Guild Wars 2

Didn’t read all the thread, but I noticed a few people whinging about the “uselessness” of Tomes of Knowledge.

Levels = skill points = superior siege

Not useless. Just saying…

I’m not sure why people are whining about the invested time required to get the key. I got mine after the 1st week with just normal playing, although I did run the JPs, which is something I don’t normally do (5m for each of the BL JPs, and probably 30m in OS ‘cause it’s been ages since I ran it and took me a while to get through the dark room ).

I’m on Maguuma, where we came stone motherless last, so maybe it was easier on a less populated server to get some of the achieves like bashing in gates.

As to rewards, I haven’t opened my chest yet, but regardless of any shinies in my box, the best thing is that this debacle is finished and we can get back to some matchups that are vaguely more sensible.

How are you finding Season 1 of the League?

1 means you’d rather eat your own vomit than put up with it anymore.

10 means you think it’s an absolutely extraordinary gaming experience that will be written about long after we’re all dead. Future e-sport events will be modelled on it, it’s that good!

Format you’re reponse thusly: League/rating

For example: Gold/5

Mif.3471:

Titan.3472:

And Longbow warrior1400 range then ; like engineer nades because IRL i never found anyone able to throw a nade farer that an arrow…

Never found anyone IRL that can turn invisible or shoot fireballs either.

You need to get out more…..

/yawn

Rainshine.5493:

If we upgrade and defend nobody comes out to play. I assumed SoS and Mag were grateful to get to get some WXP, karma etc. instead of being spawncamped during times they have little/no coverage. -shrug-

Couldn’t give a rat’s kitten about wxp and karma, and the idea that we should be “grateful” that a brain-dead zerg server is somehow doing something to help the matchup is laughable.

Rainshine.5493:

I think karma trains are boring too, but it behooves you to participate some if you’re after the Season 1 rewards.

What rewards? A poxy finisher, a couple of greens, and some dragonite ore? Woohoo!!!!

Svarty.8019:

Deli.1302:

If you’re going to change the way waypoints work then you’re going to have to do something about golems (alphas and omegas) and ram mastery.

Golems and traited superior rams currently burn gates down (reinforced or not) faster than a defensive force can get there.

I concur.

This emphasises the problem with power creep on the siege weaponry due to WXP abilities. Defensive stuff such as door and wall hitpoints/toughness haven’t kept pace.

Siege weapon mastery is a 2-edged sword. With ram mastery, I’ll quite happily sit under the fire of 1-2 superior ACs manned by non-masters, but I’ll need heals if there are masters on them. Same thing with traits like supply stripping on trebs – toss a couple of cows on the door before the attackers can get their rams down/built and you are in a strong position.

I take your point though that in an undefended situation, the masteries make it too easy to melt a door and not give defenders a chance to respond. Maybe a new mastery that makes reinforced doors/walls, guards, and fortification x% stronger (determined at the time the upgrade is ordered – and award wxp to the person ordering it )?

Hockey.2417:

won this match did ya Mag? Is this how you did it?

Strategy working to a tee….deprive the wxp kittens of what they want the most….game over…..we win!

KeeZee.7312:

If Maguuma was to play football would one person show up with golf clubs?

No, all seven of us would come, naked, except for the gentleman’s size athletic support, ‘cause (a) we’re a family server, and (b) we need it

I’m planning on reporting JQ to the UN for violation of my human rights (http://www.un.org/en/rights/). I’m sure there’s something in there about zerg servers ruining my game mode…..

Brew Pinch.5731:

It’s possible that due to server lag you were not where you thought you were and neither were they, or that lag simply delayed/prevented your action despite what it looks like on screen.

I’ve had this experience before, even in tPvP on extremely rare occasion. I have always put it down to lag which has proven true from the discussions I’ve had with the people in question. (I normally invite them to party or use /map to ask).

The issue was extremely rare for me though and I haven’t had the same experience since I made some modifications to how my network traffic works.

If you are someone who plays with a high ping (to test: type /ip in game. Alt+tab. Windows key+R. Type resmon. Find IP under TCP connections, you’ll see your ping) I would recommend:

• You disable Nagles algorithm. If that looks to daunting here is an easy program that will do it for you.
• Re-route your game traffic through port 80 in case your ISP throttles 6112.
  (create shortcut for GW2, right click > properties, click “target:” box, scroll to the end of the line changing nothing, after everything else type " /clientport 80" including spaces but not quotation marks.)
• Check your ping again to see the changes made any difference.

You’ll still get lag, especially in heavy zerg situations and might experience the issue, but I highly doubt this was “hacking” and there are some some of anti-cheat measures running behind the scenes in this game.

Nit-picking, but there is also a limit to the number of players allowed in a map from each server, so to outnumber you 100 to 1 you’d pretty much have to have only a single player in the map from your server.
They probably have much better timezone coverage, if you get co-ordinated you should be able to beat them in a few fights during your servers prime regardless of score, just remember not to run full ’zerkers.

Good luck!

This is an excellent post! Thanks for taking the time…

x per fection x.2096:

Mag Epic zerg server.

http://s22.postimg.org/q3vgd8iz5/blob.png

I assume you wiped both of those modest SBI and FA roaming groups? Someone said SBI ran in huge zergs, but I haven’t seen one all week – they look like a small group of friends just out for a good time to me.

Too Frisky.9165:

Player Character.9467:

Too Frisky.9165:

Player Character.9467:

Too Frisky.9165:

Mag has one good night of PPT and suddenly they are the greatest server that ever lived.

o.O somebody forgot to tell sbi that mag is a weekday server and averages 10x the people in voice chat on weekdays… oh wait no it was already mentioned in the thread multiple times.

It’s Monday and you haven’t had that impressive of a showing given that hardly anyone on SBI is actually doing WvW at the moment. Come talk some more smack about how amazing your server is when it’s Thursday and you’re still losing.

You’ve lost… 8k of your lead in the last 10 hours?

More like 2k-3k. During peak hours on ONE day. ZOMFG we must be bad!

It’s obvious you are new to WvW because you are suggesting your server is a “week day” server. Not to be rude but any match-up above T5 is more than a weekend warrior affair. Consistency is key and my “baddie” server has consistently held more map control than either you or FA and have consistently wiped your kitten zergs routinely. One night of disorganization from a server doesn’t mean we’re bad it just means we’ll come back tomorrow with a fresh perspective and the top PPT.

But keep talking because at this point you’re just talking to talk.

Too frisky indeed

This was posted a few hours ago on the JB/FA/SoS thread…

Seasniffer.1763:

http://emboldcreative.net/jedquarry.gif

Summary of this weeks matchup.

Gold!

I’d like to see bonus PPT for upgraded towers/keeps/castles, extra wxp for successfully defending them, and even extra wxp for capturing them. And I mean significant bonuses – x2 for T2 and x3/4 for T4.

It would also be nice to get a wxp reward when a keep/tower upgrades to T2/3, but determining who would qualify for this might be difficult – maybe the people who paid for the upgrades? What about folk who escorted yaks to make the upgrade happen. Difficult to know…

kartek.6428:

Chris.3290:

So honest question; if Maguuma goes into gold, what are the folks who don’t GvG there going to do?

die a lot

Will not. I have some of the best running-away skills money can buy.

This is what I don’t understand about the T1 servers recent recruitment drives for more people. You’ll spend 4-6 out of the 7 weeks in the league being bored kittenless. People really transfer for some poxy finisher??? Amazing!

Yep, Anet just announced in the other thread the points will be reset to their correct value….

I’m assuming Anet will reset points back to their level at the time of the failure. If they don’t, then yes it is unfair. Maybe someone on SoS has a a friend in the dev team

I’m pretty sure there isn’t a right answer to this. One of my alts is about rank 240 and has 0 points in Guard Defense or Killer, and has a lots of points in all the siege weapon masteries (+supply/repair/build). What’s great about this is that whenever your commander asks for someone with X mastery to man a siege weapon, you’re there to step up and help.

On the other hand, the alt I’m playing atm is around rank 100, and has only the bare minimum ranks in some of the siege weapons, and is pouring all points into Guard Defense. Now, whenever my commander asks for someone with X mastery, I can’t step up to the plate. I’m feeling kind of selfish about it. Yes, I’ll eventually be harder to kill, but for 115 ranks, I won’t be able to help as much as I could.

I think when the rank reset happens I’m going to reallocate my points back into the siege weapons etc.

PS. Get Flame Ram Mastery – it is ridiculously OP

selan.8354:

Tietus.8013:

selan.8354:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m a Mag PvE nublet, but even I’m putting in my time to push us to get the 6th spot. Gained 20+ WvW ranks thanks to the Cody Train last nite!

And from my own observations, Maguuma has Tier 1 skilled players with Tier 8 coverage. Thus is the reason why we deserve that spot, since skill is measured higher than population.

ok so ive seen maguuma in various matchups and yes u guys lack coverage. u have some pretty good players on your server. so does my server. we push zergs that outnumber us by a lot and win many times and i gotta say lower tier servers are way more about tatics that numbers. but believe me u dont wanna be in gold league. if your 30 man zerg runs into a 70 man jq zerg u might get a few wins, but a lot of times u get steamrolled.
i think u have faced a t1 server before…not sure, but the current t1 have stacked even more and do have some very skilled guilds now. but if u get up here, u will see for yourself.

my server is fighting hard and we are a little tired but we wont give in. even while sitting on 10ppt we will still try to push. so hope u guys will do the same.

We faced FA and JQ in week 31, and of course we got steamrolled in PPT. However, my recollection is that provided our numbers were not worse than 2:1 they were bags for the taking. To be fair, their zergballs were probably full of mouth-breathing, up-leveled pugs…. What I do recall vividly was the horrendous skill lag whenever we got near one of their zergballs. How the hell anyone can actually developed fighting skills in this environment is beyond me.

erm its not the same jq u faced then. its double from that now….

A queued map is a queued map, so unless Anet raise the map cap…..meh.

selan.8354:

Smooth Penguin.5294:

I’m a Mag PvE nublet, but even I’m putting in my time to push us to get the 6th spot. Gained 20+ WvW ranks thanks to the Cody Train last nite!

And from my own observations, Maguuma has Tier 1 skilled players with Tier 8 coverage. Thus is the reason why we deserve that spot, since skill is measured higher than population.

ok so ive seen maguuma in various matchups and yes u guys lack coverage. u have some pretty good players on your server. so does my server. we push zergs that outnumber us by a lot and win many times and i gotta say lower tier servers are way more about tatics that numbers. but believe me u dont wanna be in gold league. if your 30 man zerg runs into a 70 man jq zerg u might get a few wins, but a lot of times u get steamrolled.
i think u have faced a t1 server before…not sure, but the current t1 have stacked even more and do have some very skilled guilds now. but if u get up here, u will see for yourself.

my server is fighting hard and we are a little tired but we wont give in. even while sitting on 10ppt we will still try to push. so hope u guys will do the same.

We faced FA and JQ in week 31, and of course we got steamrolled in PPT. However, my recollection is that provided our numbers were not worse than 2:1 they were bags for the taking. To be fair, their zergballs were probably full of mouth-breathing, up-leveled pugs…. What I do recall vividly was the horrendous skill lag whenever we got near one of their zergballs. How the hell anyone can actually developed fighting skills in this environment is beyond me.

Well -40% condi duration food is cheap and very popular. Without the option of +40% duration condi builds would have a very, very hard time against builds running the -40% duration plus their traited abilities that reduce it even further, and that’s not even taking condi removals into account.

…..and then transfer to a server that doesn’t queue all the maps

Chris.3290:

To sidestep Wads’s ethno-centric ramblings and answer the original question:

Because we like a challenge. Because we get better by facing superior numbers. You have any idea how many large Maguuma and Ehmry Bay zergs we crushed this week. How many skirmishes we won while outnumbered?

Anybody can karma train up when they have the numbers on their side, but it takes true grit to fight with your backs against the wall 80% of the time.

Then you’d probably enjoy transferring to Mags. Outside NA prime, it’s a surprise when we’re NOT outmanned.

I must have missed all those fights where you crushed the Mag and EBay zergs, but I know in most of the fights I had against large SOS groups this week, you guys made me look good (and that is saying something!).

Thx to Xaylin and Natsu on thought re: Traveler runes. I’ve tried the “swap to focus, #4, swap to torch” thing and I find it gets pretty tedious very quickly. I seem to spend most of my time roaming or in small groups where getting swiftness from other sources is patchy at best. In a zerg, not so much of a problem.

Mattimeo.2146:

Didn’t hit +695, EBay capped Longview in the same second we got Arah’s Quarry.

My heart bleeds son.

Do you have an opinion on Traveler runes with this build? The boon and cond duration buffs are nice, but you lose some condition dmg and the confusion.

Every time I try a build without swiftness at least 75-80% uptime I get frustrated with it.

DevonCarver.5370:

They are not high enough currently, agreed and we will be making changes to the rank-up chests to make them significantly more rewarding.

Personally, I’d prefer to see loot drops from killing players bumped. I don’t think there is a need to encourage even more keep farming.

I’d like to see more discouragement of mega-zergs, and since people behave according to how they are rewarded…

Significantly increase the base reward for capturing a control point, and share the rewards evenly between capping players. Increase the base reward per completed upgrade (say +10%); increase the base reward per active defender (say +5%); decrease the reward significantly if there are no active defenders (say -80%).

Example. Stonemist base reward is 10000 wxp; 2 upgrades gives +20%; 15 defenders (actually attempting to repel an attack) gives +75%. If a 20-man group take SM, they’d get 19500/20 = 975wxp, but a 50-man zergball only gets 390 wxp. If there is no active defense when it caps, the cappers share 12000 minus 80% = 2400 wxp (120 wxp for the 20-man team, and 48 wxp for the zergball).

In addition, significantly increase the reward for killing players (say 4x increase) – make it worthwhile for players to want to fight. Fighters will fight anyway, but better rewards might make zerglings think it’s worth it too…

My guess is it is all to do with the League, to give them sufficient data to know with reasonable confidence that when Server A plays Server B + C, what their expected PPT score should be for a “par” score. From that, they will be able to work out who is actually winning a matchup – ie, I don’t think winning a matchup by 200k will necessarily mean you win the week.

Luiz Swordbreaker.6547:

Defend a keep 3 times

Going to be amusing to see the zergling reaction to this…what’s defending?

^^^ I’m intrigued too

I ran with our server zerg for a bit yesterday. Some of the comments from some of the players re: how great this all was made me want to vomit. First time we hit a keep that had a decent force defending, about 1/3 died from the initial defender push. I left…

No mocking from here, let me tell you. It’s just the scores really stood out and I was just imagining how tough it might be. Kudos to you all for taking the fight up….

Mmmm, it is par for the course on Maguuma in the Oceanic timezone to be outnumbered, and we are regularly getting our arses handed to us by zergs. I think we know a little of the pain you probably suffer.

I was just reading a post from a player on the Desolation EU server complaining about skill lag. I immediately assumed Desolation was an EU zergfest server ala JQ/BG/etc on NA, and my heart started bleeding for the poor chap….

However, I then looked further down the table and saw the last 2 matchups. This looks very, very, very bad. What’s going on? Are the low scoring servers (Vabbi, Whiteside Ridge, Fissure of Woe, and Arborstone) dead in WvW? Must be terrible to be playing there.

You’re kidding right? This is exactly what’s happening with no arrangements required. It’s very hard to get a fight at the moment.

Swamurabi.7890:

Deniara Devious.3948:

Skapocalypse.5236:

Watch as your group while in a T3/4/5 server won’t be able to take anything but camps and maybe a unguarded tower during European/Oceanic/SEA against T1/2 servers that you probably won’t hold for the point tick. Watch the karma train while sitting in a T1 or T2 server against T3/4/5. Watch in the lower tiers the literal ghost town at these times. Then you’ll understand the true gaps between the servers and maybe then it will lead you guys to a solution. As many have stated it’s not skill and never will be skill it’s all coverage and population

This maybe true in NA, where the rating gap is really big between rank 4 server (TC) and rank 5 server (FA): currently 169 rating points. Here in EU we have 27 servers (vs 24 in NA) and the rating differences are smaller. I play for Desolation, which is currently rank 3 (but going to drop down). We are now matched up against rank #11 (Abaddon’s Mouth) and #14 (Gandara). So this is a tier #1 server against a tier #4 and a tier #5 server. Exactly what you were writing about. See:
http://mos.millenium.org/eu

We are going to win this match up, but only because we got a bit better night time coverage. During prime time we are constantly at the brink of being outnumbered. Our enemies, Gandara and AM, are high population and Deso is very high population. I would claim that the actual number of WvWvW players at prime time doesn’t show any indication of this. Our enemies can summon a zerg + several roaming teams on the same map. Last night I saw us ticking as low as +150 at prime time. Surely we felt like both enemy servers concentrated on us.

The things to take into consideration: Despite Desolation is so called EU tier 1 (rank 3) server, we currently don’t have any major queues to speak of. Except for prime time I can get to any map without any waiting. 20-25 man guild group is big for us. Even in prime time usually just one BL map has a queue, if 3 big guilds are having a raid or gvg there at same time. After 2 hours, when the raid / gvg is over, queue is gone and we get outnumbered buff on that same BL. Desolation really is unlike any other server in EU. We are hosting the best tpvp/spvp players and also the unofficial pve capital of EU, but our WvWvW attendance is relatively low and we are still lacking big WvWvW guilds. In our previous match up against SFR and VS (EU rank 1 and rank 2 vs rank 3) we had the outnumbered “buff” on us almost all the time. Despite having clearly less than half the numbers of our enemies we were able to tick pretty well due good coordination using server wide TeamSpeak.

What I understood is that the top 4 servers of NA (JQ, BG, SoR and TC) are all very stacked servers. Here in EU we have just 2 stacked servers: SFR and VS. The league is going to be won by either SFR or VS. There is no other choice, unless some major population shifts occur e.g. a lot of people band wagon to SFR and its main guilds will /ragequit due having too long queues (happened before) or Piken Square getting bandwagoned, because it is only a medium population server and has the lowest transfer costs of any top server.

Yes, I fully agree that the winner is mainly decided by the WvWvW population and coverage. And EU is much much more volatile than NA in this respect. If 1-2 big NA guilds would move to any top 6 server in EU, that server could easily be winning the league, because of better night and morning time coverage.

Current score of your match

11. Abaddon’s Mouth 101 913
14. Gandara 93 502
3. Desolation 135 673

Current glicko rating change of your match

11. Abaddon’s Mouth 14.777
14. Gandara 30.052
3. Desolation -43.434

What if the winner was decided by glicko instead of score?

I wondered about this in another post as well. Obviously the glicko system has a built-in handicap – do better than expected and you gain points, do worse you lose. Seems a much better model for determining the real winners rather than PPT.

Will League matchup results be determined by PPT score, or by the change in glicko points? That might make things interesting for those crazy fools who choose not to stack in the zerg servers.

Karmik.2641:

Tietus.8013:

Just finished with a PYRO/VR run on FA BL. I think we had probably 60ish. I guess FA probably had around the same, maybe a few more. It was literally unplayable. Why on earth anyone would want to do this on a regular basis is beyond me.

We had about 30 APS and then VK responded when Pyro started bringing the pain to garri… TC had 3 large guild mobs though was a lot of fun and learned from tonight:D

The only thing I learned is that “1” spamming is dull, dull, dull…

Just finished with a PYRO/VR run on FA BL. I think we had probably 60ish. I guess FA probably had around the same, maybe a few more. It was literally unplayable. Why on earth anyone would want to do this on a regular basis is beyond me.

Just wondering, when the new League arrives, will there be a prize for best in Forum?

I like the concept of sharing a pool of wxp among the players that have contributed, whether it’s killing a player or an npc, or capping a tower.

For example, if a tower is worth 5000 wxp and a small group of 5 claim it, they get 1000 wxp each. If a 50 man zerg claims it, they get 100 each. This seems only fair, since the 5 man had to work way harder than the zerg.

While compelling in theory, the downside would be that this system would discourage cooperation. It’s pretty easy to envisage that 5-man group actively discouraging other people to join in on the cap (this is a polite way of saying that chat and mumble would get flooded with personal invective: “kitten-off this is OUR cap”. Probably not a path we want to go down…

Interesting idea, but the downside is that people will immediately start ordering upgrades for the wxp and money, and not because it makes sense to order it. How many times you been in the situation where a zerg’s just arrived on your map, your garri is full of supply and some numbnuts orders extra guards, or mortars, or…. Having an incentive to place an order is just asking to make this worse.

bradderzh.2378:

Tietus.8013:

As last week, less than 12 hours after reset, 50% of NA matches are heading for blowouts. At least its consistent.

Golf clap for Anet.

50%? We must be looking at different info… Sure t2 and t3 arent great, but other than that…?

I mean the only reason t7 is bad is because anvil rock is in it and they don’t wvw anymore, and the next closest ‘blowout’ is t5 but it far from GG just yet…

t4 and t7 certainly don’t look like they’ll be racing to down to the wire, but optimists’ll say it’s early days….

As last week, less than 12 hours after reset, 50% of NA matches are heading for blowouts. At least its consistent.

Golf clap for Anet.

Sigh. Just sigh.

I’ve not had any trouble in Frostgorge champ runs with a 0/20/20/0/30 build (rabid armour and weapons). I open with torch#5 to get confusion up, sceptre#3, dodge, dodge, shatter#2. I do run centaur runes though because I wvw a lot and mobility is important for me, so I’m usually up the front of the champ zerg.

Dayra.7405:

Tietus.8013:

About 12 hours after reset, 4/8 NA and 4/9 EU matchups appear headed for blow-outs.

If
NA-4 vs NA-5 is 28 726 : 13 262
NA-6 vs NA-7 is 25 005 : 15 588
(!!) NA-15 vs NA-13 is 22 692 : 14 307 (!!)
there is no way any matchup-system can produce better matches.
In the new system, the loosing servers may be lucky to get a simpler opponent next week. In the old system these matches would stay for month if not even forever.

This may be true, but it is hard to avoid the conclusion that a large fraction of the player base are not able enjoy competitive WvW matches because Anet have lost control of the game. Whether you like it or not, it will never be possible to produce a match-making system that results in few blow-outs if nothing is done about server size imbalances. I suspect I am not the first to make this observation