join and play with a BG guild. We also already discussed how to handle ET when it came to community decisions for WvW and even that was decided that you got as much a say as any BG guild (and before you say something: guild size has never made any difference when it came down to agreeing on something for BG)

I dont even know who in BG would “mock” the amount of people you can contribute because frankly we have multiple more than a couple small guilds of 5-10 players who roam around and do their own thing away form the large guilds. Guess what we love and support them as much we can because what they do is really helpful.

Your post just seems like a convenient story to show the ‘horrors’ of world linking in an attempt to justify your attitude.

This thread is meant as an invitation to ET people to communicate with BG so we can do whatever we can to make the best of the server link between our server. Regretfully the link has happened and it is very unlikely it will change anytime soon so its best to cope with that reality

I reiterate complaining wont solve anything: BG guilds wont suddenly stop playing so you can have the maps to yourselves, the devs will not stop/change their tests because of the complaints of a few, and the blobs from enemy servers will not get smaller because you want 30 player fights. But through communication we can TRY to compromise what we can so that both the servers are comfortable.

What does this mean? if you have a 20 person guild that want to run on EBG at a certain number of hours during prime on a specific date then TELL US. If you do then we can work under that assumption, give you your space and have our guilds run some other map as to give your guild the best chance at all getting into the map on time. Granted that eventually one of BG’s guilds will want to play EBG and you will have to concede them the chance to run the map while you play another one.

If you dont tell us what you want then we cant take it into consideration and at that point its you will just be fighting a losing battle for spots on a map with guilds that can almost queue a map by themselves and are willing to wait in queue for a long time.

Im sad to see these handful of ET people throwing their salt around as if it’ll make a difference. You should figure out you’re in an underwhelming minority of people who dislike the change when you are the ONLY NA people complaining in the whole thread.

I encourage you to talk to people in Blackgate, join them on WvW, ask them for help if you need to since all of BG’s guilds are open about cooperating with any and all ET people so we can have a nice time. Well at the very least be linked for the remainder of the beta so make the best of it.

To that handful of people who cant let the salt go? transfer off. Go try and chase your t8 dream which obviously doesnt exist anymore since even t4 people are reporting similar results in queues and map activity to what happened in t1. I wish you luck.

Daemonne.5018:

It’s not even all about the queues. ET’s identity in WvW is just gone. We have a few guilds who pride themselves in taking up the call, slapping on the commander tag and running the circuit. I actually made it into one of the Borderlands tonight. I did love seeing the groups running around and the battles that ensued. the horrible thing is that this is not our tight knit little community though.

Even if we had been merged with one or two of the lower tier servers, we would at least have the same styles in common to work with.

It should be quite clear that if they merged the servers a certain way and eliminated the lower tiers that was because the population – and the gameplay style they supported- isnt the intended way for WvW. You may have had a tight knit community but that doesnt mean that with the changes you cant cooperate and coordinate with the larger server who is very likely willing to help as theyre as much stuck with you as you are with them.

Part of the coordination I talk about is ACTIVELY communicating your intentions, numbers and schedule to the different guilds so that they can also give you similar information and you can try to split off with them in a way that best mitigates queues (blackgate does this every week for reset so that the large guilds arent all stacked in a single map). Teamspeak is also important as it further helps out coordinate movements between guilds specially important in float or when help is required. Im sure builds and other resources can also be shared if you ask and intend to make changes to better adjust to the gameplay.

Im pretty sure that additional changes will happen but I can bet that even if they do you will never return anywhere close to the WvW you knew of back in t8, so id start coping rather than complaining

Sirendor.1394:

Sirendor.1394:

Bandini.6185:

Poor guys in Vabbi, they will never be able to go to EB…

128 queue on eternal borderlands already… pfff I wish they had decided to merge vabbi with the other t9 servers…

Two hours later: 110+ people in the queue still. Not going to get into EB it seems.

If you are holding your breath to get into EBG I have suggestion: dont.

EBG will be the hardest map to get into particularly on reset night but its very likely it will continue to be tough during the week. If you want a shot plan multiple hours ahead.

There are reasons the high tier servers have very large amounts of organization and queues are one of them. They often plan, comunicate and coordinate with others days ahead of time so that they distribute themselves as evenly as posible and get to play as a group on the times they can.

billkamm.9201:

My concern coming from a lower level server is I’ve rarely had to sit in a queue. I’m worried that I will now have to sit in queues. Especially at reset.

This is a very likely situation and you probably will have to deal with it as its inevitable (t1 and t2 servers all queue up all maps on reset).

Your best bet to avoid down time when you want to play is to reach out to the larger server, join their TS if possible and coordinate with their groups to see where you can join and play easily. Most high population servers already organize to divide their guild groups evenly and avoid queues as much as possible.

FrizzFreston.5290:

Rasudido.6734:

It would be nice to know the linked world beforehand so we can organize as to best avoid any unnecessary clashes and offer any new friends in the partner worlds help wherever they may need/want.

reaching out to people, helping them out, giving them TS info, and organizing in a large scale as to best avoid giant queues all night (particularly true in T1) all takes a significant amount of time we dont have if were kept in the dark about things.

While I at first agree with the organizing part and such, on the other side you obviously have the guilds that are totally going to take advantage and switch and bandwagon to a certain server.

The solution could be to disallow switching server for the first match or well into the first match and then let us know beforehand for organizing purposes.

But it’s all very sensitive information in the wrong hands really.

I agree completely

That said we have info that individual server pairings can be changed and may not be permanent, which would certainly put a dent into people trying to bandwagon. Your idea on locking server transfers until well into the match would also work.

It would be nice to know the linked world beforehand so we can organize as to best avoid any unnecessary clashes and offer any new friends in the partner worlds help wherever they may need/want.

reaching out to people, helping them out, giving them TS info, and organizing in a large scale as to best avoid giant queues all night (particularly true in T1) all takes a significant amount of time we dont have if were kept in the dark about things.

I really appreciate when feedback is asked. I think this is what has been the weakest part of anything WvW related. That said here are some of my opinions:

1. Desert BL vs Alpine: Return Alpine. I understand the DBL were indeed a lot of work work from the team but they encourage too much PVE, are too large, have way too many choke points, the keeps are nigh impossible to take if defended and the map provides little to no room for good havok. We even lost certain aspects we had in the old BLs like how towers actually meant something (every tower except SE tower could be used as a strategic place to siege up keeps). The keep lords in DBL are ridiculous, have way too much CC, scale too high and provide way too much of an advantage. Without solving all these issues first the maps will never be a good place for what should be a large scale player v player experience.

2. Balance: Pay more atention to the amount of CC available in game, theres just too much and it has a heavy ripple effect on the meta. The stability change for example is a result of this where stability was nerfed (for pvp purposes) but CC generally went up, this in turn made guardians even more necesary and warriors declined as a result. Counter options arent available either because balance is PVP based which is small group – example is that boon corruption could help balance our the rampant amount of boon sharing but corrupt boon (and most boon strip) is single target which works in pvp not in WVW. Long Story short you have to balance exclusively for wvw knowing its a LARGE SCALE group combat, what works for PvE or PvP wont work in WvW

3. On Tactivators and Siege: Both things are meant to give a smaller group an advantage vs larger groups BUT there is no way to restrict it to this intention. It is very common that a large map blob abuses siege, tactics and buffs provided by WvW to the point smaller groups cant compete. Tactics should have a way way way longer cooldown, they should be emergency buttons and some things like SMC stealth water/airship defense should just be removed simply because of the overpowered nature they have. Siege caps, locations they can be placed and ability to use them should get looked at as to stop the siege creep from a group with already superior numbers.

4. Rewards: this is simple, WVW rewards suck and they have sucked for a long long long time. Since WvW is tied to PvE in its equipment and as a result WvW should have access to EVERYTHING in PvE without having to grind it out in PvE. I shouldnt have to grind PvE to get my ascended armor when I want it for WvW while not getting any worthwhile rewards when I actually play the game mode. Also make the rewards for for winning the week actually worthwhile so that people CARE about winning the match.

5. Population: Balance is much more complex and I wish you luck there. Frankly id think that removing the transfer costs between servers so that players can move as they please. If the worry is that players will stack a certain server then it doesn’t matter because impossible queues will be their own punishment and eventually people will move naturally as a result of not being able to play because they bandwagoned into high population server.

6. On Scoring: The only suggestion I can give you here is to make a better balance between PPT and PPK (points per kill) probably making PPK weigh in much more into score. PPT scoring is fine the problem is that it heavily rewards population imbalance where you have coverage at times where the enemy server doesnt. Maybe a multiplier that changes the weight of your PPT depending on how heavy your population at a certain time is would work stave off night capping. (Example: a server with extremely high wvw population against 2 servers with low population at OCX time would get a PPT multiplier of x0.5 while enemy servers get x2 during that time zone)

Getting hero points through WvW, both EoTM and normal WvW is not bad, the rate of proof of heroics is ok since you get ~3 each rank meaning 3 ranks = 10 hero points from personal experience . This will roughly give you 120 ranks to fully master which isnt terrible and can be obtained easily in ~3 days of heavy wvw farming. While it COULD get cut down a bit more 40 ranks is way to easy to get.

My main issue is that the scrolls you can purchase are SOULBOUND rather than ACCOUNT BOUND. Changing them to account bound would be great as it would allow people to use their main character to purchase the scrolls and train their alts with time.

“Yeah, it will be 5:00am on Sunday morning for [KnM], [DAWN] and [FL], and 1:00am-3:00am for [SuS], [Ng], [Ra] and [ND]. Way to step over Oceanic/South-East Asian guilds.”

This quote exemplifies whats wrong with the reset change and it makes me sad to see so many affected. You guys are simply getting it wrong because you dont see how great a friday night reset is for people.

1. Friday night reset NA allows for such great reset because ITS FRIDAY. People are [usually] done with work and school with many having the full weekend off to play to their hearts fill. For NA people this is great as it gives 2 FULL NIGHTS of WvW and staying up late thanks to decreased responsabilities the next days. This is the same reason sunday night isnt good as people have to turn in early because of monday responsabilities.

2. On the same point this means that FRIDAY—> SATURDAY NA translates into SATURDAY for OCX/SEA/EU. Friday NA reset its early Saturday for those guilds and thus they can log in once NA starts going to sleep and play all Saturday if they wish. The change makes is to that all those guilds completely lose their ONLY day where they can play and know they have the following day off . For non NA its more of a RESET DAY than a reset night and youre killing that

3. NA prime reset works because most players do things during the day and come back to play late afternoon/night. Moving the reset time to 1pm is terrible as it comes in direct conflict with very real limitations plenty of people have on your NA timezone, be they work related, social or Personal. Simply this will cause resets to impossible to attend for the largest portion o your population.

—

In my personal case (someone who lives at US Mountain Time schedule) Saturday night reset wasn’t bad for me but I knew of the issues it caused for my friends at the OCX/SEA/EU timezones.

The most recent change though not only doesnt fix the issues of the previous one but also causes me greater amounts of issues. If saturday afternoon reset happens I simply wont play reset, and ill be even saltier because not only are you screwing me over but did so without fixing anything anyways.

Id rather keep the current reset as potentially buggy and issue ridden experience that it can be, than have no reset experience at all.

Zachary Stiers.1879:

An upcoming patch will contain changes to how line of sight is calculate for arrow carts. Some of the arrow cart skills ignored line of sight and the rest were too forgiving with their line of sight calculations. Both of these issues allowed players with modified cameras to shoot an arrow cart from behind walls to locations they shouldn’t have even been able to see, much less fire at. In the future arrow cart skills will use a special type of line of sight checking specifically designed to reduce this problem while still making the allowed target areas feel reasonable.

OMG [Kill] just got nerfed dont know how they plan to take structures now that they cant map blob and also build arrowcarts to zoomhack

I just logged into say thank you very much.

While not all the things I was worried about it the testing I did were addressed and some were tweaked but way less than I would have liked, all these changes are welcome and a great step in the right direction.

Im glad that the community feedback was addressed so fast, continue the great work.

My standing issues at first glance would be:

- “Suffer” is STILL an inferior “Flash Freeze”. It damage was already less (and the damage got lowered now), the CD is significantly higher than Flash Freeze, the freeze is the same (so even thats not a feature) and thats even considering you dont give AoE Frost Aura to all allies (which can mean Might, Fury and Swiftness for all allies as well as AoE weakness to all enemies when traited.) It becoming instant cast is great but it has to get a significantly lower CD to be any good.

- Chilled to the Bone is still bad and its all because of the CD. Getting a lower cast time is great but compare it to Plague Form and Lich Form, both of those elites are well worth the CD providing more survivability (both), damage (lich), control (plague) and stability (both) than chilled to the bone will ever and they’re not even remotely as easy to interrupt. IMO as it is it needs as low as a 70s CD to even compare.

- Rise is will still be bad. This is regretfully a minion issue as ALL minions suck across all game modes, simply put they wont survive enough to last more than a single hit (if any) in any content that matters. Unless the minions are made useful by dying (aka have a death nova effect) the skill will be bad always.

-Shivers of Dread is still underwhelming, fear sources from necromancer are all in long CD and are very limited quantity, the chill would have to be significantly larger than 3s for this to matter.

Ridiculous you cant actively punish one team because the other team is rage quitting.

If anything what needs a look into is the impact of OUT-MANED across all maps.
The buff should be significant as to give the severely outnumbered force a real fighting chance not the pathetic bonuses it gives now.:

1. Damage Bonus: Out maned players should deal more damage, particularly on siege, for them to be able to deal with a larger force and deal with the AoE cap and how a large group will soak so much damage because they have more players to distribute the damage across.

2. Damage Reduction: Similarly players should get damage reduction or increased vitality to be able to mitigate the sheer damage advantage the enemy team has from numbers alone.

3. Global Supply Capacity Increase: Outmaned maps should intrinsically give people the possibility of carrying extra supply so they can easily build the siege that is often required to balance the situation be it to build siege and be able to take their stuff back or build defensive siege to make a blob go away.

4. Speed Increase to all outmaned players: Often in outmaned battles the smaller force gets wiped and is forced to run back from spawn mostly too late as lambs to a slaughter since the larger force can just throw numbers at them and rez who ever the smaller group did kill. A speed increase would at least help the smaller group rally up faster.

5. Outmaned applies to structures: Not only players but structures should get the bonuses making it harder for blobs to karma train everything just because they have an overwhelmingly bigger force.

any way of changing the settings? I tried and the only result it would lead to is a failure to load at startup.

Smaller servers are their own meta. Same way higher tier servers are another.

Reality is that balance in smaller tier servers and their player activity IS the problem. You can look at the 10 pages of post here and the complaints are ALL from people in lower tiers. And the truth of the matter is that if as solution is to be applied it would happen to the community as a whole not just those smaller servers. I dont get how a large people in lower tiers have complained about how WvW is an issue for them but keep ignoring the one element they all share (low populations in lower tier servers).

A better handicap would be great but then again what do you base it on? using GLICKO rating is terrible as shown by cases like Magumma and SoR who were on higher rating for months than what they trully were. Sever population numbers are just as terrible as not all players in a server accurately represent the active WvW comminity. Also how significant should the handicap be? is it a constantly shifting algorithm that changes with every possible transfer? Should you intead get static matchups so that servers only fight the 3 closest to them in numbers? then youll complain about how boring it is…

while it is true that consolidation is not an absolute solution it is a start.

You really don’t get it? It’s not lower pop that’s a problem, as it is right now it’s either play the same servers each week over and over or get blown out/ have blow outs by numbers alone. What, you think when mid tier servers have evenly numbered matches we don’t have the same experience top tier does? If so you’re absolutely wrong. There’s only so many freight train matches people can take, on either side. This entire thread is about population imbalance, not about why lower tier servers need to be another JQ/BG/TC…

No you really dont get it.

The population imbalance comes from smaller servers who like to exist as their own little island doing their own little thing, which is great I dont mind it. The problem is the population is far less stacked and chances are that if anything goes wrong and a guild/group cant make it your active WvW population varies greatly because you have less players that will take those spots. All this is affected by time zone, day of the week, people’s real life issues, holidays, and other releases (like PvE) taking the populations. And like you say after so many matches under unfavorable conditions people stop attending (or worse transfer out of the server) and thus a downward spiral of inactivity/number smashing starts to happen. TC/JQ/BG usually dont have this because their populations are so large even when a portion of them goes on a break/hiatus there are plenty of other players keeping the activity up (and sometimes this means 1+ hour long queues across all 4 maps when they do all show up)

If there were less servers and all around player population was consolidated number blowouts would be far less likely, you don’t get this by thinning out existing server populations.

What sort of thinking? the one where the lower tier servers are complaining about how WvW is “dying” because their experience greatly differs from t1/t2 servers and they lost their active guilds to those servers?

Guess what the people moved to t1/t2 because they are far more content that way. WvW is better, more active and rewarding. If people keep stacking into a server its because they want THAT experience, not whatever the lower tier servers have to offer.

I would rather have 23 other servers to fight against instead of 5 or 6.

except that you will never have 23 servers fighting each other, there simply isnt enough player population in GW as a whole as to make 23 servers fighting each other and be active and not have issues. Simply put you dilude and thin your population way too much.
If you instead cut 11 lower tier servers and force their populations into the remaining 12 (which probably wouldnt include TC/BG/JQ because of server caps) you could have far more balance as the player population would be more stacked as well as evenly divided.

How strong would Ehmry Bay be right now if every guild that transferred up to T1 was still on it? They have a pretty decent size night crew, with more of a day crew they would be a pretty solid server.

This is the issue right here. As much as you say you have anything it is nothing compared to what BG/JQ/TC and to a certain extent SoS and FA have right now. All of you guys would be far more useful stacking into SoS for example and thus giving SoS the boost it needs to fight BG/JQ/TC and in general having a far more active, organized and rewarding WvW experience.

I didnt “abandon” Ehmry bay because I wanted to win. I got out because it was a ghost town, where my WvW guild was a 10 man group that didnt even show up all the time…. 10 man group is the low point of what my guild runs before we go to bed these days.

I’m understand why you, being on BG, would hate this idea, but you’ve moved before, you can do it again or go to EotM while waiting to get in to WvW.

OR the guys in the lower tier servers (who are probably far less than the amount of people in the higher tier servers who would get inconvienced) could move to another server and bump up their population so they could compete on equal grounds….

This is sad. Most posts are some made up complaint about how T1 servers should be the ones modified rather than the obvious where lower tier servers are the problem.

All tier 1 servers have a healthy WvW population, all the servers cap their maps, make heavy use of TS, have great organization, play constantly and have map blobs. All of these can be reduced to what people really want : an active server population.

I used to play in Ehmry Bay, moved over to blackgate. The reason I moved was the lack of a population in Ebay, WvW was a ghost town except for a few guilds who would do their private raids in their private TS and not invite people. This is different in Blackgate, guilds do run by themselves privately but they communicate between each other, there usually is a large guild running the “map tag” where any PUG can join in TS and listen. I dont even care about the rewards as I play 3 times a week with my guild JUST FOR FUN something that was impossible in Ebay.

And here is the reality anyone in the lower tier servers SHOULD be forced into a t2 or t3 server to “balance” the population. You want more Blackgates and Jade Quarries (the two t1 servers that have survived this long), you want more servers to get bummped up like TC did. Most people are proposing the inverse where you want to destroy T1 through harsher caps when what you want is to be a T1 server? You could probably shoot SoS into kitten compete with JQ/BG/TC right now just by moving a couple of guilds from the lower tiers into it.

I understand any lower tier server players having pride and not wanting to move, but if your complaint is that population is an issue and you dont want to move to a server with better population? thats all on you guys not the other servers…

The whole problem with the system is that it broke something that it shouldn’t have: when people asked for horizontal progression they didn’t say they wanted it in their vertical progression.

New players are stuck with a system that is slower than before, more complicated, requires tedious tasks and hurts their chances at group content (as now theyre not only low level with bad gear but ALSO dont have their traits unlocked.).

On the veteran player side it just make it annoying. Having to do everything again? I dont want to. I already experience the tedious process of my first char and I certainly dont want to go through it again unless I have to (like the case of needing map 100% for making my 3rd legendary).

Truth is traits should be account unlocks, once the player manages to jumps the hoops to unlock a trait his second- Xth character shouldn’t be subjected to it.

I wanted to stay away for the forums for this but I decided to show up just in case someone read the comment and appreciated the feedback.

As with a lot of people I had some reservations about the megaserver when it was initially getting made, some of those reservations were prooven false as the megaserver does indeed help PvE, but theres a small catch: it only helps solo roaming or very small groups.

After fully experiencing the differences I can say that people SHOULD be allowed to pick which megaserver to go and even be able to create instanced versions of the map.

All week me and my guild experienced problems trying to complete stuff because no one would get sorted into the same map. this was an issue for guild missions which we had on monday and took 45 minutes longer to complete (than we usually do) because half of that time we had to brute force our way into the same megaserver and the other half we would move and had no idea if we were in the correct map and/or if the other was dead.

Aside from Guild Missions we tried to do a coordinated map clears, another guild event we do, and we failed at that one because people got frustrated with not being able to get sorted into the same map (one of the map even hardcaped twice :/). This is very much a hindrance over the previous system were we pretty much guaranteed an empty map by guesting to the less populated servers.

Now we come to the coordinated boss triggers…. The idea was to coordinate with another guild a run of Wurm-Tequatl-Karka Queen as part of our PvE night so that all the guild got in on the fun and got some rewards (particularly on wurm). The results? total failure, even though the times we used werent the designated server times for the events the maps still had enough people roaming/doing other stuff that it prevented a significant number of the guild people to get into the correct map (it hardcapped consistently). This meant that we didnt have enough people for the wurm, the PUGs there were of no use because they has 0 preparation, Tequatl almost failed (50 seconds left), we had to spend more merrits/influence on Karkaa Queen because we had to lure her out on two megaservers (so guild people didnt get left out because lol bad sorting). All in all people were extremely frustrated, some of them even left the event/closed the game out of this frustration because they were genuenly excited about this (like killing wurm because it was the first time they were going to) and took time to prepare only to be slapped in the face by the terrible sorting system that doesnt work.

The saddest part is that while megaservers arent fixed we have decided just not to attempt any organized PvE content, the system literally killed various guild events we had planned because it was a week full of frustrations, and many people have outright stated they will not even participate in guild missions if its going to be this way (because they have no need for the commendations and really dont want to be dealing with this).

Megaservers are bad because the “smart” sorting is terrible and players have no control over what to do when it fails aside from blindly asking guildies if they are in a different map so they can join spam them….

I had a terrible time during this week’s guild missions because 2 maps we had them in were megaservered…. the waypoints didnt work, the guild kept getting split into different servers (took like 10 minutes just to make sure we were in the same map twice!!) and then there was guilds in that server already doing the an event which effectively blocked our progress (another 15 minutes wasted!!!)

Frankly here are my suggestions:
1. Allow players options on how they want the megaserver to sort them— Sliders or such for options so players can decide how weighted the choice between the following would go a long way: Guild based, Home Server based, Emptiest megaserver, and most populated megaserver

2. Give players direct control over where they want to go in case they didnt like the sorting . And no, having to ask someone if you can join their party to get the privilege of right click joining on them s not a solution.

3. Increase the rate of the natural spawn timers on the bigger bosses. This means Tequatl, Karka and Wurm, even if they dont get done they should spawn at least every 3 hours like they used to give non organized players of every time zone a chance at them.

4. Remove all contested waypoints from the game. They were all based on how active your home server was and how often people were clearing them, this responded to your old server system and dont work now. Remove the possibility of them getting contested at all. (Removing WP costs would also sort of make this better because at least im not spending more silver to experiment)

I have mixed feelings about the mega server system.

For one I am sure this will come as a quality of life improvement to all lower population servers as their problem was finding enough people to play with and accomplish events.

I dont like this because it basically turns everything into overflows (which have countless valid reasons why people hate them) which depend on this “smart” system anet has developed (which I dont trust because your previous “smart” systems have all sucked).

Im OK with this getting implemented BUT I should be allowed to pick which instance of the megaserver I want to go to in case I dont like where the “smart” system placed me. I shouldnt have to brute force this through my friends/guild list who happen to be somewhere else. This should be a system like gw1 where a drop down menu let me pick Lion’s Arc #53 if I wanted to even if I was sorted into LA #20.

thefreezingvoid.8516:

Ferris Bewler.9706:

You were outplayed, outclassed, outstratagized, and just soundly beaten like a drum this week..

Get over yourselves. You guys won due to superior coverage. You did not outplay, outclass or outstrategize anyone on JQ.

Sorry to break it to you but as a server making sure you have near absolute coverage IS a strategy. taking advantage of an opponents weak spot? strategy. Managing schedules so that presence exists at most time across all maps? strategy

What isnt a strategy? Getting handed 3 consecutive 1st place wins by Anet and then QQing because you lost the first week where you actually had to compete.

but if it makes you feel any better you could go to the corner and cry about russians and how blackgate bought them. Take a lollypop with you.

Living World… well I have my serious issues with it.

1. Temporary and not permanent content: Everything is temporary, what is “permanent” is not in any way impacting. Scarlet Invasions, the new TA path, Southsun thats all the permanent anything Living World has given… please make a new map or changes to the maps that are actually noticeable and worth it for more than the living story 2 week frame.

2. Go back to the dragons: I like scarlet but she is just not threatening, every part of her story comes too slow and she does NOT feel like a final boss at all. There are 5 other dragons out there and we have spent the better of 1 year doing nothing against them. Frankly a big story arc is the reason id like expansions to happen instead of this focus on living story where we get drizzles of content that get interrupted by seasonal events or things like a tequatl buff….

3. Stop with the achievement mentality: Everything is based on getting acheivements. There is little incentive and impact past this race to get the achievements by quickyl grinding them and even then the achievements usually give terrible rewards. This is particularly terrible since most things are time gated by the two week squedule….

4. New Maps with new content: Similar to Southsun we need new maps that have things to do and stick around with incentives to play in them.

The game modes from GW1 are a great idea: Alliance Battles, Jade Quarry, Fort Aspenwood and Guild Battles should all be implemented.

Similary Elite PvE modes/areas like Underworld of Fissue of Woe should exist.

PvP wise dueling would be excelent.

Most if not all of the suggestion points id point out have already been outlined by other but here goes my post:

1. Queue Times: The program should display average expected length of the que as well as be less random (its extremely frustrating to have been waiting for an hour to hear a guild member say he got in instantly.) To add to this a way to prevent ferrying of people to abuse jumping the queue time.

2. Separate WvW from PvE: This involves balancing skills, adding achievements and content intended for one to the other. Too many times have the servers been hampered by people who are trying to do a jumping puzzle for example instead of participating in WvW activities; same can be said about skill/class balances that are intended for one type of content and affect the viability in the other. Simply Put PvE and WvW are NOT the same thing, stop acting like they are.

3. Servers should be weighted for seasons: WvW season 1 for example has a conundrum in the gold league where Blackgate, Sanctum of Rall and Jade Quarry are evenly matched but in the later weeks the balance is out of proportion. JQ for example gets 3 weeks where they have an easy win (unless the other two servers double team them) and those weeks if won should count less than the win by Blackgate or Sanctum who dont have it as easy. Similarly if a lower rank server manages to beat higher tier servers they should get more points.

4. Have WvW be more secondary friendly: equiping a secondary character is extremely hard particularly if you want to have it be PvE and WvW proficient, not only that but its almost impossible to level a secondary for WvW if you have to spend lots of time on your main (an upleveled character frankly sucks and is not a solution). Have WvW drop vials of liquid experience that you could dump on secondaries so I can play my main and have the Exp gained be transferable into my secondaries if I want.

5. Adress Zergs: The AoE cap limitation made it extremely hard to deal with zergs and a lot of the time what could be a competitive, strategic and skill based game is dumbed down to “who has the biggest number of bodies.” There has to be more added into the game that allows people to break mindless zergs.

6. Incentivate WvW: have better drops and aditonal items. Medals should be able to get you more than just WvW items and equipment, as well as compensate the time not spent grinding PvE because you were in WvW.

~Ras, BG

oo invite please much interrested in continuing Tequalt Slaying

the overflow system is extremely bad. Frankly the district system from GW1 provided for similar interactions that GW2 has: you can teleport and be on the “main” area without any problem, if its full you go to the next available overflow.

If we had a system similar to gw1 we could force an instanced overflow where you could get cooperation. This would be extremely beneficial if more tequalt type events are being planed; this would allow far easier planning than having to abuse the party join system to force your way into a overflow.

Smooth Penguin.5294:

Asmodeus.5782:

In time, when people get their achievements, the place will get completely deserted.

I already maxed my achievements, and I’m still helping to do the event. So are a lot of other people. You still get exclusive drops, and it’s nice to help other servers to get a win. So don’t underestimate people.

Pfft the “exclusive drops” are pathetic, the guaranteed drops are even worse… you could literally do anything else in the game rather than be forced into a waiting game for hours a day for tequatl to spawn so you dont lose your spot in the server/overflow of your choice.

I am one for “elite” content, but this is just too much. Tequatl should be instanced, should not be on a spawn timer and his rewards should be worthy of the effort it takes to just organize the amount of people to take it down in that 15 minutes….

This isnt a simple issue of “too hard” and “you people complain too much”. Its an issue with it being unrewarding, open world content which is more logistically complicated than “hard” or challenging and easily plagued by issues like AFK, Leech or Greifing.

All in all its like Anet didnt learn anything from the Karka Queen. If that was abandoned by the community who the hell would think this is any different. I surely hope this isnt the “plan” on raids they were talking about because this is really badly done.

It wasnt rewarding.

Sure there was an awesome moment when I did kill Tequatl and got the Meta achievement….

BUT knowing that I spend the best of 4 days attempting to kill it getting little to no reward and then having to wait long hours in fear of losing my spot in the non-overflow at the chance to kill it again instead of playing makes me feel extremely bad. Heck just about anything else couldve been done in the time spent killing tequatl and It wouldve been less of a waste of time.

I find the survey pretty spot on and something that should be looked at by Anet developers.

Content like this is appreciated by such few people because the glaring flaws: it extremely hard for the general level of organization in a open environment, too hard for smaller servers which cant hope to manage even if they organize, plagued by random people who either underperform and/or go AFK and harsh on any person who is denied a proper chance because they arent lucky/able to get into the correct server/overflow.

At the rate that this goes the “permanent content” will go unused and avoided in a worse manner than Karka Queen was once the hype is over (a.k.a once most decent players get the achievement and see that get terrible rewards for the level of dificulty)

No just no…

first lets look at the definition of achievement:

Something accomplished successfully, especially by means of exertion, skill, practice, or perseverance.

What makes the tequalt boss meta particularly interresting is that these are more GROUP based achievements rather than idividual; this is fine for the reason that tequalt itself was meant to be a GROUP based thing. Since the start all you have heard is to “organize” and “work together” and thats because thats the exact dificulty in these achievements: to work solidly as a group.

I do feel bad for the smaller servers due to the high dificulty bar, but as the (now 3) Tequalt Killer guilds across multiple servers proove, it is perfectly feasable to organize with strangers from other servers rather than PUG. Doing so should get you the achievements rather easily 3 of which can and likely will be completed at once (Power Play, Slaughter in the Swamp and Perfect Defense) the rest are all completable by yourself without killing tequatl…..

The hardcore crowd should be asking for real elite content like the Underworld and Fissure of Woe and Domain of Anguish in gw1 and not trying to justify badly balanced content like Tequatl to be kept the same just so it becomes a ghost town once people stop caring at all and it quickly just becomes impossible and inacessible even to their “elite” selfs.

ha learn their lesson…. right

at least in gw1 they gave me a half competent team of custom heroes so I could attempt group content even if other players just couldnt be bothered with it…

This event is already ghosting and its not even been a single day.

No if youre a casual player then dont. Frankly even if you beat Tequatl the rewards are trash and not worth whatever you went through in those 15 minutes….