Guild Wars 2

I’ve been on Fort Aspenwood since beta, through two times failing to make gold league, one time succeeding, and at least three times we were predicted to collapse and yet came back. I’ve enjoyed the community and I never thought of switching. I understand server pride just fine.

I also know a dying game mode when I see one. NA straight up doesn’t have the population to fill a total of 96 giant maps 24/7 and no amount of fiddling with the mechanics is going to make playing an empty map fun.

It baffles me when people say that the new desert BL “breaks up the karma train” or some such. If you want to flip undefended objectives, the new maps are by far the best place to do it. They’d be the best place to do it even if they were full – more paths means you can avoid enemies, longer reinforce times makes saving them harder, and more attack points on each objective (and spaced farther apart too) means that it’s harder to effectively siege up even a tower, let alone one of these giant keeps.

By contrast, EB funnels everyone into the middle of the map, and whoever takes SMC invites a 2v1. Not to mention EB actually has people on it who will fight you. Anyone who just wants to ktrain is gonna go to the new maps, not EB.

So they changed the tower waypoints to be on the keeps – does this mean that they get them at tier 0 like before? And that the “home” server can’t hold them? If so, that’s kind of…. weird, right? It’s a big buff to the two south servers. In fact I would guess it puts the north server at a disadvantage.

I like that Anet made a significant change to the map, but I would’ve rather those waypoints (and the rampart one) showed up at tier three instead.

I’m part of a WvW guild but I’ve also been part of a PvE guild since launch. This particular PvE guild does guild missions Sunday noon PST since the expansion.

After the PvE missions we take them into WvW to complete the WvW missions. It’s only been two weeks so far, but both weeks the outcome has been the same: we start by taking a camp, then a tower, then a keep, and no one shows up to defend.

Earlier today we went to TCBL, took their T3 palace keep, and not a single solitary soul showed up to try and stop us. We rammed down two fortified gates with normal rams, it took forever, but no one showed up to defend so we took the keep anyway.

All I can say is that every time I’ve tried to play the new desert borderlands the result has been boring. No one to fight, nothing to do. Once upon a time taking TC’s T3 keep would have been exciting. Now no one cares. It’s just another PvE event basically. And this is in tier 2. If tier 2 is dead, it means that most likely tiers 3-8 are dead too.

Participation and interest are flagging, so is activity, so is the community. I understand that Anet can’t make big changes quickly, but they can at least acknowledge the issue right? I want WvW to succeed. If you don’t believe anything else, believe that. I’ve been roaming in the new maps for the specific purpose of learning them and providing content for opposing servers, but my endurance is running out here.

OP made a very good post, good work, I agree with most of it. I do have some issues though.

First is that I don’t think upgrades should cost anything. I don’t think they should be automatic but they shouldn’t cost gold either. I actually think Anet is relatively close to a good upgrade system – they should just increase the amount of time it takes to upgrade but ALSO increase the amount of time getting a yak in decreases the timer. Right now yaks are frankly kind of irrelevant. So using the same system but changing the timers could result in a good mechanic.

Second, I see having a player limit on waypoint use as leading to all sorts of potential problems. Guild groups getting split up is the most obvious one. I think the waypoint player limit fixes a problem that isn’t really a problem. When I’ve run havoc groups and I can make a big blob port in to respond to my 5-8 or however many people, I consider it a victory because a few of us occupied many of the enemy, meaning that my allies elsewhere and on other maps have more breathing room.

Third, and this isn’t really a criticism of your proposal but more a comment on WvW as a whole. WvW’s primary problems are not directly related to map mechanics. IMO WvW’s primary problem is that it basically is not actually a competitive game mode, because the outcomes of matches are determined primarily by coverage imbalances. No map mechanics can be a true solution to that problem.

To give an example, your idea for outposts is a good one. But I’ve never once on the new borderlands maps had to use a treb on anything (with the exception of defensive gate trebs), because there’s never been sufficient defense or siege to justify using a treb over a ram or cata. Right now WvW’s population is just not high enough to fill these maps (and more worryingly I’m not sure Anet’s servers can even handle the number of players it would take to make them play properly).

I can see potential in the desert borderlands maps if they make some changes AND the maps are full. But I don’t see how we’re going to fill them with the current server system.

To the extent that I believe Anet is serious about focusing on WvW once the expansion stuff is settled, I hope they’re looking at solutions for coverage imbalances first. As I see it, no attempt to use game mechanics to dilute the advantage you get from superior coverage has ever been successful.

You know the game wasn’t released until 2012 right?

I tried to give these maps a chance. I learned the routes, I learned the jump pads and teleports and all that. I even looked up guides online. I now know all quickest reinforce routes and the points you can jump over the barricades (is that even intended? I doubt it) As a roamer/scout, the experience is always the same: I see almost no one. I see enemy players like once every twenty minutes, or less than that. I spend the bulk of my time killing NPCs.

As a sometime leader of a havoc group, the maps feel lonely and sluggish. As a member of a large PPT-for-fights guild, I have to wait in a long EBG queue while the borderlands maps are empty night after night. (Then I get DC’ed from lag – while my teamspeak is working perfectly – and have to queue again)

No one responds to callouts on home borderland anymore. They just don’t care, not even for a tier three Rampart (the garri equivalent). I’ve only cared this long because I’ve pushed myself to.

Go on, call me a zergling, a one-masher, a rallybot, a scrub, say I don’t get it, whatever. The new maps are boring, sluggish, and empty. And this is from a Fort Aspenwood player – on a server that, according to Anet’s own metrics, is full. I don’t even want to think about what it’s like on lower tiers.

I’m on an NA server and we definitely get more lag during the skysplitter event.

Central (west) outer gate of palace: you can now put siege down here as we successfully put down rams yesterday. But now teleport skills don’t work here for some reason. Mesmer blink returns “no valid path to target” even if you try to blink like two feet away with no elevation change.

When camps flip (and possibly other objectives too) – the supervisor and quartermaster respawn in the same place they were when they died. So camp supervisors that got dragged away from the capture circle (like by someone soloing a camp, say), respawn in that same place, which is sometimes well away from the camp. I suspect this is what’s happening to people that have seen quartermasters outside of tower walls. Somehow they got dragged outside during the capture, and the new quartermaster spawns in the same place as the old one was.

I have a hard time believing this “everyone is PvE’ing” story for the maps being empty. If everyone were PvE’ing you would expect to see all maps empty, but that’s not the case. EB is queued every night on my server (Fort Aspenwood) and the queue seems to show up earlier every night. But I haven’t seen a queue on borderlands outside of reset since the expansion dropped.

What’s more, FA is a “full” server now according to Anet’s counting method, which as I understand it now exclusively counts players in WvW maps. What’s more from what I’ve heard this is the situation on other full servers as well, last I checked the top six servers in NA were all full status.

The conclusion is that players aren’t playing the new borderlands because they don’t like them. And this isn’t some vocal minority either, this is the collective behavior of several entire servers, voting with their feet and queuing for EB while ignoring the borderlands.

I don’t think WvW is dead. I think people will gradually get sick of EB queues and filter into the new maps and they’ll get a bit busier. But this is frustrating. I bet a lot of dev time was put into these maps. Better communication and understanding of what goes on in WvW could have clued you in to how they’d be received.

And this policy of “we won’t show you anything until we have something significant to show you” could just as easily be described “we won’t show you anything until it’s too late to make use of player feedback.” I was in the second stress test where by the second day the maps already felt like ghost towns. And this was in a stress test! Of course by then it’s too late to make anything but minor tweaks.

Speaking as a player who mostly wuvs, I would like some kind of way to get mastery XP from wuv. For example, have the vendor that sells the hero point item give a mastery XP item as well. It doesn’t have to give a huge amount of mastery XP, just some.

I don’t want to have to do things I don’t like (like map completion or that CoF mastery XP farm thing) to access the expansion stuff. Let me get it through wuv somehow, even if it’s slower.

—Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?

I’ve played in havoc-sized groups (3-10 people or thereabouts), guild groups of 15-25, guild groups of 25+, and solo roaming. I do it all basically…. I’ve played mostly in groups that do care about PPT and try to take/defend objectives instead of just looking for fights, but too long without a fight and even a PPT group gets antsy.

—Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?

I usually play on the borderlands, only occasionally on EB. My experience doesn’t change much to be honest. Small changes only. On EB sometimes the fights get huge (like 40+ on each side) which is not my preference, anything over 25 or so per side is too big for my taste.

—Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.

I can’t speak to what the experience in the new BL is gonna be once people get used to the map. But right now it feels way too big. You can run around for what seems like forever without seeing an enemy player. That’s been most of my experience so far. There’s just no one to fight.

As a result, you spend more time running around, watching rams gradually down gates, and fighting PvE mobs like keep/tower lords. But that’s not why I WvW. If I wanted to kill PvE mobs I have the entire rest of the game to do it in. I go to WvW to fight other players, and they’re just harder to find in the new map.

—Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.

Haven’t had enough fights to say to be honest. Seems like there’s a lot of places where one side or the other has to push through a choke or up an incline (which makes it difficult to aim AoE at people standing at the top). Situations like that reward passivity unfortunately.

—In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.

It takes much longer. Feels like gate HP has been buffed, especially fortified gates. Got boring to be honest.

—How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I wish I got mastery XP in wuv, personally. I have enough ranks to unlock all the traits, so I don’t need wxp except for the doodads you use to get hero points. I main guardian in WvW and don’t really plan on using dragonhunter so…..

—How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?

Maybe people get used to the new map or something and groups and players are better able to find each other. But I’m gonna be less likely to play this new map. EB has become the first choice of every WvW guild I’ve talked to since the expansion. If EB is queued, and they can’t find fights on the new map, they’ll probably just log.

—In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.

Y’all needed to ask this question six months ago. In the stress tests the consensus of everyone I talked to was that the map was too big. Now, here we are at release, and it’s still too big. I don’t know what Anet expected to happen. You increase the play area by a huge amount but don’t increase the population? Why did you think it would turn out any other way?

—In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.

Dunno how I’d do that in 100 words or less

—In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.

Ditto

—Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?

EB. Desert BL as of right now is huge and empty. I hope that’s because people are still PvE’ing. But on my server (FA) there were queues last reset and I expect the same was true on TC and SoS, and the maps still felt lonely. I used to like borderlands more, now I like it less. It’s too big.

Senario.2038:

This is concerning Story mode Part 14 (tracking)

I’m on the story mode and have been eagerly anticipating the content in HoT but I recently ran into a bug at the beginning of this part of the story where you are following the trail. The tangled depths sign that is at the bottom of the area does not progress the story but instead gives no dialogue and removes the marker for where the next part of the story takes place.

Please get this fixed as soon as possible as I would very much like to continue the story.

I’m having this exact same problem. I’ve tried zoning out, restarting the story step, both, doing everything in every order I can think of. Nothing progresses the story.

(Also tried zoning out to both Lion’s Arch and the PvP lobby, no change)

If we’re stuck with Saturday reset for now, please change it back to Friday as soon as possible.

You know what time would be great for “emergent gameplay”? Friday night. I would emerge the hell out of my gameplay if reset were on friday night. Just sayin.

I just want to know, what is the rationale behind this change? What positive effect does Anet expect it to have?

Seems to me this’ll just turn Saturday from fun fights day to ktrain day, and I don’t think anyone was asking for that. Even for NA this change is bad, it’ll be worse for other time zones, especially OCX and SEA like many have already pointed out.

I know some people like long sieges, but some don’t, including me. To me they’re a boring slog. 3-4 players man siege, hitting the same 1-3 buttons over and over again, while everyone else stands around and watches. The only person that gets to do anything interesting is the commander, who makes the decisions of how much supply is need, what siege should be placed where, etc….

Also, when people disagree over the relative strength of offense vs. defense when it comes to attacking a keep (and to a lesser extent a tower – towers are tougher in the new map), we should differentiate between how powerful defense is, and how much people actually want to do it.

As designed, defense is extremely powerful. In fact I’d say it’s by far the biggest force multiplier in the game. 5-10 organized people inside the walls can shut down a giant enemy zerg. In the current map (not sure if this is possible in the new one, never got a chance to test it) a single player with a gate treb can stop a ktrain by themselves.

The thing is that effective defense requires a scout who’s on point, and people don’t like to scout because it’s boring. There are a few people who enjoy it and do it well, but they’re rare. Commanders don’t like to tell people to do it either. I never liked telling someone “you babysit this tower while the rest of us go out and have fun.”

So if you’re one of the people saying defense needs to be buffed, I hope you’re saying the incentive to defend needs to be buffed. Defense itself, if an objective is actually manned and has supply, is crazy powerful already and doesn’t need any more buffs.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Your suggesting it was a common buzz word on the forums before when describing the meta? I don’t by that.

As well, since your making it about you. I see no post in your post history in which you used the term once before the change. Personally I find that to be extremely convincing as a bases to suggest you are indeed doing as suggested. I don’t know about everyone else, but all I have seen on the forums was discussion of GWEN meta. This so called pirate ship buzz word strikes me as new and used around the stab changes.

After a few hours every evening since the change, I guess ranged play has some more value in larger fights. My experience thoug, suggests that it alone, is by no means optimal.

“Making it about me”? He was one who accused me of repeating buzzwords. What’s more, I don’t often post on these forums, my last post not relating to the stability change was five months ago.

You honestly think the term “pirate ship” was made up in the last few days? Let me save you some time: no it wasn’t. Ask anyone who’s familiar with the GvG scene.

dancingmonkey.4902:

rainisword.7860:

Coldtart.4785:

Did it bruise the egos of the siege monkeys here to see a video of a guild so easily doing what you keep claiming was impossible? Here it is again.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-L91Sq1zzAQ
Permanent stability was actually possible during this time. The guild I was in actually used to run it, but we didn’t become good enough to really win hard fights until we reduced our guardian count from 3 to 2 per party and ran more dps. No one was ever being carried by stability, but scrubs now are being carried by line cc.

If Anet wanted to increase counterplay to stability they should’ve increased its boon strip priority for common aoe boon strips instead of allowing cc to counter its own counter.

By the way, if any of you siege monkeys wants to say urrrrrrrrrrrr l2p adapt or die to me, take a look at my sig. I’m a lightning rod staff ele. This new meta is brain dead easy mode for me.

Literally no good guild in existence in either EU or NA ran enough guards in 1 party to have permastab. You know why? Permastab is useless, thats why. You’re not constantly spiking with your melee. There are times where you are moving from place to place or even regrouping. The only important time to have stab is when you are engaged with the enemy melee. Its the same thing with fury. You don’t really need 2 wars per melee part for permafury because you don’t need permanent fury since you arn’t always spiking.

You lost me at the point you claimed permanent stability as useless.

Why? He explained why immediately after.

Even with the old boon duration runes running 3 guards per party was a waste of limited spots, other class compositions were better.

100% stability uptime was never something top guilds actually used.

coglin.1867:

Yougottawanna.7420:

If we go down the list in the way the stab changes affect various size engagements:

pug blob vs. pug blob: the larger blob always had an advantage, now they have an even bigger advantage.

smaller guild group vs. pug blob: the change makes it much harder on the smaller guild group.

guild group vs. guild group: optimal play here is now pirate ship meta, near as I can tell, even more so than before. The role of melee is to secure downs and peel for casters, not to push in.

havoc/roaming: not much change here.

I don’t see any of these changes as positive. The most charitable thing I can think to say is that havoc/roaming is mostly unaffected.

If you feel that is optimal play for guild groups, iI feel you should stop regurgitating what you read on the forums, take a step away from mimicking the buzz words and try some things out yourself. My experience running a guild group suggest your so called meta behavior is Inaccurate. Personally, I feel any e claiming a defined meta in under a week to be comical in itself.

Under a week? Ranged meta has existed in some form since VR and EP back in like 2013. I’m not regurgitating or mimicking anything, and you have no basis for accusing me of doing so.

This so-called “buzz word” (pirate ship) has been around for months before the stab change. The fact that you hadn’t heard of it doesn’t make it a new thing.

Gravy.7589:

This is thread is full of people crying about the changes in stab when it could be used as a means to create a discussion about how to counter the change. Which guilds have done btw. BMO, FUN, PS, DUI, IX, BAE and many other guilds have delt or are dealing with the changes and have had success so maybe ask why your guild hasn’t rather than complaining the game is broke. Lol

The discussion over how to counter the change and the discussion over whether the change is a good idea from a balance/gameplay perspective are two different discussions. You can come up with ways to adapt to the change and still think it’s a bad idea.

If we go down the list in the way the stab changes affect various size engagements:

pug blob vs. pug blob: the larger blob always had an advantage, now they have an even bigger advantage.

smaller guild group vs. pug blob: the change makes it much harder on the smaller guild group.

guild group vs. guild group: optimal play here is now pirate ship meta, near as I can tell, even more so than before. The role of melee is to secure downs and peel for casters, not to push in.

havoc/roaming: not much change here.

I don’t see any of these changes as positive. The most charitable thing I can think to say is that havoc/roaming is mostly unaffected.

Sorel.4870:

Kasteros.9847:

HOW WIN MAN? U can’t, just can’t win against 3x more ccs and 3x more stab stacks it is imposible. It isn;t about strategy, it is about number. Don’t, just don’t talk like u know a thing cos as i see u don’t. Now anet just forced us to blob up and cut down skilled players – even when u are super duper amazing guild u can;t wipe blbo now by simple calculation taht i presented few times( basically by spamming aoe ccs and satb in blob).

Ok, first of all, let’s drop the 1v1-quickscope-at-dragon slang, thank you.

You’re right on something: I don’t have the definitive answer to your current issues, because:
1) The patch was yesterday and no one has had time to adapt yet
2) I’m not a commander in a “super duper amazing guild”. I’m merely a humble WvW player who gives an opinion on the game mode, providing arguments.

Yes, three times larger zergs have three times the cc and three times the stab, that seems like a reasonable assumption. My question is: are you a “skilled player” if you try to fight a zerg three times the size of yours using the same strategy this larger blob uses? Do you see me complaining about losing against three pew pew rangers if I stand still and RF one of them (that’s the reason I don’t play ranger btw)? You gotta be smart m8! Get skilled, train with your guild and earn your victory.

The problem is that the most likely strategy people will adopt is already in the game: the ranged bomb/pirate ship meta, also known as the meta most top NA guilds are already using anyway. It has two problems:

1. When two ranged comp guilds fight each other it’s boring. Fights take forever as no one wants to push. Half the assjams I see now are due to sheer boredom.

2. It’s not able to push through chokes. With the (indirect) buff to AC’s through the FOV changes and the new borderlands apparently being chokepoint paradise WvW is going to be boring as hell.

gricks.1897:

So what about all those condition removing skills? Every class has a skill to remove conditions. Why not try those? Why not try Guardian shouts that remove conditions? Why not try actual team work, and layered condition removal?

Melee is still viable, it simply requires team work now, and target priority. Those eles who always sat at the back being useless? Well you should prolly get your ranged folks on them. Hammer warriors got you down? Fear them, root them, knock them back. What works on you, works on them.

WvW builds have always been so focused on damage/movement, and root removal, now folks need to actually think about conditions mattering. Zergs need to look at what is there and have a couple of support folks for condition removal, have a few strong ranged options to knock down their ele’s and necros.

Actual strategy has come into play a bit.

You think eles were useless in the old meta and you apparently don’t know the difference between a condition and a control effect. You shouldn’t be lecturing other people on strategy.

So under the old stab, a coordinated group on teamspeak could beat a larger uncoordinated group, and now they’re less likely to be able to do that… how is that a good thing? That means numbers have greater relative importance and communication/cohesion has less relative importance. Isn’t that the exact opposite of what we should want?

I don’t keep track of everything the devs say on here – is there a place where they described their reasoning for the change, or what kind of play they wanted to encourage/discourage with this change?

I don’t understand what the intention of the change is basically. Are there any posts where they explain the intention?

Four hour long matchups separated by time zone, where each time zone has its own glicko rating. For example, a server with an NA glicko of 1.7M would be matched up against other servers with roughly that glicko. Then, during OCX, that same server might have a glicko of 1.5M or something, and be matched up against other servers that have that glicko in that timezone.

This way you get competitive matchups in all time zones, and you don’t have to break up existing server communities.

Roe.3679:

Narkodx.1472:

Roe.3679:

Yougottawanna.7420:

I didn’t even know they worked in WvW, but they shouldn’t. They’re not available through normal play, only the gem store, so they shouldn’t be usable in any kind of pvp (not just “competitive” pvp) as they give an advantage to the richer player.

And to those saying “it’s only 5% you probably would’ve won/lost anyway,” that’s a bad argument that could be used to justify nearly any level of P2W. In a close fight 5% can make a different, so they shouldn’t be allowed.

You’re complaining about fairness in WvW, where numbers rule all? If you want the fairest of fair fights, go to pvp where these arent allowed. Otherwise there is literally no argument you can make that isn’t trumped by “bring a friend.”

Pretty much THIS

In a place where one player can have Applied Fortitude/Guard Stacks while the other doesn’t there is no balance or “fairness”

Or ascended gear. Or more people on their team. These boosters are the least of any imbalance problem, and will rarely appear and in those instances, rarely make a difference.

Ascended gear and guard stacks can be earned outside of the gem store, bad comparison.

And like I already said, it makes the difference in a close fight. It doesn’t have to hypothetically swing a 5v1 in favor of the one guy to be unfair. If it gives you an advantage in a 1v1 in exchange for gems, it’s P2W, which is bad.

By your reasoning an item that gave you +100% damage in exchange for gems would also be acceptable, because if you were outnumbered twenty to one you would still lose.

Saying they’ll “rarely” appear and “rarely” make a difference is not an argument in their favor – in fact it’s conceding the point that sometimes they do appear and do make a difference. To the extent they do, they shouldn’t.

I didn’t even know they worked in WvW, but they shouldn’t. They’re not available through normal play, only the gem store, so they shouldn’t be usable in any kind of pvp (not just “competitive” pvp) as they give an advantage to the richer player.

And to those saying “it’s only 5% you probably would’ve won/lost anyway,” that’s a bad argument that could be used to justify nearly any level of P2W. In a close fight 5% can make a different, so they shouldn’t be allowed.

IMO we shouldn’t be trying to make a “gvg tier.” A healthy server plays for a mix of fights and PPT. Too much fights and there’s tensions that divides the server and causes bad blood. And if a server goes stops caring about PPT, their PPT will go down and they’ll drop a tier. What happened to Maguuma was entirely predicatable, and it’ll happen again if another server takes a “we’re here for the fights, kitten the score” mentality to its logical conclusion.

Instead, try fostering a gvg scene in every tier. I know JQ has at least 2 guilds (QT and IX) that are down to gvg, TC has more, dunno about Blackgate but they must have at least one big as they are. T2 obviously has several, below that there are some on Crystal Desert, some on Devona’s Rest, some in Yak’s Bend.

Related to this: gvg guilds ought to PPT at least some. It’s how you’ll attract new people and let the wider WvW world know you exist and when they see you wiping people they get interested in learning how to play better.

Werat.7063:

Luvpie.8350:

Yougottawanna.7420:

The big change is that now attacking an upgraded keep that has any defenders inside is such a boring slog that no one wants to do it. A keep with 1700 supply means defenders can chain-disable siege for literally hours. In populated matchups they only get flipped during coverage dead zones. The net effect is to make the PPT game more boring, and the PPT game is already boring enough that a big chunk of hardcore players don’t care about it at all.

This hits the nail on the head…

I have been a defender for so long and if you look at the many times a blob has brute forced t3 with 4-5 rams before we even could react considering fast build i think for the moment it is justified to let def be a little op.

While I agree as grave points out, that using a siege disabler can be abused both ways and this is surely true – the not surprising insight on my side is that i see a way higher intelligence level in the guys that deff versus the the blob in front of the gate how seems unable to put some brains in it and expect t3 to drop easily.

Have you tried one of the following:
- draining you objective with a few tier5 treb users (should not be an issue to come by them nowadays).
-running at least one main group and one distraction group who hits the objective from the other side
- spacing your siege (2 deffers….30+ blob cant space their siege so not all will bloked at once?)
- using reflection and protection your siege
-coordination to cause a distraction somewhere else on the map
- map awareness where you 3rd party on the map is (aka taking advantage of the enemy of the enemy)
- destroy a wall or multiple ones will drain supply quickly
- cut enemy supply into keeps
- using a siege disabler yourself

There is sure a few more but just straight out complaining wont do.
And last but not least, did you guys not always “we are here for the fights”. Well, I am on a deff server and that sure give me alot of fights when i can call in my own people to deff a tower where a 30+ blob stands outside (back turned stupidly to the inc and no scouters and stacking, nicely standing in the red circles of sup ac). If we spend 2 or 3 hours fighting around our keeps trying to maintain our objectives on the map versus multiple groups I can assure you everyone gets something out of it even if at the end of the run we loose a keep.

And if all does not help. Go for a 30 golem parade (happened on us today). You can still brute force but it wont come at a cheap price.

If you want karma runs go eotm.

If you get your T3 keeps ram rushed before you can react you should’ve had a scout. You don’t need an overpowered gadget that makes long sieges even more boring than they already are. A scout, a gate treb, and half a brain were all you ever needed to stop a ram rush, but apparently that’s too hard.

Look at your suggestions. You want the attacking force to have to split up into several small groups, hit multiple gates at once, rotate reflections (which requires running several eles with weapon combinations that are bad for fighting), have havoc groups keeping the enemy starved for supply, and sit on catas/trebs for long periods of time.

You want attackers to do all that, but for you having a scout and a gate treb is too much work? You want to be able to not only stop a blob by yourself, you want to be able to do it without having to do anything hard. 15 badges and five silver for me, thirty golems for thee.

Disabler as it is now is overpowered. Disable or remove please, like the title says.

Disabler should be nerfed or removed IMO. It doesn’t slow down karma trains that much, since karma trains are often attacking undefended objectives, or objectives that are paper with no siege inside, and even if they do get disabled they have the numbers to just autoattack the door down.

What’s more, there were already tools to slow down/stop big blobs. You anticipate their movements, flip or drain supply camps before they get there, and use gate trebs or other siege to stop the ram rush. Defenders already had many tools to stop blobs, they didn’t need more. The people this hurts the most are havoc groups, who don’t have the tools to keep high reflection uptime. (Which doesn’t even work that well BTW. Player can drop inside cata bubbles and drop the grenade inside them, pretty easy for a thief with shadow refuge. Furthermore the AoE is so big that you can aim the grenade so that it doesn’t hit the reflect wall/swirling winds/bubbles but the AoE still hits the siege)

The big change is that now attacking an upgraded keep that has any defenders inside is such a boring slog that no one wants to do it. A keep with 1700 supply means defenders can chain-disable siege for literally hours. In populated matchups they only get flipped during coverage dead zones. The net effect is to make the PPT game more boring, and the PPT game is already boring enough that a big chunk of hardcore players don’t care about it at all.

Sweet thx

(15 characters)

Superior rune of the pack has a chance to give nearby allies swiftness, might, and fury when you’re struck – does anyone know exactly how nearby the allies have to be? And I assume it’s five nearby allies?

Maybe I need more details but I don’t quite see how this would fix the current problems. Seems to me that under John Corpering’s system people would just stack the top alliances the same way they stack the top servers. In fact if there’s no gem cost during the “restructuring” phase that would probably be easier than ever.

And I know you said that you want to address overall population imbalance right now rather than timezone-specific imbalance, but it seems to me the one goes hand in hand with the other.

I think that with EOTM you were actually closer to a potential solution than you realized. My idea: make WvW matches much shorter – like 2-4 hours long – and divide server rankings by timezone. For example my server, Fort Aspenwood, can compete with our most common enemy (Sea of Sorrows) in NA time but not in OCX/SEA time. So you would keep the same server communities but have separate rankings according to timezone.

An example of what this would look like: between 5pm and 9pm pacific (or thereabouts) there would be a mini-WvW match with whichever servers were near FA in glicko for that timezone – it would probably be tier two in this case. Then, between 9pm to 1am pacific (or thereabouts), another match with whichever servers were near us in glicko for that timezone (for the sake of the example let’s say it’s tier three). Again for OCX and SEA time, in the appropriate tier. This means each timezone gets a competitive matchup. Since the stakes are lower for each individual match (they’re short), you could introduce more variance in matchups without a bad matchup lasting an entire week too.

What’s more, it allows you to do something new with seasons – for four weeks, seasons go back to weeklong matchups. This means higher stakes and can preserve some unpredictability as people will be less able to predict the outcome of a season. (In the current system there isn’t much. From day one FA knew we were gonna place fifth in the current season).

Strengths of this approach:

-Keeps current server communities, no need to merge or split.
-Each timezone gets a vaguely competitive matchup.
-Seasons are a real change instead of just (mostly) more of the same.
-Removes the frustration of one timezone seeing all their hard work erased after they log off.
-I’m not a programmer or anything, but it seems to me that the system I’ve described would be easier to implement than many of the suggestions listed in this thread.

Weakness:

-You’d have to adjust some game mechanics for a shorter match. Like, maybe upgrades would cost less in supply for example.
-Having different timezones on the same server fighting different servers could have an unexpected effect on server communities. I’m not exactly sure what it would be, but it’s something to consider.

Things that seem like weaknesses but aren’t:

-Lower stakes: for many people the PPT stakes are nothing, because they can’t control what happens when they’re asleep. This puts control of the outcome of the match in the hands of those playing.
-“This will turn WvW into EOTM”: IMO no it won’t. WvW players are competitive and they’ll keep trying to win even with shorter matches. The difference in culture between WvW and EOTM is down to the players moreso than the format.

1: 45 seconds is waaaaay too long

2: Any defender complaining about these hasn’t thought things through. These benefit defenders much more than they do attackers, because defenders can put siege in many areas where the disabler can’t reach.

3: The net effect of this thing on WvW is more waiting. You either wait out the disabler and hope your siege doesn’t get disabled again (it usually does), or you have to leave, get more supply, and come back with cats (which can also be disabled). Or you go to another objective. I think we should all be able to agree that “more waiting” is not a desirable gameplay outcome.

I really wish some dev or another could tell us what the INTENDED effect was for this on gameplay. I have a feeling that they don’t really know.

They fixed the stuck on siege bug? Man I wanted that more than I wanted golem mastery.

Esplen.3940:

The first placed will always have priority. If you are having different effects, your blasts may not be centered inside of the fields, causing them to have different effects, depending on placement.

With projectile finishers, the first field the projectile encounters will apply to it. Same with leap and whirl. Additionally, certain whirl finishers will apply the combo to all of their attacks even after the field has disappeared.

When I tested this I dropped both fields directly on my head, centered on me, and the blast finishers were both directly on my head as well. I dropped healing rain followed by frozen ground many times and got healing sometimes and frost armor sometimes. I tried similar things with other fields – the first field dropped does NOT necessarily take priority.

I just tested in Lion’s Arch – several times I put down healing rain, then frozen ground, and then blasted with Arcane Wave and Arcane Brilliance. I didn’t always get healing – sometimes I got frost armor. Sometimes I got frost armor on one blast and healing on the other. And these are skills with 5 and 6 second durations, so they weren’t expiring before they got blasted. It doesn’t look to me like the first placed always has priority.

You can only interact with one combo field at a time – but what if there are two down in the same place? Which one takes priority? No one seems to know, or rather, everyone seems to “know” but no one seems to agree. I’ve heard that the first one to go down gets priority, and that the last one to go down gets priority, and that some fields take priority over others. But my own experiments haven’t gotten me very far. When stack different fields on my ele and blast them with arcane brilliance, I get inconclusive results.

For instance I tried dropping the following combinations of fields on my own head, followed by a blast (and I made sure that both fields were still active when I blasted):

Static Field (lightning) followed by Healing Rain (water) and vice versa
Healing Rain (water) followed by Lava Font (fire) and vice versa
Frozen Ground (ice) followed by Healing Rain (water) and vice versa

All of them yielded seemingly random results. For water/fire sometimes I got healing and sometimes might, for ice/water sometimes I got healing and sometimes frost armor. It seemed like a coin flip. Then there was a weird exception: dropping water followed by lightning and then blasting gave me healing every time and never swiftness. I think I tried it eight times in a row and it was healing every time. Did I just “win” eight coin flips in a row, or is there something going on with combo fields I don’t understand?

Has anyone else done experiments like these, and if so what were the results? I really want to get this sorted out. It’s bugging me that I don’t know the mechanics behind multiple combo fields in the same spot, and I haven’t found any online resources that aren’t either vague or mutually contradictory.

I used to work in copyediting, have some training in statistics, and occasionally hang out with consultants and such. One of the many things I learned is this: every company claims to use analytics. Shareholders and analysts love that stuff, as does upper management – it appeals to their vanity that they there must be a team of Nate Silver-types exhaustively analyzing every decision they make and concluding that it’s the right one.

The truth is usually much more mundane. They most likely canned SAB because influential people at the company just don’t like it. At any given company usually about half of upper management has no clue what’s going on and the same is likely true at Anet. I doubt that there are any kind of comprehensive data analyses going on about these various decisions, demonstrating that ROI is lower for SAB than hypothetical alternate content.

I don’t doubt that they’re collecting a lot of data and arranging it into graphs and such. That’s the easy part, especially in an online game where data collection is relatively easy. But the truth about Anet’s missteps is most likely simpler. They’re just normal garden-variety mistakes, which become habits if they go unchallenged. Raising a big stink on the forums is actually one of the more effective ways to challenge them – at least one of the more effective we have access to.

I want to know why they included this item. What type of gameplay are they trying to encourage or discourage? They say that this will cause attackers to spread their siege out more, but why would you want them to do that? When I think of problems with WvW, “the siege is too close together” is not one of them.

Right now siege is powerful enough, and scouts effective enough, that if you want to get your PPT up the best way to do it is to try and find undefended objectives. It looks like that’s even more the case now.

It also seems to me that this favors defense much more than offense. There’s no offensive siege that can’t be disabled by a shadow refuge and this new gadget, but there’s plenty of defensive siege, most notably trebs and ACs behind the walls. What’s more, attempting to take a keep especially is usually a race between the attackers and the responders – this gives a big advantage to the responders.

If their goal is to make people use catas and trebs more often, I don’t see that working too well either. Disabling one of those is only gonna be marginally more difficult than disabling a ram, and trivial if you’re a thief, mesmer, or any combination of classes with a smoke field and a blast finisher.

It also adds more waiting. If you throw down rams and they get disabled, are you just gonna leave? You probably don’t want to – so you wait around until you can use your rams again. Waiting for 45 seconds is not fun, especially when it’s likely that when the 45 seconds is up you’ll just get disabled again.

And I hope you like waiting, because your siege is gonna get disabled, folks. A lot. Throwing one of these things is gonna be way easier than stopping someone from throwing them. I know, I know, swirling winds and cata bubbles. I don’t envy the pugmanders trying to get five different focus eles to coordinate, and siege bubble’s duration is 3 seconds on a 20 second cooldown. You’ll need seven people with cat mastery to get to 100% uptime, and 100% uptime is what you’ll need to stop anyone with half a brain and a grain of patience. Realistically, effective defenses against the siege disabler are gonna be rare.

Been on FA since beta and I’ve never considered moving anywhere else. I’ve also run with nearly every guild here at one time or another and enjoyed it all. This is the place you wanna be, basically.

I’m on the west coast and having the same issue. Teamspeak is working fine at the time of the disconnects.

Edit: I should note I ran the gw2.exe with -diag at the end like the suggestion in the support section of the website. According to them I’m losing 0/25 and my ping is 1 ms, so it doesn’t meet the criteria for “bad connection” listed on that page.

A spectre is haunting Fort Aspenwood – the spectre of MEAN.

Moot of Especially Angry Nerds [MEAN] is a WvW guild for those who want to play to a high standard but can’t make the time commitment required in most hardcore WvW guilds. Many serious WvW guilds have raids 5-6 nights a week where attendance/repping is mandatory – but not everyone can meet that kind of schedule, and some people want to PvE sometimes.

If this dilemma sounds familiar, then have I got the guild for you. MEAN is an offshoot of NICE, a PvX guild that’s been on FA since beta, so we have a core of players who show up regularly, but we’re looking to bolster our ranks. We aim for a standard of play comparable to that of GvG-type guilds, but without the same time commitment – and I think we can do it. There are a few requirements:

1: You must be willing to use our builds.
2: You must be willing to play with discipline, and play as a team. To some extent, success in WvW comes by way of playing like a bunch of trained seals, doing certain things at certain times.
3: You must be willing to take on challenging stuff. We’re going to be trying to do things that are hard, like consistently win fights when outnumbered and doing kickflips and basically just being rad all the time.
4: Even though we don’t have a time commitment, it’s best if you play regularly – like, three times a week or more. We won’t be WvW’ing as a guild that often (or at least not at first), but it’s good if you play (and WvW) regularly.

Currently, we raid twice a week – Friday reset and Monday night, starting a 8 eastern/5 pacific. (We plan to add a third night, but for now it’s just two). You should rep MEAN during this time but you don’t have to rep us any other time. Currently we’re looking for warriors, guardians, elementalists, and necromancers.

It this sounds like your brand of vodka, contact Yougottawanna.7420 ingame.

FA Member
31 posts
0 warning points

Yougottawanna
Guild:NICE
Race:Human
Class:Mesmer

A spectre is haunting Fort Aspenwood – the spectre of MEAN.

Moot of Especially Angry Nerds [MEAN] is a WvW guild for those who want to play to a high standard but can’t make the time commitment required in most hardcore WvW guilds. Many serious WvW guilds have raids 5-6 nights a week where attendance/repping is mandatory – but not everyone can meet that kind of schedule, and some people want to PvE sometimes.

If this dilemma sounds familiar, then have I got the guild for you. MEAN is an offshoot of NICE, a PvX guild that’s been on FA since beta, so we have a core of players who show up regularly, but we’re looking to bolster our ranks. We aim for a standard of play comparable to that of GvG-type guilds, but without the same time commitment – and I think we can do it. There are a few requirements:

1: You must be willing to use our synergy builds.
2: You must be willing to play with discipline, and play as a team. To some extent, success in WvW comes by way of playing like a bunch of trained seals, doing certain things at certain times.
3: You must be willing to take on challenging stuff. We’re going to be trying to do things that are hard, like consistently win fights when outnumbered and doing kickflips and basically just being rad all the time.
4: Even though we don’t have a time commitment, it’s best if you play regularly – like, three times a week or more. We won’t be WvW’ing as a guild that often (or at least not at first), but it’s good if you play (and WvW) regularly.

Currently, we raid a grand total of one night per week – Monday night, starting a 8 eastern/6 pacific. (We plan on adding a second raid, but for right now it’s just one) You should rep MEAN during this time but you don’t have to rep us any other time. Currently we’re looking for warriors, guardians, elementalists, and necromancers.

It this sounds like your brand of vodka, contact Yougottawanna.7420 ingame.

As an FA guy, as soon as I saw the title I thought of Tyrion.

1 – Word count is good but don’t make it too short. 150-200 words is good.

2 – I’d prefer player votes. Some people will vote for flying mounts and such but most won’t.

To me the primary problem is that it can cause a situation where a group of players does everything right and still loses. Say it’s a good fight of 15-20 on each side or so, between two organized groups. But some uplevel or something who’s not in teamspeak runs in, gets easily downed, and causes the fight to swing in favor of those who rallied off him.

That means there are situations where you have allies show up to a fight and instead of being happy to see them you wish they would go away. That’s no good.

My suggestion that I think would be relatively easy to implement is that only one person can rally off a kill. It wouldn’t change WvW tactics too much, but it would remove the problem I described (or at least reduce it).

My other suggestion is that if someone is dead for a certain amount of time, they’re auto-ported to spawn. It prevents corpse-scouting, which is a weird mechanic because there’s no way to stop it. You can’t kill the guy again after all. It also would address some things that I consider exploits, like Mesmers dying near the Bay water grates and getting rezzed from outside the keep.