Guild Wars 2

If, by breaking out of maps, you mean getting into areas that are not intended to be accessed either by getting into an unopened area or getting “beneath” the geometry of the map, I would caution you. It highly unadvisable to do this intentionally for two reasons. First, getting into areas that are closed off or otherwise not intended to be reached is only possible by exploiting the geometry. You could get banned for doing so. Second, encouraging people to exploit the game the same way could also bring down the ban-hammer.

As far as I am aware, the only ways get a rune off of an item is to destroy the item with a salvage kit or to transmute it, transferring the rune from one to another, which also destroys the original item. If you want to save the original item, you can simply install a new rune (or other upgrade), but this destroys the rune. There simply is no way to retain both the item and the rune.

It is not necessarily a bug, and it is not limited to Mesmers. Reflect type skills from other professions can do this as well, and it appears to work on any mobs that spawn like that. As Qelris and Disatro mention, it works on breeders in AC, too.

Snores.7806:

Tosha Daydreamer.9251:

Thanks for the explanation.

I can see how this works for Call of Duty for example. But for an MMO, that is supposed to be long-term enjoyment, this would be shooting themselves in the foot. No one would ever buy something from them again. Ever.

I honestly think Anet isnt stupid enough to choose a course like that. Which brings me to my second question: why do you think anet would choose a course like this?

Which AAA MMO have you participated in for the last 5 tears has given you “long term enjoyment” ? Swtor ? DCUO ? LotRO ? AoC? WAR ?

I can’t name a single one apart from WoW and EVE, and they’ve been going for 10 yrs. MMO companies have discovered that the easy bucks are based around hype and a quick turnaround

First, WoW came out in November of 2004. By the most recent discoveries in the field of mathematics, it turns out that WoW, then, has only been out for eight years, not ten. Likewise, Eve was released in May of 2003, which means it has been out only a bit over nine years, not ten. By contrast, SWG came out only month after Eve and over a year before WoW. Even despite the NGE, the game lasted until December of last year, which means it was out as long as WoW has been thus far. More to the point, EQ2 came out a month before WoW, and it is still going. LotRO released in April 2007. It is still around.

As to the “long term enjoyment” argument, I have never and will never play Eve, and I played WoW for a total of seven months. By contrast, I played SWG on and off until just before LotRO came out, probably about two years total play time. I played EQ2 for a total of at least two years. I played LotRO from Open Beta until the day they announced it was going free-to-play. It released in April 2007, and the announcement was in June of 2010, that means I played LotRO for just over three years. I left because of the announcement they were going free to play, not because of the game play itself.

Similarly, I played SW:TOR from early access. I left around August this year, not because I did not like the game, but because I got fed up with the negativity of people who wanted the game to be SWG2, WoW in space, or KOTOR: Online and were finding fault with every aspect of the game because it was not. In short, I left the game because of the community, not the game itself, but, still, I played it at least as long as I played WoW. Additionally, I played Rift longer than I played WoW. I played STO longer than I played WoW (I am still playing it on and off).

The idea that the only games that are in it for the long-term are WoW and Eve or that only they offer long-term enjoyment is non-sense. MMOs are experimenting with non-traditional subscription models (with a hybrid subscription/free-to-play combination being the most likely next standard model), but they are not throwing away millions of dollars of development money in the hopes of running a game for only a couple of years. Some MMOs have, indeed, failed out of the gate. But these failed from either bad design or the growing unrealistic expectations of the MMO community as a whole, not because of some tin-hat conspiracy that they are looking only for short term profits.

GregT.4702:

If you’re on the forums right now, you haven’t quit the game over Ascended Gear.

And you’re very likely not going to. You’re either going to:

( a ) quit the game because actually you’ve finished all the content you want to and you’re bored with it;
( b ) quit the game because as a hardcore player you have a high game rotation and honestly you were going to move on to another game soon no matter what GW2 did;
( c ) not quit the game, and keep complaining for another three years; or
( d ) not quit the game, and enjoy it.

Your stereotyping of people is nonsense. I left both WoW and Rift after reaching the level cap and realizing that, unless I wanted to slave myself to a playstyle I did not enjoy, the best gear in the game would be unobtainable. So, contrary to your stereotyping:

1. I did not leave because I had completed all the content or was bored with the game. I had plenty I could still do, and I was, in fact, still enjoying both games.
2. I did not leave because the next latest and greatest game came out. I left both games because of this issue, not “for” another game. In fact, in the case of leaving WoW, I went back to EQ2, a game I had left for WoW only because a friend I played with wanted to check out WoW.
3. I did not stick around and complain about it.
4. I did not stick around for any reason and I have never gone back to either game.

I don’t necessarily agree with the OP’s position. I am not ready to leave GW2 yet because I am waiting to see how they deal with this gear. While the gear is currently available only through running dungeons (which are not my favorite content), they are done with single groups and not larage scale raiding. Since I have people I play with, I can tolerate that, and, to my knowledge, they have not yet stated that they will only make this gear available through this format. I am concerned that they are making it so that you have to get on a dungeon treadmill (higher and higher fractal levels) to get the best gear, but I can bide my time and see how this plays out and impacts the game.

However, if it becomes clear that the only way to obtain the best gear in the game is to run gear-gated content repetatively and that the gear-gating makes it hard to get with friends who have either moved on to higher tiers or have fallen behind (making it even more mind-numbingly repetative), forcing me to have to rely on PuGs to get the gear, I want nothing to do with it. If they do not make the gear obtainable through other means (or worse, add a raiding requirement) and if I have to start facing opponents in WvW who have better gear than I can obtain through means I enjoy (which was the case in WoW PvP), I will have little reason to stay with this game.

People do leave games over issues like this. Quit trying to marginalize them just because it doesn’t bother you.

We have a total of five weapon skills and five slot skills available. That means that each skill is 10% of my total capabilities without even taking into account the relative power of each ability. The Elite skill slot is, argubly, your most powerful slot ability. It is already annoying enough to have to choose whether to use that ability now and not have it available for two to three minutes in a big fight. Giving up 10% of your total capabilities for 2 hours or so? Even if that ability were made more powerful, my vote is “No, it is not worth it.”

Phzt.9864:

The downed state puts a soft limit on small group warfare. Too many posts are focusing on even numbers or 1v2, 1v3. What people are complaining about is how it effects those numbers magnified to 5v15, 10v20, etc. The downed state mechanic gets more favorable for the larger/defending side the larger the fight is, which is a detriment to this game becoming something like DAOC, among other things. I understand why they put downed state in for spvp and pve, and I think they should stay there, but in WvW, it’s hindering the game’s progress toward a skill driven, small scale warfare game.

There’s nothing more discouraging then fighting a 5v13 and downing 20 people, losing none of your own because of the inability to finish. You will eventually lose or just need to run simply because they had more people that pressed a single button. In small scale, sacrificing one utility/weapon skill/class skill that ensures a finish is acceptable, but as numbers increase, the value of survival abilities scales higher as well. Popping them for finishers means you will probably die.

This idea that the revive mechanic greatly favors the larger gorup is an idea that keeps coming up in these threads. It is a flawed concept.

Attrition favors numbers; therefore, attrition favors the larger group. The revive mechanic does nothing to change that in respect to the larger group. If the larger group is able to control the fight enough to revive its players while preventing the smaller group from doing the same, then they are in enough control of the fight to win because of numbers alone.

On the other hand, if the smaller group can keep itself from over extending and can revive its own downed players while largely denying the larger group the same privilege, the smaller group becomes larger than its numbers suggest and can actually make attrition work in its favor. Thus, the claims that this mechanic works against a smaller, more skilled group are actually wrong. If you are skilled enough to take out a larger group to begin with, then you are skilled enough to turn this mechanic to your favor. Otherwise, it is simply a wash or a way to speed up the inevitable.

Peetee.9406:

Kirrund.2654:

The game’s damage output and total health pool is balanced around the downed state though. The downed state isn’t just some tack on to a balanced combat system, some extra addition thrown in to the mix, no, it is part of the combat system as a whole. Do you understand what I mean? Without the downed state, they would need to rework all damage amounts, all health levels, all that stuff. I think too many people have the WoW (or other MMO) mentality about this particular mechanic, and see it as two separate things.

This needs to emphasized.

I am perfectly okay with removing downed state if you cut all damage output in half.

I am not okay with removing the downed state, but your point is valid as is Peetee’s.

I would add that, when someone is reviving a downed player, they are solely dedicated to that one task. They cannot execute offensive or defensive abilities. They cannot dodge or evade attacks. As such, they are risking themselves and lowering the overall group output in order to get that player back up. That is balance.

This is why what someone else mentions is so true. Having someone downed is really an opportunity to down others. This is particularly true when you are operating siege. I always love to down someone while operating an arrow cart or ballista on a tower. It often means that I can stack up multiple bodies in that same spot as others come to try to revive him. It’s a two-fer. While he becomes a sitting duck while I finish him off, others come in, locking themselves into that one task and making themselves easier targets, and I don’t even have to aim elsewhere. Yes, sometimes they get him up, but often, they end up joining him.

The mechanics are fine. There may need to be some tweaking that needs to be done, but the overall concept is fine. It just isn’t a rehash of the simplistic mechanic of defeat on the depletion of the main health bar mechanic that other games are slaves to, and it hurts some people’s, shall we say, e-gos to see a health bar depleted and not actually be done with the job.

Bunzy.8674:

I am so over killing people just to have them instant ressed back up. This is not fun not does it reward skillfull gameplay.

It needs serious changes or remove the whole concept from any type of pvp.

Your complaint is invalid because your premise is completely wrong, as indicated by the two things I have highlighted above.

First, and most important, your premise is completely wrong because you haven’t killed someone if all you did was get them into a downed state. All you have done is put them in a state of increased vulnerability. The problem here is that you think that you have won just because you depleted their up-state health bar. The truth is, you haven’t won yet, and the very mechanics prove otherwise.

When you are downed, the message you receive is “Fight to survive,” and the message the get when standing next to you is “Finish him.” If you are fighting to survive and they have to “finish” you, you clearly are not yet dead. In fact, if you are able to rally from a downed state, you can actually down and stake your opponent. Likewise, you don’t receive the “You have been defeated” message until someone stakes you (or your downed state health bar is completely depleted), and the person you were fighting doesn’t receive rewards until you get that message. Downed does not equal dead, so your premise that you have killed them is simply wrong. That brings up the second major flaw in your premise, that it somehow cheats you out of a reward for “skillful” play.

There is a major flaw in thinking that being able to down, but not defeat, someone is an indication of more “skillful” play. As someone else mentioned, the game mechanics are balanced around the idea that there is a downed state. If there were no downed state, players would have more defenses, more health, and greater abilties to heal both themselves and others. The latter is particularly pertinent to this discussion because the complaint is that others are able to rally a downed player.

Reviving someone in a downed state is simply a healing mechanic. That mechanic is in place because the ability to heal ourselves or others is limited in this game. Likewise, there are no healing potions, etc., in this game like there are in others. As such, complaining that someone was revived from a downed state despite your “skillful” play is like complaining in another game that, despite your skillful play, someone survived by drinking a health potion, using a self-heal, or being kept up by a dedicated healer class.

The bottom line is that the downed state is not a defeated state, and you have not won until you have actually defeated them by staking them or depleting their downed state health bar. What needs to happen here is not to removed the mechanic but for people such as yourself to get over the notion that depleting someone’s up-state health bar is an indication that you have won. That may be true in some games, but in this game, there is a reserve (i.e., the downed state) health bar like the reserve area of a gas tank on a motorcycle. You are not really out of gas until you exhaust the supply on both sides of the tank. The same is true here. You haven’t won until you deplete both the up-state and down-state health bars.

I have to disagree as well. One of the things that annoys me most about other games is the fact that content gets greyed out and pointless to fight even if you still have quests or objectives to complete in a zone. Level scaling makes every zone valid throughout the life of the game. That is particularly important because of how easy leveling is in this game.

For instance, my level 80 Ranger did most of his leveling in PvE, so he worked his way from the starting zone all the way through to the very gates of Orr, including the story quests. My level 79 Mesmer, on the other hand, did most of his leveling from about level 26 in WvW. He is not too far behind on his story quests, but he has very little of the map open except for the Sylvari starting zone and up to somewhere in the mid-20s zone of that area. Otherwise, it is mostly just places he has had to go for his story quest. He also has much less of the map completion achievements done than does my Ranger. Either way, there is still a lot of content they both have not experienced.

If there was no level descaling, going back and doing either map completion or just dymanic events from different areas would be mind-numbingly boring because all the mobs would be greyed out and no challenge. At least with descaling, there is a point to going back.

boneduste.4023:

MysticoN.5068:

Siege should NOT (!) have the 5 target limit, but players should. Also Siege should be cheaper and easyer to build. Make em more fearsome.

Whould also fix the zerg “problem”.

Why should players have the limit, but not siege?

Why? An arrow cart, for instance, costs 6 silver or, I think it is, 6 badges. It takes three trips to supply (or three people with supply) to build it (two if supply carry is boosted to 15). It goes away on its own if not used, and can be destroyed even by an occassional passerby dropping AoE on a wall without even seeing. It cannot be moved or repaired, and even a moderate size attack force can destroy all the siege on the walls within the first 10 seconds of a fight. If the asset is taken, then the enemy will destroy it.

By contrast, the only cost to a player for casting his skills is if he is killed, which can be avoided. The cost of armor and weapons does not count because those same armor and weapons are used to make more than enough money/karma/tokens to pay for themselves. They are not destroyed and never simply vanish. You don’t have to make supply runs to build them, and they are present even if you show up to location where there is no supply. If one spot is too dangerous to stand in and attack from, you can easily move to another postion and cast from there. Likewise, since you are mobile and siege is not, if the enemy is out of range or moves, you can move to where they can be attacked.

Either way, asking why players should have an AoE limit while siege does not is like asking why Keep walls can take several minutes of pounding from a cat or trebuchet when a player gets killed in just a few hits by them. The answer is simple. You are not a fortress, and you are not a siege engine. You are not supposed to have the same capabilities.

Heru.5427:

So instead of swapping to a server with people that play in the same timezone as you do, you choose to remain on a server where you barely find people to play with? Seems to me like the problem here is some kind of weird moral standards on your part rather than Anets fault.

I make about 100 badges per evening playing about 5 hours and around 1 gold from vendoring blues and junk, even if I die a lot. Obviously I play in a decent guild to achieve this, but I think that at least grouping up can be expected for WvW just as you are unable to solo a dungeon. That said, it is indeed probably faster to grind AC if you want quick PVT gear and cash.
I have to agree with the posters saying that acquiring gear from WvW is much more time consuming than from PvE though.

I don’t disagree that he should consider changing servers if he is having problems grouping with people on his current server, but since when is running around with a group of 20 to 30 people “soloing” WvW just because you haven’t bothered grouping with four of them?

When are people going to get over this idea that not grouping = soloing?

hoschi.8693:

I don’t understand some people..

You play a MMO – a massive multiplayer online game, yet complain when you should group up with others. Clearly, some have missed the picture here. You knew what game you were buying from the very start.

That aside, even in 2hrs of running in a 4 man team last night I got about 30 badges from kills only. Don’t see anything wrong with the drop rate. Also, i got 2 20-slot boxes full of green/blue drops that vendor for quite a bit, including one rare L77 drop.

Lastly, ANet is not ignoring WvW, you’re just being too impatient. The game isn’t even out 6 months, there have been numerous fixes and changes in relation to requests and complaints from the community already, and they’re working on the rendering and culling issues, which alot of people have complained.

But I guess you can’t make everyone happy.

Bottom line, if you need badges fast, farm the puzzles with all toons, That’ll yield at least 50 badges per day for about 1hr worth of work, and some siege blueprints and drops on top of that.

This is same tired, old argument about grouping comes up in every MMO. The fact that it is an MMO only says that there will be a lot of people in the game at the same time. It does not say anything about what they are doing, let alone that they have to be grouped with each other to do it. For instance, assuming equal populations, 2/3 of the people in WvW are there trying to kill me. I don’t group with them, now, do I?

The problem with this argument is that it presumes that grouping is necessary. It is not. Grouping gives you a private /Party channel. I don’t need that to talk to anyone in WvW. I have /M, /T, and /S as well as /W. It highlights where your group members are with white dots on the map. I don’t need that either as I can find a commander anywhere on the map and any fellow defender/invaders near me show up as dots on the map as well.

The only thing grouping does is tie me to (up to) four other people. It creates a psudeo obligation to organize my activities around what they are doing. Why, pray tell, should I turn over decisions about my play time to four random strangers just because of some unneeded game mechanic? I spend most of my time cooperating with lots of people in WvW. I almost never group with them because it is not necessary.

Don’t get me wrong. I group when friends and guildies come into WvW with me. I join squads when there is a commander on the map I feel is worth following. However, this idea that, just because it is an MMO, you are somehow not playing the game right if you are not grouping is an obsolete notion that has to go.

As thine mother and thine first grade teacher toldest thou, if thou comest upon an empty alter of supply and thine fellow is waiting for the manna from heaven to fallest and refill it, thou shalt waitest for thine fellow to retrievest his supply before thou takest supply from the holy alter of supply thineself. For thou never want to hearest from thine mother, “Son, I am disappointest.”

Well, it’s too big to be a space station, but, still, I have a very bad feeling about this.

Nanorin.9285:

Don’t want to give badges just Alt – F4!

Ok thiefs have perma stealth. Everyone else gets alt-f4. I’m getting sick of this kitten.

Just had group of 5 morons on FA getting out of being killed.

What makes you think thieves don’t do this. Ironically, the only time I have seen this happen is when thieves did it. I am not saying that all thieves do it, just that it is not exclusive to “Everyone else.”

A couple of thoughts:

First, to the suggestion that someone just has to be nearby but not in the circle, I have to agree with those saying this is not so. I have been way closer than that when a camp flipped. Being in the general vicinity does not count. You have to be in the circle. In my opinion, the guy just had the attackers so preoccupied that they failed to find a thief abusing the stealth mechanics to stay permanently invisible inside the circle.

Second, technically, yes, this is an exploit. An exploit is when you use a bug (or an intended mechanic in a way that is not intended) to achieve a result that is unintended. It is clearly a bug in the terrain logic that is causing the area where he is standing to grant that player an invulnerabilty buff where no buff should exist. By making use of that bug, the person in question was exploiting it, using it as a get out of jail free card, so to speak.

The only caveat to that is that he is not shown there fighting back, but merely using the invulnerabilty state to frustrate you. If that were the only issue, I doubt an action would be taken for using the exploit in this manner. However, I assume he was in a fight for the camp or was caught out in the open near the camp and ran to that spot to avoid getting killed. That would be a actionable offense as it is using a bug in the terrain to avoid the consequences of being out in the open and not in the safe spawn area.

Finally, the first person to respond was 100% correct. It doesn’t matter what the exploit is, whether it is a bannable offense or a simple annoyance. You never post information about an exploit on the forums because, when you do, you have simply shown people who would use exploits how to do it. In fact, every MMO I have ever explicitly forbids passing on details about an exploit to anyone but them. Posting it on the forums can actually get you disciplinary action. I would remove those pictures as soon as possible.

Brunners.7251:

zoobaby.7804:

Warlord.9074:

All the players upset by this patch are the ones who turtle.

And the ones that farmed badgers from them….

Well they shouldn’t have been carrying around a bunch of badgers in the first place.

Well, badgers can do a lot of damage, and if you have a bunch of them in a group, then I can image than a lot more than 5 people are going to be injured. If the badgers are rabid on top of that, the complaints about limiting the healing are beginning to make sense.

Dee Jay.2460:

I think everyone is looking forward to Duels. It would be cool if they added a mosh pit to the Mists too, specifically for dueling.

As admiralnlson says, “everyone” is not looking forward to it. Unless they add a “auto decline duel requests” option and prevent people from taking over an area for their own private dueling area (usually in the middle of one of the busiest parts of town), then, no, personally would rather it not be added.

I have no problem with you or others wanting to duel. I just get tired of inconsiderate people spamming unsolicited duel requests or interrupting my game play with duels in the middle of a crowded area. With this game’s sometimes over-the-top spell effects, this is even more of a concern. It is bad enough trying to get through a keep gate and not being able to see where I am going. I would rather not run into that on my way from the bank to the BLTP building.

Your suggestion of an area in the Mists is an option I have considered as viable. The Mists does seem to be the appropriate place for that. The only caveat is that the Mists does not allow people to test their current level and current gearing against another/others in a controlled environment, only ideal (or theoretically ideal) builds and gearing. Thus, while it is a good idea, in my opinion, it wouldn’t necessarily satisfy everyone’s expectations.

Either way, I don’t care if they add it, provided it is prohibited in areas where it is in apropriater and as long as there is an option to automatically block unsolicited duel requests for those of us who are not interested in participating. However, I would rather them worry about bug fixes and balance issues before bothering with this.

They added a “d” and left out a space. This resulted in a sequence of letters commonly used as a slur for an, as they say in politically-correct-ese, “intellectually challenged” individual, and that is what was filtered.

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

You can keybind a “look behind you” button. It’s unassigned by default, I think.

This is correct, and it is not bound to a default key. I remapped B (the WvW interface) to Ctrl-B and mapped B (for Behind) to that function.

SoulstitchMMO.1396:

Ok a lot of you in this thread are not understanding my OP.

Downed: Is the active state you can still fight back. Where you have access to your abilities and can still stay in the fight possibly rallying back to fight. THIS state I have no problem with and welcome this part of the game.

Defeated: Is when a downed player is… defeated. Where you no longer have access to your abilities/rally and must wait to be rezzed, or waypoint out. THIS IS what I have problems with. Bad play should be punished.

You are being reasonable in your view of the downed state. You are, however, assuming way too much in saying “Bad play should be punished.”

Getting ganked by two thieves you had no way of knowing were near you and you could never see due to rendering errors is not “bad play.” Getting overrun by ten players who all focus on you because you could never see them and kill you before you can even react is decidedly not bad play. Being caught and killed by even one player when you have low life and no more cooldowns after defeating a skilled player is not bad play. In fact, you could be the most skilled player in the game, as most PvP’ers assume they are, and still get killed even though you did everything right.

Yes, there are plenty of times where people play poorly and get killed. However, these and a thousand other situations in WvW where either circumstances or game bugs/issues or balances issues result in your death do not automatically constitute “bad play.”

It is one thing to suggest that you should be unrevivable once defeated for your sense of what is best for the flow of the game. I might even agree with you on that. However, to suggest that a player’s defeat is the result of “bad play” soley based on the idea that, if you are dead, you played badly, is a completely unsupportable conclusion.

Snort.3698:

Very important question. If its usable in pvp then we have to PvE?

A set for karma would be a fine idea.

This is very important to me. Skill, not gear, should be the deciding factor in PvP. And it is pointless to gate content by gear because the diffence in winning or losing an encounter becomes the difference between gear levels, not skill, so even in PvE, skill, not gear, should be the deciding factor.

Either way, I left WoW because I refused to get on the raiding gear treadmill. This meant that my only other “endgame” option was to PvP. Yet, in PvP, I was facing people equipped in the best Tier x raiding gear, giving them an unfair advantage as far as I was concerned. If this game does not implement instance obtained gear in such a way that the added stats only apply in instances, and not PvP, I will likely not continue playing this game.

One of my primary deciding factors to play this game was that they did a lot to level the playing field in PvP. In WvW, you are auto leveled to 80. In sPvP, they take the additional step of normalizing all equipment and giving everyone all their Trait points, etc. That is an extraordinary step that weighed heavily on my decision to even try this game. If they take that away with stats you can only get in instances, forcing me to have to do instances to remain competitive and only adding to balance issues (even though I do instances as it is), that, too, would weigh heavily on my decision to continue playing. And to be honest, even with the current game issues, I have no plans to stop playing at the moment. Adding gear differences would likely change that.

First, I doubt there is anyone who does not find it frustrating to have to run a long way back in order to return to a battle after having to respawn. However, it is necessary. Here is why.

In PvE, there are respawn timers and respawn limits that prevent mobs from spawning so quickly that you cannot defeat the encounter and, in cases of instances, prevent you from having to fight the same mobs over and over again if you have to come back after being killed. These are needed mechanisms to make a fight winnable. Likewise, in a real war, battles are won when everyone on one side is killed or enough are killed that the losing side runs out of reinforcements or otherwise recognizes that it can no longer field enough fighters to win the battle and withdraws.

PvP suffers from a lack of either limitation. Unlike in a real war, you don’t really die when you die in PvP, so you respawn like a mob in PvE does. That means that, again unlike in a real war, you have basically an unlimited supply of reinforcements. Worse, unlike PvE, more enemies can join the battle at any time, who, again, can infinitely respawn.

Because of this, there has to be an attrition mechanism for PvP battles to come to some kind of conclusion. Since perma-death or kicking people out of the zone won’t fly, it has to be in some kind of limit on the respawn. Making people wait to respawn would be equally untenable, so the only real option is to control where people can respawn so that there is a delay before they can get back into a battle without preventing them from returning to battle altogether. Coupled with the revive mechanics, this allows people to choose to respawn and run back or wait for someone to get them back up so they don’t have to run back.

Together, those to mechanics shape the natural advantages and disadvantages of the map for each team. A team that is near its spawn points gets an advantage of being able to get people back into battle faster. This helps them control the area of the map that they are intended to control. Likewise, a side controlling a keep can build a waypoint, which allows additional waypoints in the map, but it is an upgrade, so they have to build it. Likewise, when a keep is under siege, the waypoint becomes contested so that the owning side cannot have an endless supply of defenders. If you get killed and have to respawn, you have to make your way back through the enemy to get back inside the keep.

These mechanisms make it so that battles can actually come to a conclusion even with the respawn mechanics. Yes, it is frustrating to have to run all the way back, but it would be more frustrating if nobody could ever win a battle because both sides could just keep spawning people right back into the fight.

It has always been a pet peeve of mine in PvP to see people, especially light armor wears, run into a mass of people, have some kind of major effect on them, then run out unscathed. Warlocks in WoW, for instance, were able to run into a mass of people, cast an AoE fear scattering them, then run back to safety. Seeing Thieves wearing medium armor spin into a mass of people, doing massive damage, then stealthing before you can get a shot off at him after his spinning is done is another example.

Thus on my main, a level 80 Ranger, I get frustated because he can only sit back and watch, unable to shoot until the spinning is done, hoping that Barrage is not on cooldown and hoping that, if it is not, I can affect an area where he stealths off to. However, I get to smile on my alt, a Mesmer (level 26 when I first brought him into WvW and now level 48). Ever since I got my first Elite skill, I just love to see Thieves spin into range because, if they do, they will, in very short order, find themselves turned into a Moa, unable to continue spinning and unable to stealth.

Even if they are fast enough to recognize their peril and get away, I smile to myself imagining their smug anticipation of doing a lot of damage and stealthing away suddenly turning into “OMG!!!! I am a Moa!!!!” It does my heart good.

YumCHA.8706:

What a silly insult generalizing the majority of Rangers to be ‘really bad’. For all you know they could be putting out the utmost devotion to win any battles, even against a thief, timing their skills to be used at the critical moment. With a thief, you can just spam its skills blindfolded and still win.

The effort used between a thief and ranger just to win is clearly noticeable. Fact is, thiefs have it easy and ranger’s don’t.

I agree with this. It is insulting to suggest that, just because you see someone still shooting at a Thief, this is somehow a mark of a bad player. Others have mentioned the autoattack issue. Rapid Fire is another issue over which you have little control. The volley of arrows of Rapid Fire is not a bunch of #1’s with its own many quickness, where each shot is its own event and each individual arrow having its own target. When you start firing Rapid Fire, whatever you had targeted when you started is where the damage for every arrow goes. Even if you change to a different target during the animation, you continue firing at the original. Likewise, you cannot stop firing it. Once you trigger it, you are stuck in the animation until every arrow fires.

If you target a Thief and use Rapid Fire, especially if you use it with Quickening Zepher, then the Thief goes into his little ballet of death, there is precious little you can do even if you notice it early enough, which is not always easy since they typically do that little move while slicing through as many people as they can.

Personally, I am very quick to notice Thieves using that skill and to stop shooting as soon as I can. I am also patient enough to wait for the second they stop to unload on them if I can. But to suggest that, just because someone continues to shoot at someone who is in the middle of a crowd doing that move, possibly with a ton of other animations obscuring the screen, is some how bad is simply insulting. This is even more insulting considering the autoattack problems and that we have a skill like Rapid Fire that doesn’t stop shooting even if you change targets.

That said, yes, you do need to be aware of the signs of this and any other skill that reflects projectiles or does retaliation of some kind.

Walay The Brave.6813:

have a lvl 56 engineer right now, and 3 other toons with lvl 80’s already that spent 75-80% of their time playing WvW… karma, xp, and ingame money wise it’s better to do it here and you get to finish the daily quest within an hour or so with a decent zerg or squads doing hit n run supply camps, yak sniping, quaggan/nodes… etc

Karma is definitely easier to come by in WvW if your are in an active map where you are turning over a lot of assets or defending a lot. If you are in one of those matches where one server is dominating all the maps and no one is participating, it can be a bit slower.

XP, I am not so sure about. It depends on the activity again. I would think it is even at best but the edge would have to go to PvE a lot of the time simply because you can be earning XP constantly whereas there can be times when little or nothing is happening in WvW.

In-game money, on the other hand is not easier to come by in WvW. You easily get more cash from PvE than you do in WvW simply because you get more loot drops in PvE by far. In addition to loot drops, you have dungeons, dynamic events, heart quests, and other things that give you money. Farming PvE will net you money quicker than farming in WvW.

So we can decide whose peak hours crews are better against another server’s off-hours crews? That doesn’t make a lot of sense.

Dinas Dragonbane.2978:

It actually does two things, one minor and one major.
The minor- It strips people of the reward they should’ve received for killing said enemy.
The major- It strips a server of the point it would’ve earned by killing said enemy.

I’ve seen a handful of people do this, enough to make it annoying. There aren’t too many people for it to be an imbalance problem but it likely will work its way there if given enough time.

We just need a system that would penalize players for this poor sportsmanship.

In WvW, you get points for the number of camps, towers, and keeps your server controls and whether or not your server controls Stonemist. However as far as I am aware, there is no tally applied to the score of the number of kills the respective sides have accumulated. It would affect an individual player’s PvP kills achievement, but it would have no effect on the server’s score.

In fact, if anything, if anything you could argue that it actually benefits the opposing server as it takes less time to get back into action by eating the death, teleporting, and running back than it does to reload the client, log back in, and, possibly, have to wait for a queue to get back to the same point. Even waiting to be rezzed if people can get to you would take less time than getting back from a client disconnect.

It may unfairly deprive the opposing player of a kill for his personal achievements (which is skewed anyway because that is not a count of soloed kills but, rather, a count of participation in someone’s death). It may unfairly deprive people of loot bags. However, it does not affect the opposing server’s score in any way and actually benefits the opposing server by taking the person doing this out of action longer.

Either way, the game should not penalize you for your client crashing or for a network problem. The better solution would be to keep a character in the game world for a set period of time if there is a disconnect. This would prevent people from using Alt-F4 to escape death without the need to penalize people who get disconnected through no fault of their own. If done right, it would reconnect you to your character object in the game world if you got back in soon enough, meaning you would not be knocked out of WvW and have to sit in a queue again just because you were disconnected by a client crash or other glitch. That is the better option in my opinion even if they cannot, for technical reasons, reconnect you to the character object and make you wait until it is out of the game world before you can log back in on that character.

While, undoubtedly, many, if not most, occurrences of people disappearing from the game world in such a situation are due to people manually closing the client, don’t assume that, just because they did disappear, they Alt-F4’d. Games crash. New games crash frequently. I know my game has crahsed just as I entered combat or sometime during. That has happened in PvE, and, while I don’t recall the specific instance right now, I do recall “waking up dead” in Lion’s Arch upon logging back in after a crash in PvP. Crashes likely are only a minority of such instances, but don’t assume, just because someone disappeared before you could down them, that the only explanation is that they manually closed the client so you couldn’t defeat them.

People complaining about the downed state mechanic need to get over it. You haven’t won just because you downed someone. You have merely put them in a vulnerable state which limits their ability to continue fighting. Until you fully deplete their downed state health bar or stake them, you have not actually won. Getting up from a downed state is no more taking a victory away from you than is someone using their heal and regaining health before they get downed. Think of it like those extra miles you can drive after your gas guage points to “Empty.” You aren’t really out of gas, just in a vulnerable state where, if you don’t do something to fill your gas soon, you will be. As Mad Max would say, “He isn’t dead. He’s only mostly dead,” or, as the saying goes, “It ain’t over till the fat lady stakes him.”

Finally, eliminating the downed state mechanic would have no effect on people Alt-F4’ing. People have beeing doing this since games, especially PvP games, have been invented. EQ2 had a mechanic to keep people in the game world if they disconnected. It lasted something like 20 seconds, if I am not mistaken, and it was specifically there to prevent people from intentionally disconnecting to avoid death. It worked the same way in PvE and PvP because, contrary to another suggestion, people do try to avoid deaths in PvE. Even with that, people would exploit the zoning mechanics to avoid PvP deaths.

EQ2’s load screens had an exit button that was there to log you out if you got stuck in a loading screen. Yet, I specically recall someone bragging on the forums about how he exploited (he didn’t think it was an exploit, mind you) that mechanic in PvP (EQ2 PvP was open world and only on PvP servers) to get away from enemy players. He would zone, then hit the exit button to get out of the game before he appeared in the new zone. The downed mechanic has nothing to do with this practice.

Corian.4068:

Stop being afraid and do it. Eat the deaths if you need to.

Everyone’s okay with repeated dungeon deaths, or repeated jumping puzzle deaths, but dying even once in PvP is somehow magically worse than all of that?

Hop to it, man. Or grab all those friends you’re so loath to leave and knock the map stuff out together. You can fix this yourself, you’re just afraid to.

You have got to love it when someone is so bent on pushing an agenda that they don’t even bother reading what the OP was talking about.

His point is that it is unbalanced and unfair to make map completion dependent on whether or not a server owns points on a PvP map when, as is obviously the case, there is generally one server that dominates the map and does so very quickly, when other servers seem to always be dominated, when queues can keep you out of a specific zone even when you do own it, and when the achievement has nothing to do with PvP but, rather, simply happens to be on a PvP map. That is a valid point and has nothing to do with this nonsense about being “afraid.”

Exactly, pray tell, how does one “hop to it” and “knock the map stuff out together” when your server doesn’t own the keep in which the “stuff” resides? How does one do that when your server never seems to own the keep in which the “stuff” resides? What are you expecting him to do? Stroll bravely up to Stonemist, knock on the front door, and politely ask — strike that — bravely demand that they allow him to access the map completion points? Yeah, that will work. And no one should have to change servers, especially now that there is a 7-day waiting period before you can go back to your home server, just to get map completion.

The bottom line is you can “eat death” from now until the day the servers are taken down, and you won’t get map completion if your server never owns the completion points. That was the OP’s point.

I apologize in advance for words that may sound harsh or belittling. They are not intended that way. They are meant to strongly illustrate the error of the underlying premise of the OP.

The OP is clearly biased against people who have money or who are in a large guild. I, personally, find the suggestion to be offensive that, if someone has the book because his guild bought it for him, he somehow “milked” the money from them and, therefore, clearly automatically undeserving of the title. No. It could not possibly be that they freely chose to pool their money to buy the book for someone in whom they already had confidence as a leader. You know, almost as if they voted for him to be their leader. No, he clearly bilked those poor retirees out of their money like some Wall Street scumbag. WE ARE THE 99%!!! OCCUPY GW2!!!!!

There simply is no need for a cludgy, bloated mechanism to “level the playing field” for Commanders. Almost no one bothers with /squad chat and most communications occur in /Map and /Team. That means it is virtually pointless to join a squad, and I would guess that the majority of people don’t bother. They simply follow the commands in global /M or /T chat they feel are worth following. Since most comms occur in chat available to everyone, and everyone is free to follow whomever they want, including those who [gasp] don’t have an icon over their head, even that icon is of extremely limited value.

Either way, the OP is disingenuous about making this an election. Elections are about free choices, but he automatically disqualifies people who have been elected before (for a time), meaning even if you want a specific commander, your vote doesn’t count. More importantly, however, if you are in a large guild, and enough of your fellow guildies have already voted, guess what? Your vote doesn’t count. Both of these provisions are born of his blind prejudice against large guilds. See, if you belong to a large guild and/or you have the confidence of a large number of people, your vote shouldn’t count or you should be disqualified from leadership if people keep supporting you. Ironically, it is leadership that no one is obligated to follow anyway.

For the purposes of full disclosure, I am not in a particularly large guild and I have never had more than 3 gold on my character in the entire time I have been playing (i.e., since early access). I am not inclined to farm for 100G, and I do not have the book. So my perspective is not of one from a large guild or one who has money falling from my pockets because I have so much.

The OP’s suggestion also means that, if you and your friends or guildmates want to invest in the book so that your choice of leader is visible to you on the map, it doesn’t matter. You can’t obtain the book because the OP has decided that your choice of your leader is unimportant. The only leader you get to follow is the one the server chooses under rigged election rules. It doesn’t even matter that no one has to follow your choice of leader if they don’t want to. You and your friends or your supporters don’t have the right to form a squad of your own and have an icon you can follow. The 99% have spoken! Like kindergartners, we are all winners and we all get a chance to have a ribbon.

No thanks. This is a bad solution for a non-issue. Don’t want to follow someone who is a commander? Then don’t. Want to be a commander or want someone you have confidence in to be a commander, then get off your butt and earn the money or get enough people to agree with you and pool your money to buy the book. There is no need to have a cludgy, bloated mechanic that is a bad solution to a problem that does not exist.

Xsorus.2507:

Strangely a system that worked fine in DAOC for 10+ years is unbalanced in this game

hmmmm

Giving a team that already has the numbers to take all three orbs more health and other stat bonuses is, by definition, unbalanced.

Shadow.1059:

Rashagal.5867:

uhm… it’s a team game? Also, do you really want a thief bursting you down in 3 secs just after you finally got to that supply camp you all the way across the map you wanted to take? You can interrupt the revive just as easily as the stomp. Anet built this game so that burst can happen VERY quickly. As a result, the “fight to survive” is necessary so battles wont seem too one-sided when the numbers start adding up.

That is the most illogical argument I have ever read in my entire life. If a thief bursts you down in 3 seconds, do you really think fight to survive will save you? No, unless you are with a big group of people, then it will only delay you running back to the supply camp; and if you are with big group of people and you still die in 3 seconds from one person, then it is obviously a user error. I do not believe Anet input fight to survive because they “built this game so that burst can happen VERY quickly.” If you are getting one shot by someone, what makes you think fight to survive is going to save you? The only thing this is going to do is limit higher skilled players from defeating multiple opponents at once.
“so battles wont seem too one-sided when the numbers start adding up.”
This makes absolutely no sense at all. This makes balance worse. The higher quantity of people have an even greater advantage against the lower quantity, simply because it is more easy for them to revive players. I have no idea what you were thinking when you wrote this.

Actually, the premise of the thread itself is the most illogical argument. It is based on the false notion that, if you have downed someone, you have won and that that “win” is being taken away from you by being able to be revived from a downed state. The fact is, the system doesn’t tell the downed player that he is defeated until he is staked or until his downed state health bar is completely depleted. As such, by definition, your premise that “The only thing this is going to do is limit higher skilled players from defeating multiple opponents at once” is factually incorrect because you have not defeated the player just because you put them in a downed state.

It is also a false argument to argue that this is about balance. Since both sides have the abiltiy to revive someone, whether from a downed state or from full defeat, it is, by definition, balanced. You cannot argue that larger forces have an unfair advantage because they have an easier time of reviving people due to numbers because those same numbers mean they have an easier time downing people and and easier time defeating someone in a downed state. Those same numbers make it harder for a small group to down someone or to finish them. In fact, if anything, a smaller force having the ability to get someone up who was overwhelmed by larger numbers helps the smaller force far more than it does the larger.

The complaint is moot because the argument is based on a false premise.

Spike Firebrand.8943:

Eridani.8317:

ShadowBlaze.2573:

I hate WvW. I never cared about WvW. I only like to PvE

Lol. Then you’re playing the wrong game.

No hes not. pvp has 5 maps wvw 2 maps (NO its NOT 4 as 3 of then are the same)
and PVE has 31 (25 world maps + the 6 towns) So PVE has over 4 times as many maps as pvp and wvw put together. GW2 is a PVE game even anet has said so.

First, you are simply being dishonest about the number of maps. Each of the border land map may be similar, but there are differences in each of the border land maps. They are not exactly the same. Even so, it is utterly disingenuous to suggest that because they are similar they are not different maps. As an IoJ player, I start in the IoJ Citadel on the IoJ border land map. Without hacking, I cannot even get into the Citadels on the other two border maps. And you start in different positions on every map depending on the server you are on and even the color of your team for the week. This makes each map a different experience. There are four WvW maps and suggesting that there are only two is simply dishonest.

Either way, the number of maps a game has of each type does not define the focus of the game. PvP does not need the same number of maps because PvE maps are largely level dependent. A level 1 -15 zone cannot accommodate leveling for both level 1 – 15 players and level 60 – 70 players. You, therefore, have to have different maps for different level players in PvE. PvE maps are also largely static. If you go through the area different times, you will always find the same mobs basically in the same places. Thus, on top of needing different maps for different levels, you have to have different maps to have different mobs so that people don’t get bored. That is, the very nature of PvE requires a large number of maps.

By contrast, this game auto levels everyone to level 80 whether on a sPvP or WvW map. Thus, you automatically eliminate the need for additional maps because of level differences. Likewise, PvP maps are anything but static, even when one server dominates a game. Last week, IoJ dominated the match, and I was able to take my level 23ish character through to get all the map completions in WvW. This week, SoS is dominating the map, and it is dangerous to even stop outside the starting point. DoH has not really been much of a factor in this matchup, but normally even in a dominated game, you will find different keeps/towers/camps under different server control with different levels of defense throughout the week. There is a termendous variability to each WvW map from moment to moment, meaning you don’t need dozens of maps to make up for the lack of variability found in an individual PvE map.

It is utter nonsense to suggest that the number of maps devoted to a particular style of play determines the type of game this is. PvE, by its very nature, requires more maps, so the fact that there are more PvE maps is meaningless.

Finally, I don’t know what ANet quote you are taking out of context, but this game, like GW before it, is designed as a PvP game with PvE components. It is not like other MMOs which are generally PvE games with PvP almost force fit over PvE mechanics as an afterthought. Knowing this is one of the reasons it took me until the very night of (early) release to decide I was going to even play it because I am primarily a PvE player. They may have characterized GW2 as a game in which you can play PvE and not bother with PvP at all, which is true, but to suggest that this is somehow a “PvE game” as if PvP were not the primary focus of the game is simply wrong.

Sorry, but I disagree with your thinking. The skill should execute at your target. It is a skill intended to affect allies as well as you. Having it execute at your target gives you much more control. For instance, suppose you are doing okay, but you want it to heal/cure an ally a distance away from you. How do you send it over to him? You can’t use the basic attack command. He is an ally, and since there is no “Go help my friend” command, you have no way to have him go near your ally to heal/cure him.

Conversely, in your example, there may be allies that is near your targeted enemy. By having the skill execute at your target, you can stay targeted on the enemy you already have targeted and send him over to heal/cure allies nearby. If F2 for that skill only ever executed wherever the pet currently is, the only way you could accomplish this is to send him to your target with the attack command, then wait until he got to your target before firing off the skill. It is much simpler to have him run up to your current target and execute the skill when he is in range. Since it is a PBAoE (Point Blank Area of Effect) skill, it is not saying heal or cure the enemy but, rather, heal or cure allies near this target.

Frankly, I wish the wolf’s F2 ability (a Howl that causes an AoE fear) would work consistently that way, which is the way it works in most games. Executing the skill is saying to go execute it at that target. Unfortunately, he will frequently only run a few steps then howl well out of range of the target or, worse, howl then run. I assume this is the dreaded obstructed bug making it think it is as close to the target as it can get. But sometimes it works the way you would expect and sometimes it does not.

I have had this problem as well. I usually see it when I am viewing a thread when not logged in (the buttons don’t show up then as they shouldn’t), then login to make a reply. Often, when doing that, the buttons do not appear. To get around this, I will generally move back to the forum front page, login, then clear my cache, then go to the page I want to comment on or edit. Often, the buttons will show up then.

Sometimes, as just happened for this reply, it doesn’t work, and clearing the cache again and refreshing the page will, as it did in this instance.

Rhyse.8176:

Juvenile Delinquent

We have a winner!

My wolf’s name is Bob. I don’t know why. Whenever I play a pet class, one of my pets gets named Bob.

My spiders get named either Legs or Gams.

My armor fish is named Aquarium, because he is a fish tank.

Indoles.1467:

I call my spiders “Charles”, wolves “Jeffrey”, bears “Toby”, and raven “Poe” in PvE. In PvP I replace “Juvenile” with “Champion” or “Veteran”. From what I’ve seen, veteran gets the best response. Enemy players tend to attack it much less.

I don’t know how sPvP handles it, but in WvW, your pet’s name wouldn’t have any effect. WvW doesn’t display the player or pet name. In the case of pets, you just see the server’s name, whether or not they are an invader or defender (based on the map), and the word “beast.”

I fully agree about towers and keeps. It is utterly ridiculous that a reinforced, walled fortress can be breeched in mere minutes by a force that doesn’t even bother putting up siege. I disagree with the supply camps point, however. Supply camps are open with minimal defenses. They are supposed to be hard to defend. And if people choose not to defend them, that is a poor strategy, not a flaw in the game mechanics.

The problem with supply camps is not that they are easy to take but, rather, that you get rewarded for taking them even if you have no intention of retaining them. It is a poorly thought out mechanic that allows a server to hold a supply camp for the majority of the time while allowing another server to get the points tally credit for it simply because they rushed in just before the points tally and flipped it with no intention of defending or keeping it. The point of taking a supply camp should be that it starves the enemy of resources, making it harder to upgrade or defend a tower or keep, not to artificially boost the points tally just because you took it at a specific time.

The problem is that the whole tally system is built on the idea that they are only crediting for possession of an asset at specific intervals rather than basing it on actual time of possession, and I don’t know how they can change that without gutting the whole system. Personally, I would just remove the credit for supply camps from the points tally altogether or make their points contribution fairly insignificant. They are too easily flipped, which encourages the tactic of flipping them just for the points tally rather than for strategic purposes. The point of them should only be that possessing them makes taking the real assets (towers and keeps) easier or harder. There is no reason to count them in the points tally. Alternatively, put a time of possession timer on them, and give a percentage of the potential points for that asset based on percentage of time possessed since the last points tally.

That a guild should get rewarded for simply claiming a WvW asset doesn’t work for me. Should a guild get rewarded for claiming an asset that someone outside their guild upgrades and defends? If the only point of defending or upgrading an asset is the event rewards, why should I, as a member of another guild, upgrade or defend some other guild’s claimed asset? An asset that is well behind your own lands and is fully upgraded is less likely to be attacked or taken than one on the front lines. Why should a guild be able to claim an asset early on and reap possibly unbroken rewards from that asset while guilds claiming assets on the front lines are constantly having to retake disputed assets and continue to spend time and resources re-upgrading them?

This is the wrong solution.

BillyGoatsGruff.4695:

well you are supposed to be able to right click on the icon of the commander on the mini map or when you click on them and join their squad

If I am not mistaken, it works on Left Click, not Right Click. You click on the squad commander’s icon on the map, and it gives you an option to join the squad. Click on it, and you become a member of that commander’s squad.

“Useless.” You keep using that word, but I don’t think it means what you think it means.

Pets are not as useful as they should be, but they are far from useless. My wolf’s howl has saved me during a downed state or prevented me from being downed, giving me just enough time to finish rallying and/or to escape, and even when it doesn’t it is funny to see a well timed interrupt (#2) stop five people right as they are trying to complete a “Finish Him” on me, followed by them running off from a howl induced fear right as they try to complete another. I once prevented four or five enemies from completing a “Finish Him” move three times because of my wolf. My pet has also gotten me up from a downed state allowing me to finish off a downed opponent I was fighting who fell at the same time or gotten me up on a wall when no one was able to get to me.

My wolf’s howl has also feared one or more people trying to down or finish off a team mate, allowing me or my fellow team mates time to intervene. And when it hasn’t, it at least slows and frustrates their efforts. My spiders have rooted people and my wolf/dogs have knocked them down, allowing me or my team mates to catchup with and kill them. Conversely, they have rooted, knocked down, or feared opponents chasing me or a team mate allowing us to get away.

My Armor Fish’s stun has achieved similar results underwater, stunning a fleeing opponent or one chasing me.

I have knocked out or helped knock out siege out in the open even though it was protected just using just my pets while I stood safely out of weapons range. Again, the wolf’s howl is very useful in this regard as is the Jaguar’s stealth.

Just last night, we took a tower, and one of the enemy jumped off the wall and ran. I sent my pet after her without bothering to chase her myself. He followed her, returning only when she got so far out of range that I could no longer see her any more. By having a pet nipping at a fleeing player’s heels like that, they cannot be sure if others are not far behind, which can keep them running so they cannot stay and spy just outside of pursuit range.

Pets are useful for that kind of harrassment and just generally wasting the enemy’s time. Sending a pet out after that lone enemy standing in the distance trying to decide what to do can often convince him to vacate the area. Sending a pet after an emeny with low health behind enemy lines during a back and forth skirmish-type battle can either down that player or force him or her further behind the lines. If nothing else, if the enemy is busy shooting your pet, they are not busy shooting at you or one of your team mates. It is also very satisfying to see a whole lot of them trying to kill your pet, only to recall it before they can do so. Even just sending your wolf in to howl and make them scatter for a few seconds then recalling him holds a certain amount of satisfaction because it conveys the message that you can affect them and they cannot touch you in that circumstance.

Even without that, when used tactically, such as putting them on a target engaged with another player or NPC, they can do damage without taking much themselves. Ranged pets are very survivable in this usage, and the spiders drop a poison field which can increase your DPS via combos.

Now, granted, if all you do is let fight until they are killed, they won’t survive long, but a correctly timed recall or swap can certainly extend your pet’s life and usefulness.

These are just some ways in which pets are useful in WvW, and, for the record, I am not even spec’ed more than 5 or 10 points into pets, by the way. Yes, pets need some serious buffing to make them more useful in WvW and PvP in general, but to say that they are useless is simply factually incorrect.

Phantom.8130:

if someone’s been trebbing a wall to broken + repairs, they deserve a gold. they’ve put in more time and effort than the zerg who runs in to get the easy win.

Wait. Are you actually arguing with a straight face that people sitting on a treb doing nothing more than pressing 2 over and over are putting in more time and effort than those who keep the enemy away from you so you can press 2 over and over again? They are putting in less time and effort than you rushing out to destroy counter siege that is firing back at you? And they are putting in less effort rushing through the break in the wall/gate, often against strong opposition and risking repair costs? Likewise, did you run and get all the suppply for the Treb itself, or did some of those who just walked in and took credit for all your work have to make supply runs to build the Treb?

I am all for everyone who actively participates in an assault, whether it be at the keep itself or by operating siege, get credit for the siege. However, to suggest that people who actively protect that siege equipment and actually rush the castle are somehow just leeching off the hard work of turning a Treb in the right direction then pressing 2 over and over again is just utter nonsense.

I have to agree with the no votes. Starting it on Sunday night would mean that people who have to work (or go to school, etc.) on Monday, which makes up the majority of players, would have to choose between getting enough sleep to meet their real life obligations or staying up and help estabish a server’s position at one of the most critical points of the match. That is hardly more beneficial that having to wait a couple of hours to get into the start of the match.

Worse, let us say they did the reset at 4 PM PST Sunday (not even Sunday night). That is 7 PM on the West Coast of the U.S., but it is midnight in London, and 1 to 2 AM in much of the Europe. Worse, it is already 8 AM Monday morning in Tokyo, Soeul, and Western Austrailia. That also makes it is 10 AM in Eastern Australia and even noon in New Zealand.

So basically, because some of us cannot get in at the moment the matches start and may have to wait a couple of hours to get in, those in England and the rest of Europe, and especially those in the Pacific Rim should be screwed completely. I don’t see that as a good alternative.

All of you jumping all over capnflummox for pointing out that it is not a bug and trying to argue that it is are simply wrong. ANet has specifically stated that this behavior is by design. In other words, it is working as intended. So you can argue all you want about how it is a poor design decision, and I would agree with you on that, but you simply are wrong claiming that it is a bug. Even if it were not, it is fairly obvious that it is working as intended.

The problem is in your assumption that you are naming your pet when you change its name on the pet interface. That is not what is happening. First, if you look at how the system is designed, you likely don’t even acually have an inventory of pets. In other words, pets are not like companions in a game like SW:TOR where each pet has a record in the database which has its own weapons, armor, etc. Rather, if you look at the pet interface when you go to slot an existing pet, all you are given is a list of all the possible pets you can have, with the ones you haven’t tamed greyed out.

That almost certainly means that there is no record for each pet you own, only a flag on the list of possible pets you can tame showing whether or not you tamed that particular type. That also means that when you slot one of those pets, you are not slotting a specific pet you have been working with, but a generic copy of that species of pet. In other words, it is not that the system has a bug in which it forgets to save the pet name. There simply is no place to save it because you aren’t actually recalling the actual pet (object) you tamed.

In other words, when you name your pet, you are not actually naming that pet. You are simply changing the display name attribute of the pet slot in the pet interface. That name displays over the pet in the game world, but it is still the name of the slot he is in, not his actual name. When you tame a new pet, you can see this in action.

If you choose the option to go ahead and make the newly tamed pet your active pet, what happens? In my experience, it usually replaces the old pet with the new one, but it also retains the old pet’s “name.” Why? Because it was the slot that was named, not the pet itself, and the code to slot the new pet’s attributes does not bother changing the name of the slot, so the pet retains the same name as the previously slotted pet. That is, if the pet object itself had a name attribute, that wouldn’t happen, but the name is the slot display name, not the name of the pet itself.

If, by contrast, you don’t choose to slot the new pet at that time, but, rather, slot it later manually, what happens? The slot name attribute does change. Why? Because the code that loads the slot with the new pet simply grabs the generic attributes from the pet table for that species and changes all the fields for that slot, including naming the slot with the generic pet name for that type of pet.

This is no bug. It is a design decision by ANet. You can argue all you want, and I would agree with you, that it is a bad design decision because it forces us to have to rename pets when we swap them. However, capnflummox was correct. It is not a bug because it is working exactly as intended, and ANet has confirmed this. Those of you who are arguing that it is a bug are simply incorrect.

musaflex.9176:

I was about to reply with basically the same thing nornh said.

But just to add. Every gate your server owns has a green teleport right next to it, if you are able to repair the gate its because the invaders haven’t taken the the keep/tower yet which means you can use that green portal.

The next time you repair a gate with the enemy inside simply run to the portal right next to the door you just repaired and you will be on the other side of the wall facing possibly a few invaders trying to reinforce their team(but can’t because you blocked them) rather than the 20 some invaders inside your very own keep/tower.

This, except, for the color part. The color of the portal next to the gate will be green, blue, or red, depending on which server owns the asset in question. If the green server owns the keep/tower, then the portal will indeed be green. If the blue server owns it, then it will be blue, and so on. Until the keep/tower changes hands, the portal will remain the color of the server that owns it, and that server’s players can enter the keep/tower through that portal regardless of the status of a wall or door that was breached. Once it changes hands, the color of the portal will change to the new owner’s color and only that server’s players can enter through it.

In other words, repairing a breach in a wall or gate doesn’t prevent your server from getting in unless you don’t own the asset to begin with, which means you couldn’t repair the gap to begin with. Even if possession of the asset changes right after you repair it, it doesn’t matter since the walls and gates are repaired automatically once possession changes.

Thus, repairing a breach is not a boneheaded move because it eliminates a way (usually the only way) an opposing team can get more attackers inside while not preventing your team from reinforcing. There are only two caveats that I can think of.

First, if you repair a breach in a wall and your reinforcements are at that gap, repairing the gap means that they will have to go through the portal door. For gates, this is not usually an issue since the portal door is almost always right next to the gate. However, if the breach in the wall is on the other side of the tower/keep from that portal door, then you may end up forcing your reinforcements to run around to the other side of the tower/keep, costing precious seconds. On the other hand, this still does prevent more enemies from entering, so it is a judgment call given the situation at the time.

Second, the only other caveat I can think of would be a fluke. If closing that gap meant that invaders trying to escape could no longer do so through that gap, you might force them to turn and fight. It is, therefore, possible that closing the gap could turn a rout into a loss, but that is highly unlikely, and the far more likely scenario is that, by leaving the gap open, you allow enemy reinforcements to change a rout into a loss.

Closing a gap is almost always a preferred strategy if you can do it, even the attackers continue to pound the breach and reopen it. It prevents more enemies from getting in, which in itself is never a bad strategy.

I am 100% against this idea. Here is why.

First, it is already hard enough to get the average player to run to a supply camp only a short jog away in strongly held territory to build siege rather than take it from the tower supply needed to upgrade the tower. Honestly, do you really think any fortified position would have a chance of actually having supply if it had to depend on players making supply runs?

More importantly, however, I think you are missing the whole point of Dolyaks being interdictable. As pointed out, a small team, or even one person, can kill a Dolyak, meaning supply can be interdicted even if you are greatly outnumberd. By contrast, a server with a large numerical advantage doesn’t have to bother killing Dolyaks. They can just take and keep a supply camp. No supply camp, no Dolyaks at all, so why bother interdicting one at a time if you have a large presence? This mechanic actually helps balance numerical disadvantages in that a smaller presence can still disrupt supply and can force larger forces to have to protect supply routes, not just face-roll supply camps as soon as they are taken.

Additionally if players can carry supply (assuming you can actually get them to), a large force that has a numerical advantage can easily run groups of players to deliver supply, daring a smaller force to try and stop them. Not so for a smaller force. If you can get players to make supply runs to start with, they will have to face zergs looking for player kills who would only bother interdicting a yak if they happened to be near it.

So, no thanks. All this would do is further the supply problems in the game, especially for servers who are outnumbered, making it that much tougher for those who are already behind to catch back up.

Kasama,

You provided a nice piece of historical context, but unfortunately for the point that you are trying to make, that “ranger” came from Roger’s Rangers (who used rifles), the term “ranger” predates the French-Indian War by about 400 years.

ranger :

late 14c., “gamekeeper,” from range (n.)). Attested from 1660s in sense of “man (often mounted) who polices an area.” Modern military sense of “member of an elite U.S. combat unit” is attested from 1942 (organized 1941).

“ranger.” Online Etymology Dictionary. Douglas Harper, Historian. 10 Oct. 2012. <Dictionary.com http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ranger>;.

(You may want to edit your post, btw, as you have a typo that moved the French-Indian War to 1955. )

As to the rest, what happened in the French-Indian War, WWII, or any other more modern setting is irrelevant to the game. The context of “ranger” is dependent on the time period the game is set in, not a more modern context. Likewise, the game’s use of the term is dependent on the lore of the game, not the lore of more modern wars.

In the fantasy time setting the game is in, it is perfectly reasonable that there would be a nature oriented profession that eschews firearms. The lore of the game enforces this idea, as someone else indicated.

As to the idea that everyone has a right to an opinion and that, if enough people want something it can be added, I have two comments.

First, everyone has a right to an opinion, but that does not make every opinion right. As such, like it or not, people who disagree with you have the right to tell you that your opinion is wrong, even if you have a right to it. That is all the OP is doing, showing why he thinks your opinion is wrong, just like your attempt to provide a counter argument is saying his opinion is wrong.

Second, no, just because a bunch of people want something added to the game does not justify it being added. When you buy the game, you are buying a right to play the game, not a right to have a say in its development. Developers may be wise to listen to what players want, but 10 years experience playing MMOs tells me that the last thing I want is to play a game that gives player opinions as to what should and should not be in a game undue weight. The resulting Rube Goldberg monstrosity would likely collapse in on itself creating a black hole so massive that all MMOs, if not the universe itself, would be in peril.

Levetty.1279:

Then the change was intended as a nerf to the attack speed of the bow and they should have put that in the notes.

But that also leaves us with the problem that they intended the shortbow to be as mediocre as all our other weapons. So what exactly is Ranger supposed to do? I swear if they had made it so that Shortbow hurts yourself with every shot some people would be defending this horrible patch.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Game_updates:

Crossfire: Increased casting time by 40 milliseconds. This was done to fix some glitches in the animation that caused problems with this skill.

First, as far as I have seen and according to the patch note, Crossfire is the only attack the shortbow uses that was changed. Since Crossfire is only one of five skills the shortbow has, changing that one skill does not remotely equate to a “nerf to the attack speed of the bow.” It amounts to a change to the attack speed of that one skill. In other words, they did not say they were changing the attack speed of the bow because they were not changing the attack speed of the bow.

Second, what is there about specifically stating that they have increased the “casting time” of that skill that does not communicate to you that they have changed the attack speed of that shot? The only distortion of the truth I see here is coming people, such as yourself, who are reacting emotionally and jumping to conclusions based on what they want to happen rather than what has actually been said.

Finally, I specifically stated that I did not like the change. I further stated that I expect that the change they made resulted in an unintended additional decrease in the attack speed of that shot. That means I expect them to verify that the shot is not working as intended and that they will fix it in a future patch. What is there about that position that remotely suggests that I am “defending this horrible patch.”

(Edit) Since posting this, I note that they have replied before I got to that. They said that they confirmed through testing that the 40ms change is working as intended. That is disappointing as I believe that this is resulting in an overall decrease in the effectiveness of that weapon beyond what they intend.

However, they further stated in that post that they are continuing to monitor the output of the weapon and that they may make addtional changes. Those changes could be to increase the per shot damage of Crossfire, or, more likely, increase the effectiveness of another shot or shots (i.e., change their cast times, cooldowns or damage per shot).

Either way, the point I was making is that they have not once lied about this. They have been forthright and honest about what they are doing. Just because you and I disagree with the change, doesn’t mean that you have the right to accuse them of lying or distorting the truth.