Guild Wars 2

Friiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiday

We have to face the fact (much as many of us hate it) that we’re getting this map whether we like it or not.

So how to “fix” it?

- There are some balance issues that need to be addressed (the gate buffs for one). This should be fairly simple for Anet to do.

- There are some map “issues” (and I deliberately put that in quotes) that probably we can live with. NPC Mobs, lots of chokes, verticality for no real reason, a maze of twisty passages, all alike. We’ll learn the map better eventually, and learn to deal with these minor annoyances.

- There are some “where is everyone” population issues that need to be addressed. This one is much harder; without drastically changing the map (which isn’t going to happen), or raising the cap (which isn’t going to happen with the CURRENT lag at the current cap), the only solution I see is to try to funnel everyone into one map, not spreading across three identical ones. tl;dr: make this map a replacement for EBG. (or EOTM!) Move the spawn points closer to the lower two keeps to make it more fair. Keep alpine borderlands as-is. So, we wouldn’t have SMC. Big deal.

I think I feel bad for the developers and Anet here.

They’ve designed this huge, pretty, complicated map. And, really, I think it’s too big for the server capabilities right now. However, Anet is hardly going to scrap the map, or cut it in half, or whatever, after spending so much time and resources in creating it.

Which means we have a massive problem that I don’t see a solution to.

If all three servers have “a map queue” size mega blob running around the map, it’ll be hard to find the other two blobs, even if you want to. If they all split into multiple 10-15 man groups, it’ll be easier to run across another group, but at that size significantly harder to take a walled objective (particularly with the new guild buffs).

There was a group of 5, with an Omega, pounding on a reinforced wall of a tower, and it took me more than 5 minutes to find them. Part of that was due to unfamiliarity with the map, but part of it was simply due to “run over here and check this wall….nope, okay, run waaaay over there and check that wall… nope… okay run way over there and -ah-ha!” And even after all that, they were handily defeated before getting even vaguely close to the tower lord.

That was a tower. Not a fortified keep, all of which are apparently 1.5 miles wide, as best I can tell.

So we have two situations:

- defenders present in objectives: nothing can be taken unless you have seriously overwhelming numbers; if you succeed in taking the objective, we wind up with:
- no defenders present in objectives: karma-train EOTM-style

The only “solution” I can think of is to make this the new EB, and keep the current borderlands as-is. Replacing the current alpine set with this will just wind up with everyone playing normally on EB, and using this map as Yet Another EOTM, I fear.

Which is a shame, because there’s lots of neat stuff there. Too much.

Regarding the ability to open the “Objective Upgrades” UI by clicking on the map marker in the mini map OR the World Map:

Is there a range on that? Can you click on any map marker in a map, even if you’re waaaaaaay across the map on the other side?

Latest patch still hasn’t fixed the weird supply cap. (SoS BL, home garri with waypoint but capped at 500 supply)

Sephirius.1457:

Sieging should be a big deal and take some strategy rather than repeating the cookie-cutter tactic.

It’s still possible to siege – you just have to use your brains now.

Let me repeat myself and clarify a couple of things.

I actually like the siege disabler trick, as a general concept. I think it is valuable to give the defenders a boost at preventing the 38453 rams insta-melting your gate thing.

Yes, strategy needs to change. Some changes have already been pointed out: more use of further-back-from-the-wall siege (catas and trebs), and/or spacing your catapults out to avoid a single trick being able to hit them all at once, and to eliminate multiple cata-bubbles being able to rotate for endless protection. These sorts of changes are good.

What is NOT good is the simple fact that rams are heavily heavily disadvantaged. You can only ram a door; you can’t ram a wall. Doors just aren’t that big, therefore even at their furthest-apart spacing you can hit most rams with one trick placement. (Not to mention, hitting through a door, which means you have no chance to block the projectile!)

So essentially, this just eliminated all use of rams, period, as long as there is one defender with 10 supply in his pocket.

It has been my (limited so far) experience that trying to follow a red tag can be confusing, when it gets lost in a screenful of downed enemy players. Perhaps red was not the best choice to make…

(I’ve also heard that there may be some color-blind issues with the precise colors chosen, which would be a shame if so.)

Yes, it works on golems, only it’s 20 sec disable on a golem. 45 secs disable on everything else. I think we all agree that 45 seconds is way too long. Making it 20 seconds for everything seems more reasonable, and still useful without being awful. Diminishing returns or a temporary immunity is an interesting idea, but one that would have to be carefully balanced.

The range is 1200. TWELVE HUNDRED. You don’t need a thief to sneak up on those field catas unless they’re waaaaay back there. I don’t really have a strong opinion on whether or not the range needs to be changed.

The area of effect is 450. This is possibly too large; either smaller, or just make it single target.

I like to defend. I think defenders should have the advantage. Having all your pretty trinket wall siege disabled instantly isn’t an advantage. Being able to perma-disable door rams is an advantage, but a way overpowered one.

Please fix!

Completely agree. Either a for-reals public test server (that frequently patches, with the big disclaimer that “this is NOT final content” obviously), or a more private one to which you will invite A LOT of players to. Not just a handful. Like enough to get together and do the bigger events. Really, you need a lot of players to ensure that all the weird little side things get tested and so on.

Star Trek Online sometimes has two test servers running, one for “latest content that hasn’t gone live yet”, and one for “wild hair we’re testing that may never see the light of day”. City of Heroes had a test server. There was a ‘copy char’ tool on the website that you could use to selectively copy all or just some of your characters over to the test database. (There was a separate install for the game, as I recall, but it may have just been the same install with a command line flag.) Other games do it. It’s not a new idea, and it doesn’t overly ruin the surprise of the game.

Bug reports on the test server should be flagged differently internally, of course, to keep them from being lumped in with bug reports from the live server.

I think this is a bug. In WvW, this is what you get:

/em shouts loudly.
Rosy Dawn: Sea of Sorrows Invader shouts loudly.

(Note that I’m on Sea of Sorrows, but Invader isn’t my rank.)

So it’s even sillier in WvW.

Yes, arrow carts (and ballistas) on the walls are now Doomed by siege disablers, but it’s WAY too easy for a single person to defend from inside a tower with an AC, cata, or treb on the ground where it can’t be reached from outside, and where they can easily toss a siege disabler trap at the gate, or onto near catas from atop a wall. Toss a trap, walk leisurely back to supply hut to get supply, heck buy a trap if you don’t have one, still have plenty of time to leisurely stroll back to toss the next trap just as the first one times out.

This effectively makes rams nearly useless, which I suspect was not the intended effect.

Yes, you can siege from a distance, and/or space your catas and trebs far enough apart that the defenders have to use multiple disabler traps, and that part is fine, but again it’s the rams that really suffer here.

Heck, I love defending, and I’ve often thought that attackers have it too easy, and defenders too hard. But THIS is overpowered.

I think reducing the disabled timer from 45 seconds down to 20 seconds would be more reasonable, but would have to test that out live to see.

Any time you have enough time to do a bio break while defending without worrying about attackers, there’s something wrong.

This is happening on SoS as well.

The laurel vendor in WvW doesn’t have the same stuff that the one in LA has/had. No fancy cat!

Look at it like this: we have a monthly achievement, right? And we all know that it’s darned easy to get in casual play usually within a week, but you’re given 30 days to get the meta achievement accomplished.

And what do you get for the monthly achievement? 50s, 20 coins, 1 essence of luck, 1 flask of liquid karma, but most importantly: 10 laurels.

The WvW Season 1 meta was 7 weeks long. Logic says the reward should be “worth” almost twice the monthly meta reward. Let’s say 20 laurels, for easier math…

For 5 laurels, I can get 2 rare or exotic gears. So 20 laurels should be worth 8 rare or exotic level gears.

So yeah, we’re getting seriously underwhelmed with the reward chest.

The worst thing about the achievement meta was that it encouraged a tit-for-tat karma train. There was really no point to defending anything (aside from getting the repair achievement), because if you happened to own everything — you couldn’t get the points for capturing something. Therefore you had to let your opponent capture it, so you could backcap it. Whee, instant round thing jerking.

Awesome post.

I too think the WvW achievements (despite some of them being too insanely high, I’m looking at you yak/sentry killer) were a good idea overall. I am less certain about the way the league split happened. I do think it’s possible to hate leagues and yet like the achievement. There was no real reason that the achievement meta had to be tied to a league; it’s just a length of time, after all.

I do not mind the idea of gating the commander tag behind 100g plus some number of WvW badges+raw rank score (or dungeon tokens or guild commendations). I do mind the idea of having to spend Wxp rank points on commander tag/abilities. Right now, Wxp is really aimed squarely at attack-only; if you scout or defend a lot, or even just run small havok groups around to capture camps and the like, you’re just not rolling in the Wxp.

Those sorts of people do not often tag up, it’s true, as tagging up typically equates to going on the offensive with a largish group. However, I have noticed that often there are downtimes to when there’s an available commander on the map, and it’s quite useful for someone who doesn’t command ALL the time to tag up. Players who don’t command ALL the time are far more likely to have spent their Wxp wisely in other ways that will be more useful to them the 80% of the time they’re not running as a commander. We shouldn’t be penalized for wanting to help, being capable of helping, but not being able to in a limited situation (commanding) because we’ve chosen to be more helpful in other situations (AC/ram mastery, etc).

By the way, the in-game help for commanders is abysmally lacking. I only knew about /supplyinfo from other commanders. I had no idea there was a way to mark waypoints!

I just had this happen to myself as well. Doing jumping puzzles is very difficult for me (mainly due to vertigo issues), and I had to get a friendly mesmer to help me out. Finally getting both parts of the key and following someone through the door to loot the chest but NO achievement bug… makes me want to cry. I didn’t want the kitten ed chest, I wanted the kitten ed achievement point for the WvW season.

Fail, Anet, fail.

Ele comments:

Many people have already pointed out the issues with the proposed changes to the Water line, along with the Arcana changes. Honestly I don’t see how most builds won’t just gravitate towards 20 in water and at least 20 in arcana (if not the full 30 as usual for Evasive Arcana, the actual reason for buying into arcana, not the cooldown), which hardly increases build diversity.

I also want to point out the lousy condition removal elementalists have currently; unless you run staff, you also cannot share condition removal with allies at all, unless you have Cleansing Wave (and Evasive Arcana) — but now you must spend more in water to keep that ability. Staff is useful for a certain meta in WvW, but is lousy for basically everything else. D/D and S/D (and */F, ha ha ahahaha--ahem) are far more tricky to keep alive in a blob in WvW, being ultra squishy, and I feel required to keep 10 points in earth to stay alive (plus lots of dodging). The changes to water mean I’m going to have to DROP those 10 points, since I have enough problems with getting overwhelmed with conditions as it is.

These are not major issues in PvE. They are very major issues in WvW.

Thrashbarg.9820:

Even in a random group with no guardian, it should be possible to have at least one of: Elementalist, Engineer or Mesmer.

All three are capable of applying group stability with either a utility skill or trait (same as guardian, although engi and mesmer may have less uptime, haven’t checked yet).

The only Ele trait/skill that I know of that grants group stability is Earth VIII, attuning to earth will grant a whopping 2 seconds of stability to your allies. Who runs around with at least 20 points in Earth?

Or am I missing something?

I’ve noticed this most often on the SoS BL. I’ve never seen the same problem on any other map, including EB, even with massive numbers on the map. (Just normal skill lag then.) I don’t think it’s at all related to numbers on the map, as on SoS BL we can be NOT outmanned (a rare gift), still only have 20ish people on the map tops, and massive skill spikes that lead to a disconnect about 2 minutes later.

Is it working as intended that you can catapult and treb Bay from the west side of the Hollow? I thought the new bloodlust areas weren’t supposed to be able to hit the keeps with siege.

Also, why the nerf on the garrison treb-the-bay spot? You could hit those trebs from below with an arrow cart easily enough.

Well….. I sort of agree with OP. The new map areas are pretty to look at. However, they don’t make a lot of coherent sense. Most of the other ruin-y places across the world look like you’d expect ruins to look like. The new stuff, though, looks more like some kid upended their Lego box on the floor. Stuff is all pretty, it just doesn’t connect well.

Have killed several champions (captain, etc) since, and no new drops. Vorpp still says I need to come see him, but nothing more.

Not realizing they were part of the quest, as opposed to junk unsellable stuff that gets picked up from random mobs (I’m looking at you, small frogs and dwarven keys), I badly needed the bag space and so (stupidly) destroyed the THREE pink crystal items.

I do have the achievement for obtaining all three items. I went back to Vorpp, and all he’ll say is “come visit me”, even when I’m standing right there. Now what??

EDITED TO ADD: Turns out I was confused by someone’s holographic Vorpp standing right AT the waypoint in the Crown Pavilion. Without a Living Story waypoint on the map to remind me to look down the stairs and around the bend for the REAL Vorpp….

Once I found the right little dude, the story did correctly progress.

Nikked.7365:

Dayra.7405:

/emote “text”
is visible to anyone (also opponents) in range,
but I’ve no idea if you can use it downed or dead.

I’ve seen people on my server use this, and I’ve heard the opposing server can see it, but I’ve never actually seen anyone on the opposing server use it. I always questioned whether or not the /emote actually makes it into an opponent’s chatbox.

Sort of.

The opposing server just sees “X gestures.” They don’t see the specific emote text.

Kingzook.1620:

Considering this game is about socializing in the end, if [RE] would go to an EU server, i recommend they research each server indept

I find this hilarious. RE, with very few exceptions, doesn’t socialize with anyone not in RE.

Right. Right! For those that don’t know (because I sure didn’t for a few months!) the forum is http://kainengunited.net. Please to join if you’re on Kaineng.

There are a (rare) few guilds that don’t use the Kaineng teamspeak because either they don’t speak English at all, or they don’t feel it’s good enough. That’s a good reason.

Some commanders get frustrated because even after asking repeatedly on mapchat for people to join teamspeak, there’s like 6 of us in there tops. That’s lame, and should be fixed.

The commanders who refuse to use it when they are tagged up and know they’re getting militia following… are lame. I said it.

Seriously seriously wrong forum for this, but.

I’ve lived in central Oklahoma (ie, where the news about most tornadoes comes from, but not where most of the tornadoes are, which is out in the relatively empty west) for 44 years and I’ve come vaguely close to a smallish tornado precisely one time.

The odds of actually taking any tornado damage at all, much less catastrophic damage like this one, are very very very small. The cost/benefit ratio for building a safe room that will survive a massive tornado and not trap you inside is waaaaay out of whack.

The wind record at Mount Washington is 231mph. The record in their “new” building was set in 1980 at 178mph. This tornado clocked in at over 200mph, and the May 3. 1999 tornado (the EF5 one) clocked in at over 300mph. Tell me again about building codes. When a tornado that powerful is capable of pulling concrete slabs and asphalt up off of the ground, there’s really not much you can do about it except get the heck out of the way.

Yes, schools need to be built better. I have no idea when the two schools that were hit and destroyed (one of which had no fatalities) were built, or to what design standard. I know of the 5 elementary schools in my town, several have certified storm shelters, and two of them are in the process of being replaced with new schools which are having massive storm shelter hallways put in. I can only hope more schools do go that route.

And before non-Okies start going on about basements, the reason we don’t have a lot of basements is because of the soil. Being primarily clay and sand, with bedrock hard to reach and a relatively high water table, the ground goes through a crazy dry/cracked and sopping-wet cycle constantly. It is next to impossible to keep basements dry, much less sealed and dry. I also want to point out that some of the children killed at the one elementary school apparently drowned by being trapped under debris in a low area (I’ve read both “basement” and “not basement, just low area”) when water pipes burst. I dunno about you, but I’d much rather be under some debris aboveground than under some debris in a hole with rain pouring down. Aboveground saferooms are much better, but again, when we get to EF5 levels of tornadoes, even that may not be enough.

Why continue to live here? Because the odds are still incredibly small. I stand a much better chance of dying in a car accident just driving across town. And so do you.

Aveneo.2068:

Devinchi.2756:

If I’m not mistaken, Dragon’s Tooth is player targeted, not ground targeted. The reason it’s falling sideways is because some of the aoe circle is on the wall.

Alright, but can you keep on casting it without LoS once you have targeted someone then? As you can see in the second picture, my guildmate was halfway down the stairs when it formed again.

Yes, this is how it works.

It is worth knowing that Dragon’s Tooth does not have that great of a range, so if you get outside of the range it can’t hit you. Also, it’s possible to back off enough so that the elementalist loses you as a target. I don’t think this is normal out-of-targetting range length, but out of Dragon’s Tooth range and line-of-sight range. Basically if you wander into sight range so you can be targetted, don’t be surprised if you see a slow-landing Dragon’s Tooth aimed at you.

It’s got an AoE circle, and it takes a while to land, so is easy to dodge. And relatively easy to get untargetted (although that’s certainly harder for you to determine).

Yah. And who exactly gets the outmanned buff on any given map? The bottom one of three servers? The bottom two? Is it based on the number of “we few” vs “the other two guys added together”, or “we few” vs “the server with the mostest” ignoring the server in the middle?

And where’s the tipping point? 20% fewer guys? 50% fewer guys? 200% fewer guys?

Frankly I’m fine with this change — as long as the treb range is also reduced. Right now they can hit crazy far away — which doesn’t actually bear any relation to reality at all. I’d much much rather see trebs have to be built and defended in the field, rather than behind a wall somewhere.

Gamblit.5041:

Check out tier 6 for a moment.
…
You can see DH is dominating a little bit over the other 2 servers, but because of the initial points advantage of DH over the other two servers, the predicted score result for this week for DH is -44 Points.

And so on and so forth, blah blah blah.

All this does is demonstrate where Glicko ratings fall down, which I think we all agree is the case. It says absolutely nothing about “do you get good fights, or get repeatedly facestomped by superior numbers.”

I honestly don’t care what tier Kaineng is in, as long as it’s a decently-balanced one. It’s no fun to be on either end of a wildly-unbalanced situation.

Oolune.4357:

Oh, you sneaky sneaky KN.

It’s a shame one of those FA stumbled across you. =P That would have been hilarious.

Hey, we had to try! We figured you weren’t going to tell FA on us hiding over there. But alas, FA overran us like fireants.

It was fun.

Jayne.9251:

We were at Hills in KNBL trying to deliver a pizza. There were only five of us

We got in to deliver it to the Lord’s room but nobody was there Then about an hour later, those sneaky FA folks came and ate all the pizza we left for you while we were tied up at Bay.

Tied up? Tied up?? That was some pretty persistent pizza delivery to Bay, what with knocking down three walls and a door before you waltzed in.

I did appreciate the restraint in timing all three of your trebs together, so me and the other lone focus Ele could attempt to keep the walls up for a while….longer. So more people could show up for the pizza, I assume. Too bad we could only rustle up about 10 of us all told.

ghtchill.7613:

Point is, you don’t need to be in a big Guild or have a specific community forum to go to, yes it can help – especially to discuss topics such as this – but really you just need to play. Figuring out WvW isn’t rocket science. You play for a while, and if you have fun, you learn fast.

Oh sure, and that’s mostly how I learned the basics — by just sticking it out and following clueful-seeming people around. But it irritates me to no end to see some commander typing on map chat or saying in TS “hey, do we have someone at X, what’s going on there?” and seeing/hearing no reply, so I’ll go run over there only to see there’s 5 or 6 people standing around talking to each other. It’s not like Only The Big Guilds are responsible for scouting, but I honestly think there isn’t enough time taken to do any non-zerg educating. (The zerg training has picked up recently, which is fantastic!)

I dunno how it is with FA and TC websites/forums, but I just today found out that Kaineng even has one, and I’ve been doing WvW for about a month now. The teamspeak info gets regularly advertised, which is great, but absolutely nothing about any other form of communication.

So from my perspective over the last month or so, if you’re not in a big guild, or at least not in a WvW-heavy guild, you have basically no support, no communication, no engagement whatsoever. If you don’t happen to trip and fall into a WvW portal, there’s no way to even know what the point is, or why you might be needed as a new WvWer. And if you ARE in WvW but not wanting to follow the zerg (for whatever reason), there’s absolutely no attempt to, say, explain the mechanics of scouting. Or sitting on siege equipment in a tower. Or heck, doing anything at all other than sitting around in the citadel wondering what to do next.

I’m fortunate enough to be in a decent-sized guild, and listen on teamspeak, and split my time between following a commander I think actually has a clue and sitting in a tower attempting to defend, or running yaks or suchlike. But I had to figure the value of those things out entirely by myself, because no one said anything about it at all. I have several friends in another guild that have asked me “so…what do you DO in WvW?” and I’d dearly love to point them at a website where we’re all discussing plans and tactics and schemes and so on, but frankly there’s nothing.

It’s a testament to Kaineng’s great WvW-heavy guilds that we’ve done as well as we have, I think. And I can only imagine that TC and FA are doing a much much better job at reaching out to and educating the militia. Kaineng is pants at it.

SHAKA ZULU.3128:

Side note: did TC or FA bl experience the bug we did where north camp was not spawning the westbound yak? We didn’t get one all night and Woodhaven had no supplies. That’s why it was paper when I believe TC (I forget, I was tired) tried to take it out. The few times the camp flipped it didn’t spawn for FA or TC either.

I’ve noticed this also on KBL. I filed a /bug report, but who knows when/if it’ll get fixed…

I haven’t been doing WvW long, but this week was lots of fun overall. First time I’ve heard the apt description of “a swarm of ants!” as applied to Fort Aspenwood zergs.

I do gotta apologize to some little asura thief with a name too long for me to remember (started with “Java”) that I flipped out on, watching him steadily and dutifully repairing the NE wall of SMC while FA was trebbing it repeatedly last night. Low blood sugar on my part or something… But Ethersin attempting to tell me he was a n00b, also repairing that wall, was hilarious. Dude, as I said I haven’t been in WvW that long, but even I know the commanders names that are on all the time!

Yay for TC. And yay for hopefully being able to get more world completion next week!