Guild Wars 2

T3 is pretty dead compared to T2 and T1. Just see what happened when FA switched places with Dragonbrand for a week: http://mos.millenium.org/servers/view/39/229

If you’re looking for a stable WvW future, T1 and T2 are your best bets.

The current T2 match is very close each week, making it a very interesting place to be. On SoS there’s stuff happening in each timezone, but queues are not really an issue – they rarely pop outside of NA. We have a large amount of fight guilds and GvGs happening in T2 as well.

Finally, some of the guilds that used to be on DR are on SoS now. Perhaps you can join your old friends?

Over the last four months SoS has had numerous guilds join us after being refunded only one scout and nothing more. The fact that these guilds funded all their other members themselves must be a sign of how they enjoy what SoS has to offer.

If you’re looking for something new, send a scout as they did and see what your new home is like.

SoS has a lot to offer for everyone.

There’s a mix of PPT players and those who only (or mostly) pursue fights or GvGs. Whatever it is you’re looking for SoS has it.

What would be interesting is if we could ditch the concept of servers altogether. For PvE and PvP, your server does not really matter anyway. So we’re primarily looking at WvW.

I know this is purely hypothetical, but imagine the following:

• There are no more separate servers.
• Guilds can form alliances.
• Alliances can assign other alliances as allies and rivals.
• ‘Signatures’ are calculated for WvW activity of guilds/alliances.
• Matchmaking is done by spreading the alliances out as evenly as possible, topped off by the guildless players and allianceless guilds. For guildless players they should be grouped with as many friends as possible.

This would create more varied matches, and more equal matches. Assuming most current servers form an alliance with their current guilds, you still keep some server pride going.

Alternatively, for the sake of simplicity, skip the alliances part and just have guilds assign others as allied/rivals.

Thanks for reading.

My guild and I recently decided to move servers – we’re switching from Sea of Sorrows to Jade Quarry.
Each of us got their 1800 gems in their wallets, and we’ve been waiting impatiently for the moment that JQ would drop below full status.

However, it seems that just now the transfer fees increased. Transferring to a ‘very high’ population server now seems to cost 2400 gems, which means that we’re back to square one.

Why wasn’t this change in transfer costs announced, like they previously have been?

Hey there everyone.

There’s a new weekly show on YouTube, the WvW Recap. It’s a weekly summary of all WvW related changes and news.

Below you’ll find a link to the pilot episode. I’m trying to get new episodes out every Sunday morning (for American timezones).
As this is a pilot, it’s still very much testing the waters. Leave feedback and help me turn this into a show you all enjoy.

The first episode can be found here.

Cheers,

Keen

Dhampyr.2104:

Two thumbs up, dude. You made my entire day. Totally wasn’t expecting a quaggen to greet me. Plus, it figures that you’re a CNB guy – are you originally from Kaineng as well? Original T8 Kaineng here. :-)

There’s actually a lot of the old Kaineng WvW crew on SoS now – Rx, CNB and KA (a different KA than SoS’ current KA) all ended up there, transferring in that order in the weeks leading up to leagues.

I’d like to coin “Fort Purchasewood,” in case it ever becomes relevant.

FA, Good fun in SoS Bay at roughly 3:20pm PST/Servertime.
The sheer amount of ACs you had definitely made me think twice before going balls-deep and just making the best out of it, which luckily turned out to be successful.

Just jumping in here to share my personal experiences.

My guild, [City], transferred to SoS a week before the league started. We were looking for a ‘drama-free zone,’ a good community and good fights. We also had two friendly guilds here, which promised we’d fit in well.

SoS more than delivered. Regardless of the matches the gold league brings us, players show up and give it their all. Players are realistic in their expectations, keeping morale high, and different guilds get to play how they want. For example, we only get friendly laughs when running our weekly lowby-night.

Altogether we’re having a blast, and my guild members all seem happy about the move too.

Regardless of how stacked your opponents may be, regardless if they buy guilds and regardless of previous matches, you have to play with the cards you’ve been dealt – the alternative? Don’t play at all. Either sit it out or go in and do what you can, but complaining on here won’t get you anywhere.

Actively recruiting guilds to join your server might not be “true sportsmanship”, but sportsmanship usually doesn’t get you to the top anyway. Looking for the boundaries does.
As long as you can keep all noses pointing in the same direction it’s an effective way to win – and if you can’t, well, Kaineng would be a good example. The choice is theirs, and if being #1 is their primary goal they seem to be doing a pretty good job at it.

Had a great time playing tonight. Commanded the SoS militia, playing for our northern half, which went pretty well. SoR practically had no presence so we could focus our attention on BG. I saw Bay go green twice, but nothing else really.

I’ll admit we got a bit overexcited when trying to retake our BL’s hills from BG, that was not pretty when the waypoint opened, but we had a good time overall. Wiping you between garri and NW tower (after you fell for [Rx]’s bait – thanks guys) was a satisfying conclusion of my run.

This was all on SoS BL from about 10:30pm to 1am PST/servertime.

Thanks for the fights BG (but please stop hugging our dolys to death).

As it stands now, fixing population imbalances isn’t going to happen. Therefore, we need to look to something else.

Instead of tinkering with population, we can tinker with the PPT objectives offer. Taking something from the #1 in a match should yield more points than something you take from the #3. Also, this effect must be stronger when the #1 is very far ahead, but as weak as possible when the match is fairly equal.

I suggest adding a factor to the PPT for objectives on enemy borderlands based on the current scores of a match.
For example:

World A has 180k points,
World B has 150k points,
World C has 120k points.
The total amount of points is 450k, so the average is 150k.

Now we divide each world’s points by the average to get a factor:
Objectives in A’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 180k/150k = 1.2x regular PPT
Objectives in B’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 150k/150k = 1.0x regular PPT
Objectives in C’s BL and in their EB corner should be worth 120k/150k = 0.8x regular PPT

We do still have a problem: each world will hold their own BL and EB corner most of the time, so this would be very beneficial to #1 while hurting #3. Therefore, your own borderland and EB corner should always be regular PPT. Only when taking an objective in enemy territory (their BL or EB corner) this factor should come into play.

This means that (with the example above) A gets 1x PPT on A’s BL and C gets 1x PPT on C’s BL.
But A only gets 0.8x PPT in C’s BL while C gets 1.2x PPT in A’s BL.

Because we base the factor on the difference in scores, the effect will get stronger as the match is more lopsided, giving #2 and #3 in a match more incentive to fight for #1’s territory and makes it easier to catch up. If the match is balanced, the effect of this will become very limited (because the factors will be roughly 1.0) so it barely affects the match anymore, keeping things fair.

It will also put more emphasis on defending your home territory when you’re getting ahead in points, and more on offensive play when you’re falling behind. I think it can make some very interesting changes in tactics and strategical meta. For example, you can choose to trade a tower on your home BL for a tower on another server’s BL, because the latter is worth more points overall.

There might still be some problems with this, as I came up with it only just now, but I think it has a lot of potential. If you see a problem, please do raise your concerns and possibly solutions if you think of one.

Just stopping by to wish my few remaining comrades ([Ai], [NIIX], etc. You know who you are.) on Kaineng all the best. It’s good that you got Bronze.

1) Bug-fixes and polish
2) Commander system
3) Scoring system (alternatives to / variations on PPT, to compensate for coverage gaps on t3-8)

Mirsa.1628:

SBI, learn to make troll guilds. This is a pretty sad attempt.

They should learn from this individual. (Screenshot from Kaineng.)

Aside from this little bit of PvF, I’m really enjoying this match-up a lot. There’s always something to do – karmatrain or fighting against the odds. I like both, this match lets me alternate between them at will.

Hexen.2930:

Luthan.5236:

Awesome. With these amount of trebuchets you can kill a lot of enemies. Great for defense. This is not griefing. I mean the guy still needed to buy blueprints and he is free to do with them what he wants. If you want him to stop take supplies first so he can’t use them and keep the supplies at 0 all the time.

are you kittening serious?!

No, he’s not.

When reporting players like this the response tends to be that players are free to how they play, they might just be trying to build defenses but don’t know too much about tactical siege placement , etc. He tied in that stuff to a sarcastic/cynical reply, which I think many readers will appreciate.

Thanks a lot for this. I’ll admit I was getting bitter about the potential future of GvG, but this has swayed my opinion for the better.

Wanderer.3248:

Kain wipes whenever they encounter half their numbers.

Good thing they have more than the other two servers put together. They do OK if they all run around in one big blob.

Seriously, some of your wipes have been the most fail-tastic I have ever seen in Guild Wars. Ever.

Because why keep things civil if we can bash and generalize another server, right?

Ostra.3927:

There is only one commander on KN that brings that many of the fairweathers together.

You are looking at the Prince zerg!

Thanks for forgetting about, you know, your guild leader! v.v
Pulled a queue in EB today, commanded from 9:30 to 17:30 my time (0:30 to 8:30 server) and had over 70 people in the zerg before switching maps.

Kaineng has players. We just lack commanders in certain timeslots.

Moon.6371:

Do we really need new GvG threads every few days were content is nothing but GvGers telling the world how special they are?

You guys must have very few things in live that make you feel important, if you need a new thread every few days with walls of text basically stating all the same. Please, next guy with the brilliant idea to open a thread to “inform” the world how unloved, unwanted and unrecognized you as a GvGer feel , please just dont do it.

It gets old, ladies… are you really that desperate for drama?

I`ve watched that Anet interference GvG vid and the only really sad drama to me is the friggin terribad PvP play I`ve had to watch. I had the feeling these guys had too few computer periphals at hand and one half of the crew was using mice only, while the other one was making first steps at their keyboard while using no mice at all.

Please GvG community, spend less timing whining and arguing, that time would be much better spend by actually learning to play. You know, good players usually don`t have to prove anything or to “inform” their communities that they are any good.

And yeah, call me guildless pug, PvE casual or whatever you want. I guess it`s easier that way for you guys.

I prefer not to resort to personal attacks.

There’s a lot more to GvG than meets the eye. Of course there are some bad guilds giving GvG a try, but there’s also a lot of very good ones. I can watch the same GvG from a guild like Everything Purple, VII or Second Law over and over again and recognize new patterns and things going on every time.

There’s a lot of factors involved like synchronized damaged, periphery play (backline/free castings) and counters to it (thiefs, rifle warriors), and of course a lot of tactics like faking veils, to waste their cooldowns, focusing leaders to disorganize the enemy and more. All of these come back in regular WvW combat one way or another.

I’m not saying guilds participating in GvG are per definition better than those who don’t. However, practice makes perfect, and GvG allows you to practice extremely well.

Here’s a couple of videos of GvG guilds playing regular WvW:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ODMDRLsglb4
Second Law

Good Fights

Now you can call this “terribad PvP” as much as you want, but fact is that in both videos a GvG guild takes out an enemy zerg significantly larger than their own group. They must be doing something better than their enemies to wipe them like that.

All GvG guilds ask for is a way to compare their skill. For that they need a leveled playing ground. The area below south camp is as much out of the way as possible, and any player – whether it’s a PPT player, a roamer, someone doing map completion or someone who’s afk – has the same right to a que spot as any other.

However, it seems like everything is being done to take that away from them. It hurts when you’re just trying to have fun with like-minded players and changes to the game make that much harder.

I agree that some members of the GvG community are going way overboard. But that’s a vocal minority. The rest of the community just wants to have even fights every now and then to see where they stand compared to other guilds.

selan.8354:

also one thing that has always bothered me…why on earth is the lord in smc standing at the bottom and not on the top level?o.0 it would make smc way harder to take if he was on top.

He used to be at the top, but could be killed with a treb there. So they moved him down. That’s also when SMC became 35 instead of 50 ppt.

More tiers would help, but also some more unique ones. “Capture a [camp/tower/keep/SMC] without being damaged”, “Kill x players by using siege weapons”, “Destroy x pieces of enemy siege weapons”, “Knock X enemies off siege they are manning”, “Destroy enemy siege with a cannon, mortar or burning oil”, and so forth. There’s a lot of options there completely unexplored.

If you ask me, what WvW mostly needs is a lot of different QOL changes.

Imagine you’re assaulting the Hills keep with an enemy waypoint in there. You breached outer and inner, but the enemies are holding the chokepoint. Every +-3 minutes, when the “repel the enemy attackers” event (for the defenders) hits 0 all their dead players and reinforcements from other maps can mass waypoint in there. And unless there’s an attacker that keeps hitting a closed gate, the waypoint will even stay open.

The Tutorial for WvW is missing any notion at all about the Bloodlust buff. The information is also presented in the wrong way – the stuff the voice tells is much less important than what the small popups show, but most people focus on listening instead. And choosing the menu options for advanced questions? There’s a placeholder saying the NPC needs to wait for “the battle plans to arrive”. It also doesn’t explain anything about the different maps, the unconquerable spawn points and other things a beginner should know.

Adding a ‘Private’ option for the Commander Tag would also allow guild groups to use the targeting system for what it was actually designed for instead of it being a ‘ghetto commander tag’. It will encourage more groups to run individually instead of all zerging up.

Having some more achievements for WvW would be a welcome change as well. If WvW players want to get the achievement chests at any decent rate, they are forced to do PvE / living story for it. +-5-7 points from the daily just doesn’t cut it compared to how much you get in PvE. It doesn’t even have to be all the way up there, but an increase would definitely make me happy. I think this also falls under the ‘more rewarding’ header. (I don’t want WvW to be the MOST rewarding at all. I just want to make it more viable to leave PvE completely.)

The new change keeping WvW open while a new patch is about to land is a great improvement. THAT is the stuff I want to see, and many others with me.

Snavenhoj.9125:

Do you guys over at Kain not sleep or something? All the 4 battlefields are green…

We have a relatively large oceanic presence for this tier. So yea, we do sleep, but our night crew will be like this for most of the week.

Miguel.2653:

Gerby.6219:

LilMcGinley.3890:

AydenStar.4216:

LilMcGinley.3890:

You should talk to the mesmer from [EP] and tell him he/she is just there for Veil and Time warp.. see how that goes over.

LOL, its like asking me what a Ranger brings to a zerg, I’ll chew your ear off but I know what our limits are compared to our professions. Its the truth, what is the point of the Mesmer in a GvG other than Veil or Timewarp? A GvG group will only need one Mesmer, hell a zerg of 40+ only really need one/two Mesmers. I play a Mesmer and I understand there group mechanics and the are very limited and pigeonhole to a few gimmicky skills in WvW large group play.

Like I said go talk to them. That mesmer helped [EP] destroy casters during the fights I watched. they aren’t there for “just veil and timewarp”…

After just facing EP, thinking a mesmer is JUST there for the veil and timewarp is silly. They are there for many other reasons. From an outsiders pov GvGing might be a waste of time and might not contribute as much as other players looking to “increase/hold PPT”. The truth is that most GvG guilds play wvw to kill other players rather than sitting in towers because playing the PPT game burns people out. I mean who wouldn’t want that feeling of accomplishment when you wipe a 60 man zerg with 20 people?

I’d like to see a video of 20 people wiping that 60 zergs, could u link 1 please?

First result for “gw2 wvw zerg bust”:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsxhITzz39o&t=2m36s for instant action,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RsxhITzz39o for the full video.

There’s a lot of generalizations in this thread, coming from both sides of the argument. I personally have been following the GvG scene for a while now because I want to get started with them soon, and I feel like the real issue isn’t being touched here.

From what I’ve seen the GvG scene is a tight-knit, ambitious community that has to make the best out of a bad situation. With the lack of official support they searched for a sort of middle ground (by having the fights out of the way of ‘regular’ WvW, below south camp) but still has to deal with hits from the outside regularly (like the new buffs on the borderlands or people jumping in matches). There are people who put a lot of effort into making this work in a way that’s best for everyone, but keep facing new resistance after every step they make.

First of all, many of those who’re against GvGs seem to forget why these guilds do it: GvGs are about comparing each guild’s skill under equal circumstances. Even with the unbalanced or ‘overpowered’ builds available in the game, both sides can use that keeping things fair. These guilds pushing the envelope to crush their rival is part of what pushes the meta and helps design completely new playstyles.

Then why not PvP? Well, not only does PvP limit your freedom in builds, but more importantly it limits size. Size is very important in GvG as an important aspect of your success comes from different group compositions and larger scale tactics. Some builds only become viable if you scale them to a group setting larger than tPvP’s 8v8.
Additionally, it allows for more freedom. For example, having a thief to suppress the enemy periphery (free casters, ‘backline’ etc) only costs you 5% of your players in a 20v20 but 12.5% in a 8v8. It only becomes viable after a certain point.

Another reason many of these guilds play GvG is because – for them – PPT has lost its meaning. Depending on your tier, PPT is determined more by coverage than your server’s skill or tactics. If you cap everything during NA, but your opponents caps +400-450 during Oceanics and holds it during Euro, you lose even if you had stupidly high PPT in the NA slot. Playing GvG lets them compare their guild’s own strength to others in a way that coverage does not affect. The server you’re on no longer matters.

Why is it okay for them to do this in the borderlands? Well, why not? These players paid for the game, just like you did. So they have the right to play it however they want, as long as they are not breaking the EULA.
Right now, the area beneath south camp has proven to be out of the way most of the time, while being easily accessible for both servers involved in the fights (if they pick the 3rd server’s map they both have a waypoint right next to it). For these logistical reasons it’s the best place. As explained above, WvW maps are the only options because of the size element, so finding a spot that’s out of the way like they did is the best compromise for everyone.

But what if there’s a queue? Well, that doesn’t really make a difference. There’s nothing saying that in WvW you’re obligated to play PPT. It’s encouraged, sure, but in the end you’re free to do as you please. We’ve seen Arenanet say multiple times that people should be free to play however they want, so if these players don’t want to play PPT that’s their fair right. They have the same right to a slot on a map as any other player on your server, and how they use it is up to them.
The same argument can arguably be used to say that other people can play how they want to, too, so should be able to jump into the GvG fights as they please, but I think that doesn’t hold up for a very simple reason: you can play ‘regular’ WvW somewhere else, but a GvG cannot be done somewhere else (without being even more cumbersome). It’s mostly a matter of respect to your fellow players: they host their fights somewhere out of the way, and in return they ask you to let them fight each other for an hour or two (out of a 160+ hour match).

Because really, a guild might fight one or two GvGs a week, but that’s it. Out of the total playtime during a match, that’s a very small amount. Let’s keep things in perspective.

So to go back and answer the OP: Why so much hostility against GvGs?
I think it’s simply because many people
- don’t understand how little impact it has on their server’s score,
- don’t understand why these players GvG in the first place,
- forget that everyone is free (encouraged even) to play the game how they want to.
- GvG created the illusion of hurtful to their own options. (Time spent in GvGs and impact on score is actually negligible).

The cool kids are being mean again? We still love you nyx <3.

HellsPriest.6745:

Let us not create drama. Let’s be honest here Kain, you guys know you can’t cough up what is takes to be in this match. It isn’t personal, nor an attack against you guys. However, until you guys get more guilds interested in WvW and overall just better tactics you aren’t gonna keep up. Just last night you guys had a zerg twice the size the one I was in, and you guys not only got crushed but your tactic(or failure to remain organized) was to split your zerg and start running in all directions leaving us to easily pick you guys out…. and this was on YOUR side of ebg.

Note: I’m sure if you want us to very badly, we can show you how we will take interest in fighting your side of things, and flip your entire borderlands if you’d like. However we try and stick to fighting CD as it is a bit more fun. Think about it, our focus isn’t even your server and you guys still can’t really keep up :/ (sorry but truth is truth)

Emphasis mine.

No need to get degrading here. You say it’s no attack, but I disagree. It seems you’re just trying to rub it in, which is bad sportsmanship – and I don’t appreciate that. Hence my reply.

You say we don’t belong in this match-up, while even with two more important guilds leaving us only days ago we’re holding up better than many other servers this week. In fact, our match-up here is the most even one after the standard T1 race.

We might not have a realistic chance to get up from our current third place, but we definitely bring good fights and keep you on your toes. Look at the number of shoutouts to CNB in this thread – that’s Kaineng, not YB or CD.

Secondly, even with our low numbers we pull our current results off. When we’re present, we are definitely competitive. Unfortunately that just doesn’t happen often enough with the low pool of players interested in WvW right now.

For kittens and giggles, look at our server’s history and you’ll see what we went through. Look at the very end of that curve. Even with all the guilds that have left us we have managed to stabilize. Instead of rubbing it in like you are now, applaud the Kaineng players that are still working hard and staying true to our server week after week, as it’s FINALLY paying off. These people could use a pat on the back, and get some more recognition for what they’ve done.

So to summarize, yes, we might not be competing for 1st place this week, but saying we’re lacking tactics is untrue and saying we’re not competitive is only true for our downtime. It’s a coverage issue and you know it. So yes, we need more guilds interested in WvW. That part’s true. But do you really feel like you needed to point that out for us? That we didn’t know that already? That’s why I think your post is degrading, and should not have been in this thread.

Especially if you open with “Let us not create drama.”

Valleria Darkmoon.4506:

My point is for me victory is fighting against horrifying odds and breaking even or better. Tower siege is boring, running around and finding quality fights is fun. Outnumber me if you must, what’s the worst that happens? I lose.

I applaud you for your mentality. Too many people seem to forget this is just a videogame.

To those [vT] guys, quite impressive how you run a 1-man frontline and a couple of backline players so well in such a small party size. Unfortunately my group got attracted to that tanky Juggernaught-wielding Charr too much to focus down the squishy casters behind, leading to a wipe on several occasions.

There’s a lot of criticism on WvW, and much of it is justified. While I still enjoy WvW, some parts of it just drive me made and leave the game mode broken.

Right now there’s talk about new maps or significant changes to them (“New orb system”), but also a lot of WvW related fixes and Quality of Life changes (guild commander tags/raid support, fixing issues like waypointing into assaulted keeps, etcetera).

Personally I’d prefer the QOL changes by a mile. On many servers there isn’t constant fighting on all maps, so there’s generally enough capacity for now with T1 being the only real exception to that (sorry T1. It’s nothing personal).

I just find it incredibly frustrating how I have to send someone to keep hitting a gate when assaulting a Hills keep with waypoint to keep it contested, how the circle’s visuals don’t show up for the sentry at South-East camp and how sentries can’t even kill a lone Dolyak on their own (IIRC they could in the past, making them an important part of upgrade logistics and havoc – now they’re just free WXP but nothing else).

I can wait for new content until those things are sorted out. I’m completely indifferent about the extra WvW abilities, while I’m eager to see things like the above resolved.

I was wondering – which of the two are you looking forward to the most? And why? Maybe this can give the WvW team the insights they need to make prioritizing their workload easier.

Craig.2403:

Had some great fights today. KA, you got some work to do if you want to fight Basic, cause we [TFI] wiped you 5v10, and we’re worse than BS by far. However, we all start somewhere, as you said, so keep fighting, you’ll get better.

We surely do – I won’t deny that. We’re still relatively young, but are seeing more and more consistency in our playstyle lately. The handful BS I have ran into so far weren’t much of a problem, but we haven’t gone up to a BS guild group during regular play yet.
That, combined with the fact that they were looking for small-scale fights, probably gave me the wrong impression of their abilities though. There’s nothing definitive planned yet, XOM and I are still in talks.

I’m just curious which fight you’re referring too though, as we’ve been mostly fighting outnumbered fights today at our disadvantage (with the exception of the occasional stragglers). Not saying it didn’t happen – I made some mistakes while leading tonight – but I just need someone to refresh my memory.

edit: on a side note, what time was it? Your message was posted about 4-5 hours ago (so 10PM PST ish), and we were kitten ing with Ajax for about an hour then 8.30 to 9.30). Anything before that we weren’t raiding but just playing moderately serious with those who were on, and after that shenanigans we started our more serious run up until about 1.30am PST.

Assuming you didn’t rush to the forum right after the fight, we have very well been messing around at the time.

You probably ran into Ajax Blue there. He was camping the ET spawn for a while there. Was that commander a ranger?

Xom.9264:

If any Kaineng guilds would like to do some GvG with a lowly T8 guild [BS] (basic) we would love the practice fighting strong higher tier guilds, anything from 2v2 up to 15 v 15 would be great.

Shoot a send ingame or mail on the forums.

Have a great week of WvW everyone.

Sent you a message. [KA] hasn’t done GvG before, but we gotta start somewhere!

Good fights on reset. It was a PITA to get bay back on our borderlands, which really set us back.

I understand if the current match gets a little discouraging for some of you, but I hope you keep in mind that you don’t have to win to get your ratings up (because of the difference in our servers’ ranks).

Unfortunate that the thread for such a fun match-up became such a whiny ordeal.

Nice comeback GoM, I didn’t like what I saw when I woke up this morning. We still have just over 5 hours for 2500 points. 500 points per hour or 125 PPT extra per tick is gonna be tough.

Some good fights at NW tower on KBL earlier today, but as you’ve seen I’m not just gonna let you take it (though admittedly you got awfully close).
It’s still funny many of you mention being outnumbered often though as it was 15 GOM versus 6 of us in there. Good fight regardless.

What I didn’t appreciate as much however was an YB roamer just being insulting. Look at the attachment. That’s a prime example of the opposite of sportsmanship.

After we killed him in a 2v2 turned 3v1 (because we got one extra and focused his friend to death) he joined my party only to insult us and leave it again.

Carol.6451:

Only one answer I can think of right now. Make your own personal guild and keep the gold in there. Wonder how much of that gold it would take to do that though?

5 gold and 1 silver, and 4 days build time.

1 silver for creating the guild.
5 gold for 2500 influence.
500 influence for Architecture I. (16 hours build time.)
1000 influence for Architecture II. ( 32 hours build time.)
1000 influence for Guild Stash. (48 hours build time.)

I really want to be able to deposit cash too, but creating a guild is no option for me because I’m already guild leader. The best way would still be if depositing gold were possible, or “hiding” gold from the wallet.

Edit: Before people tell me to get the treasure trove, we already use that.

As I was playing with the new Finishers tab, I imagined it would be cool if we could have a guild banner finisher.

I’d like to be able to spike my pvp kills with a banner displaying our emblem.

Make it free for anyone who’s in a guild with an emblem, or maybe have them buy it for 2 commendations + a few gold. I don’t care, as long as it’s reasonable and requires no PvE play to unlock (it’s a PvP finisher after all).

What do you think?

TeamBattleAxe.3901:

Kaineng also appears to be downright terrified of Yak’s Bend. So factor in the fact that we have to sacrifice a good portion of our offense to play non-stop defense against the 2nd place server, meanwhile the 1st place server gets a free pass on keeping most of their borderlands fully upgraded all week.

We seem to be winning most of our head-to-head clashes, though, and we’re able to nab top PPT occasionally during peak times, so I’d say we’re doing quite alright. If blue would start playing smart, the scoring would be a lot tighter and they’d actually have a shot at winning the week.

It’s different. If I have 10-15 rallians on me, of which I have may be 5 on Teamspeak, I’m going for GoM. To take today for an example: we held all your towers, garrison and hills at the same time.
Props to the defenders at bay, but we eventually got that too. I had sent scouts to YB BL and GoM BL just before we started on your hills, and the reports made the choice easy.

Just look at how later, when we did have bay but lost your garrison again, we went in again with the three omegas. Even after repeated calls they didn’t aim for your ACs but instead targeted the warrior that rushed outside, giving you all the time in the world to build siege at your inner gate. That was terrible execution on our part, and was also one of the reasons why I didn’t bring that group to YB.

Additionally your havoc groups keep showing up on our map. Taking a tower or two (or four) on your borderlands usually gets them to switch back. And because switching maps often costs a lot of players, we just stay and take whatever else is up for grabs. Operation “Low Hanging Fruit” commences and we stick around for a while focusing on you instead of YB.

I’m not saying GoM is bad. If you were, the score wouldn’t be as close as it is. However you definitely are an easier target to get our PPT up and remain in second place. Additionally, I think some of the decisions you’re making don’t work out in your favor.

Yaks focuses on us a lot to keep us from catching up – which makes sense, the server in 2nd place is the biggest threat for the one in 1st place. At the same time you’re hitting us to try to overtake us. So we’re stuck in an endless 2v1 (like WvW is supposed to) – we’re the most interesting target for both servers. If you have to retake your BL that gives us some breathing room to push YB back again.

Yak’s Bend, I can’t say I expected this shenanigans on any other day than Friday just before reset. Thanks for making my morning a unique one.

http://imgur.com/a/4DIt7

I’ve spent a lot of time on my warrior’s current set. A screenshot is in the attachments.

I’m no fan of spikes and all that stuff, hence the “no over-the-top nonse” line. I avoid those like the plague. The only exception is when I just got my Armageddon armor, and just haven’t gotten around transmuting yet. (Form over function? Never.)

As for constructing the set, I had a few things I wanted to achieve:

- Guild chestpiece
- Sufficient contrast between emblem and the cloth
- Nothing too shiny (as if I walked through a car wash) – ‘battered’ or ‘worn’ materials.
- Still achieving a sort of noble, ‘veteran’ or powerful feel.

In the end, I used the following skins:

- Severed Breached Helm from a Fireheart Rise heart-quest vendor. Dye: Shale
- Human Tier 3 Shoulders. Dye: Shale, Redemption(from top)
- Guild Heavy Armor. Dye: Shale, Redemption, Shale (clockwise from top).
- Reinforced Scale Gauntlets (there are different skins sharing this name). Dye: Shale, Cashmere, Shale (clockwise from top).
- Fur of Koda (HotW leg piece). Dye: Shale, Redemption, Shale (clockwise from top).
- Human Tier 3 Boots. Dye: Shale.

I started with the Guild Heavy Armor as base my base. Secondly, I picked the shoulders (which needed to be broad, yet fairly ‘normal’) and boots (no-nonsense). I moved on by deciding on the leg piece. The HotW pants are the only ones with a sort of skirt, making the character look broader and more impressive, therefore an easy choice. The gloves were picked because they contain the same scales as the chest piece has.

The great thing about this set is that the dyes are so easy to change. The cloth, that’s currently “redemption”/orange, can easily be replaced with something dark blue (iron), something white or another bright color. All the shale fields can easily be replaced by another dye for the metal bits. Right now I went with orange to make it fit with the guild emblem. I tried blue (orange’s complementary color) but I couldn’t find a bright dye that worked.

I used Argos Soft’s armor gallery to see all available skins. I highly recommend it.

Any questions, just let me know

Would definitely be helpful. A way to differentiate between dead allies and enemies would be cool too though. Grey for allies, black for enemies?

Nikked.7365:

I’d be much happier with better commander tools (and some love to the /supplyinfo tool) so that we can coordinate more efficiently instead of praying to the RNGods that we have enough bonus supply to get that second or third ram up on an inner keep gate.

Seconded. Keybind option for /supplyinfo, pretty-please?

Cactus.2710:

TCDJ.5378:

A lot of people still hold a grudge against Kaineng. When the bandwagon kicked off we stomped everything in our path on the way up the rankings, angering many people. And I can see why – it completely ripped apart the balance of the lower tiers when we rushed up. However, I’d like to remind everyone that that Kaineng is not the current Kaineng.

Except that while [WM] was totally skewing game play by using extremely single minded overpowering zerg tactics literally everybody else on Kaineng was defending it, and many were bragging about how much better everybody else had suddenly gotten as well. I know for a fact that there have been some great people on Kaineng and I assume there still are, but I can’t help but thinking that as a server Kaineng got what they deserved. It wasn’t just the results that garnered resentment, it was the attitudes expressed here back then as well (not that any other server is immune to that, of course, including my own).

Emphasis mine.

That definitely was not all of Kaineng. Many of us loathed the rush up because people preferred the laid-back atmosphere in the lower tiers (or for a dozen of other reasons), many of us loathed the elitist comments because it really was not so surprising we started winning after getting a sudden influx of large, dedicated WvW guilds.

With the bandwagon, Kaineng wasn’t one group of people anymore. There were three: The bandwagon, the people who had no clue what was going on, and the people who didn’t like the change but had absolutely no control over it.

That first group is gone. That last group is the group that is still around. I’m pretty sure most of those forum warriors were part of the bandwagon.

The people who ‘deserved’ some form of ‘punishment’, like you seem to be hinting at, are no longer on the server. That’s exactly what I meant to say in the part you quoted of my original post.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all ‘native’ Kaineng players were little angels – surely there were people who did enjoy the change and did get elitist about it. And every server has forum warriors – we did too at the time, and still do sometimes. But that’s not something to judge a whole server on. Most players don’t even use these forums, why judge them based on what happens here?

Regardless, the majority of the players still on Kaineng just want us to improve our rating by actually becoming better instead of by having guilds join en masse. And for that we first needed to drop back to the proper rank, which has almost happened.

Unfortunately that’s the way it is. However we only had three options: quit the game, leave the server just like they did, or pull through.
Now that we’re stabilizing again, that third option is starting to pay off.

Basically what happened was that near the end of free transfers (Feb ‘13), Kaineng had the bandwagon join. Several guilds hoped to make Kaineng the next T1 server together. However this didn’t work out as planned, Kaineng got stuck in T2 and didn’t get the extra players needed to reach T1.

Once it became clear we weren’t going up to T1, slowly but surely the guilds that bandwagoned on started leaving. Because of this we started dropping, making more of those guilds leave as a chain reaction. This caused Kaineng to be up way too high for our coverage and number of organized guilds.

By now, the bandwagon is gone. I don’t think any of those guilds is still playing on our server.

Since they started leaving we’ve been dropping in rating, but the last few matches we’ve been coming in at 2nd place again. We’re still losing rating, but winning most of our fights. PPT is still not great, but we’ll get there.

We’ve had some reinforcements from guilds sick of queues, looking for some good fights in a mid-tier server. This is helping us stabilize – I think we won’t drop much further. I think we’ll end up somewhere at rank 15.

A lot of people still hold a grudge against Kaineng. When the bandwagon kicked off we stomped everything in our path on the way up the rankings, angering many people. And I can see why – it completely ripped apart the balance of the lower tiers when we rushed up. However, I’d like to remind everyone that that Kaineng is not the current Kaineng.

The current Kaineng is mostly a group of dedicated people who stayed true to their home, made the best out of a bad situation and still has to deal with all the kitten the bandwagon left behind for us with their departure. In addition to that there’s a few guilds like [BMS] that have joined our community and became a valued part of our team. All of that is finally paying off now that we’re getting closer to the rank we’re supposed to be, giving Kaineng a good future as mid-tier server.

toohooah.4861:

Some Kaineng were underneath the floor at our Bay, killing siege and trying to kill the keep lord.
Judging from the skills, it was a thief, mesmer and a ranger.

I’m ashamed I have to admit this is probably true. At least the Mesmer being underground I know for sure. I have a screenshot with this player’s text balloon pop up below ground at KBL Briar when taking it from BP, mostly [VOX] defenders, and reported it via the support site already. I’ve already had a GM reply they’re looking into it, so hopefully his thief and ranger friends will be deterred after the mesmer loses her account. (The thief and ranger I haven’t seen myself.)

This was the first time I’ve seen a Kaineng player do this, but I will always report them when I get the chance.

Actually I think it would help increase the number of scouts, especially on servers that are currently struggling with that. By requiring one for upgrades people are more likely to step up, as they don’t want their keep to be lost quickly. Especially people having something to eat at their computer or taking a short break from commanding would have something to do now.

As for being the only one who pays for upgrades, we could always make it so that anyone can still buy upgrades, as long as there’s a lord assigned. That also solves the issue of upgrades being blocked if a lord goes AFK.

It will definitely lead to quicker captures of undefended objectives, but why does that have to be a bad thing? I see it as just an extra reason to encourage people to scout. If you, as a server, don’t scout, then you wouldn’t be able to have saved it anyway.

Finally, while being lord you can still keep supply routes open from the linked camps (and upgrade those if you’re dedicated enough). So there’s still something to do. Alternatively, the first hour or so you can easily spend on sieging up if you are in a keep.
Yes, leaving puts the circle up. But that’s a choice you make that the enemy has to make for each of their objectives as well.
Regarding the guilt of losing something, I don’t think that’s a big point either. If a zerg shows up, your dueling skills don’t matter. All you can do is man siege and call reinforcements – if that inner gate is down, and you’re alone, it’s out of your control and other players will understand that.

We already have a few individuals who stay behind and scout on most servers. I really think this mechanic will only encourage more people to do so. Yes, losing a keep will get easier, but then again if only the NPC lord is there all that gives you is maybe 30 seconds extra time to respond – usually not enough if there’s not already a scout there.

The changes that make you lose things easier of course also affect your enemy, so it will still be fair. If anything, because it becomes slightly easier to take things, that means servers who hold a lot of ground are at a disadvantage causing things to balance out a bit more.

WvW is a competitive game mode, and if a server as a whole refuses to scout there should be consequences to that. This could motivate people to step up and take responsibility for a specific objective, while getting credit for this (because everyone can see you are looking after it). Especially with the lack of scouts, people will still appreciate bad player lords over no scouts at all.

Stealth could indeed pose a problem, but it’s easily fixable by losing lordship when entering stealth.

Regarding players to be killed more easily, I just see that as a change – not a problem. If the enemy gets into your keep it’s usually not the lord preventing the capture. It’s the player defenders. In many of the big tower/keep fights the lord is down and circle is up, but the defenders fighting in the circles prevents the capture.

Going AFK as lord could indeed pose a trickier problem. Perhaps just take the WXP reward out – that way being lord is only interesting for griefers (which can be reported) or people genuinely wanting to upgrade and defend.