Guild Wars 2

I’ve been playing less and less and well not really at all in the past week. I don’t see myself playing much in the future either. I liked the leveling experience, the end game is just not for me. Its huge amounts of time for very little reward and no real impact on other players or the world at large.

While this is true of many MMO’s and has somewhat become a standard over the past decades of MMO development, its also a standard that has become boring and stale to me, and I think to many players, if you look at the diversity and depth of games being produced today and their success rates.

Its a tough challenge for any developer to make a game that casual, hardcore, and people with too much time on their hands can play and find enjoyment and a reason to keep playing. To balance mindless action and intelligence in play, as well as wonder and a sense of growth, power development, and influence over the world.

Few games have ever been able to maintain a community balance on that frontier and maintain. UO and vanilla SWG being two off the top of my head that I can think of, and still look back fondly on, and would go back to in a heartbeat if they were modernized and still had the depth and diversity in their worlds that few games have ever gotten close too. Sony admits they messed up SWG in chasing the mighty dollar and a larger audience and made a huge mistake with that special game that was decades ahead of its time. Those were skill based games with no levels, and for the most part, developers just don’t seem to understand how to make a good one. They were also games where player activity had a huge impact on the world. NPC’s and mobs would fight one another and could change the dynamic of an area in the game drastically with no player intervention. Nearly everything in those worlds has a purpose or impact, and not just as grinding fodder.

The whole concept of a butterfly flying causing a hurricane across the map held sway. You could farm rabbits, meaning wolves had no food, meaning they ate something else, meaning a dragon went hungry and started attacking a town a few days later, or whatever. The world lived and breathed on a very different level from what the WoW madness inspired and other more limited yet successful games. Some modern games try, but often fall short. Personally, I think the gaming industry is near its peak, where it will maintain and see limited growth over the next few decades and more niche based games targeting specific crowds and audiences.

Chasing short term gains and profit is all fine and good, but by and large, the mmo industry lacks the vision to create something special like those and we end up with a market like we have now. When a developer does create something special, they tend to be niche games that evolve slowly over time and through word of mouth, because they tend to lack the support of the investors looking for a quick turnaround on their investment and don’t have the potential growth factor in development resources needed to keep up with evolving player boredom. We seem small gems in the design here and there, but no shining beacon of real innovation or imagination that doesn’t get stale after a few months.

This thread illustrates a problem in overall design of the game, imho. It doesn’t quite know if its a skill based game or a gear based game and strives to accomplish both. With each update and introduction of new content and gear, and changes to mechanics and abilities, things shift from one area to another. The whole flavor of the month mentality is strong in this game, as with most mmo’s.

Most games are gear based games and the skill factor is secondary and really only comes into play when facing similarly geared opponents. That’s not quite true in this game, but it carries a lot of weight. I originally started playing this game, because I like skill based games, where player skill makes all the difference. Having played the game for a while, I can clearly see this is not a true statement with respect to GW2.

I think its strange they call them jumping puzzles in the first place. I always have. I guess the word fits, but I don’t feel as if I have solved anything in completing one. It doesn’t have the same feel or vibe as say a crossword puzzle or jigsaw puzzle. Its a set path with collision mechanics.

I will agree that requiring them to finish a zone is silly. Only a couple of zones have them for certain vista’s/poi’s. Fortunately, its its only a couple.

I also don’t like achievement systems in general. Its a kitchen sink sort of tool to keep certain players busy to give them a sense of accomplishment. The thing that bugs me about the majority of the achievements in GW2 is they are not “fun” and require a grind or work mentality to complete if you are going for them and see them as a method of progression or accomplishment. In console games the same thing does tend to arise dependent on the game or developer, but in my experience the table is flipped and more of the console type achievements are actually “fun” to complete.

I’ve hit the wall that many people seem to be hitting, and have started looking elsewhere for other games to occupy my time.

I keep asking myself where is the fun at endgame, where is the progression. It was fun for a while. Once I finished the story and got 100% map completion I just sort of found I’ve lost all interest.

I liked the skill aspect of the game early on, but the more I played the more I saw an imbalance in professions for a game trying to do away with the trinity paradigm. The boon/condition system could use improvement.

The lack of variety in my weapon choices and skills is annoying as well. Too limiting, even with weapon swapping or kit changing or attunement swapping. The forced nature of having to play with switching dynamic feels like a bandaid to make it seem more dynamic than it really is.

I did enjoy WvW for a while, but with only two maps and a zerg vs zerg mentality its pretty boring other than as a karma/gold ride when your matched well. When your being steamrolled by another server or doing the steamrolling, its just not fun.

I’ve hit max level on 3 toons, with a 50 and a 60 filling out my other two slots. I have zero desire to run through all the zones again or complete the stories on all the toons.

Dungeons are just not fun to me. They are neat a couple of times and seeing the different paths, but to me boring and annoying on rerun and the rewards are essentially useless and vendor trash with minimal gold rewards. Grinding them for skins and having to pay money for keys or lvl 80 transmutation stones isn’t something I want to do either. I really see no incentive to run them repeatedly.

The thing that makes them truly unappealing to me, is that in my exotic gear, I don’t have true advantage or feeling of power or accomplishment in PvE anywhere in the game since I am scaled to match that content.

Grinding content repeated for karma and gold isn’t really appealing. The more I went through the zones the more I disliked the design and lack of finish on certain zones.

The game lacks consistent finish on its own style. I mean what sort of drugs were involved in creating some of those zones or cities. Its all fine and good that its a fantasy world, but where is the underlying common sense or even coherence to nature.

Take Divinity’s Reach, Hoelbrak, and Rata Sum for example, those make sense to me. There is a sense of common sense in their design. Lion’s Arch, Black Citadel, and The Grove lack any common sense beyond drug induced tripping and even in a magical fantasy world, I just think they are bad designs. I could say similar things about lot of the zones, especially Orr.

I guess for me the new car smell is gone, and all I see is mediocre at best. Some of the writing and voice acting and animations just grate on my nerves. Its great that it has a lot of content and activities throughout the zones, but about 1/2 of them I just couldn’t wait to leave.

The other downside for me at endgame is that the things I geek out on involve the main things that I can’t stand, hours upon hours of mindless grinding. The endgame economy curse of most mmo’s is already rearing its head on the trade post, and lower levels or training levels of crafted items are essentially worthless outside of containers and mid level training mats sell for more than endgame mats.

My main 80’s are in exotic gear. I like their builds, sure I’d like different skins for a few things perhaps a legendary skin or two, but the time investment to get them and the frustration of getting them isn’t something I see as worthwhile since there is no change in their performance and its merely a cosmetic change that requires enormous investment and the over abused deus ex machina of the mystic forge.

I don’t see an endgame for me that will keep me playing, I log in and think I don’t want to do that or that or that. After losing the new car smell this developer sees nothing but all the flaws in something expected to have a shelf life of more than a couple of months

Its because of the rendering issue that its possible. Apparently, you all want to gloss over that part of my statement and would rather just jump on the flame wagon. the point was to help get some discussion going. I should probably have put that in caps before you all started on your call me an idiot fest.

The debuff should be increased, imho. It doesn’t just happen with zergs and wvw, and yes they can still be hit stealthed. Apparently you all don’t wvw much or see it constantly being abused in practice. I know I’ve abused it, I also gave up thief because 16k+ backstabs are just wrong and essentially an “I win” button in most matchups when used wisely.

You can argue one way or another, but I’ve also seen this in spvp. I am fine that you all love your class and want to blame the rendering problem that folks abuse, but if a rendering fix is not on the horizon, then I am all for increasing the debuff significantly.

Knyx.5926:

Sevati.6724:

The problem is that Thief stealth abilities when used properly allow permanent uptime.

One thing to consider every 3 seconds a Thief gets 2 initiative back meaning every 6 seconds they can just use cloak and dagger to stealth with what I show here. Its really simple coupled with rendering lag.

Assuming the Hidden Thief for stealth while stealing, Meld with Shadows trait for an extra second of stealth per application, Infusion of Shadow which grants 2 initiative per stealth skill use, extra initiative for a total of 15 you get a build that can maintain permanent uptime.

Cloak and dagger (dagger-5. costs 4 initiative, grants 4 seconds of stealth, 0.5 sec cooldown, can be used 5 times for 20 seconds of stealth normal initiative regen )

Shadow refuge (utility. grants 2 initiative per stealth, grants 4 seconds of stealth 3 times if you are good with it, 60 sec cooldown)

Hide in Shadows (healing. grants 2 initiative, 4 seconds of stealth, 30 second cooldown)

Blinding Powder (utility. grants 2 initiative, 4 seconds of stealth, 60 second cooldown)

Shadow Trap (utility. grants 2 initiative, 6 seconds of stealth, 30 second cooldown)

Steal ( grants 2 initiative, 45 second cooldown)

There is your permanent up time build when coupled with rendering lag issues, that’s how you shut down a zerg or group attempting to cap a point.

Failed argument. You realize for this so called “permanent uptime” which is heavily based on rendering issues, in which case is not a FIX thief issue, but a FIX rendering issue and mainly constrained to wvwvw anyways. You also have cloak and dagger, a WEAPON ability, I could reach my arms out and slap someone at farther range then this ability, it also can be inconsistent (misses when you are well within range with your target sometimes), this also has to be timed to be done RIGHT AFTER stealth naturally ends otherwise you will get the revealed debuff.

It gets pretty annoying how ignorant people can be (Ive seen High school dropouts that look like Nobel Prize winners compared to these people), when they want to nerf thief or thief abilities because of the RENDERING issue. Lets say there was a bug that everytime an any player got within 2000 range of an ele they were struck by quaggan lightning. They would be outcries from the heavens to nerf ele because those players and their class clearly has an ability that is causing this not a bug in the game.

Not really considering I get 12 initiative back in the 20 seconds of cloak and dagger alone extending the time of stealth another 12 seconds. You don’t even need to use all those skills to maintain permanent uptime, just use them wisely. Its very simple coupled with rendering lag.

The problem is that Thief stealth abilities when used properly allow permanent uptime.

One thing to consider every 3 seconds a Thief gets 2 initiative back meaning every 6 seconds they can just use cloak and dagger to stealth with what I show here.

Assuming the Hidden Thief for stealth while stealing, Meld with Shadows trait for an extra second of stealth per application, Infusion of Shadow which grants 2 initiative per stealth skill use, extra initiative for a total of 15 you get a build that can maintain permanent uptime.

Cloak and dagger (dagger-5. costs 4 initiative, grants 4 seconds of stealth, 0.5 sec cooldown, can be used 5 times for 20 seconds of stealth normal initiative regen )

Shadow refuge (utility. grants 2 initiative per stealth, grants 4 seconds of stealth 3 times if you are good with it, 60 sec cooldown)

Hide in Shadows (healing. grants 2 initiative, 4 seconds of stealth, 30 second cooldown)

Blinding Powder (utility. grants 2 initiative, 4 seconds of stealth, 60 second cooldown)

Shadow Trap (utility. grants 2 initiative, 6 seconds of stealth, 30 second cooldown)

Steal ( mechanic, plus trait grants 2 initiative, 45 second cooldown)

With mechanic, utility and healing skills that grant 14 initiative and with the passive initiative regen capability of 2 initiative per 3 seconds. There is your permanent up time build when coupled with rendering lag issues, that’s how you shut down a zerg or group attempting to cap a point.

It needs a huge nerf and its just to simple to do, imho.

Its currently possible for a thief with a certain build to be essentially perma stealthed, independent of rendering issues in WvW and sPvP. This particular build is significantly overpowered in that one person can prevent an entire group or zerg from capturing a location. essentially they can maintain stealth permanently.

They can also use finishing blows while stealthed. There needs to be a change to this mechanic in that profession and stealth needs to be more in line with mesmer invisibility uptime, and more downtime.

I used to help you all out in TSW. Welcome to TC.

Glad to have your community on board, and I may just join you all this time around.

You have a good crew and guild.

Bring back shorter matches.

Unless there is human intervention involving the server match ups, I don’t see why the match ups have to be week long affairs. That way if a prime time only server gets matched up against some 247 server, or a NA server vs an Oceanic server, players don’t have to deal with that level of demoralization as much on the losing servers and are more excited to partake in WvW instead of playing when the matchup starts realizing you are outmatched and nothing but a kill farm for a week for the more powerful server.

Make them shorter again, WvW was more interesting and a lot more fun then, imho.

Sevati.6724:

I am curious how Blackgate is hacks golanta so that it bugs and no one else can cap it.

We had a large zerg there and for 20 minutes somehow we couldn’t cap it. No one was to be seen as far as a Blackgate member was concerned for a good couple of minutes. plenty of time to cap it.

I am also curious how they got a Treb on top of the keep, without using the flying exploit.

Elementalist skills constantly miss especially with staff. All you have to do is walk and you can avoid the damage from one in PvP. No dodges needed since case times are so slow and the animation hang times are slow. Unless you play dagger/dagger. Even then the miss rate is pretty high.

I have to agree, the Elementalist is just badly implemented, After trying all the other classes and taking mesmer and warrior to 80, as well as trying nearly all the rest out through 30 to 40 lands.

Its just pale in comparison to the others.

Sevati.6724:

Elementalist is very situational, imho. You have to spec for the situation and the weapon choice to be moderately effective. You also need a lot of gear to back it up.

I find it as a profession the poorest of all of them, and the most difficult to play well. Dagger/Dagger is a pleasure in PvE and sPvP. In groups its not very good, like in dungeons or WvW. It requires deft finger skills and near constant attunement changes. Staff abilities are poor and purely a support weapon for WvW and Dungeons for healing and for assorted buffs and aoe’s if you manage to get them off while someone is attacking you. You can’t move with all the abilities or they get cancelled. You don’t even have to dodge to avoid nearly every elementalist staff ability, you can just walk since the animations and cast times are so slow on all the good staff damage based abilities.

Others professions seem a bit more balanced in trait and weapon abilities and with respect to sloppy play habits, as well as, instant cast/hit times for dps moves. Their trait choices complement other professions across a wider range of builds and playstyles. This is not true for the elementalist, imho. I think most people assume it to be a nuking class, it can be with exotic gear, but anything less and its sub par.

The profession as a whole needs a serious make over from cast times and recharge times on skills, utility skills, and traits.

We’re having this problem on Tarnished Coast with Dragonbrand and Crystal Desert. They both have spies in our ranks and on our maps constantly. A couple of them even admit too it and really get off on it. They like to camp defensive and offensive siege, take our parked golems for a walk and destroy them, and other things.

Its very sad and poor game that these two servers, or any server or person to resorts to those methods to maintain their victories and server ranks.

It should truly be punishable by a perma-ban, imho. It really ruins the game for a whole server of WvW players who choose not to exploit.

It would be better if server transfers cost real world money and required a two week to month long cooldown, and locked transferred players out of WvW until the current match is over.

For those who do farm how many different paths do you take? just one of the 3 or all 3? Near as I can tell the farming paths are few out of many and the dev who designed them is a partial sadist. This comment comes from a dev who has shipped more units than Anet will ever hope to ship, even counting their current sales numbers.

There are very few posts saying that dungeons are fun. There is a small a handful of defenders of the difficulty who post in all the forums saying they are too hard. They also don’t ever seem to pug them.

Dungeons are difficult. They are brutal, the enemy move tells are horrendous. You are often outnumbered with trash mobs that hit far harder than you do or even can in the best of gear along with silvers and golds who hit much harder and one shot.

When its 8 vs 5 or even more than that and many of the mobs one shot, and player cc (I guess they should all just be called interrupts, only a couple even last more than 3 seconds, not enough time to actually down anything) options few and far between and underpowered in durations, they just are not fun. They seriously the one part of the game that is least well implemented, imho. For those few who actually farm and complete them, grats. I don’t really understand the design goals in them nor how they are doable by any party makeup. I’ve read the guides, I’ve had smooth runs as a filler in a pre-made group. They only seem to run well with specific cores and multiple players who already have gone through the pain and suffering of learning them who are also willing to explain them. The learning curve is very high. I only ever try to finish the story mode, then never want to see them again.

What is usually my favorite part of an mmo, is something I despise in this game when learning one for the first time, and honestly what is ruining my enjoyment of the game. I’ve seen about 50 players quit now, seen entire guilds move on, all of whom farmed them simply for the tokens and their gear (which they got) then said this game broke what I love about mmo’s. Its not about the loss of the trinity, its the difficulty level in dungeons and inaccessibility of accomplishment for a large part of the player base. They just are not fun, even when you know the strategies.

Pretty much every single run I’ve run has essentially the same two strategies. 1. focus the annoying ones (that most parties all disagree on) then try to hide or not take aggro, dps when you can, dodge if a circle is under you, and if its coming at you stun/fear/kb and run. or 2. wing it as number 1 and death zerg it.

The across the board diminishing returns on loot is negatively impacting the trade post. imho.

On two toons, I was able to use the poor amount of money from wvw or pve as I leveled to upgrade gear via the trade post every 10 to 20 levels. I was able to buy a full new set of green or yellow gear. I got my first rare set around 60. Greens prior to that.

On my first toon, I was able to buy an 80 rare set and some exotic weapons of each type. Then the first round of DR changes went in, my second toon can’t afford that at 80.

Then more DR changes and loot grinding changes, and with the current lower loot drop rates and diminishing returns systems, my third toon finds that prices have gone up by a factor of 5 or more on gear at certain level thresholds and cannot afford to purchase a lvl 40 masterwork set as the previous two could. She also can’t really “Farm” or purchase the “rarer” discovery mats to even grind her crafting up enough to make a level appropriate set.

On off levels it can still be much cheaper than the multiples of 5 are off now, even with crafted gear but the itemization is strange. I find I am earning less money and getting less non node based materials to work on crafting, and going to trade post to search for mats to buy for discover, they also sky rocketed.

The DR system is bad, If I want to raise my crafting and I know certain types of mobs have a chance to drop wool scrap or bone chips, when I could have spend an hour grinding out enough mats, I now can’t and I have to change areas or kill other things or farm loot bags.

My high level toons rely on my low level toons to even have a chance of certain mats dropping because when gear drops that I can melt or mats drop, its relative to their level more often than not. There is good and bad to this design mechanic but the DR system is making the bad outweigh the good.

I really don’t want to have to game the auction house to make money as a meta-game, which I know many players love doing and are successful at and is partially driving up some prices. Most games have a better balance there. When this game launched it had a better balance there. A month later that balance has skewed poorly for the new and casual player experience, imho.

I don’t believe its the portals causing the problem. Its the same issue as running into a big zerg, or being in a zerg and running into another populated area. In some large zerg groups you can’t even see all your fellow players. We built 15 or more golems one night. I could rarely see more than 6. People fade in and fade out in our own zergs, just standing in a group on a very high end box.

There is render/loading lag and limitation and a 1 second cast time will not fix it. You need to sweep well for hiding mesmers when you take something over with lots of hiding spots so these things don’t happen.

The LOS issues bother me more. Not being able to hit the people on the wall who can hit me, or vice versa. Also being able to cast thru a wall or gate, or use a catapult on a gate from inside to knock players outside back and damage them, but not the gate. Putting siege equipment inside building and using them to for protection, but they are freely able to fire out.

I need to agree with many elemental and engineer complaints. They should be allow to swap weapon sets like the rest of the classes. I could step up on the soar box and go into why I think that should be allowed, but really play the classes for a while and its obvious.

Every other class can switch and with that switch brings greater adaptability in addition to f1-f4 abilities. Keep the cooldowns on 1 to 5 skills, I have no issue with that, but allow swapping.

There is more endemic problem, and the 24 hour transfer wait will not fix it. People are always going to transfer to the winning servers, whether its to complete the PvE exploration or to play on the winning team and grind XP/Karma easier and with less repair costs.

Still no idea when that buff even kicks in, and I still think its 4 to 1 or a worse ratio than that.

Its not 3 to one, because I have counted that ratio many times when two zerg groups are taking over a map and only 20 of us defenders are around.

Its much higher, 5 to 1 is my minimum guess. Which makes it the dumbest buff in the game. A special kind of stupid design mechanic, imho.

You can’t defend with it, you can rarely capture anything significant with it, the xp/karma that you do get pales in comparison to the zerg groups who lay on the other side of that buff and cause the other teams to have it.

If you do put a team together to get supply points or such, you still can’t capture anything significant other than run around as guerilla gang who get ganked and provides xp and karma rewards for the overpowering team and enormous repair costs for the underdogs.

I don’t even bother WvW when that buff is up, I simply leave WvW like most players.

Its an awful mechanic, imho. I usually lock my targets, but every time I cast an AOE I lose that lock, and in mass mobs have to pick that target backup and is quite difficult when they are all stacked.

Is this on the roadmap for improvement?

What is the threshold?

It feels like its 4-5 to 1.

I think the majority of these complaints comes from the servers that dominate WvW 24 hours a day with large forces. Once you get out of the top 4 servers, you rarely have a queue, and if you do, its only a couple minutes.

I am not a fan of the OP suggestions, but I do agree there needs to be some balance mechanic put in place such that 247 servers do not dominate prime time only servers.

Personally, I think PvP has a lot of potential in this game, but its current implementation leaves a lot to be desired. Its usually the weak link in every mmo that isn’t a console based game with nearly balanced team sizes.

One of the changes that would really go a long way to fixing things in WvW is a balance on the number of players in the specific maps.

Creating queues that would balance out the players each team has such that a one side doesn’t end up with 2 or 3 times as many players as the other two teams combined. This seems to happen on every matchup since switching to the weekly mode of the game. One side dominates after a day and eventually ends up xp and kill farming via spawn camping the entry points for the other teams. give opposing teams a scaling penality for approaching spawn points. The immunity buff range is fine, but scope it down from there to say half the distance to the first pvp objective.

Another change would be to swap the orb buffs with the out-manned buffs and rework those mechanics giving the underdogs a combat boost. A person could argue that a greater numbers and greater control should grant a buff to ability as things are now. Alternatively, a person could argue that the struggle to survive makes the underdogs more powerful, since they have to deal with oppression constantly. I think it would be more challenging and fun if the underdogs had a better buff, as well as create more incentive for the underdogs to even join in WvW.

The zerg mentality is so stale in MMO’s and has been around for years. Yes, there is strength in numbers, perhaps the dynamic nature of the event system could be applied to WvW and help balance match ups of zerg groups against small groups to make things a bit more challenging for both sides.

I also think the maps are too generous in the first place with their numbers. Invisible foes are not fun when it comes to zerg groups and the latency in rendering all the players in that zerg team of 50 or more. I have a high end machine with frame rates in the 100’s, but when a group of 30 or more comes storming along. If I am alone or in a small group, I am usually dead long before even half the zerg renders in.

Create more maps to spread people, conflicts, and attractive world buffs out, make the borderlands similar to eternal battle grounds with one larger map.

Create an arena system for 1v1, 2v2….5v5…10v10 etc, ie more structured PvP options. To give PvP’rs more options to make a name for themselves.

Give us better options in WvW to see where our players are and are needed. Sure this would aid the spy’s that opposing servers use to call out defensives, but it would also aid us. Perhaps create a limited time item with great expense that gives you a snapshot of where all players on your team are on the map every 15 minutes, so new players can decide where head to help.

I think the problem comes down to difficulty vs reward. People who find difficult fun are somewhat gluttons for punishment. I believe there is a clinical psychological term that goes with that along the lines of something like sadomasochistic. The majority of the worlds population does not fall into that personality character type. Its a finge space, much like hardcore engineering culture.

The dungeons in this game can be very challenging and expensive, especially when you run them the first few times blind, without someone to explain them to you. The dodge tells are hard to determine, the mechanics unknown. The costs add up from travel expenses, death expenses, and personal frustration which all erode many players sense of fun about what they enjoy in mmo’s.

Having to rez and keep zerging a boss fight or event to prevent its reset should not be a strategy that one has to rely on to complete a boss fight. A large number of players I have spoken with consider that THE method of how to complete many of the fights in the dungeons. The small handful of players who put together specific group and have regular groups who can run them without multiple wipes are by far a minority.

The game is still new, but appears to have a development staff that so far has adapted by making things harder and changing things because they are slighted by someone writing a guide and people accomplishing tasks they feel should be more difficult as people adapt to them. Players will adapt and overcome over time and become elitist about the types of groups who run them eliminating the openness of this trinity-free paradigm of an MMO. Many will adapt by leaving when they become too frustrated and looking elsewhere.

Difficulty versus reward without the frustration aspect is another story. The frustration comes when you repeatedly run a dungeon for a negative net on a few silver in travel expenses and maybe much more in repair costs for some trash blues and greens and the offhand chance of token drops or a rare or exotic that no player I know of has yet to see drop since recent changes leaves little incentive for character development or enjoyment in that avenue, other than to maybe complete them once to see what the story is in there.

How many players are even running them? completing them? farming them? Dying in them? Anet must have statistics on what percentage of the player base is even attempting them and in what modes and how often people are failing encounters in them and money being taken out of the economy in repair costs alone. Accessibility is important in an MMO if 3% of the players can complete the event or dungeon with a net profit and 97% at a loss. That generally doesn’t make for a long term player retention rate for those activities and the players who enjoy that aspect of the game.

Time will tell, the game is still new and we have yet to see how Anet will respond to player complaints in content difficulty, design imbalances, and that difficulty versus reward factor that borderlines on pure torture in certain areas of the game that people play for fun.

The out manned buff needs modification. The current buff has ZERO incentive to attempt a defense or comeback when server populations are grossly out of proportion.

I would love to know what threshold even triggers that particular buff. Is it two to one, is it 4 to one. It feels like it doesn’t even kick in until a 3 to 1 ratio at the minimum.

Regardless, I would prefer seeing a +stat increase for the underdogs, relative to the imbalance against their opposing teams. Such that of the 3 teams in WvW lets assume team A(100players), B(50players), and C(25players). Teams B and C are huge underdogs, even combined against a team A.

Members of teams B and C should get a +%_to_all_stat/dmg_buff that allows them to take on more at once from team A in that map. That buff would scale differently for team B players compared to team C players.

It would make things much more interesting and help in the night capping problem and population imbalance problems that occur.

They way things are now its just silly and demoralizing and not fun in any sense for the severs who do not have an active or organized WvW community 247.

Its also is skewing server populations and transfers to the most winning servers. If you look at the full US servers, the FULL ones are the top WvW ones, with the expception of the unofficial RP server that has its own reason for being attractive and popular outside PvP.

Imho, week long matchups are TOO long. I liked the shorter a 24 hour matchups.