Guild Wars 2

I would propose the following amendments to the legendary crafting process:

Firstly, legendaries should begin by being “unlocked.” I believe that the following requirements should be completed for “unlocking.” 100% World Completion, 100% Personal Story Completion. 1000 Kills in WvWvW. This would prompt a quest to approach a Legendary scholar, who-your reputation preceding you-believes you worthy of seeking out artifacts of great power.

(To start your next legendary, start from Step 2.)

Secondly, you are tasked with collecting the essences of beings of great power in the realm. This requires you to complete ALL paths of ALL dungeons, with an ancient relic in your inventory. Completion of this results in a charged relic (Your legendary base weapon).

From here you seek to have the resurgent artifact reforged. This requires the collection of a variety of components (similar to what we have now), as well as the mastery of at least one trade skill. Once the components are assembled, the weapon is reforged in body.

You must now christen the weapon in blood, empowering it with each felled foe. 1,000 kills of Silver portrait mobs or other players in WvWvW will satisfy this portion. (PvP players rejoice!).

You are now presented with the final task of collecting the blood of the world’s dragon foes.

After bathing the reforged weapon in the blood of the dragons, you return to the Archivist of Legends who aids in the completion of the Legendary weapon, to much fanfare.

High and Low, all rejoice, and the player can then move on to the next legendary item immediately, once again collecting essences from the bosses of every dungeon path.

Time sink? Check.
Money sink? Check.
Compelled into experiencing all dungeon content? Check.
Higher difficulty bar? Check.
Greater Lore? Check.
Improved “Legendary” Experience? Check.

Thoughts?

Ideally, there would be an additional “Challenge” component, but I don’t know what I would recommend for that as of yet.

Legendary items differ greatly between game franchises, but a lot of stale ideas seem to resurface. Long grinds, significant crafting costs, and RNG tend to be the biggest frustrations. Occasionally, games will tie essential components to difficult to clear content, even if it becomes “farmable” later on.

Whether the legendary items themselves are “better” than the alternatives or simply attractive aesthetic options, the name would imply the completion of some gargantuan task.

Is it possible that Groanar Splitpaw is a legendary Charr because he personally scavenged fully 70% of the precious metals used to construct the Black Citadel? Maybe. Perhaps that kind of dedication to scavenging could be rewarded with legendary components.

Is the Countess Emilia Hollern a legendary human because she amassed thousands of gold, and her family bankrolls Divinity’s Reach? One could argue this kind of “legendary” achievement should come with its own legendary rewards.

But for most players interested in “adventuring,” (I would wager to say almost all…), these kinds of achievements seem decidedly un-“legendary.”

Legendary items simply should not be for everyone. Making them excessively expensive or time consuming alienates players, and perversely rewards automators. Possessing a legendary becomes less a sign of prowess, and more a sign of persistent, boring, and not necessarily attentive play.

I believe that the task should still be herculean. There ought to be a significant cost (I don’t think the current model is far off). However, completion should require some sort of quality gameplay. Perhaps requiring a token obtained from the head of your home city after completing ALL available dungeon paths. Or requiring the completion of particularly challenging jumping puzzles. Perhaps PvE content exclusive to the crafting of a legendary weapon.

Legendaries should feel legendary because of what you’ve accomplished, whether it be as a scavenger, an investor, or an adventurer. They should not be tied to luck. Not ever.

The base weapons themselves should be only marginally more difficult to obtain than most exotics. Ideally, the item could be put to good use while the player seeks to strengthen or enhance its magical properties over the course of the legendary construction process.

Presently, I believe there are not significant “legendary” challenges that appropriately reward “legendary” gameplay. Furthermore, I believe that the system of randomization should have long since become ancient history, and solely serves to detract from what should be an otherwise fun, if arduous journey.

Just transferred recently. Jumped in there last night for some last minute points. Lookin forward to living in Wuvwuvwuv after my Lsat 2morrow.

No one can question that you guys were exceptionally successful.

Congrats.

That’s an eminently fair point. Why didn’t we just start with the football metaphors… Let this be a lesson.

My line of reasoning was that playing “in retirement” with the MLS might not be exciting if Becks were to dominate the MLS competition, but that it would be even MORE rewarding if the Galaxy could claw there way up to the level of the English Premier. In other words, is it more exciting to beat Everton when you’re Man U., or when you’re the LA Galaxy.

To borrow from an inferior sport, it’s a reverse Lebron. Which championship is more meaningful, the one with Miami, or the one with Cleveland (that he never got).

Regardless, there’s a very significant likelihood that the interim period would suck. It might not, but it probably will.

Oh well. Here’s to hoping you guys get some good games soon. And if you do leave, even better luck then.

As a peace offering, I’ll let you know the server that I play on. Granted, I just transferred there about 5 minutes ago, and I’m therefore unguilded for the moment.

Or rather, I’ll give you one guess.

=)

Ananda.8241:

“TA+K vs. FC and DR… who knows?”
Wow, I think you are severly underestimating TA. The pressence of their non-NA guilds alone would be enough to carry them to at least T3, if not T2. So yeah, this might be a challenging project for them in the end, once they got back to T2…but that will be after at least 6 weeks of boredom (the most point jump I’ve seen so far is +100, but it is likely if the underdog wins overwhelmingly, they will can gain 150-200 points per match)

My who knows wasn’t to suggest that they’d become a Tier 7 group. It was to suggest exactly what it says, “Who knows?” In all likelihood, dominant night-capping (when everyone is comparatively low pop) is enough to launch you into the top 3 tiers, I’ll grant. But maybe I’m wrong. At this point it’s all conjecture. The real question would be the population difference, as zerging is all-too-viable a strat in WvWvW.

I think I recall someone saying their server jumped 150 after a convincing underdog win, but I won’t pretend to be an expert on the point system.

Okay…. and there we have it. Apparently the militias aren’t that great after all.

My understanding was more along the lines of the following.

I was asking 6 of the starting 11 to play in the 7th division without all those extra trappings you cite. It’s entirely possible that they’ll play 8/9 vs. 11, especially as they move up divisions.

But playing men down in a match where numbers mean a bit more than football, would constitute higher difficulty, would it not? (Progressively more as you moved up).

As for 7 years…. come on.

And what’s the alternative? “Gee, I hope Chelsea gets better this year, otherwise I should probably retire…”

Be Beckham. Play MLS.

(okay, typing that made me vomit a little, but still…)

Note: I’m fully aware that for David Beckham, playing in the MLS and being retired are practically the same thing.

Lol. Okay, let’s keep this simple.

1. Hoping you find enough excitement isn’t relegated to “you should xfer to Kaineng lol.” It was an honest appeal that you find something (Jumping puzzles, PvE, alts, staring at shirtless Norn males) to sustain your interest. It was an honest comment. I hope you find something exciting to keep your interest.

2. “Less competition from your suggestion.” There he goes again… There’s a chance it won’t even be less competition week 1. But if you have to consign yourselves to a few weeks of stomping, it really won’t be too different than what appears to be happening in the “Tier of Tiers.” But we’ve agreed on this already. You don’t have to go to Kaineng if you want to test TA with a different militia. Then again, if you think that HoD is Tier 3 PuGs without you, then why would you migrate to another set of Tier 3 PuGs? Why not aim lower

I’ll try to break this down for the last time.

HoD = #1
HoD =/= TA

HoD vs. FC and DR would be #1 vs two T7 teams.
TA+K vs. FC and DR… who knows?

TA+Kaineng < TA+HoD

Question is what the magnitude is of that inequality. Who knows, even that first week might be more fun. I mean, think of all the militia training you’ll get to do!

In all seriousness, all this talk of Kaineng combined with the awesome Kaineng ambassadors makes ME want to xfer there tonight.

By the way, are you guys recruiting?

“Yet clearly you keep coming back for more? We can quote tree forever, but i’ve chosen to not quote the rest of your counters.”

What can I say, I don’t like being fundamentally misunderstood. =)

“You seem to be the only person who hasn’t fully grasped the meat of the matter.
We agreed on some things and we disagreed on some things … foreign concept?”

You say that, but there are differences of opinion, and then there’s A) failing to understand what the other person is actually writing, and being objectively wrong.

“So your argument here is the standard 5yr old comeback ‘No you are !!’”

Lol. Well, sometimes one must channel a 5 year old if he’s to communicate on a level appropriate for his audience.

“Yes we agree, and we agree to disagree…Thank-you”

Right back at ya.

Oops, missed a spot.

“Like talking to a brick wall …
We did change from GoM to HoD. What we tried to avoid by staying on GoM followed us to HoD.”

This is exactly the point I’m making, only my point exceeds just GoM and includes all the active players that congregated on HoD with you. The rankings caused things to shuffle given the free server transfers. If you could move to Kaineng in isolation, this would be a challenge. Hence my offering it up as such.

“There is no competition to be had on Kaineng. There is no inconstancy here, just lack of comprehension.”

You’re pretty dense, darling. The point is that Kaineng is a low population server which means you lose A) your HoD militia and any population advantage. This makes the baseline more difficult. So yes, you are exhibiting a lack of comprehension as you continue failing to accept this.

“A deaf man is all ears. You may hear what is being said but you need to start listening.”

How generous of you to cast your pearls of wisdom before such swine… /s

“No. We do not share your view that moving to Kaineng will provide a challenge.”

This isn’t subjective, sweetheart. Your task will be objectively more difficult with Kaineng behind you instead of HoD. This is, in fact, one of those great moments where someone is right, and then there’s you.

“No we do not want another round of Tailcoat Riding Freeloaders to follow us again … particularly ones like yourself :P
Challenge rejected.”

Awwww, now you’re gonna make me feel bad about myself. I think the challenge rejection goes without saying. It’s probably not going to be too appealing to someone who fundamentally fails to understand its appeal.

I’ll amend my earlier statement wishing you luck next week vs. your WvWvW opponents.

I’ll instead wish you luck finding enough excitement to keep you from quitting due to boredom.

Cheers.

“That might be fun for you, but you’re the very Tailcoat Riding Freeloader we would want to avoid… At some point you will say that “You wouldn’t have gotten past Tier 2, without us PuGs” … hence your challenge of doing it ourselves becomes moot."

Cute troll. I’m happy winning as much WvWvW as I do. Let’s not forget, it’s entirely possible I’m on HoD with you guys, remember? The idea was that I’m an active WvWvW player and one who has been successful. If I thought you were taking a risk to start over on a low pop server, I’d chip in to help you guys out. You know, spirit of cooperation. The whole point is that it would be fun because I’d expect you to STRUGGLE, not because I’d expect you to clown on everyone. Remember, in reality, I seek out competition, I don’t shy away from it. (You know… what you profess to do as well). Stands to reason we’d be natural allies… odd.

“By this stage you can clearly see i have no faith in your ability to understand basic WvWvW mechanics.”

By this stage you can clearly see I have no faith in your ability to understand the English language (maybe it’s those 45 countries you’ve been too, I have to imagine it gets hard keeping track of all those languages, you impressive man you). You actively sought out guilds, behind the scene, which possessed hardcore players, and combined them into an alliance. Or did you all magically wake up one morning in an immaculately conceived alliance?

Whether or not other alliances failed does not in any way materially alter the fact that you stacked active, talented players.

“By the fact we haven’t changed (again)? I mean why didn’t i think of Kaineng? o.O”

Alright, here’s how this works. If your mom comes into your bedroom at night and tells you that you should do your homework, do you think, “Mom clearly assumes I haven’t considered doing my homework, or she wouldn’t have told me to do it!”. No, you realize she’s just telling you to do your homework. I challenged you to xfer to Kaineng and wreak havoc. That doesn’t presume the idea never entered your head, it just challenges you to do it.

Seriously dude, it’s not even worth fighting over. You’re clearly reading something quite different from what’s actually on this page here. I thought we had come to some sort of understanding, only for you to completely flip over a fight we weren’t even having. If you wanna take shots at some other dude’s ability to comprehend what he reads, you should either invest in some reading comp lessons of your own, or a new pair of spectacles, because you’re just making yourself look silly.

This is just degenerating into flaming. If you can’t see that we reached some agreement and that this should have been settled already, I’ll just do us all a favor and have the thread deleted.

“So when we all say NO to your Kaineng challenge … please explain to me how the comprehension problem is not your own.

Don’t know what part of the World you are from, but in all 45 countries of the world i’ve travelled thus far … No means No."

What the hell are you talking about? I’m seriously questioning your literacy now. You quoted me saying “If you don’t WANT to leave” and then said, “it’s not that we don’t want to leave.” I then pointed out that players specifically mentioned investment in guild and local relations as reasons why they don’t want to leave HoD.

And then you randomly change the question from “Do we want to leave” to “Do we accept your challenge?”

Not only do you fail to read what I’VE written, you’re failing to comprehend what YOU’VE written. Just stop. I already made my peace.

“Again you fail to comprehend…You don’t got from Bottom to Top in 1 week. It would require 4-6 weeks of twiddling our thumbs. Is that fun? Is that challenging? Which member let alone guild let alone alliance would be stupid enough to do that?”

I completely understand that pubstomping gets boring. I keep repeating that. Instead of breaking up your alliance, you have members who would rather quit? That’s fascinating.

The idea is that leaving HoD would cost you some quality players. Last I checked, the consensus was that you guys liked your “militias.” Maybe that was incorrect. The idea is that it may not be the PvDoor adventure you expect it to be. Only one way to find out. And here’s the thing. If 4 weeks of PvDooring is completely intolerable, you better pray that everyone else figures out how to play, or you should start looking for a new game.

“People are quitting because competition in the Top Tier is inadiquate.”

So let me get this straight. Your combined group of recruited guilds is so good that you can’t find a decent match. But you’d rather quit than swap servers and try to beat your own guys? Fascinating. Makes people start to question whether or not you’re really in it for the challenge after all…

“Yet i am the Titan Alliance representative that said ‘No’ to your challenge. Good luck finding one that says yes.”

You’re out of your mind. My point wasn’t to demand that you move to Kaineng. I was simply interested in seeing whether or not you guys cared enough about competitive play to entertain leaving HoD and starting anew somewhere else to bolster their rating until you reached #1 again. So when you said, “we would seriously consider moving,” I considered us to understand one another over the whole “leave to generate a challenge” point, Kaineng or otherwise.

You’re inventing an argument wherein I say “GO TO KAINENG” and you say “NO” and I somehow interpret that as a “Yes, we said we’ll accept your challenge.”

Seriously. Learn. To. Read.

“Did you or did you not challenge us to become #1 on our own, without HoD’s militia… Did we or did we not become #1 under that very scenario when we picked HoD unbeknown to any1 else?”

Winning your early matches is laudable. The idea is that the posted rankings materially affected the way that forces aggregated. It’s not a question of could you when without HoD at the start, it’s whether or not you could win without them now that the active players have congregated there and consolidated an advantage. (Perhaps this is just beyond you…

I totally accept that Kaineng isn’t an option.

I hope you guys get the match you want next week.

And since 2v1 will technically make you the underdog, I’ll wish you guys luck. Give em hell.

I love this OP. Definitely makes me want to transfer to Kaineng. If only I could convince my friends… Gonna be a hard sell leaving such a successful WvWvW server…

Klick.3651:

LOL formal challenge. Wow this read was nothing short of hilarious. You sir are great. Too bad for you the alliance doesn’t take challenges from some no name guy with a family/friend guild. You can claim anything you want, it’s the internet after all. Fact is we’re winning. End of story. We owe you no explanation or challenge accepting. If you know garbage leaders in mmo’s then you are in garbage guilds. Every leader I’ve encountered in my experiences has been a top tier player. Honestly it just sounds to me like you’re bored and have nothing better to do then watch the alliances success.

How about someone challenges you instead? Get good. Get organized. Compete in Tier 1. Beat TA and HoD, since you clearly think we’re not as good as we say we are.

Lol. I guess the rumors about how seriously you guys take this game are true. No name guy with a family/friend guild, awwwww. Lord knows that automagically makes me terrible, right?

If I insulted your honor by suggesting you guys do something challenging, I want to apologize. Here’s some kisses to make it better (xxxxx). It’s a challenge dude. Nothing more. Take a deep breath, and feel free to disregard it. No need to be so serious.

You’re winning after all! So congrats to you on that. I like winning too. I also like competition. That’s why I look to improve competition, especially when I’m winning “too much.” Guess that’s where we differ. (Glad to know that some of the heads of TA here are making it clear now that they DO want more of a challenge and ARE considering starting somewhere new).

“Every leader I’ve encountered in my experiences has been a top tier player.”

I lol’d. I don’t begrudge you guys your success. Rather, I’m sympathetic to the position of feeling like there’s no real competition out there. Those top-tier leaders you mention probably know what I’m talking about, even if you don’t.

“How about someone challenges you instead?”

Perhaps the great irony here (and my hesitation to reveal my server) is all part of the great secret that I’m, in fact, part of HoD already. (Look at the language of my original post as regards moving to Kaineng with you guys…). Could it be? Have my hints secretly been lies all along?

But then you wouldn’t be able to tell me to cry more and get better, could you? And wouldn’t that just suck…

Here’s what I’ll do, since I’m such a sporting gent. While TA figures out what it’s going to do, I’ll find the likely candidate to challenge HoD’s hegemony, and transfer there to help out.

Any recommendations?

I’m afraid you’re the one with the comprehension problem. You have to understand that I do not address my responses simply to you, and that other representatives of your alliance have posted comments here.

I’ve heard players say that they have invested in their guilds, and invested in the capital of their “militias.”

Last I checked, citing reasons to stay (and not leave) could be understood as reasons for not wanting to leave. Perhaps you could correct me on that, I’d love to learn.

My “challenge” was neither short-sighted nor narrow-minded. The logic of it stands fully intact. If you are #1 because of your core, and not because of the rest of HoD, then your success can be repeated anywhere else. The most challenging course would involve going to the least successful lowest pop server. If you could raise them to #1, it stands to reason that your core is the primary source of WvWvW success.

Less tossing out arbitrary criticism, more reading comp please.

“If Anet provided the right tools, we would seriously consider moving to an appropriate server (not Kaineng).”

Awesome. Glad we see eye to eye on this. Glad to know that the upper echelons of TA are actually interested in competitive play. Remember, you’re not the only one representing TA on these forums.

Where do you get that I assumed TA ended up on top without any behind the scenes work? You’re the one who stated outright that you didn’t tell people where you were going, and represent a stark contrast to the open recruiting alliances. And yet you then suggest I assume you didn’t work behind the scenes? We KNOW you worked behind the scenes. We KNOW you recruited into the alliance and we KNOW you recruit within guilds of the alliance. That’s been part of the criticism of team-stacking.

Where do I suggest that you haven’t considered a server change? (since i"m fully aware you’ve already swapped from GoM…) I challenged you to actually make the change. That doesn’t mean I fail to acknowledge that you’ve considered it. My comments to other people regarding the inconsistency between prioritizing competition and unwillingness to seek challenge were just that. If people were ruling out the possibility of a server change, I addressed that to their comments (hence my liberal use of the @ sign).

But go on. I’m all ears, teach.

Marstar, I don’t think anyone is blaming you for your success. Rather, we’re agreeing with you that the TRFs swarmed HoD. Players who wanted an active WvWvW community tend to congregate around like minded players wherever possible.

The transfer lockouts should have prevented the swarm that followed you. The result is that there is a larger serverwide presence of able and willing WvWvW participants.

Now, the standard tactical counter to this would be A) both teams competing against HoD should team up against it. and all lesser servers should congregate their talent with HoDs opposition.

Insofar as neither A nor B appear to be happening (with a few exceptions in what appears to be ET and JQ), things won’t get any more competitive for you guys. In that case, if transfers are fixed, beating ET and JQ from beneath becomes a veritable “challenge mode” for WvWvW for you guys.

Hence the “formal challenge” of this thread.

I’ll leave it at this. If you guys don’t WANT to leave, I won’t begrudge you that. It’s a challenge from a random guy on the forums. (Seriously, it’s barely worth responding). If it excites you, go for it, it should be a good and fun challenge. If you don’t think it’s realistic given transfers following you, then that’s cool, don’t sweat it. You guys are good. That’s largely due to alliances and recruitment. But you don’t see the NBA all-star teams crying at the teams at the bottom of the standings to sack up and get better. Or blaming the league for letting them stack their teams. You were smart to link up with HoD. You’re going to be very successful regardless of what happens.

But as someone who is used to the trajectory of winning —→ boredom --→quitting, I feel compelled to challenge you to something that might keep stuff interesting.

Admittedly, I’m loving the bandwagoners coming here to ask me to stop crying. I haven’t once suggested that WvWvW is unfair because TA is too good. I haven’t made any complaints about my own games with them because I frankly can’t recall any. So I really can’t see where the stale retort of “less QQ” is coming from. That is, if we are presuming basikitteneracy. Perhaps that’s a bit too generous.

All I’ve said is that TA can prove it’s the best WvWvW group out there by separating itself from its zerg following. Everyone wants to win. We get it. That’s why people transfer TO the #1 server. Players that love real competition and challenge transfer FROM the #1 server. (It doesn’t take 15 years of MMO experience to learn that.)

I’m actually pretty receptive to the frustration of players in the TA, who have to endure obnoxious queue times, which keeps them from participating, and keeps them without a full coordinated force. I’m also receptive to the frustration that more and more bads will transfer looking to have their World Explorer or Honor farm gifted to them. I really am.

I just issued a challenge. Want to be the best? Prove that you can repeat your success with any “militia.”

What’s to stop us from calling it a fluke? Common sense? “We don’t believe you, do the exact same thing again!” looks pretty silly, I’m fairly certain we can all agree.

You guys are clearly good, it’s never been my intention to suggest that you’re not good players. There’s this pervasive sense, however, that you’re the reason servers win, and you are the best there is. I’m saying, if you want to prove that, and rejuvenate some of the fun and excitement FOR YOURSELVES, it would behoove you to transfer off (to Kaineng for greatest effect.)

@Skyexile

“Why I ask your guild and server? maybe im just a relic of the past now and believe in some sort of honour in video gaming, but I still believe that if you seek to formally challenge an alliance of guilds you should state who you are to offer such a challenge.”

Super srs. Had my honor questioned in a video game. Oh dear. The truth is, you’re looking for a reason to discredit my comments based on who I am. If I’m from SBI, you can just call me butthurt for losing. If I’m from Kaineng, then I’m just begging for scraps because I’m the bottom of the barrel. I would have otherwise been happy to state my main character, guild, and server. At this point, I think I’ll choose not to. (Here’s a hint tho: my server wins most of the time, pretty handily. We haven’t played you much, and I spend more of my time trying to figure out how to make the game more fun for losing teams than enjoying the fact that I stomp them.)

“OF COURSE WE HAVE DISCUSSED it, its been discussed every day and at every meeting. In TA, in guild…. NOBODY likes the current situation. But until anet sacks up and does something to stop people from following us, there’s no point in transferring off henge.
Id love it if you could see our private discussions Sherlock about transferring, i think you would stop posting about this immediately”

I have a feeling you’re absolutely right about this. Why didn’t you say so? How about, “Well, we’re happy proving our skill by staying on top, but we are hoping to find more of a challenge and reduce our queues. Right now, the biggest obstacle to this the free transfer system, but we might try something like this if it gets really bad.”

Do you think I would have trolled that answer? No. If you had said, “Look, we get your point, but we feel we’ve already done that, and at this point we’ve invested too much into HoD. We have friends here, we have a good relationship with our home server, and we like being high pop for those of us that PvE. We don’t wanna re-level guilds. Hopefully the overall quality of competition goes up, but until then, we’re happy with where we are.”

I would have no problem. Far from it, I’d actually have some respect for the answer. (It’s worth noting that some of you HAVE said as much. And I respect that.)

TIL that the words “basic” and “literacy” are censored when used together.

@Sooty

Sounds like we definitely agree on those points. I guess the blanket term would be “Sporadic Incentives.”

@Lymain

“1&2. Resets kill the fun factor. Not only would you avoid building siege and upgrading keeps prior to the reset, but taking orbs or territory prior to the reset would seem pointless.”

People keep saying this, but I don’t buy it. The logical extension of this is “People will now never build siege or upgrade keeps.” You’re correct on the margin, that there will exist a halo around the reset where players stop pouring resources into WvWvW, but there is still plenty of incentive to upgrade and deploy siege for the first 2.5 days at a minimum. Recall, that you’ll want a significant lead, and whether you control the first 3 days or the last 3 days, it’s about your overall score, and both are as important.

The effect of a reset is minimal on player investment, and it increases player activity by reestablishing map parity in a way that temporarily removes obstacles to participation for losing teams and provides newly available rewards for winning teams.

“3. You’re not supposed to be rewarded for playing poorly, and what’s the point of a long match if you implement mechanics that force each match to go down to the wire? You might as well just argue for shorter matches.”

Well, one could argue for shorter matches. I’m instead trying to design more competitive and interesting longer matches. These are not suggestions on how to preserve an even split of points 100% of the time. Far from it. These changes are to reduce the likelihood of entire servers (or both losing servers) from giving up entirely, or suffering from a “too stacked deck.”

“4. Those siege weapons will probably just be saved for the next match, giving the losing team an unfair advantage.”

If they are perennial losers, than all the siege in the world won’t save them, but it will take some of the sting out of losing, and could make them more formidable in the future. And think, if they save it and deploy it later, it still gets used. Let’s say it’s used to destroy the lower bracket. Well, now the lower bracket has extra siege for the future. There is a bottom to WvWvW brackets, so eventually the extra siege will be used to combat superior forces, and not eternally inferior ones.

The most excitement appears to be coalescing around this idea of “sporadic incentives.” The question is, how do you provide additional incentives to play without simply gifting extra rewards to the perennial pubstomping servers. How do you put in incentives to get servers to elect NOT to “take their ball and go home.”

@Skyexile

Asserting that someone may or may not be a troll doesn’t pass muster for countering their argument. You’re going to have to do a bit better than that. What does my guild or server have to do with the points that I made? (I’ll give you some hints: I don’t ever recall playing against HoD directly, and my guild is a small guild of close friends).

-“Some of us in TA with over 15 years of MMO experience, mostly in leadership positions”

Means absolutely nothing. I know players with 15 years of MMO experience, mostly in leadership positions who are garbage. It’s actually a rarity that the players in leadership in MMOs are the highest quality players. It tends to be the people willing to finance a website or a vent server, or people who do it for the power trip or the loot priority. That being said, I have similar MMO experience (in leadership positions) and at high levels of play. That’s why, when my friends proposed transferring servers for better competition, I suggested SBI. You know, because I like challenge AND I put my money where my mouth is.

-“why would we? we’re WINNING!”

And here I thought you guys liked challenge and competition. When you’re “the best,” the best competition around is fighting yourself. You’d think after 15 years of MMO experience, you might have learned this simple lesson. But you seem a bit more interested in stacking the deck and pubstomping, so that’s cool. Big tough guy, eh?

-“You guys though… you have the answer to fix PvP game wide for GW2, in one swift move! TA transfers to kaing.”

1. It’s Kaineng, and 2. I’ve proposed legitimate fixes to the WvWvW system in another thread on this same forum. You can find it here: (and yes, it’s written by someone who is on the pubstomping side of things about 70% of the time).

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/How-to-combat-folding-in-WvWvW-Constructive/first#post337466

-“Hey guys, i know lack of PvP and opposition even in the high brackets have been getting you down, so we have a solution to this. We’re going to transferring with TA to kaeing, some random dude on the forums challenged us, im not sure who he is … but we’re taking up his challenge anyway."

How about simply, “People don’t want to acknowledge that TA is the real reason HoD is successful, and the only way we can prove that would be to leave HoD. If we really wanna prove our value, we’ll have to go to the worst server there is. Not really much room for argument if we take Kaineng up to #1.”

Remember darling, it’s about the argument, not the person making it.

“Right so back onto the transferring issue. If you thought we had no resistance in the tier of tears, this is gonna be a door banging treat! we will fight for weeks on end against the mighty doors, walls and keep lords until we move high enough to face a server with oceanic forces where we may face some resistance.”

You’ll likely only face each set of servers once as you climb up. Let’s not pretend it will take long if you’re as good as you say you are.

-"and with free transfers still open we couldn’t POSSIBLY have the exact same issues we had on henge…or GOM before that.”

If TA is the be all and end all, and HoD starts getting trashed, perhaps there will be another diaspora and the militia will lovingly follow their overlords to the ends of the earth. Alternately, they’ll stay put or transfer to another top tier server. This would only share the talent around, and increase the overall quality of competitive play (horrible for you, I know…). Remember, many people transferred because of the server rankings, not because they’re following the TA twitter feed.

-“Idiots.”

Nope, just “Idiot” (singular). You.

It’s worth pointing out that I’m only issuing this challenge because I see so much nonsense about how amazing TA is on these boards. I don’t personally have my day ruined from losing to these guys, WvWvW is fun where I am most of the time. But when you see people congregating talent to a single server and then absorbing the rest of the talented (or at least active) players, most of the time you’d expect them to keep looking for greener pastures of fun, competitive play.

Chances are, the highest quality members of TA are doing just that, wondering how they can keep things interesting (they can always pray for JQ to keep things interesting). But eventually that too will fade, and instead of yelling at the lower tiers to get better, TA might just decide they really do want the challenge after all, so they’ll swap to a lower tier and prove that they can turn ANY server into a tier 1 if not #1 server.

@Easymode. “You’re thinking like a novice.”

I’m deliberately thinking like a novice. I’m not interested so much in fine tuning the highest level of competition as shoring up the drastic iniquity facing most server pairings. When 1-2 servers completely fold each week, it ceases to be fun for anyone. If there are 10 ballistae and 15 defenders standing out in front of your spawn, easy access to the supply camps means nothing. The best teams won’t ever find themselves in that position, so appealing to the highest caliber teams for fixes won’t address this root problem.

@Judas.

-“This would ruin the whole idea of upgrading a keep you’ve just taken to make it more sturdy.”

No, it really wouldn’t. It would have an effect on the margins. You’d declare ahead of time that the battles have a 3 day PoI reset built in (not a score reset, mind you). On the margin, players at 2 days and 23 hours might not upgrade their keeps, but why should they? It doesn’t mean they’ll stop playing right before a reset. Currently, there’s no dearth of players leading up to a reset. Why would this change that?

-“I understand we want to keep things interesting but the fact remains that people need to work for their victories. We shouldn’t change this to 5 3-day long battles (which is what it would be) when the whole draw for some of us is a 336 hour war between three servers. All that in the name of people who don’t like to lose but don’t want to put effort into winning….sounds like a bad idea.”

The problem right now is that, given population and “winner gets stronger” mechanics, the deck is stacked against teams that are already at a disadvantage. This isn’t really a tough love situation. (It would be like the San Antonio Spurs playing the Miami Heat, but giving the Heat a 10% shot accuracy buff, while asking the Spurs to play with only 3 men…) If you want to dominate a map for 336 hours, what’s stopping you with occasional map resets? You’ll just take everything again anyway, only this time you’ll get more gold, xp, and karma in the process. Sounds terrible, right? It wouldn’t be 5 3-day battles. The scores don’t change, and everything can be recapped again between resets. If anything, it provides more excitement than the dull, spawn-camping for no rewards that currently goes on.

“I actually doubt it would make any difference anyway. If they were getting rolled, these same people would probably be even more likely to just abandon WvWvW until the battlegrounds reset, increasing the lead of the server who was having fun.”

This is fundamentally no different from people leaving right now. The only difference is that resets give them a reason to come back EVER. That’s currently not happening at all in most pairings. The dominant team stops getting xp, gold, and karma, and the losing team stops playing completely. That’s the whole point.

“2, 3, & 4. I mostly agree.”

Sweet. Me too.

“5 as well”

Awesome.

Edit: I do also believe that awarding 1 point per kill would also be a welcome change. It might contribute to spawn camping, which would need to be countered some other way. But it makes the scores tally faster when there are more players playing, and it makes defending points a bit more valuable.

The reasons to do this are:

1. You separate TA from the local HoD population, or as they call them " the militias."

2. You move them to a low pop server (which will likely still be free even after transfers start costing money given that it’s low pop). This INCREASES the likelihood that TA players will be the ones actually fighting.

3. You essentially prove that you, TA, are the reason your server is winning by moving to the “Worst” server, and still climbing back up to the top.

Silly arguments thus far:

-We already did this at launch. This misses the point entirely. Free transfers have lead to players congregating around the easiest win. By attracting hardcore players, you starve yourselves of competition and challenge, two things you allegedly want.

-If you want to compete against the best force, you’re going about this the wrong way. This would be akin to the Lakers courting Dwight Howard and Chris Paul, while stating the goal that they want to have games against really challenging opponents (as they strip them of their premiere talent).

-“Can’t upset the locals by transferring!” It cuts both ways, my friend. If you leave HoD, you could argue that HoD will suffer by losing top-tier talent. You would also argue then that Kaineng gains that same talent. (Advantage Kaineng!) HoD, however, will now have shorter queue times, while Kaineng inherits large queue times (Advantage HoD!). It’s ultimately a wash. Thing is, I’m fairly certain that the people of Kaineng will sacrifice some of their queue times for the chance at winning EVER.

-“But it won’t be fun in the meantime!” That’s a pretty arrogant statement. That’s what I’m trying to test. Can TA, by itself, really dominate every bracket back up to first place? You said yourself that you’re better as leaders than in the trenches. Sounds like you might not believe you can do it afterall…

I give HoD credit for winning handily as the top ranked team. However, I don’t chalk this up to inherently superior play. If players want to make the argument that they are indispensable to their server’s success, the best way to prove it is to prove that they can do it without the rest of that server. Find the “worst” server, and win there. Then we’ll believe.

Wanna avoid the massive zerg exodus? Don’t tell anyone you’re doing it. Just up and do it. Let people know after transfers are changed. That way you can make Anet some extra money in the process.

The only real reason I can see why you wouldn’t want to do this is that you want to keep everyone in TA together, and that some players also like to PvE and don’t want to struggle to find people to play with on a lowpop.

Edit: It’s funny. When we had top-tier players flood Tichondrius in WoW, we didn’t rest on our laurels. It was cool for about a week or two while we destroyed everyone with barely a challenge. Then it was just embarrassing, so we all quit playing. The only games that were still fun were playing against ourselves. There’s a lesson in that…

Server transfer to Kaineng, push #1 NA.

If you’re really that good, it shouldn’t be too hard, right?

Plus, it will be fun to watch the bandwagon turn Kaineng into a max pop server during the climb.

Hell, if you actually do this, I’ll come join you.

Lol, this reminds me of the mass migration to Tichondrius after the first season of RBGs in WoW. We went from occasionally having a fun match against the other Top 5-10 teams, to struggling to find any decent competition after they all transferred to our server, to selling spots in farm teams, to quitting. Winning all the time does actually take its toll.

I don’t have a lot of respect for TA or Ruin in a game with posted rankings where everyone can instantly transfer to join up with the zerg. The talent will concentrate for maximum pubstomping into a single zerg server or two (or three). If TA or Ruin want to impress anyone, they should migrate to Kaineng, and see if they can come back and beat HoD.

I don’t care if you all stick together. If you really are that talented, you should be able to jump ship to any server and still make #1 overall.

Do that, and I’ll gladly sing your praises.

Haha. Definitely giving you guys points for creativity. That’s a fairly massive overhaul of the current system, so I’m not very optimistic. Clever idea though. I think the notion of privilege within your own server’s borderland is a good one. It already exists somewhat with the convenient placement of MV, and the optimal starting zone, but I believe it should be more significant than that. Perhaps something like the orb bonus of 150 stats combined with something like 1.5x siege damage. Better teams will still find ways to win, but that will go a decent ways to closing the gaps.

It really does seem like there’s been a mass exodus to these 3 servers. It’s weird to hear SBI talk about a weak night crew as though even the top servers have suffered attrition.

You’d think that crazy queue times would eventually send people off those servers. Aren’t you guys hitting like 3 hour queues yet?

Thanks for the replies guys.

@Jewel.

You make a good point about complaints regarding the investment made in securing the keeps, placements etc. If we use a singular reset a few days in, the advantage gained from secured keeps, placements, etc. will still be significant in acquiring a lead. If players are less interested in fortification, there are fewer obstacles to capture, which leads to more active gameplay. If communicated well, players shouldn’t feel that their money was wasted. Instead they might not contribute to their own defense. While A-Net misses out on some goldsink, players will have to accept that their frugality decreases their ability to compete.

@ Crispeh.

I also like the idea of giving servers a home server buff in that particular borderland. Since people can specific queue, this could lead to some frustrating queue times for that particular map if you’re struggling. Other than that, I think it’s a solid recommendation.

@Epsilon: Most of the changes I mentioned serve to rectify a scenario wherein matches are exceedingly boring from a lack of participation. Bearing that in mind:

1. Map resets would need to be announced ahead of time. For example, weekly WvWvW running Friday to Friday would see a reset at 5pm on Monday. This is going into primetime, and is consistent with daily resets. Your concern about server advantage only becomes an issue in highly competitive WvWvW matches. Currently, not many pairings are highly competitive, certainly not half way into the match. I believe that a primetime reset captures high populations for all servers. It should not be very complicated as it would be a hybrid of a standard reset (everyone is booted out temporarily, and the scores are preserved) and a weekly reset (the maps are split into their respective thirds.)

2. It is fully illogical to suggest that orb resets would supplant regular fighting over the orbs. The point is that many matchups currently have NO fighting over the orbs, since they are all controlled by a team overseeing 90+% of the map. There is no reduced incentive to obtain the orbs between resets. Resetting orbs only increases the likelihood that they will be contested, and temporarily removes the “winners advantage,” that currently exists. Races to the orbs post reset will be a bastion of activity, which is precisely what is missing at the moment.

3. I think swapping the orb bonus with outmanned is a good idea. However, I think that the bonus provided from the orbs in competitive play should represent an advantage, and not be incentivized solely as a reward-booster. I feel that such an advantage should be countered if the score gap becomes sufficiently high.

4. Are you suggesting that the winning team should get an increased chance to obtain siege plans? Would you be adding it to current outmanned, or after it was swapped with the orb bonus? I think it should be a bonus for the losing teams, as more siege confers an advantage to the weaker side.

5. We pretty much agree here. Free server transfers won’t be around forever, which will help things a bit. I believe (and hope) they’ll still be free to lower pop servers. The question then becomes whether or not players will sacrifice the gold cost for the sake of winning at WvWvW. If they are already willing to buy Golems for 1g a piece, then perhaps gold is not an obstacle to them. I believe therefore, that paid transfers should also be accompanied by a weeklong transfer lockout, and ideally, that players would be unable to transfer to servers with which they are directly competing.

For the life of me, I’ll never understand why people believe the appropriate behavior in a pvp zone is to Not pvp.

I guess it really is only appropriate to say, “Cry more and skulk back to your carebear pairing with your tail between your legs, you ninny.”

Hey guys. I’m trying to compile a list of reasons why we have such consistent disparity over time in WvWvW matches. Some of them aren’t things that need to be or ought to be fixed, others might warrant some attention. Here’s what I’ve got so far:

Night Capping – All is fair in love and war. Gotta fight that much harder during the hours you ARE on.

Population disparity – Being outmanned is never fun. Being outmanned because you guys aren’t participating is aggravating. Being outmanned because you just don’t have many players period is the worst.

Orbs – It’s great to have a system with a clear objective. Orbs provide a very significant bonus, and they’re spread over multiple borderlands. They are highly contested, and not always easy to obtain. I’m a big fan. I would recommend, however, that the bonus be lowered slightly, and that the orbs reset every 1-3 days. (perhaps even on a random timer to keep things interesting).

Server Bonuses – They’re great aren’t they? They actually aren’t all that hard to accrue, which makes it a fairly weak incentive. Still, having pvp glory translate to pve quality of life improvements is great! Unfortunately, however, (much like orbs) these bonuses further slant towards winning teams. If we don’t want a system that drives players away, we need to prevent a “snowballing” effect where the best teams just get better with orbs and bonuses.

Bugs/Glitching/Hacking – Will be fixed in due time. (Please be quick!)

Transferring/Supply Dumping – We know you guys are looking into this. Hopefully we can make some more improvements to prevent this from happening.

(Please let me know if I forgot anything!)
————————————————

Generally speaking, (and I come from a server that usually does the destroying), the losing team has to contend with, "Well darn, not only are they clearly better than we are, but also:

1. We can’t get a foothold.
2. They have the orbs for an extra 150 to all stats.
3. They have more health and endurance from the server perks.
4. There’s just more of them.
5. They have a huge supply advantage.

If you don’t want players to give up, these are the things that need to be addressed.

Recommended solutions:

1. Reset the maps to the respective thirds twice during the week. Winning teams will have more DEs to complete, so it’s less boring for them, and struggling teams will be able to retake a minimal base of operations, without being humiliated by 10 ballistas pointing at their spawn…

2. Reset the orbs (perhaps with the map resets). Again, the orbs are often the most exciting part of the weekly matches. The more orb fighting there is, the better. Orb fighting isn’t exciting when the guys with the orbs control the whole map.

3. Provide some sort of stacking buff to losing teams based on a point ratio. There’s no reason that the clearly dominant team should have extra health, endurance, and stat boosts after the first few days. There should be stacking buffs that grant extra stats, health, endurance (only within WvWvW), as well as stacking siege buffs. Something like 100,200,300 to stats and 1.5x, 2x, 3x siege damage, as well as 1.5x, 2x, 3x NPC effectiveness depending on the scenario. As servers start to close the point gap, these buffs go away, and the winning team can reassert their dominance. (Naturally this needs to be balanced to where winning teams don’t just take a break and give up until the score gaps close… not that this is so terrible a thing).

4. Mistwrought buff. Some sort of increased chance to get siege plans when your team is way outmanned/outscored.

5. 3 day to week long lockout on server transfers to competing servers. I’m sorry, but if you haven’t been able to transfer to play with your friends at this point, and they just so happen to be on the server you were just randomly matched up with, then you can just wait a few days. If you really can’t wait, perhaps there can be some sort of expedited server transfer ticketing system, with a history where players who abuse transfers can be identified and appropriately punished.

Lastly, and despite all this, I’m really enjoying WvWvW. It’s the most fun I’ve had pvping in a long long time. Keep up the great work, and hopefully this helps shed some light on the current state of WvWvW from a player’s perspective.

It’s a pain to do really. The circles on the ground DoT boss (#2 iirc) is fairly punishing, especially if you’re doing it when it first becomes available.

The ice turret hallway boss is similarly really really annoying. It degenerates into a pillar humpfest and takes a long time.

The final boss just throws his wtfbirdsaids on you and you have to be super good about reviving or he’s also brutal.

Additionally, there’s no real reason to repeat storymode anymore, so even the people doing Exp HotW aren’t interested.

Then there’s the lack of excitement about Exp HotW. Path 1 (Butcher) is farm city with an annoyingly long fight at the end. The other paths have randomly huge damage spike potential (really frustrating), and a few super annoying bosses. Mainly, the absurd levels of health (Zealot boss has taken me 20 minutes before…) on fights with static mechanics makes it:

1. Frustrating
2. Boring
3. Inefficient

I think SM in particular should have its difficulty addressed, while EXP mode should have its difficulty preserved, but boss health nerfs to the tune of 33-50% depending on the boss. (Especially the underwater fights). If they want to balance the health nerfs by making the fights harder in some way, I’d be happy with that too.

Reporting back to answer my own question:

Just completed HotW Butcher on my Elementalist AFTER completing it on my Guardian.

Rewarded with 60 tokens.

First path bonus is per CHARACTER per day.

Incoming from Hrouda:

“Diminished Returns System”

You’re a god among men, Mr. Bunny

I was considering speeding up my token farm tomorrow by clearing out HotW on both my Guardian and Elementalist.

If I clear each path on one character, I should receive 60 tokens per path.

If I clear each path on the other character afterwards, will I still receive 60 per path, or will I collect 20 instead?

In other words, is the 60 token reward:

per character per day
OR
per account per day

So I’ve been collecting a set of Power, Toughness, Vitality gear with the skin I want in HotW. At this point I’ve done each path at least a few times, and the butcher a ton of times. I tend to like dungeons, even their difficulty as true end-game level challenge (especially with pugs…)

Perusing the forums, I haven’t seen many posts about HotW. I’m guessing that’s because people either:

A) Are staying away from it given it’s history of difficulty and bugs.
B) They’re on hour 473 of clearing path 2 or 3.

I’ll start with this:

It’s really not that hard. There are a few mobs with very spiky damage (Corrupted Quaggans, Claymores, to name a few). As far as difficulty goes, that’s more annoying than challenging. But I’m more concerned with:

Boss health.

I’ve been playing MMOs for a while now, and thoughts like “Man, if this boss only had 5-10% less health, we could totally do this, let’s double down and figure out how to minmax our dps.”

In GW2, however, I find myself saying instead, “If only this boss had literally HALF its current health, it wouldn’t be so darned annoying/boring.”

It’s one thing for a dungeon path to be more challenging. It’s really frustrating when it’s also just plain longer. The combination really starts to frustrate players (especially when they run into some phantom DR).

As I see it, there are only 2 justifiable reasons for high boss health:

1. Difficulty
2. Epic Scale

I’ll give you guys 2. Nothing says Epic like a massive health pool. That is, until it takes me 4 times as long to kill the boss of path 2 than it does to bring down a Claw of Jormag…

I’m more interested, however, in #1. I come from a game that has a resource system. High health pool boss fights pose a unique challenge in that resources evaporate over time. Regeneration of resources becomes part of strategy, and scraping by creates all kinds of stress, tension, challenge, and excitement.

GW2 doesn’t have a resource system. There can therefore be no added difficulty from “endurance” fights.

What is the effect then of high boss health? A giant headache, boredom, frustration, and general malaise.

The only addition to difficulty comes from trying to fight while being unable to keep your eyes open, or simply dying of old age.

There are paths in dungeons, and players will happily tell you which, that are disproportionately long, with no real need for high health pools. On Path 2 in HotW, both of the Purple portrait dogs can have their HP nerfed by 50% and retain the same level of difficulty. One has a charge and the other uses a combo of Fear and Summoning Minions that further frustrates players by reducing dps “uptime”. The 2 subsequent bosses should have their health nerfed by roughly 25%. When you force players to kite 2 champion mobs and a boss mob, the least you can do is lower the health pool of the boss.

At this point, the only real benefit to having certain boss mobs with gobs and gobs of health is that it might help serve as a buffer to the DR that will invariably set in when you least want it to. So in that sense, Thanks? (I guess?)

TL;DR: Some bosses have unnecessarily high Health Pools. Please look into reducing them as it has 0 bearing on overall difficulty and represents a HUGE quality of life improvement.

(additionally, please consider putting a floor on token DR. Something like 10 tokens no matter what. If players want to do 10 token runs from here to eternity instead of going for 60 in another path, so be it. If your concern is a too-fast rate of item acquisition, then put in a token cap. Let’s say 250 a day per dungeon. You can get 60 per path on a first clear, and 20 after that if DR doesn’t kick in. Running the same one over and over only gives 10. Therefore it would take the 1 pathers, 19 runs of the same path all the way through to hit their daily cap, while it would take everyone else 7 clears.)