Guild Wars 2

Stenia.9623:

on SBI no one went last week against HoD/JQ we had no queues, many people from BG/IoJ have complained people have given up

Isn’t it kind of your own fault you fell to a less fun bracket if you didn’t show up to fight last week?

And I think the only “game is doomed” problem WvW has right now is the invisible armies. This week was even worse than normal, so I just skipped WvW this week. They’ll get it fixed, but the engine screwing them up is 3rd-party culling stuff. It always takes a while to coordinate for solutions with outside companies, so just be patient.

For free transfers, I still think it makes sense just to disable WvW until the match resets. There are other parts of the game outside of WvW (I know, probably not to most of us talking in this forum), so I think our suggestions should really try to minimize impact on the other aspects of the game.

I completely agree with disabling WvW until reset on a server transfer. I’m hoping they keep free transfers in place for at least a couple weeks after they implement whatever fix they said they were working on for server queues. The fixes possible have hugely different impact on how I’d be able to play WvW, so it could greatly impact which server I’d want to play on long-term.

Or they could allow like 1 free transfer a year and unlimited paid ones I guess. As long as I get that final free transfer to make an educated decision about where to play.

Ferguson’s Crossing is probably dominating the 2 low pop servers.

I carry a few blueprints from the jumping puzzle, but nobody has ever asked for them to get deployed. I stopped doing the puzzles as a result. I’m sorry if I don’t know tactics well enough to know where to place them, but I don’t think I’m alone in that regard. And I’ll keep carrying the blueprints, and keep carrying supplies.

Vorlidian.1045:

I don’t know perhaps your just better at hoarding money then iam. If the occasion arises where my team needs me to setup a treb or balista, i just go grab it. Or i feel the need to increase supply to a tower/keep, then ill cough up the 10s at the supply depot to upgrade it, knowing that it could get taken over at any moment. I suspect its a bit less costly in the BL, but i only hit up EB and only use BL for the JP while waiting for EB. I think it would be a bit more hectic in EB.
Who knows.

It sounds like your problem is the cost of siege equipment and upgrades, not repair costs.

Jamaz.9837:

Transfers allowable, but account denied to WvW for a grace period of one week.

+1

Instead of denying WvW for an entire week, just deny WvW for the remainder of the current match. That way people can still transfer right before reset and have minimal time being denied WvW.

Either queues got longer on HoD from the same time last week, or that bug where you randomly just never pop a queue came back to haunt me hardcore this week. I gave up on EB at the 3 hour mark ~8am. I gave up on JQBL at the 90 minute mark ~1am. I forget which queues I had earlier in the week, but I haven’t gotten in this week. But the PvE on HoD has still been a blast, and far better than any other server I’ve tried.

I like how Xenesis thinks, trying to work within the limitations to maybe get us some quicker fixes than we could otherwise get. I support any of your ideas that are easy to implement. Hot pink, giant loot bags for everyone!

I would definitely love to see this, but I can appreciate that it must be lower priority than things like invisible army, queue relief, etc.

I also seem to have major problems with my loot bags appearing where I was before I ever fired a shot in an encounter. I’ll often find a bag quite a ways down the path I entered a supply camp from even though the fight was at the opposite side of the camp and I fired no shots anywhere near where the bag sat. It’s almost like they spawn where I first switched weapons or something.

exploits@arena.net – use it.

2 weeks. I want some weekends to have defenses built up, while other weekends are fresh starts. (I’m open to some other way to achieve that though)

While I personally don’t want this solution since I’m looking forward to the matches that last 2 weeks, it is at least a far better solution than a lot of the other solutions proposed. At least it wouldn’t be telling people that play at 3am that they are somehow inferior or bad for the game.

I agree with:

- Fix invisible armies
- Remove AOE damage through gates
- Show guild tag on claimed structures
- Fix queues
- The guild owing a tower or a keep can:
disable/enable supplies pickup for non guild members, or
set a minimum amount of supplies that cannot be picked up

I disagree with:

- Alliances support & chat
- Improve outmanned buff. atm it’s useless.
- Siege weapons can damage friendly structures
- AOE Friendly Fire

Friendly fire would be abused by kittens that want the other server to win or just to troll people.

Direct support of cross-server alliances just doesn’t feel right to me. If people want to do it in vent or whatever, more power to them. That means the people setting up the alliance need to have a good enough reputation with the rest of their server to communicate the alliance and have people stick with it. (I assumed you were talking about cross-server alliances)

And I hate the idea of outmanned buff being used as the vehicle to fixing the current population issues. Population balance problems are incredibly common in multiplayer games, and most available solutions are better than an outmanned buff in my opinion. I’d like to see incentives to join the undermanned side tried first since it is the least disruptive. If that doesn’t work, there are still tons of options better than a buff.

TheAltarBoy.3176:

A lot of people have mentioned staying mobile but that seems counter intuitive. If you’re moving around wouldn’t you be more likely to be seen since people are drawn to movement?

In many cases I seem to be okay if I’m standing still, what gives me away is people seeing the nameplate over my head as soon as they get even remotely close.

You should stay in motion because you should be doing more than one thing. If scouting a single spot was a good idea, you should just go there naked and die and then scout as a corpse.

But seriously, staying mobile is useful because nobody can sneak up on you. If you’re running west and your enemy that spotted you is running west, you have a very long time to see him. If you’re running east and your enemy is running west towards you, you’ll see them since they’re right in front of you. On that note, be sure to use your camera to briefly check around you every once in a while.

Stay in motion. And if you see a group while you’re on your own, run the other way early unless you’re luring them into a trap. And know your terrain. If you can delay a large group as a single person by making them jump down somewhere that will take time to get back up, mission accomplished (as long as you told /map where they were heading). And use a waypoint to completely avoid conflict whenever useful.

Ascii.9726:

Just wow lol. I forgot world vs world is about 1v1’s /facepalm.

If you’re going to just dismiss how anyone else plays the game because it is not how you play the game, there is really no point talking about the issue with you. The developers clearly intended WvW to have things for smaller groups to do, hence the objectives they can accomplish with a small group.

Ascii.9726:

And if you actually read the post rather then skimming it, you would see the population scaling idea is dependent on TOTAL population, not current.

( assuming 100 people per borderland per server)
Prime-time: 1,200 people / 1,200 people = 100% full instance = 100% full point value.

Night-Time: 80, 70, 70, 50 for one server, 50, 20, 40, 10 for another server, 20, 30, 30, 10 for the last server: 480 / 1,200 people = 40% full instance = 40% point values for objectives.

Its simple mathematics really.

Here’s the problem. On Henge, we can easily fill 500 slots of the total 600 (if 600 is the total allowed in a map) even if the opponents are mostly asleep and only fielding 50 players each.

And as others have pointed out, there is absolutely no reason to implement a system that rewards a fair 100v100v100 fight as somehow only half as important as a 200v200v200 fight. If you reflect on what others are saying about your idea, perhaps you can improve it rather than relying on just insulting everyone?

Point value for % population is not a reasonable fix. How you describe it, it would even treat a 500v50v50 the same as a 200v200v200.

Changing the outmanned buff is also not a reasonable fix. It would ruin the fun of all those guys out there enjoying 1v1 and other small encounters. There are better fixes to the underlying problem, and they are well known to game developers as many games have faced the same problem. Have faith that ArenaNet developers can do their job and implement a better solution. They have shown you the amazing talent they have, so give them at least a little credit.

Yes. I might play less later in the week if our opponents in WvW stop putting forth as much effort, but I’ll definitely play for those weekend resets and continue slowly exploring the non-WvW aspects of the game.

Here’s one of the original discussions of WvW: http://www.arena.net/blog/mike-ferguson-on-guild-wars-2-world-vs-world

Please note I’m not saying the OP is correct in his opinion of what Anet said, just providing the blog post I assume caused the opinion.

There are blocking issues in the ~30 areas, and the game has been out about a month. So you’re talking about people that might only be level 30 after a month of playing. That’s hardly people burning through all content in a week.

The main issue is just that your idea is uselessly punitive. Why not just prevent playing WvW after a server transfer until the reset? That way people wanting to genuinely move can do so right before reset with minimal impact, you can’t switch to the winning side of your current matchup, etc. Kyte, and many other players in many other threads, have already explained that idea. I’m sure it’s not perfect, but it sure is better than blocking people from transferring back to their friends if they change their minds after seeing the grass really wasn’t greener.

No. There are still people using server transfers to find a server with a certain event or whatever unbugged, and then they transfer back to their preferred server after unblocking their character progression.

While I love WvW and want what is best for WvW, I don’t think it would be right to harm the non-WvW players when implementing a solution to problems in WvW.

The queues on HoD have gotten shorter over time (they were 6 hours at one point), while the queues got longer on SBI and ET. You basically can’t avoid the queues. Now look at the strengths of HoD. When we were getting pounded relentlessly and being humbled this weekend, we still played and we played hard. But it seems SBI and ET are putting forward less effort when they fall behind this week. I want a server with that sense of fight and eagerness to learn from the enemy, so I’m sticking with HoD.

And ArenaNet will obviously be doing something, so why not wait to see what they do before making any big decisions?

I disagree about the map design of the BL maps needing work. All of my best memories from WvW actually took place in BL maps, so they really do encourage some epic battles.

But I do think the BL maps could benefit from resource nodes being normalized. I am guilty of going into EB more than once because I wanted more mithril or whatever other higher level resource.

Making WvW 24-hour is a terrible idea because it is just plain less fun for tons of players. Most players on any of the three sides of the HoD-SBI-ET matchup on Sunday would attest to how awesome it was that people had over 48 hours to entrench their core holdings while still having a constant flux of outer holdings. And SBI’s golem army couldn’t really ever happen in a 24 hour match. Sure the match kind of disintegrated on Monday, but at best that shows we should have 2 weekly matches of Friday-Sunday and Monday-Thursday. I still prefer longer matches (I want those 2 week matches already) since I enjoy the depth added by long-term planning in a game, but I do accept there are convincing arguments for a Fri-Sun and Mon-Thurs schedule. I just haven’t seen any argument that does even a decent job of justifying 24-hour matches.

Allowing the merc idea would be decent, although you’d probably need to provide incentive for people to stick with whatever server pops instead of constantly jumping in and out until they get a winning side. It sounds like it would take a long time to develop though.

A similar idea to the merc thing that is easier to implement is just having overflow copies of the game that just don’t impact server ratings. That would also free up the option to restrict the “real” server battles to having equal numbers on all 3 sides without causing people to be unable to play the game.

Please don’t go back to 24 hour matches. I absolutely love the epic feeling of long-term planning and coordination, and it’s still increasing each week. Just look at SBI storing golems for use much later in the match. That is awesome, and just won’t happen in 24 hour matches. I also like the feeling of upgrades and siege purchases being able to last the whole week if you can just keep them since it’s much easier to convince yourself to spend that hard-earned currency.

And can everyone please just stop recommending that we banish our Oceanic friends from playing with us on our servers? There are also people that work different jobs than the normal 9-5 to consider, so let’s just stop these silly recommendations relating to off-peak. Sure HoD has a huge benefit from overnight hours right now, but there must be a better solution to that problem than just telling players to stop playing or telling them they don’t count as much as “real” players count in primetime.

I have no problem if they remove the visibility of the overall score as long as they leave the potential point section. I’m not sure why that would help, but I’m all for it if somehow it would help.

Tindahbawx.5317:

Do the top servers actually communicate in WvW?

I’m beginning to get tired of my own servers lack of direction, which usually just amounts to “now zerg this”, “come and defend this” and “what the hell are you doing, we need supply camps guys”.

On HoD, I think we have pretty good communication. But if you don’t like information relating to where the zerg is organizing, what needs to be defended, and what supply camps need to get capped/recapped, you might be disappointed even at HoD’s communication.

Other than what to attack/defend/abandon, we’ll sometimes get a request for a few extra players to join a certain strike squad and where to meet up. We also get “20+ SBI Anz” or “5 ET Rogue” or “SM SE wall 20%” or “100 supply @ rogue” or other combat updates. You almost never see “coming to help”, but you do get very quick reinforcements well over 80% of the time unless someone said to abandon the location, so you can usually just use delay tactics and survive until reinforcements arrive while also preventing the cap. Some guilds on some maps give updates on where to focus supply runs and repairs, but other maps don’t involve pugs in that stuff. We also get reminders like “don’t take supplies from tower/garrison/SM” or “you can use the east/west exit from base” or whatever other stuff newer players might not know yet.

I can’t speak for other servers too much, but I can speak to their response times. SBI has really fast reinforcements just like HoD. ET seems to lag just a little on response time like they’re either not calling inc as soon or they’re not keeping 100% swiftness uptime on the reinforcement squad, but I suspect that will change before the week is done.

Just provide rewards to people that play on the side that needs help. Give them a 30 minute buff where every kill or assist drops a bag of undermanned goods, and every successful DE rewards an even better loot bag. And have a way to check if you can get the buff while you’re outside of WvW. If you put that in, people will even server transfer to chase the loot.

I think the gear matters in WvW because it was originally aimed at being more casual. I don’t think ArenaNet expected the player reaction to WvW that they got.

I hope we somehow get both options in the future. I’d like to be able to jump on an alt in WvW and not feel like a wimp, but I’d also like all the other stuff in the game to still benefit your time in WvW so things you do while waiting in queue at least have a point.

Adaneshade.2409:

In my experience thus far, the top 5 or 6 dominant servers are not there because of any particular organization skill, but because of sheer zerg size. When our little 10 man guild group can kill 20 of them, it only goes to show that it’s not organization or some superhuman skill but purely zerging.

It actually is organization, but definitely not skill at one’s class, gear, or ability to win against equal numbers on the open field. The fact that HoD, SBI, and others can get the random people not in an organized guild to join a zerg or other group that is doing something tactically wise makes all the difference. HoD and SBI also do a lot of work building and maintaining siege equipment and have mostly trained the pug/random/whatever players to always keep supplies and take only from depots, while lower tier servers often actually let the siege weapons just disappear from expiration and just use a lot fewer siege in any given assault or defense.

If you want to see the difference in how the games are played, go to a lower tier and check the supply levels of every depot, tower, etc. and then check the supply levels on HoD or SBI. The supply levels on HoD and SBI aren’t at zero because we just build stuff and destroy it for fun. Or go to every contested point on the map and notice tons of stuff is constantly under treb fire on HoD’s matchup to drain supplies, while lower tiers generally only build a treb right before a specific assault. You’ll also notice top tiers have fights closer to objectives on average, while lower tiers are often fighting for control of grassy fields.

Corvindi.5734:

Here is what really needs to happen while transfers are still free:

There are 4 heavy WvW servers. HOD, SBI, ET, and JQ. All are full to bursting and don’t need more WvW guilds as far as I can tell.

So we have Tier 1 with 3 servers and Tier 2 with 1 heavy WvW against two that are mid-range. This is bad for all concerned.

We need guilds to coordinate and consolidate on two more servers so we can have 2 full tiers of heavy WvW servers.

If possible, consolidations to create a third tier would be great, too.

IoJ seems to be gaining traction since they already had a solid Oceanic presence, and building up an NA presence is way easier. NS might also already have a solid presence at all hours, but we just can’t tell until they work their way up to a much higher tier.

ET actually has a huge problem in lack of PvE players. If they keep only attracting WvW players, they are going to wind up with a truly obscene queue before hitting the population cap.

Solonite.8072:

Smallpoxx.6935:

go to SBI i heard there WvW ques weren’t long enough.

SBI?

SBI is the abbreviation for Stormbluff Isle, who is winning the top tier US matchup right now. We tease them because we love them

There are some threads you might search for in this forum that list the server rankings (actually right up top) and the server queue lengths. Between those two posts, you should be able to make a decent guess of a server that might fit your desires.

Daish.6139:

Richard.8207 its possible for it to never come into play if the servers are balanced

but if the servers are unbalanced there is NO GAME ANYWAY 100vs10 is NOT A GAME

do you understand how boring it is for the other team to lose their morale and stop trying the game is over at that point

Your arguments are how so many games have made the mistake of shipping limiter code. Reality for almost every game that has done this has been terrible. Add to that the implementations of these limits are usually done in such a way that bugs are really hard to find and you wind up blocking more people than you intend for months before you realize it was a bug instead of the code locking people out like it was designed to do. I sincerely hope ArenaNet learns from the mistakes of others.

There are other solutions to the problem, and they are better solutions. Even the bad solutions of a stat buff to the underpowered side and AI players are better than preventing players from playing.

But you don’t even need a bad solution since there is a good solution that actually works amazingly often for social games. For GW2, you can start with providing information about how many players from each server are on each map. That will actually help players coordinate their efforts to at least have one fun map, then maybe two once the population increases, etc. But you can even go a step further and provide an incentive for people to join the side that needs more troops. You could provide free siege equipment, free repairs, just plain gold, mini-pets, or whatever you want. While I hate to bring up the largest MMO, it is a good example since the way they finally fixed the tank shortage (same issue with 3 different groups of players that need to balance: dps, healers, tanks) was to just bribe tanks with bags of goodies. Encouraging more people to play is always better than preventing people from playing.

This is probably a thread better placed in tech support, but out of curiosity who is your ISP? I ask because I suspect a certain cable company that loves traffic shaping might be doing it to GW2, and that is exactly the symptoms you are describing. But it could be something else, and tech support would be able to help you figure it out.

You keep claiming it will almost never come into play, but then why even implement it? Most games had a threshold before their limits kicked in, yet they still caused more problems than they fixed. That’s because the primary thing that gets “fixed” by these limits is too many people wanting to play on one side (or two for GW2), but too many people wanting to play a game is a good thing that should be encouraged instead of “fixed” by discouraging players from playing the game.

Phidaissi.5160:

Such a limit would pretty much only come into play after one world has already stomped the other two enough to discourage people playing. At that point wvw has lost its point, it’s no longer a competition.

This is not true at all. Limits have been used in other games, and it just doesn’t wind up working out as well as you claim. It is even worse when there is advantage to be had in the game by not playing in order to preserve an advantage earned earlier in the match, which clearly would be the case in GW2.

It is almost always bad game design to discourage people from playing a game when they want to play. When developers start telling players “stop playing our game” the players usually listen, and that’s bad for business.

They reset 24 hours after you open them. Actually, it’s probably 23 or something so you can do them at around the same time every day even if one day you take longer or something.

If double teaming is what gave us a competitive match this week, I’m all for it. If double teaming never happened, all the better. Either way, this week has been an absolute blast. Thanks for the great PvP action however you provided it.

If you guys lose, you’ll have to recruit more overnight guilds to be competitive. I think the class and skill you’ve shown on the battlefield and off should make that a lot easier. Best of luck, and thanks for providing such a fun matchup.

It should also be interesting to see how the average skill level is impacted after Tuesday when lots of visitors will return to their other game for a new expansion.

Jeul.1068:

30 minute expiration? Where did you see this info?

I have heard everything from 30 minutes to 12 hours.

30 minutes is the consensus from the community. I assume someone tested it to find out since you can test it for 6 silver (or half your blueprints from a single jumping puzzle).

Can you guys from ET just go with the standard “if someone from our server is exploiting, please report them so the scum get banned and don’t mess with our fun.” Trying to defend people that might be exploiting just makes the losers who want to exploit think they have your support, and ArenaNet are the only ones that will be able to verify if there was exploiting or not.

By the way, I hope the OP sent the screenshot to ArenaNet’s exploit e-mail address.

Rimarlk.1529:

And where’s that thread? I didn’t see it.

On the first page of topics titled “Queues for WvW: The Official Thread” at https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Queues-for-WvW-The-Official-Thread

VakarisJ.5619:

You aren’t supposed to sit in a stronghold, waiting for something to happen for an eternity. That’s not how you’re meant to play. You’re supposed to go on the offensive the second you defend a wave and try to take over the enemies’ territory, coming to defend when needed. There should not be a reward for sleeping in a tower for an hour before a zerg comes in and rolls you.

That actually does bring up a thankless job that is full time on some servers. The guys who touch all the siege equipment in Stonemist or any other large fortification before the 30 minute expiration. They clearly are coordinated and do their job quite well, so they deserve some XP and loot or at least a beer or something.

Umm, you can’t queue from Lion’s Arch since it’s an overflow server. And level 1 players can get to Lion’s Arch by going into the mists and using the portal.

There’s already an official thread for complaining about queues though, so why not just add your thoughts to that thread?

I thought all those NPCs built the cannons and oil pots as the dolyaks arrive with supplies. Do players actually have to run around building that stuff?

If ArenaNet wants to keep WvWvW open to lower level players in the same fight as 80s, they should give a bigger boost to stats. The verbal abuse of lower level players is constantly increasing, which is no fun for anyone. I’m hopeful ArenaNet will respond soon since they do seem to deal with a lot of problems early instead of waiting for things to get out of hand.

It’s possible 1-79 WvW getting split from 80 would be the better solution, but that would cause even more problems for Kaineng and Devona’s Rest. In all likelihood, ArenaNet has already decided what to do for this problem and many others and they are just waiting for development, testing, etc.

Since people can’t seem to understand why two opposing sides would AoE the keep lord instead of each other, think about it. Here are the options:
- fight each other outside the well fortified position reducing your numbers even if you are successful, then get wiped out by the well fortified defenders of the keep.
- fight the keep lord first, then hash it out with those other guys and see who walks away with the keep.

Why are you surprised they would choose the second option? I sure hope HoD would choose the second option.

Wraithowl, as a player on HoD I would like to beg everyone you know on SBI to keep using the tactics you are using. You’d have to be idiots to turn a 2-way battle where 100% of the deaths are your enemy into a 3-way battle before you’re sure you can win it, and I’m sure the majority of players on HoD appreciate you playing smart since we really do appreciate the challenge.

Please understand a lot of HoD players are recent transfers that somehow haven’t noticed HoD’s frequent calls in /map to let the enemy keep each other busy or do our work for us. Or better yet, even to head south once inside the outer walls since an enemy went north… and we can just wait for them to kill each other some before we pounce… sound familiar, Sparkles? It’s not collusion to attack the flank left exposed by an enemy, it’s smart tactics.

As for the rendering issue, it has been a bigger issue this week than last. That suggests our enemies are ensuring they have sufficient numbers to bring the battle to us, which is good. But not being able to see those sufficient numbers is obviously bad since we don’t know to call for more backup early enough. I’m sure Anet is working on it, so hopefully invisible armies will cease to exist soon.

Alarox, that’s why you need to shut down the waypoint before you attack. It adds even more depth as a result, which is why I don’t want it going away. I don’t care if that was unintended, it sure as heck is fun.

And being able to run away in PvP does not negate an attrition mechanic. Rewarding people with skipping a repair bill for being able to get out of combat seems fine. As I said, I like the uncertainty about if the enemy really teleported or they’re just hiding to recover and plan their counterattack. It also adds depth to WvW.

I’d just hate to see something get “fixed” only for the developers to realize later that being broken was actually a lot more fun than being fixed. I honestly think the waypoints being used for retreat was unintended, but I also think it makes the game better.

To the NS players, don’t take it personally. Last week, every server that was dominating their match had a lot of people trash talking the players. People just want competitive matches, and were wrongly taking it out on you guys for not getting a competitive match.

The only two matchups that look totally lopsided this week are the bottom two brackets (Kaineng, Dev’s, Borlis; N Shiverpeaks, Ferg’s, Anvil). Both have first place with over three times the score of second place.

The idea of removing the ability to teleport unless dead is absolutely terrible. There’s a lot of tactics involved in shutting down an opponent’s waypoints (at least in HoD’s matchups), and it would be sad to lose that.

Adding a 5 minute cooldown after combat is even worse. That would mean I would always run away from a fight while doing supply runs since I don’t want to be kitten at my job for 5 minutes just to kill a scout that can still scout dead anyways.

Adding a cast time I guess would be okay, although honestly I just don’t think it’s a problem worth even 5 seconds of developer time. I honestly kind of like not quite being sure if the guy that ran away is still there or teleported back home anyways.