Guild Wars 2

Jackie.1829:

Finally, true that there is a finite amount of supply on the map. But you forget keeps being stockpiled with 1700 supply overnight (hello EB). And you also forget that siegerazor refills all your supply, and I am assuming will fill you up to 15 if that is what your cap is. A guild being able to actually take 15 supply is actually very game changing, but you will notice these things months down the road from now, which is good, cause the dedicated guilds will be achieving quite a lot more then.

This is an interesting notion I hadn’t thought about: Does the siegerazer really fill you up to 15? I can’t imagine that it works that way; I mean siegerazer doesn’t even fill a whole zerg with 10 supplies (bug or intended, I don’t know, but when we are really numerous there are always some who get no supply despite standing next to the npc).
But it would definitely make the whole supply upgrade much better, as keeps with 1700 supply are not always available (at least not when you have enemies who play well and harass your supply chain).

I guess we’ll see when the first people have 20 points available to spend on the first extra supply point, which should be today or tomorrow max for hc players.

LieutenantGoogle.7326:

I’m surprised at how little people see the advantage in having 5 more supplies per character.

This usually means that when attacking a keep a attacking team can place 1 more ram for every 8 people. 40% better wall/gate repairs per person, only 3 people to make a ram as opposed to 4 (this is pretty big)

Supplies are the life and blood of wvw, you can’t go expecting to get a +10 supply buff and not expect for it to be broken.

The problem with this calculation is that you assume that supplies are available in large numbers. But they aren’t and therefore the +5 supply will be next to useless in most situations other than the beginning of reset-night or the beginning of a special event when everybody brings a fully supllied character.

It’s definitely handy if you’re running with a small group that doesn’t eat up all the 100 supplies a camp provides. Then it will be beneficial to be able to carry more supply.

But in a normal WvW situation with a zerg of more than 40 people, and a not fully supplied fortress that you can plunder, you won’t really benefit from +5 supply as a team. Because there just won’t be enough supply available to max out everyones capacity. All the +5 will do is spread the supply out more unevenly so that less people will get some and more people will run around empty.

Therefore, I will go for the other things first. NPCs doing less damage/taking more damage can be handy for roamers and the siege improvement also seems like a thing to go to.
But overall, I don’t think these upgrades will have much of an impact. I had hoped for more revolutionary novelties. Because to be frank, the only thing I’m exited about with this new patch is the possibility of finally getting other exotic gear than soldier’s via WvW (and at a more reasonable, yet still hefty, cost). The ranks are nothing I will concern myself with, or focus on. The improvements they provide seem to be too negligible to me.

tolunart.2095:

I don’t see a lot of toons in culture armor. I do see quite a few in “look at me! I’m on fire!” dungeon armor. There are times when I see toons standing near each other in LA wearing identical flaming armor except for the color scheme. You’ll actually stand out more in Culture 3 armor than dungeon gear.

Two reasons for this:
1) it’s the easiest dungeon set to get, since COF can be done so quickly .
2) one of its versions has bersi stats and lots of people like running glass cannons.

@topic: You only buy them for the skins. And as they cost lots of gold, some might have bought this gold through gems, which is probably exactly what Arenanet wants

Ah, Vayne, you can’t stop discussing, can you I thought you left the fan-forum because there was too much arguing going on and now you’re hitting the official forums? (If you aren’t that Vayne, sorry, but the name and the writing and arguing style are too similar to be a coincidence )

@topic:
I agree that the story in GW2 is somewhat shallow and boring. I don’t feel like the characters the OP pointed out are the problem, though. To me, they are in fact the only ones that have some substance. They have some character.

Most of the other characters I met are all goody-two-shoes. They are, to me, uninteresting.

It’s not only the personal story that is lacking, though; I think the whole world feels a bit empty, because of the way they chose to not have quests, which are normally the way an area’s stories are told.

I don’t say that there is nothing there. There is, in fact, some lore and story to be had by following the DEs and by listening to the NPCs talking. But it happens too scarcely and also too subtle. You can run around the world and slay mobs and never get to know more about the world than the names of the areas, the general dragon and undead infestation.

As a human you’re always fighting centaurs in the beginning. But you don’t get any information on why they are hostile or what their goals are. There’s a multitude of such conflicts and I’ve always wondered why tribe x or race y is hostile towards us. I would’ve wanted to learn about the history and story of these conflicts. Alas, I couldn’t.

Maybe I didn’t look properly and missed these parts, but I just feel like a lot of the world, which is beautifully designed, is just lying there with mobs running to and fro and events popping up and somehow someone forgot to put in all those lines of story that should exlain all these happenings.

I think I would have paid a sub in the beginning, as I’ve played pretty much every AAA MMO in recent years and thus am used to the subscription concept and also don’t really have a problem with it.
But I think 2 months in I was getting seriously disenchanted with the game and would have left it then.
With the B2P concept I can still come back occasionally, whenever I feel like doing so, or whenever I want to join one of our server’s WvW events, without feeling the pressure to actually have to play to justify me paying the sub.

On the other hand, my wife and I both have an account and aside from the purchase cost and € 30 I spent on character slots, they didn’t see money from my side. Had it been subscription based I would’ve had to spend more money on it.
So, if my play- (and pay-)style should be the norm, I wonder how they pay their bills

Wryscher.1432:

If only there was somewhere we could go in game where equal number of people could pvp against each other. maybe make it somewhere around 5 so it wouldn’t be all zergy like the op states.

That’s true. But also: tpvp is not my cup of tea. 5v5 is not that fun for me. I like the massive battles of WvW

The OP’s suggestion is bad as it would exclude players. What I would really like to see is something like an interbreeding of WoW’s AV and WvW: A smaller WvW zone for ~40 players, which is not constant 24/7 but more like a bg in WoW with a definite end (like a score that needs to be reached or something like this). This could probably offer the fair and balanced PVP on a larger scale that people in WvW seem to be craving for.

JaironKalach.4938:

Fay.2735:

Supply Capacity is far more costly than any of the other categories if you look at the picture just one bit in Supply Capacity is 20 points while the others are all 5 or so. So they do understand the value of more supply and therefor made it hardest to progress in. So you’d have to figure out what’s more of an advantage only a couple more supplies over a long period of time or putting in some points in other areas to help against siege defense/damage or against guards etc.

Trying to figure this one out, myself…. Do I go for something with immediate impact or wait and get the bigger bang for my buck? Do I spec for siege defense (increased siege damage), siege offense (increased siege damage) or personal offense (increased siege defense)

My biggest concern in this whole equation is the whacky decision to make this progress character bound and not account bound, as it should be. Unless you progress really easily (which I don’t think, as this would make the whole thing somewhat useless again) you’ll probably wait a really long time for these 20 points to accumulate for the supply capacity, if you’re playing multiple characters , which most WvWers I know do. It’s really disheartening that they are “forcing” me into one character now, if I want to progress through these upgrades as quickly as possible.

It also depends on what you’re doing. For reset (or when you’re starting a special event and everybody is decking themselves out in advance) 15 supply (or twenty, rather, if the buff adds to the claim-camp-buff) on every zerg member is definitely a cool thing to have.
But for normal WvWing, when you’re constantly using up your supply and need to get fresh ones, you also have to take into account that a large zerg won’t profit that much from the plus of supplies on each individual, as there are only limited amounts of supply on each camp. The question is: does it matter for your playstyle if the 100 supply, a freshly turned camp is providing, are spread over 10 players or 6.something?
If, on the other hand, you control a fully upgraded keep that has a healthy supply line and is constantly near full with supplies, then the 15 on each member will definitely help the zerg.
Therefore, I guess the decision, which upgrade to take, is more difficult to determine than just go for supply delivery. Although it does indeed seem to be the best; at least as long as we don’t know how much of an improvement the other things will be; If the siege equipment upgrades lead to the possibility of oneshotting players with ballistae, then this would also be a nice choice. If it’s only something like 500 dmg increase, then it’s negligible

Yorric Hunt.8214:

You want to talk about number superiority, how ironic.

Well, weekend was always a time when we had very high numbers. During the week not so much. However, last week was a surprising exception, as we are normally heavily outnumbered then. But I guess GH has probably less WvWers than us. But nothing you can really do anything about, I guess.
I’m really curious how Ranik will be during the week, as they really had very high numbers 24/7 the last time we met. But this time there are holidays so our schoolkids/students should be there in numbers during the day
Sadly, the French don’t seem to frequent the international forums.

Greetings, opponents!

Was a nice afternoon on GH and FR borderlands. Had very epic fights for FR bay keep!

Should be an interesting match with, hopefully, good fights! Hopefully Ranik won’t have such a number superiority during the week as they had last time we met. Easter holidays should bring us decent numbers during weekdays too, this time.

cya ingame

I agree with phoenix. I know it sucks that smaller guilds have a hard time completing or even unlocking the guild missions. However, I also feel that guild missions are not made for these small communities, but for the larger ones. Because that was what GW2 has been lacking since its release: content for more than 5 people that is not WvW.

Everything else in this game evolves around 5 man groups. Before Guild missions there was really no reason to be in a guild of more than 5 persons (given all have same onlinetimes) if you weren’t interested in WvW. Now there is something that requires more than 5 man to complete and caters to bigger communities and I think that is only reasonable.

The quality of the now introduced content is debateable. In my opinion Bounty hunt is rubbish (haven’t done others yet). It’s a boring and dull waiting game until all bosses are found → press button → slaughter bosses. And that other guilds hunt the same bosses makes this whole thing a lot more tedious than it should be.

You also must not forget that the high cost of cultural armour (in connection with the fine transmutation stones that one can only get through blt-chests or for gems, if I’m not mistaken) is also a good monetization item for the developers. Many that want the look will grind for the gold, but some will also buy gems and turn them in to get the look faster.
Together with the fact that they are entirely cosmetic, I’m absolutely fine with the cost of the armour. I don’t have any, but I also don’t need it and there are plenty of good looking models available for less coin or even for karma.

I also don’t really like the bounty hunt system.

I guess it could be fun (but also frustrating) if you did it like Zudet, but if you’re just looking for the rewards, it’s a boring and tedious (but at least successful) task. You just spread out (we had 18 people for our first T3 try, which was successful too…) look for the mobs, pop the quest and then you post waypoints…boring and unfun.

For me this is just the next carrot on the stick thing I didn’t really want in the game. Now I’ll have to take part in that boring tedious PVE thing at least once a week to get my shinies asap. I know I don’t need them. I know it, trust me. But somehow I feel the urge to do it nonetheless. And I dislike me for that urge…

I’ve rarely actively finished a daily before the laurel stuff. It either happened, or it didn’t. If some gathering was missing, I wouldn’t bother before, because there was no reward I particularly cared for. Now I feel the urge to hunt down that last ore or tree to finish it, when I actually just wanted to go offline, because I want shinies I don’t actually need. It’s sad isn’t it.

Same problem here. All of guild seem to have same issue.

Yeah, the crafting thing is going to be a lame money sink (especially since its green or higher), but otherwise this one is pretty easy.
But I had hoped for something like the dailies (like 9 categories and 5 to choose).

A double German, single French, European double decker:

I hope we can establish this thread as a port of inter-server-exchange. I’ve created the same thread on the German forums, so those of you who speak German are heartily invited to join our conversation (and the nitpicking….) over there.

Otherwise, it’d be awesome if you would use this thread, so that any exchange can happen. After all, I, for one, am completely devoid of any knowlegde of the French language, which is not a good basis for cross-server-communication :P !

So, I hope you’ll use either this or the German language thread to communicate with the the two servers you’re opposing next week.

Keep it civil. No Name calling, please! Calling out Guilds for duels, however, is highly recommended

Chrono.7430:

Just a quick general question: do you need to get hits on all the champs to receive credit? So if the event requires 3 champs and you were only in the fight for one can you still receive the reward?

No, you don’t need to hit them all!
You don’t even need to fulfill the whole criteria as a guild.

We did T1 bounty hunt first and after the first of the two mobs we had to down, those who hit him had already got their personal reward. So even if we would have let it run out afterwards, to get the personal reward you only need to kill one mob.

Only for the guild as a whole does it matter whether you finish or you don’t.

@Fiontar:

It’s really all about teamwork and talking to each other via TS/any other voicechat.
The paramount thing to do is to find all targets before you trigger the event. (If somebody has no waypoint in certain areas, like I do, that’s not really the game’s fault) Then you have to look at the targets (All are immediately visible(something which wasn’t known to me and the members of the guild I’m in previously)) and then you have to make a decision: On what character can I reach at least one of the mobs. You have plenty of time to get there if you talk to your guild and say, “Hey guys, Boss xy is the only one I’ve got a waypoint in the vicinity. Kill the others first. I’ll wait there for you.”
That’s pretty much the way the game is meant to be played. Getting a hin on it might seem harsh to some, but otherwise there would be a lot of monster guilds flourishing to exploit these new features.

I think they made this change due to the recent increase in prices on exotics on the TP that resulted in the increase in ecto-prices (which are, besides the other fine materials (which are relatively stable), what determines how much exotics cost, if I’m not largely mistaken) Exotics seemed to be too pricy lately. Therefore, I can understand this move. I am curious, though, if it won’t be taken back, due to the major impact it has on the market now. I wonder if I should sell all my ectos now or should wait for them to rise again

What’s really sad about the whole thing is that all the events are now so overfarmed that it’s really not fun to do them. Most of them weren’t hard before, but now, it’s more like “guildy posts a waypoint: xy event. I port immediately and barely arrive in time to get a hit on it.” I remember when I did the frost maw event on my, now lvl 80 ,guard, when he was still younger, with two aides. That was a fight with multiple rezzes among us and a decent feeling of accomplishment, when you’ve fulfilled them.

That is why WvW is the only interesting part of this game for me (tPVP I’m not that interested in): It’s the only thing in this game where you can really accomplish something (when you take some structure after hours of siege or something like that).

Everything in PVE is just so vain. I mean, why is CoF even there. I’ve been there twice and after my introductory run a week ago, I’ve been whipped through it in not much more than 10 minutes today, without even so much as a challenge (Except the thing where you have to dodge the boulders….haven’t quite figured out how that works….But after all, I don’t have to…only three have to.).

If you make dungeons sooo easy (And by that I mean make it so that you can skip all trashmobs….In WoW, if you aggro’d a group of mobs in a dungeon they followed you to the entrance and oblivion) then you could as easily give out the reward just for running into the portal (Keep a timer on it, so that it only gives out the reward every 15 minutes probably)

I agree. It should probably be made so that every guild member online gets the reward.
But, on the other hand, would that not promote super mega guilds with 500 members (or more? I don’t know the max) that have all the events running all the time and every guy and his dog gets a reward every now and then? I don’t think that that should be the result of these events.

I think it’s hard to gauge one’s influence. When I didn’t get the kill on the second mob, due to them starting too early I was furious inside until I found out that nobody got anything and I already got my reward on the first mob.

But I’ll definitely work on my map completion in the areas where the mobs are, so that I don’t have to relog everytime

molepunch.5673:

Turkman imagine that you are in a Guild Bounty alliance. You know, bunch of small guilds.

This other guild group finds it first and starts the fight. Posting the closest way point. Maybe you DC and the countdown clock is ticking. Something.

And you get there or back online too late. This other Guild in the alliance gets the reward but you didn’t.

Who do you blame then? I honestly am over the matter but as a long time Guild leader in WoW I can spot potential guild-sundering mechanics a mile away.

Definitely, but from what I’ve seen the event itself costs 200 influence, once you’ve unlocked it. So, you could just do it again. And as you only seem to get rewarded once a week (As an individual; the guild is supposed to get points for the next unlocks every time, I think), you don’t miss out on too much, if you don’t get credit for one event.

Also: You might probably be aware, but you only get rewarded if you’re actually representing the guild that started the event. We had a few members of guilds we’re doing WvW with running along and applicants and they only got your standard Dynamic Event reward for helping out.

penatbater.4710:

Turkman.1089:

Probably a cause for drama, but also a cause for blaming your own guild management, as you did. You have plenty of time to wait for a couple of minutes for your people to arrive (especially if you’re only doing T1 or T2, and of course looked for the targets in advance)

But I think that some of the bosses (like 3 out of 4 we did today) are waaaaaaay to easily downable. We got the diplomat in the Brisbane Wildlands first and he is a proper enemy. Downed all our melees in the first second and then took about 3-4 minutes to get downed. But prisoner 1141, Tricksy Trecksa and the one in Diessa (I think) were all down in a matter of seconds after we attacked. I bet some of them are soloable.

Shouldn’t/Don’t they scale with the number of people attacking them?

Probably, but we were always about the same number (25-30 in TS and always at least 5 people who had no waypoint near enough or had to wait at the next target)

So, from the look of it, it looked as if we were approximately the same number every time. But the brisbane wildlands guy was the toughest to down.

For two (prisoner 1141 and Tricksy Trecksa) I was too slow to arrive, because they had started while I was having loading screen or while I was running from a waypoint too far away (But from the shouts in TS it took only seconds (“Omg, that one’s dying fast” ) and from the group and commander symbols on map there were plenty of us there ) and for the guy in Diessa I can confirm that he lasted about 5 seconds. One member was still on his way and we shouted dmg stop at 50% but he passed away on the dots….So, combatwise some are risible.

Probably a cause for drama, but also a cause for blaming your own guild management, as you did. You have plenty of time to wait for a couple of minutes for your people to arrive (especially if you’re only doing T1 or T2, and of course looked for the targets in advance)

But I think that some of the bosses (like 3 out of 4 we did today) are waaaaaaay to easily downable. We got the diplomat in the Brisbane Wildlands first and he is a proper enemy. Downed all our melees in the first second and then took about 3-4 minutes to get downed. But prisoner 1141, Tricksy Trecksa and the one in Diessa (I think) were all down in a matter of seconds after we attacked. I bet some of them are soloable.

I’ve had the same problem just now. have 6 categories fulfilled but get no reward. Yesterday I had no problem doing the daily, but today it seems bugged.

Norn are even bigger. And I’m not getting targeted more often than on my smaller characters.
Being first target in a controlled group battle is a matter of class, not race.

sostronk.8167:

Turkman.1089:

Diashame.6328:

All this has achieved is encouraging you to have groups of 25 or less.
It’s changed nothing Other than the above. White swords have always needed to be scouted. 2 rams and a small group that is not stupid have always ninajed without swords.

But it’s definitely harder now to keep track of the zergs. Because now even a zerg (on our server 25 man is pretty much a zerg; we have bigger ones, but normally only when there’s some special event from a guild/commander) doesn’t trigger the orange swords so easily. And a zerg can get things done way quicker of course. It could be done before too, but you needed to restrain your people to not hit/get hit by random mobs on the way. Now you don’t need to look left or right and can just carve through the map and attack whatever you want and the enemy will have a hard time keeping track of your movements.
Of course, you needed to check white swords before that too, but you had more time to do so.

WvW just got a lot more difficult to coordinate and thus also less casual friendly, and I mean that neutrally. We’ll see how it will play out in the end, but I’m really hesitant to call this a change for the better.

All you need is a couple of decent players on a server and you pretty much know where the enemy zerg is the whole time. Players like myself pretty much attach themselves to the enemy zerg and follow them around to com for commanders intel.

But you’re playing on the current top NA server, if you’re signature is accurate. You have a lot of dedicated WvW players. After all, that’s why you’re up there and others aren’t. I bet you have less randoms in WvW and more people doing what the commander wants, running supply chains or whatever. Servers in lower brackets with 20 people on their community TS will have it significantly harder.

Therefore it might be a tactical improvement on larger servers where massive zerging seems to be a problem (On our server 50 man zergs is the utmost maximum I’ve seen, more common is 20-30 people during prime time). But on lower tier servers it will probably lead to a lot of stuff getting ninja’d and people just resorting to circle capping because it is easier to recap than to cover the whole map with scouts.

I think you’re being a bit paranoid Nobody targets anyone because of their character model. Would really surprise me, if anybody would do so…

Diashame.6328:

All this has achieved is encouraging you to have groups of 25 or less.
It’s changed nothing Other than the above. White swords have always needed to be scouted. 2 rams and a small group that is not stupid have always ninajed without swords.

But it’s definitely harder now to keep track of the zergs. Because now even a zerg (on our server 25 man is pretty much a zerg; we have bigger ones, but normally only when there’s some special event from a guild/commander) doesn’t trigger the orange swords so easily. And a zerg can get things done way quicker of course. It could be done before too, but you needed to restrain your people to not hit/get hit by random mobs on the way. Now you don’t need to look left or right and can just carve through the map and attack whatever you want and the enemy will have a hard time keeping track of your movements.
Of course, you needed to check white swords before that too, but you had more time to do so.

WvW just got a lot more difficult to coordinate and thus also less casual friendly, and I mean that neutrally. We’ll see how it will play out in the end, but I’m really hesitant to call this a change for the better.

If you’re running solo you’ll get targeted regardless of race/class (well, if they see you’re a thief they probably won’t bother trying to catch you ) and if you’re running with a group you’ll get targeted as well.

But not more than any other race. Why would any race be targeted over another?
And don’t forget, in zergfights it’s very hard to pick a target by choice. It’s rather done by tab spamming. Therefore, I don’t see any issue with some race being targeted more than others.
Of course there are classes that are supposed to be taken out at first in small group fights, but that’s another matter.

The colours switch based on the starting placement in each respective tier. Spot one is green, two = blue, three=red. See here(http://mos.millenium.org/matchups) for more information (on the bottom you can see what place and tier you’re server is supposed to be next week, based on current points.

kuora.5402:

Turkman.1089:

kuora.5402:

This is why you need scouts.

L2P
L2P
L2P
L2P
L2P

You’re definitely right. But you mustn’t forget that this is a game that’s meant to be played for fun. Scouting is not fun for 99% of the players. Therefore, it will never be done enough. As a consequence the recent changes weren’t a good idea for the gameplay as a whole.

You need scouts now though. Rotate it. If you want to win, sometimes you have to do things that you don’t necessarily want to do. No scouts is fine, but that’s going to cost you a tower.

True, but other than probably the highest tiers, there will be not enough people willing to do the boring part (together with the incredible ease superiour rams/katas carve through walls/gates, which makes it at times hard to defend in time even if the alarm was rang at the first possible moment). Thus making recapping just as easy. In theory this change is a good one. But in reality it will play out very differently and I guess in a few weeks time most will think that it wasn’t a good idea.

Khrums.3765:

Good change, now we have to scout and that not mean babysitting keeps or towers, good scouts roam around and when find enemy follow them and update position.

Use brain, check map where sentry guards gone, where supply camp flip that might help predict enemy movements. Don’t blob in 1 big zerg make commanders to cover parts of map instead ruining all over map and you will see wvw become more fun.

Also smaller groups can try get something done by using cunning attacks on different positions to lure enemy there when main attack is somewhere else.

Make zerg sweat running between towers and keeps

Also using WP when is contested for 2 sec when timer go down should be removed.

I would like to be able to think like this. What it will really lead to, though, is probably people not upgrading things anymore, as the risk of losing the structure and therefore the investment just got a lot higher and just running in circles recapping even more than before. People will allways choose the way of the least resistance in such games. And if it’s very easy to cap something it’s also very easy to recap.
Of course this is just an assumption, but a very likely one, I think.

kuora.5402:

This is why you need scouts.

L2P
L2P
L2P
L2P
L2P

You’re definitely right. But you mustn’t forget that this is a game that’s meant to be played for fun. Scouting is not fun for 99% of the players. Therefore, it will never be done enough. As a consequence the recent changes weren’t a good idea for the gameplay as a whole.

I am not yet sure how it will play out, but I think that the change will negatively affect the “fun” in WvW. I don’t know how others define fun in WvW, but for me it’s about fighting groups of other players. Rushing through doors/walls without resistance (aka karma train) is not really fun.
Yet this change will improve “karma training” vastly. At least on mid-low tiers the map zergs usually are ~30 people. To get something ninja’d before needed a bit of restraint, which many public zergs weren’t able to muster. Now you almost must want to create orange swords; Never again will they pop up accidentially.

I can also understand those that want a more realistic war-simulation were you have to put scouts everywhere. But I can assure you that only the most dedicated WvWers will be willing to do such tedious things like running around a keep to look for intruders. That’s just a silly thing to spend your leisure time with.

For me WvW is about getting in a group/zerg and finding the enemy group/zerg to crush it beneath our heels. But now it will be difficult to find said enemies. It will definitely make the game more difficult and less casual friendly.

I would have loved if they had made structures easier defensible, by making the walls/doors tougher and more endurable so that the defenders can arrive in time more easily and all could have a nice time actually fighting over something. The way they chose will probably achieve the direct opposite of it. More PVDoor and even less PVP.

Also, the change of rules affects servers with different populations differently. It would be advisible to apply rulesets according to server’s, or rather tier’s population. e.g. on T1-3 25 people make orange swords, t4-6 10 men suffice and t7-8 5 men.

Hi,

I am getting a little disappointed that PVE is so much more rewarding from a currency/gear income perspective than WvW. On top of not getting equal rewards, you also have infinitely higher expenses in WvW if you play it dedicated (Siege and upgrades are very expensive; especially when compared with the meagre income of WvW).

I know that a lot of the fun in WvW comes from it sandboxy feel and what the community on your respective server makes of it. Nevertheless, you should be equally able to gear your character(s) or acquire multiple sets of gear for different playstyles (e.g. for zergplay I want something different than for roaming, etc.), which is a lot more difficult for pure WvWers than it is for pure PVEers.

First of all there is only one set of items available for WvW-only currency. Thus, as a start, the variety of gear available for badges (or any other WvW currency you might implement) should be increased.
But to make that even a remotely viable option, said currency needs to be increased dramatically. Buying a full set of Invader’s gear is probably the most difficult thing to do in GW 2, besides getting a legendary. The items are so hilariously expensive (or the droprate of badges so low) that equipping multiple characters through this system is really not a viable option at all.

And while this is so difficult to acquire, the PVE dungeon gear is basically handed over for free (in comparison). I am not a huge dungeon man, but last weekend I did the required five dungeons to finally be done with the monthly (2 COF and 3 AC paths). I had never been to said dungeons, but as I was with a group of mostly guildies, who explained what to do in each dungeon it was done fairly easy and I spent between 2-3 hours there with some lfg time in between.

Now after the 3 AC runs I already have enough badges to buy an exotic helmet (and nearly enough CoF badges to buy something there as well) with PVT stats; the very same stats the WvW-badge gear has too.
The WvW-gear helmet costs over 300 badges, if I remember correctly. Needless to say that with the low yield of WvW-Badges (and the broken system that support roles that do less damage are less likely to get loot at all) I would be nowhere near that helmet had I spent the time, I spent in the dungeon, doing WvW.

Fact is that if you are a dedicated WvW player and really do something for your server, like purchasing upgrades and buying siege equipment, you are not able to get different gear sets for your characters, because there is only one set available in WvW, karma sets also offer only a few stat variations and the TP is just too expensive, while in PVE you are very easily capable of getting full exotic equipment by just farming a dungeon for a couple of days.

This inbalance needs to be alleviated. I understand that you probably want to be PVE more rewarding from a coin/gear perspective, but I can’t believe that you want the advantage a PVEer has in that area to be that crass. I really hope this is something that will finally be tackled with the upcoming WvW patch.

Luciusbrimstone.7925:

Please remove WvW from PvE daily and monthly achievements. I don’t like the idea of being coerced into doing a player vs player event that I don’t particularly care for if I want to earn some rewards in the player vs environment area.

Not sure about you, but today my daily quest was to do 5 out of perhaps 10 options (only one of which was WvW related, if I remember correctly). Therefore, I think you’ll never again be forced to do WvW to finish a daily. And from what I’ve gathered, the next monthly will be designed accordingly.

But I really feel your problem. I was really kitten that I had to do 5 dungeons for the last monthly achievement. Here’s to hoping that that’ll be over…

From what I gathered, you only get rewards if you’re actively participating in the guild events. (I mean, it would be pretty silly, if they offered rewards for something you didn’t participate in, wouldn’t it?)
Therefore, if you find multiple guilds that are ok with you not representing all the time and are still large enough to complete the challenges, then I guess no one will hinder you.

I think if you’re a PVEer you’ll get gold reasonably fast. But as a WvW player, who doesn’t only let others carry the burden of siege and upgrade expenses, I have a very low ingame income.
Would I not do some dungeons occasionally, I wouldn’t have the money to equip my alts (besides karma equip). I hope this income inbalance will be adressed in the upcoming WvW patch in March (or better: sooner )

To be honest I don’t expect to much. As a WvW-man these PVE-Guild Missions won’t really be for me, I guess.
I just hope these guild missions won’t be the sole way of acquiring the new ascended jewellery I believe to have seen on the preview

It’s really a shame that WvW is still so broken and relatively unrewarding (compared to PVE).
I really, really hope the march update will fix some of the issues and make it more fun. It is fun as it is, but it is not the standalone part of the game it should in truth be.

As a player from AM, a server which has been in T4-6 for almost its whole existence, I can say that I find WvW very fun. Now, I don’t know what it’s like on top servers, but from what I read here, a lot of it seems to be about very large zerg battles. In the mid-range tiers we have decently sized zergs at prime time (I have very rarely seen a zerg with more than 50 people; 30 is more the average on a good night; And there is normally only one such zerg on a map. So there’s plenty of small scale fights going on, too). During the day and late at night, you’ll see very few players and only small bands of them, not zergs. This, naturally, offers a nice opportunity for smaller groups to have a significant influence on the scoreboard.

I think the idea that the lower tiers are filled with worse PvPers/WvWers or worse tacticians, which some of you seem to have, is wrong. We just have fewer dedicated WvWers down here and more “randoms”, who are unwilling to join the community TS. And of course we have less players in WvW overall. We never have a queue except EB and own BL during Primetime (and even then it’s mostly only 3-5 minutes).

Nevertheless we have a lot of nice ZvZ or GvG battles going on during primetime. After all, to me, these battles are what WvW is about in the end. The scoreboard is not entirely without its merits, but, at least to me, it’s not the center of WvW. I gave that thought up, when I learned that WvW was too much about numbers and 24/7 coverage. Why bother with something that I, as a non 24/7 player can’t influence anyway.

Senninha.4105:

Decear.7089:

Nice 10 golem+zerg rush again am, looks like thats the only tactic your server can do at night. Btw gz for holding sm for 5mins lol.

Dont forget to mention within 2 hours after their Golem zerg on SM there wasnt anymore AM on the EB map :P.

Well, that’s the whole point of WvW, isn’t it? Cap points while you’re there and lose them while you’re not.
I guess by now it is obvious that AM doesn’t have the capability of fielding a sufficient number of players to compete around the clock. All we can do is compete at the times, when we are able to field nearly as many players as the other contenders. Which we did last evening. And we had a fun time and wiped a lot of zergs from both opponents. At times we even lead the income board. That this is not the case when nearly nobody is online really is not a huge surprise to me.

So, no need to get all psyched about your recapping success. PVDoor is a necessity and something I’d do too, if I played at a time when there are few defenders, but it’s not really a thing to be bragged about.

I agree with many of the OPs thoughts, but not all.

1) I don’t see the commander being purchaseable not as a big problem (Well aside from the fact that you can’t really earn 100g by playing WvW if you don’t have a guild sponsoring your commander; but that belongs to point 4)

This may come from a subjective point of view from my own server. We don’t “suffer” from too many commanders running around doing stupid things. If anything, we have too few commanders willing to actually turn on their headlight.

Of course there are some commanders, who are better than others, but generally I’m always relieved when I see any commander about, rather than all the people spread out over the map doing their own thing. So, to me even a poor commander is better than none, which is the case too often. This, however, might be different on higher tiers (we are pretty much in the middle of the ranking).

Nevertheless, I agree that commander should be purchaseable with a WvW inherent currency, like badges, for instance (That would at least require you to have spent some time in WvW before becoming commander)

2) I agree that the incentives for having a guild are not that big (Not only in WvW but in the game generally;) and could be improved. I don’t see that as a major issue, though.

3) I also agree that the limit of AOE targets is ridiculous. And from what I’ve read, they are planning on nerfing AOE rather than buffing it, so that’s obviously a view that is not shared at all by ANet.

What is more, I think that structures are way to easily conquered. The time it takes to burst through a wall/gate should be significantly increased, thus leading to more actual PVP fights, which there are too little of.

In addition, I feel like siege equipment needs to be buffed so that it does more damage on players. The non-upgraded version of the arrow cart is next to useless. With both my Ele and Guardian with WvW standard PVT gear and reasonable survivability builds, I hardly notice being hit by a regular arrow cart. This must be increased significantly, so that structures become more easily defensible.

Also, the line of sight “Bug” when defending from the battlements of a tower/keep need to go. As it’s now it’s actually easier to do damage for the attackers by laying aoe on top of the battlements than it is for the defenders. Defenders more often than not need to jump onto the edge of the battlements to get some damage down onto the attackers. And more often than not some clever guy pulls you down from there and the zerg eats you alive. This cannot, nay must not, be working as intended.

4) The lack of rewards in WvW is appalling. There is fun, sure. But from a character development perspective there is nothing to be had in WvW. If you’re playing actively and buy siege & upgrades, you make zero money in WvW. There is only one set of items available for badges and with the abysmal drop rate this is only available for the most hardcore of players.

If you want to try out a different build/itemset you are forced to do PVE, because only there you earn the necessary coin to buy anything on the TP or you are forced to grind dungeons to get the gear you want. And getting gear through dungeons is infinitely easier than through WvW-badges. Yesterday I did all three paths of AC for the first time (Not a big Dungeon fan, generally). It took about 2 hours altogether, didn’t take the time exactly. But afterwards I had already enough AC tokens to buy me a piece of exotic armour. So after a week or two of doing all paths daily I’d probably have a whole set of said dungeon.
After 2 hours of WvW I’d probably have enough badges to buy a catapult and an arrow cart, but would be nowhere near to being able to purchase a piece of armour.

Why is that so inbalanced?
Why is there only one set of items available through badges, generally?
I sincerely hope that the rewards of WvW are adjusted to match those of PVE dungeons, or at least to be brought somewhere in the vicinity of them. Because as it is now, if you want to have change regarding your character’s equipment beyond the karma items, there’s only PVE.

5)
I also feel like WvW is, together with sPVP, the stepchild of GW2-development. I understand that PVE is the predominant playstyle in most MMOs and that this section will always see the most novelties, but the perceived lack of improvement in this magnificent sector of the game is disheartening to say the least. For many of us WvW is the sole reason to play the game, because to be honest, other than that there is only PVE (s/tPVP seems to be in an even more desolate state than WvW) and there are other games out there that do that better. Right now, I think the only reason why the whole WvW-Community hasn’t abandoned the game altogether yet, is the lack of a real alternative. But I really hope that the promised update in March will be something huge and bring real improvements.

I can totally understand that those in very small guilds are disappointed about the news about AoW tier 5 being required for the guild missions.
But I also think that this is intended and that the guild missions are something these small guilds wouldn’t be able to complete anyway. The guild missions are supposed (or so it seems to me, maybe I’m wrong) to introduce something of the grand raid-achievement that has been missing from GW2 (well, except WvW).

Because as it stands now, everything worthwile in GW2 PVE is focussed on 5 persons. The larger outdoor events like dragons are so faceroll easy that they don’t feel like an accomplishment.
Therefore, I think (or rather hope) they are correcting this mistake now and introduce PVE stuff to do for large guilds.

Would be in favour of this too. Something like the WoW Dualspeccing system, with two traitbuilds saved and changeable whenever outfight. It’s very annoying to have to respecc for WvW/PVE and not have one single button to do it.

I fear that for some servers it will really be impossible. I’m talking about the servers that sit on the bottom of the ranking (especially Europe, NA seems more balanced there). The last two servers haven’t changed for weeks (and haven’t been the “green” server since they dropped to the last tier) and are managing an average income that’s barely over 50. I assume for players on these servers it will be really hard to accomplish this feat. But probably this will improve when Arborstone has completed its descent to the last tier.

Wow. The community on your server must be really rotten. I’ve not seen achievement points one single time in a grouping request.
Especially, since that’s a totally nonsensical parameter that does neither say anything about your equipment/build or experience with the dungeon in question.

I think you’re right with the notion that the visible scores and the weird perception that the opponents should change every week is actually harmful for the participation in WvW.

Yesterday, when we saw that we only got 80 points during the afternoon we only managed to field 15-20 people on our borderlands (on the community TS; There were probably a few randoms too), which was then, understandably, heavily targeted by GH, who wanted to overtake us, which they eventually managed.
I think the ability to view the score live has kept less dedicated WvWers away, because they didn’t want to join a lost cause and get beaten by superiour numbers repeatedly.

That said, I hope the coming week will be fun. Pointwise it was a decent matchup, but at prime time during the week FS was able to field vastly more people than GH and AM. GH and AM seem to have their best time at different times (GH in the morning and AM late at night). The most even it got was funnily around lunchtime. I hope this matchup will bring more even fights.

Frustrating to yet again lose a place and come in on last place due to virtual non-activity on friday. Feels like a deja vu…We’ll definitely have to work on that, but I assume everybody is already resting to offer you a well deserved beating on reset night :P

Was a nice matchup, though. Looking forward to the next week.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

Yea, we all saw those forums full of posts asking for AC to be made harder…. NOT!
.

They mentioned that they would make it more like fractals. Are these considered difficult (not talking about higher levels, but generally)? I mean, I’m not a big PVE fan, but the two times I did fractals (lvl 10 and 5 btw), they were faceroll easy. The hardest part was to manage the small time window of the swamp. The bosses were ridiculously easy.

So I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that AC will get more difficult.

on the sword changes: I had actually hoped that they would make it harder to cap stuff and easier for defenders to show up at a spot (=take longer to get through walls/doors). Which would lead to more acutal PVP, which is the thing that WvW is missing the most, if you ask me.

I’m really wondering why they seemingly chose to make keeps/towers easier to cap; because that’s what that change will effectively be about: you won’t see enemy zerg movement anymore (more than 25 people accidentially hitting/getting hit by a doe won’t happen very often) and with superior siege equipment it will get ever more difficult to arrive in time to defend, once the attack has been spotted. Not to say that this makes WvW even less casual friendly, because now you need those scouts more than ever and people will get kitten because of this and arguments will start.

I don’t think that this is a change for the better. But I’m curious as to how this will pan out.

xiv.7136:

Because it’s fun.

That’s pretty much the only reason – and a completely sufficient one.

There’s really no such thing as rewards in a MMO. You can’t pay the rent with your gear tokens or your new shiny sword.

While this is true, and the fun is sufficient, I still feel that WvW is not correctly rewarded when it comes to ingame currency or items.

I mean if you’re seriously engaging in WvW that means you’ll be using a lot of siege weaponry, most of which are ridiculously expensive, compared to my ingame income. And you also need to upgrade keeps and such (I know, that’s meant to be more of a guild effort, but still, it’s quite expensive to get a keep from t1 to t3.). And you just don’t make that kind of money in WvW, if you’re playing WvW only and not just run around plucking flowers or exploiting mines.

The badges should be a way to keep the cost for siege low, but you just get too few of them, especially if you plan on getting alts and getting the Pow/Tou/Vit equip for WvW badges for them.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m scraping by or even making a meagre profit playing WvW, but it is nowhere near the income I could have from doing PVE. So, if you want to try out a different build with a wvw only character, you’re screwed because you’ll have a really hard time to finance a whole set of equipment, if you’re not able to get it for karma (where only few stat combinations are offered).