Guild Wars 2

Sorry, but I just gotta vent for a while. I’m sure I won’t be as bitter tomorrow but today I just had to quit WvW because I’m finally fed up with the behavior of some guilds.

It’s not that it happened today. I most probably would just have brushed it off. But it happens time and time again. I think it started with a huge influx of new guilds on our sever when the bandwagoning caused by the first tournament happened.

Anyway, I was roaming with a friend of mine and we happened upon a guild. Believe it or not, it can happen. Maps are not infinitely large and it often makes sense to go to the nearest target and capture it. Only a few seconds pass until we are not only rudely told that this is a closed guild raid but also that we should change the map we’re playing on!

I get it. You’re on a guild run. You want to have fun with your buddies. You want to enjoy this game just as I do. You have the right to politely ask me to not follow you around and I’ll happily oblige. But don’t act like the map or the game is yours. Don’t be so kitten impolite. Don’t forget that this is an MMO and other people have just as much right to play it and have fun as you do. Being in a guild doesn’t make you superior. Being in a guild doesn’t give you the right to treat others without any respect at all. Just show some decency and basic respect to your fellow players (which are all humans by the way) and at least try to make this game a place where no one feels totally unwanted.

Like I said above, it really isn’t that it happened today. But it happens at least 3 times a week if I play daily. Although most often not to the extent that I’m told to switch map. I don’t know why some of you feel so entitled and sometimes have the nerve to do things like run into a camp I’m currently taking over, killing all the guards, then run to the next camp (that was next on my “roaming circle” anyway) and then tell me to kitten off if I run into the same direction because I’m ruining your precious guild run. Well, guess what, you’re ruining my precious roamer run.

What I want to say (or ask of you guildies) -I guess- is: Please just be a bit more considerate and don’t make others feel like they’re totally unwelcome in this game.
Don’t jump to the conclusion that someone wants to join you and is out to ruin your guild run just because they are running in the same direction for a camp or two. And if you want people to go somewhere else, remember that you can’t order them to do what you want (you wouldn’t like that either, would you?) but you have the right to ask them in a polite manner.

I’ve been playing WvW for over 3 years now and once loved it dearly (and still do to a certain extent). There was such a great sense of community, of working together against a common enemy and accomplishing things through teamwork. But as things stand now I often feel totally unwelcome up to the point where I don’t feel like playing WvW at all and that’s a kitten shame!

Hey there!

Thanks for all the work you put into this!
Now that the game has been out for a while, do you still play this build? What do you think about it now? Are there any things you would change? If you’re still happy with it I’ll try to get together all the gear (and the hero points *sigh) to test it out. Had a mesmer at level 80 for a long time now but never really got around to playing it but this sounds super fun!

Xillllix.3485:

[…] when you can code an entire website in 2-3 days.

This statement alone is ridiculous and disqualifies your entire post. I think you don’t have the absolute slightest idea about software development.
Developing a real website (not just using Wordpress..) often takes months of development time.
Assuming the contracts are already set up, you’re lucky if you have most of your requirements engineering done and your development environment set up in those 2-3 days.

Besides, no one knows how hard/easy it is to fix. Those systems are complex. If it was that clear and easy, it probably wouldn’t have had a malfunction to begin with.
Identifying the problem not necessarily makes the problem easy to fix.
It’s a completely different example but probably more tangible for most: Just because the Japanese realized that and why the nuclear power plant (Fukushima Daiichi) leaked didn’t magically turn the matter in an “easy to fix” situation that could be resolved in a day or two.

Claudius.5381:

lordkrall.7241:

Claudius.5381:

While I accept that debugging takes its time, I cannot understand the Friday/Monday argument Mr Katzbach made. MMO is leisure time entertainment, as is for example Disney World. In both cases the main numbers of players/visitors will appear on weekends. It would make no sense to close Disney World over the weekend because their employees want to spend time with their family. And it makes no sense to reduce the staff of ArenaNet during weekends either. That includes developers, especially after a screw up. If anything the weekend staff should be even more numerous on weekends.

And how long do you think the company would survive if they burn out all of their employees by forcing them to work 7 days a week?

I don’t know about the US but at least here in Sweden there are actually laws that regulates how much people are allowed to work each week.

I am from Germany. We have also laws regulating working time. We stumbled over a mind-blowing concept several thousand years ago, called “shifts”. It is widely used in areas which have to provide 24/7 service, like police, hospitals and fire brigades. While you probably don’t need a full staff during the small hours (even on weekends people sleep), the aforementioned concept may help to cover weekends.

And no, you don’t need more people. You have only to distribute the working time in another way.

I’m working in the software industry and I can tell you that you wouldn’t assume that one can just simply switch to shifts ("You have only to distribute the working time in another way.) for a variety of reasons. Sorry, but you clearly have no idea how software development (and large companies in general) work at all.

Also, did you seriously just compare the need of an online game staff working 24/7 to that of hospitals/firefigthers/the police/etc. ?! As in “a service so vital people would die without”?!!
If anyone out there should be that dependable on one single game, I’d seriously suggest seeking out professional help.

zMajc.4659:

So 100% of players must suffer because a minority didn’t get their chests? What kind of flawed logic is that?

I’m so very disappointed i can even describe it.

Geez, so many posts like yours. Can’t people read or don’t they just want to?! It’s to not further compound the issue, not to punish anyone. E.g. they might roll back the rewards (render all the tickets already issued useless/delete them) and give everyone a new chest and that would not be possible if some people already spent their tickets. It’s already complicated enough because some people got the wrong rewards as is!

Further, if you realy suffer because you have to wait for a digital reward (that’s only cosmetic on top) for a few more days or maybe a week or two, I feel bad for you…

Crunk n monkey.3749:

For the people who haven’t gotten their chest and tickets, this is somewhat good news, at least they won’t be the only ones who are miserable. But to the ones who already have their tickets, this sucks really bad.

I can only think of two outcomes from this, either a rollback and take away tickets and rewards from everyone and reissue them again correctly. Or everyone gets the same reward, probably 1st place to make it “fair”.

Although I’d get first place anyway, I’d be okay with everyone getting first place rewards. It isn’t like it would hurt me in any way and I’m sure people in lower places fought equally as hard if not even harder but were just unlucky to not have as many people and organized guilds on their servers.

savchris.9246:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

While the World vs. World team investigates an issue with tournament reward chest distribution, we are temporarily delaying access to the rewards that would have otherwise been available on the Battle Historian on June 3rd. We hope this will help prevent further compounding the issue, and avoiding unnecessary confusion while we work to resolve the problem. Thank you for your patience.

Thanks for the post and I’m really sorry for the the idiotic/hate comments.

Wholeheartedly agree! I’m glad we get regular updates and they at least seem to be really working on the issue (of course I was bummed out to that there were problems with rewards again).
I really don’t get how some people can’t understand that the delay isn’t a punishment but just there to not further complicate the issue and to make a proper fix more feasible.

jakep.9572:

Hobbitz.5831:

The issue seems to be:

- You were given the reward chest based upon where your server ranked at time of meta completion.
- If you completed the meta the first week before servers became ranked, you were not given a chest.

The solution seems easy enough. Just give a chest to everyone that completed the meta the first week. Make it a first place chest for the inconvenience.

I don’t think this could be right. I completed the meta about two weeks ago, and I’m fairly sure servers were ranked at that point, but I did not get a chest and my achievement is for the wrong rank.

Exactly; it’s not just people completing it in the first week but a lot of people that didn’t get a chest seem to have completed it in the first few weeks. Which might be a coincidence .. or not. But it’s really save to say that it didn’t just affect people finishing the event in the first week.

Johaocarl.5430:

Tarnished Coast, no chest, meta done, never transferred. Too no ETA for a solution to this problem.

I just opened a customer support ticket today, first june. I really irritated. Tomorrow I will open other ticket and the following day too until I get my chest.

Just don’t. Opening a ticket for this is fine imho so you’re at least properly registered as one that is affected by the problem.

But doing so every day for the same issue until it’s fixed is nothing but extremely childish. Also, it won’t make them resolve the issue any faster.
If anything, the overall time of resolving issues will increase because of people opening multiple tickets for the same problem and thus increasing the workload the support has.

Multiverse.2536:

Yes i have put multiple tickets in thinking " Well maybe they didn’t get the first two " Please fix

Please refrain from doing this in the future. They can’t fix your problem more than once and it won’t go any faster just because you put in more than one ticket for the same issue. On the contrary! It just means more work for the customer support and longer waiting times for everyone that has an open ticket.

Sorin.4310:

Chris Barrett.3280:

We’re investigating a bug or bugs involved with delivering this tournament’s rewards to some players. We’ll update this thread when we have more information available.

I didn’t read all the pages, so if someone has pointed this out sorry. But my guildmates and I have noticed a pattern for who got the chest and who didn’t. Under the WvW —> World vs World achievements tab, anyone whose S2 achievement matched the actual rank the server got, was rewarded a chest. Those of us who didn’t get a chest, the place did not match up with what the server got – instead it matched up with S1 placement.

Most probably just a coincidence. There are multiple people (including myself) where rank and achievement match and that still didn’t get a chest.

biskup.8192:

Naturally I don’t have my WvW reward chest as well, and after April 14 patch bug with reward chests I’m little annoyed.

Or the reward chests on first winter’s day… or the reward chests for the Karka event.. or the reward chests for WvW season 1…. sigh

Isaac.6041:

[…]AND they also failed to award many players their chests. And it seems to be the majority of the players missing their chests are those that finished their achievements early. I have evidence to support that because the only guildie that I know of who received their chest only finished the meta yesterday a few hours before Euro’s tournament ended, all the other guildies finished the meta weeks ago and they don’t have their chests.

Although it might be a coincidence, you could be on to something! I indeed completed my meta achievement somewhen in the second week if I remember correctly whilst my friends that received their chests all completed it a few weeks later.

Registering in this thread in case you need the names.

On Gandara. Got the 1st place achievement in the achievements tab but didn’t receive the chest.

Same here.

I’ve been on Gandara since the game launched. Got the Tournament meta achievement as well as the WVW Torunament 2014 achievment. It also states the reward as “unlocked”. But never got a chest. My sister is on the same server and we played together all the time. She got the chest without any problems.

It’s so frustrating. Those reward chests never work properly. WvW season 1, season 2, first holidays, Karka event… it’s really tiring. I wouldn’t complain if this was a one time thing but it just never works.

Can’t you properly test this stuff for once?

Haven’t got mine neither while my friends have Never transferred server since the launch of the game.

Also, I didn’t get the tickets early on or anything.. just no chest at all.

Can’t such stuff for once work without issues? sigh

I’m on Gandara in case it matters..$

Would have been a good idea once and I indeed was hoping to someday be able to get something actually good for my Badges of Honor. As a roamer I probably got 20-40 an hour, depending on how things were going.
Yesterday I got 29 from a single undefended tower in Eotm. Sometimes you fight over Stonemist for hours on end and get 5 Badges in your “reward” chest.
In contrast, I probably make 200-300/h in EotM. EotM rewards are so out of this world compared to normal WvW and absolutely have crushed any potential value Badges of Honor might have had. I don’t see us buying anything good for them unless it costs 10k-15k a piece and then it will again be something that is nearly unobtainable for “normal” WvWers.

coglin.1867:

With 20% from water + 30% from the trait line, You reach 50% boon duration. To me, that appears to be where Anet feels it should be, and personally that seems good to me.

The problem is, when boon duration gets to high, it allows stability entirely too much uptime to fully negate a lot of CC builds.

It also seems to me that with the re balance to ferocity, it limits protection a little better. Your already taking less maximum damage, there for longer protection is not needed.

With those points in mind, the current state of boon duration seems to be right where it needs to be, and I find the complaints unjustifiable.

Well, the old state of boon duration certainly didn’t prevent hammer zergs becomming such a big part of the meta game ;p

But in all seriousness: I won’t disagree that stability and such a high boon duration bonus might be very strong in a few cases but here’s how I see it (mainly talking about the stability you mentioned; with other things I don’t personally see a lot of problems anyway):

• Not many classes are able to gain a lot of stability (or even share it) to begin with
• It would only make you especially strong against people that mainly use CC. In my experience, most people rely on normal conditions or normal damage. Even if there were/are a lot of main CC users, I don’t see how this is any different from the rock/paper/scissors principle anyway. If someone has a zerg build and encounters a roamer: though luck for the zerg guy. Are you running a condition build and attack someone who mainly invests in normal armor and or/vitality? Though luck for him. Does he turn out to have invested in a lot of condition removal? Though luck for you! I don’t see why this should be any different for CC users.
• I’m not sure I ever saw a thread that claimed boon duration was overpowered. While people complain about other things on a nearly daily basis (stealth, spike damage of warriors and thieves, (back then) confusion damage, etc). If they came up, they must have been far and few between.
• There are also skills that strip boons or even turn them into conditions
• If you manly go for stability, you wasted a lot of resources whenever you fight people that don’t make a lot of use of crowd control
• Guardians might e.g. build up a lot of stability, but as mentioned above, that’s not even nearly the case for everyone. From my perspective as a D/D roamer ele: The only skill i have in my build is armor of earth. Which is also one of only two stun breakers and one of the main damage mitigators I have. Without any increased boon duration it lasts a whooping 6 seconds and has a cool down of 75 seconds. This skill is an absolute live safer and I’m very hesitant to use it just for stability. I need the stun breakers. If I get nailed down.. well, I get nailed hard. After all, it’s the only class which has the lowest armor and lowest health pool at the same time and if I can’t move in a close range battle, I’m as good as dead. Even with 70% boon duration, I’d still only have stability for about 10 seconds out of every 75.. is it really so much to ask to get at least that?
• You didn’t see everyone and their mother running around with boon runes. If they were clearly overpowered, I think that a lot more people would have made use of them
• Like mentioned in the last post, we’re very squishy beings. I have to invest a lot into vitality, toughness and some healing, to not get ripped apart by warriors or thieves. Although I’m not full bunker, I had to spec quiet defensively to have at least about 1/3 of my lives left and a chance to recover, when a thief spikes me. Even with ferocity now in place, HP go down very fast and I have to be constantly on the move. Things like vigor and protection are still essential for survival (since they nerfed RtL it’s very hard to disengage a fight and you certainly can’t run a thief or a lot of warriors. If you fight them it’s simply “do or die”) and because I have to invest a lot (trait and armor wise) to not be just a rally bot, I relay a lot on might and fury to have at least some kind of damage output and to not just be a guy that simply doesn’t die but can’t out damage anyone’s healing abilities. That’s why I need(ed) the boon duration.

Not saying that you’re wrong or that I’m right. Just wanted to explain why I don’t think that boon duration was too strong (in most cases).

Maskaganda.2043:

Yuki Chuki.2457:

But to be at least a bit constructive: Did anyone find some other alternatives in runes/gear that worked well to replace boon duration builds and feel kinda similar in play style? Especially talking about D/D eles but guardians, etc. might be interesting too!

on both my guardian and my engie I’ve gone with runes of water, the extra healing works quite well and it still puts me at 50% boon duration, which is reasonable and close to just as good as before.

on my ele I went in a different direction with runes of the monk, changed to sigil of benevolence and aquatic benevolence. atuning to water and then dodging heals my group for almost 8k every 10 seconds, my soothing mist ticks at just about 200 while my regen does 300ish per second to allies. I always ran my ele as support and its never been better in that role, even with reduced boon duration.

Thanks for your insights! Rune of the Monk might be a bit too supportive for me because I also love to run around alone or only with 1 or 2 other people. But going full rune of the water might indeed give me a nice healing boost whilst still enabling for some damage output through upholding might, fury, etc. a lot of the time. I’ll be sure to check it out!

Immolator.5640:

Bye boon duration, bye vigour (double hit because, guess what, they nerfed boon duration!), I’ll be back to WvW once I’ve run AC 6 times over so that I can actually play with runes \o/ what joy I take in playing such a well thought through and maintained game. Needless to say, no more solo roaming for me, dat kind of play was just bad anyways, I won’t sweat it, running around in groups of 40+ spamming 1 is much easier, I just won’t leave spawn without a zerg for fear of encountering someone who didn’t have their roaming build nerfed, or a group of 2 people who can mow me down easily now.

And then onto the massive headache of figuring out how to redo all of my guild group’s builds, I truly am blessed with the amount of fun ANet gives me in these incredibly intellectual changes they instigate. My one minor piece of constructive criticism would be to try playing the game before making such changes.

I feel exactly the same way. They just destroyed a lot of builds and took a away the way I like to roam.
My build really is not feasible anymore. I could maybe go with runes of strength as an alternative but it won’t be the same kind of playstyle (not only do I lose some survivability but also a lot of group support) but those runes are also going for 12-14g a piece. Might not be much money to some but full time roamers know how little profit you make and that’s just another 72-84 gold down the gutter just because ANet had the glorious idea of “expanding” build variety.

Mabe I’ll also have to run some super fun dungeons to get gear I can’t buy with all my worthless Badges of Honor.. just “playing the way I want”… sorry, yeah, I’m bitter. But it really sucks when builds get completely destroyed and you have to put in a lot of money and time playing game modes you don’t like to get back on track.

But to be at least a bit constructive: Did anyone find some other alternatives in runes/gear that worked well to replace boon duration builds and feel kinda similar in play style? Especially talking about D/D eles but guardians, etc. might be interesting too!

iFruit.6190:

Bandara is surely unstoppable at this point, unless their old guys get dead sick of hanging in these ridiculous queues (although AFAIK WvW map capacity getting increased tomorrow?) and find the courage and resources to move somewhere decent, or their wagoneers somehow retire from 3W.

Can’t speak for the other old Gandarans but personally, I’m just trying to sit it out. I love EBG but since the season started, I played there only one single time because (even now) most of the time when I get to log in and play, the queue is around 50-80 people (on week days, mind you). Luckily, the borderlands now are at least down to maybe 15-30 in the time frame I can play.
I’m just hoping that most of the people are only here for the season and will grow tired of WvW (PvE opportunists) or the long queues. I also hope that some of the toxic influences that have arisen will quell and things will return to how they were. I feel like we’ve got more arguments lately and the place doesn’t feel a 100% as welcomming and supporting as it did before the transfers. But I still like it a lot here. Hopefully this all will pass… maybe if new, unwanted, free transfers come before the next season.

You’re speaking about finding the courage and/or resources to move but for me it’s not even that. I love Gandara. Not the server name. The people. I’ve been fighting alongside this guys and galls for well over a year now. I know a lot of regulars just by seeing their avatars. Granted, I know only a few close enough to call them my friends. But I have a lot of fond memories connected with so many of them. I’ve spent a lot of time with them, helping each other out, laughing and raging together. Our WvW community did (and to a great deal still does) feel like kind of a big family to me. You don’t necessarily get along with everyone but you shared so many things together and when it counts you overcome your problems and manage to work together.

Most of the single players and guilds stayed when the big transfers came. Most of them probably for the same reasons I did. Most of them didn’t like the transfers very much. Probably for the same reasons I didn’t. But transferring would mean for me to leave all those people behind. As long as the majority of the community stays, I’ll stay too. If they would unitedly go to another server (which is probably unlikely and I’d also wouldn’t wish that upon any other server), I’d go with them. If they’d all scatter and go to different servers, I’d probably leave too (hello AG ) But since I think a lot of them have similar feelings towards our community, I don’t see that happen at the moment.

The only way I realistically see myself moving is if Gandara stays strong after the tourney and permanently moves up into the upper tiers where the blobbfest supposedly is going strong. As a near fulltime roamer I couldn’t stand that. I already don’t like the current state where nearly every decent small scale fight gets interrupted by a group of 40-80 people suddenly steamrolling the combatants. I couldn’t stand that for long and would certainly switch servers (and a lot of others probably too).

Eze/Immolator from [WvW] on Gandara.. by far

bump affected as well

Dayra.7405:

@Ansau: When you won against Kodash/Riverside you got some points and they lost some, however you did not won decisively (or often) enough to be ahead of them.

Batercus.6257:

I think match making not taking active WvW population into account is a mistake that creates unfair WvW match ups based on numbers and not tactics.

Glicko-Rating IS a measure for previous active WvW-Population and it’s performance in WvW, so it is taken into account. However no method is able to predict how the wvw-pop will develop in the next week. And it has some inertia build into the formula.

Glicko only “registers” WvW population indirectly in the sense that servers with higher populations likely do better than those with fewer people and it always takes quiet a few wweks to adjust to big changes in serverpopulation (e.g if all Tier 1 people would move to the server in last place, it would still take a very long time for them to get back to the top).
Glicko works well where contesters only get gradually better/worse and changes in strenght take a long time.

I’d say server population/coverage is one of the biggest factors for winning a matchup.

Measuring the players/activity on a server at least as part of the calculation how strong a server is and which other server it should fight against might not be the worst idea after all. You could e.g. log how many hours that players put into WvW in total over a given week or even extend it and take into consideration when they’re active during the day, etc.
I don’t claim to have an idea of how to integrate it best or if it would solve most problems but it would at least allow to factor in the actual WvW activity and thus adapt better to huge population changes and also make for better matchups. Batercus might be on to something.

ardasica.4531:

Substance E.4852:

Not sure what is better, the obvious hyperbolic sarcasm or the many folks whose heads it flew clean over.

I would say a bit of both really. It only gets this delicious when others blindly run into it.

It got to a pointwhere I can’t even tell if the people over whoms heads it seems to fly are totally ignorant to the concept of sarcasm or just the most sarcastic ones of all.

Twinny.9304:

Take into consideration, in Gandara’s place it would have been a nice match up this week since rating and ranking are quite close together, but since Gandara’s big influx of guilds has made that match up what it is. Gandara are on the climb and will get the matches it deserves from next week.

But as for FSP AG and Viz, its a joke match up they should have never been matched against our servers but in good faith they bring plenty of loot bags, they win by coverage and hiding behind walls. A whole Viz zone blob ran from a guild of 25-30 last night to the nearest structure they own so they could have AC coverage while they fight us when they were clearly enough to wipe us without AC’s, but i suppose that’s the way they play and win.

You’re totally right that Gandara would have had a fair matchup if it wasn’t for the huge influx of players caused by the free trasnfers (peaktime queue for EB went up from 5~ minutes to 1-2 hours) while the Vizunahmatchup just was an unfair matchup in comparison to the ranks, current points, etc.
I guess I just wanted to point out that that’s yet another thing that causes unfair matchups and that the matchup algorithem as well as things as free server transfers before the start of a season should be things that Anet might want to reconsider/rework to lessen the occurances of matchups that aren’t fun for either side.

Also, I feel your pain about clearly bigger forces running back into the range of their ACs and I know it’s not fun at all. I’ll keep my fingers crossed you’ll get better matchup next week!

seraff.5796:

“They are not playing to humuliate us”

So when a 40 man group chase a 3 man roaming group the full lenght of the map it isnt to humiliate us its just to hug us and give us cookies ?

I’ve been on both sides of such situations (ankitten ot from Vizunah btw.) and can’t speak for your specific situation but I don’t think it’s acting in bad faith most of the time a thing like this happens.

If there are huge differences in server strength in a machup, this just happens.
In the beginning it isn’t that bad. But after a short while a lot of people on the losing side get frustrated and stop playing WvW for the current matchup, making things even worse/the gap between servers even stronger. It’s not only frustrating for the losing servers but also for the winning side. A server clearly dominating usualy has way more people wanting to play WvW and at the same time a lot less objectives they can tackle. It’s super boring if your server’s doing too well. This matchup queues declined drastically for us after we’ve got a hold of over 75% of everyhting there was to own. It just gets super boring becaus you want to play but everything already has your color and you can’t attack it and there are also no big zergs to fight. Basically you’re just hanging around waiting to defend or take back something and in that situation every enemy in sight is a welcome sight and gets pursued asap because you then have something to do again for at least a few minutes.

I’m absolutely not saying it’s cool or anything like that but I honestly believe that it’s out of boredom and not out of spite most of the time.

Junkpile.7439:

There seems to be lot’s of blow outs in lower tier this week. Wonder why.

Yeah, it’s curious, isn’kitten There are some super boring matches that are very frurstating for all of the participants; like this one: http://i.imgur.com/9OhJV42.png

But I really do wonder why I could understand it if the ranking system was very slow in adapting to huge server population changes and if they did something “well thought out” like I don’t know…. free transfers to some servers on top of that?

But since this isn’t the case, I’m as puzzled as you and probably everybody else in here

We are the strongest server in our tier that’s free to move to atm and already got a huge influx of new players. We’re doing a lot better now point wise. Since all the changes occured, we stomped a server into the ground that was placed 7 ranks above us! But before I had 0-5 minute queues on EB during the week (evening) and now it was approximately 1-2 hours the last few evenings and due to when I have time to play GW2 I can’t really play on my favorite map anymore and I’m thinking about moving to another server so I can play the map I like again. So, there’s that…

Aside from personal complaints, I just think that it’s a very bad idea in general to cause such immense player movements when your ranking system takes weeks or sometimes even months to account for such a thing. Looks like we’ll be fighting in the 10-18 tier and before the reset that just occurred, we were stronger than the server that was ranked 8…. “fun” times ahead for all of us.

Straegen.2938:

Leagues have imploded our BP server. We came through season one worse than when we went in as it burned a lot of players out and created a lot of tension between “PUGS” and “Skill Groups” on our server.

With Season 2 T4 is an extremely expensive transfer, a guarantee of being out manned most weeks and no chance of landing the big rewards, we are seeing a huge upward migration off of our server. It is possible this was coming without leagues as most servers transition but these seasons certainly accelerated our decline.

Maybe the ultimate effect of Seasons will be to migrate the population upward and prevent the need for transfers. If that is indeed where this is headed, they should just make transfers to kitten free and jack up the cost to everyone below. It would certainly create a more competitive environment.

You’re exactly describing part of the scenario I’m scared about I’m really sorry it turned out this way for you and hope that your server will see better times again!

The fact that rewards are directly bound to how well your server does is not helping at all with server balance but instead just rips a lot of them apart

Bertrand.3057:

Yuki Chuki.2457:

Agree. Also, I so love the server stacking it causes. Nothing better than to be a regular that fights on a near daily basis for his server and is only able to log in after 8pm because of work and then can’t play because of all the queues. Seriously! Before I could play whenever I wanted. The only map that sometimes had a queue was EB. Maybe 5 people during the weak and on wekkend peaktimes 20-30 at worst.

Now we’re have queues on every single map during the week. The shortest queue yesterday and the day before were 10+, EB now constantly had 40-60 people in queue between 8 and 10 pm (then I gave up..).
I really don’t want all this additional people. I love WvW but due to the peak time queues we now experience due to all the stacking and the limited time slots I’m able to logg in, I now nearly can’t play WvW.
Making rewards dependent on how your server does was such a great idea. I bet, all the servers the people moved away from are thrilled too….

Gandara, right? It’s getting ugly.

Wow, so the situation’s really that bad that you just recognized me as a fellow Gandarian just from my description? Seems like I’m really not imagining things then.

Seriously, it’s super frustrating and also makes me a little angry.

I really love Gandara and am there since the first day of the game. I love our WvW community and it’s great to recognize so many players just by their name or even by their looks when they’re running by. I really love our WvW community and am playing on a near daily basis. I absolutely don’t mind if people want to join Gandara to be a part of us. But this is just masses of people joining us in hopes of winning the Season. If they really wanted to be a part of us, they clearly wouldn’t all have realized that just low. I know that everyone has the right to play WvW (and also on our server) but I care too much to not be upset about the fact that I fought for Gandara every day and now I’m not even able to log in and join the fight during the time frame my regular life allows me just because lots and lots of people who never gave a kitten about Gandara and now just hoped over for an easy win use up all the slots!
It’s already this bad during the week; I don’t even want to know how the weekend will be. And let’s face it: Practically noone serious about WvW ever sayd “Yeah, I want to play in EotM!”

Basically this all punishes everyone that really cared about Gandara (or any other server this happens to) and fought for it to be where it is by making it harder for them to play and enjoy the game.
It also punishes people on other servers that care about them and are left behind!

It kinda makes me wish for something like a loyalty bonus where you can rack up loyalty points by playing a lot for a certain server and gain queue advantages over people that are just bandwagoning and leeching.

Also, I don’t know what will be more fun: The super unfair fihgts we’re gonna have (frustrating for both sides) or that we could possibly end up with a huge gain in ranks and then, when the season is over and everyone leaves again, have unfair fights for weeks on end and getting steamrolled all the time.

Also, I don’t know how this will interfere with our community. Juding by the numbers we now have way more players that switched over than regulars (before we had mostly only very small queues on EB, a good number of people on our own border land and were very often outnumbered in the other borderlands. Now we have queues on all maps).

I so love playing with you guys and am a bit afraid that the sudden influx of WvW players from other servers (and also them probably leaving us like a sinking ship after the season is over) could hurt our great community badly in one way or another

Edit: Just got home from work early to maybe play a little in EB: It’s not even evening yet and we have an EB queue of 54 (!!) people. This might not be a lot for higher tears (wouldn’t know about that) but before all this bull kitten, I’ve never seen the queue go over 30 in weeks or even months and that was on Fridays/Saturday evening. Most of the times you could just get in directly or within 5 minutes; even in the peak hours.

Yeah, I’d already be more than happy if they just said something along the lines of “We’re aware of the problem and working on it”. If they just delete every single thread about this issue without any aknowledgment of the problem, it’s not very hard for one to get to the conclusion that they aren’t planing to take on this issue at all.

I’m not saying that it really is that way but that’s a at least thought that inevitably comes up for me when I see no sign whatsoever that they’re working on a solution.

Agree. Also, I so love the server stacking it causes. Nothing better than to be a regular that fights on a near daily basis for his server and is only able to log in after 8pm because of work and then can’t play because of all the queues. Seriously! Before I could play whenever I wanted. The only map that sometimes had a queue was EB. Maybe 5 people during the weak and on wekkend peaktimes 20-30 at worst.

Now we’re have queues on every single map during the week. The shortest queue yesterday and the day before were 10+, EB now constantly had 40-60 people in queue between 8 and 10 pm (then I gave up..).
I really don’t want all this additional people. I love WvW but due to the peak time queues we now experience due to all the stacking and the limited time slots I’m able to logg in, I now nearly can’t play WvW.
Making rewards dependent on how your server does was such a great idea. I bet, all the servers the people moved away from are thrilled too….

Thanks for taking the time to answer, MiLkZz. It was an interesting read

MiLkZz.4789:

I got 205 ranks in 5 days with birthday boosters, they are insane.

Serious question, how do you do that?!!
I just can’t imagine it, no matter how many karma trains you ride. I assume you won’t have the outmanned bonus while making serious WXP points because you don’t have enough people to get a karma train rolling.

That’ leaves you with WXP and Birthday Boosters and means you get 250% WXP. Taking a tower (including the gate and the supervisor) gives you 500 WXP. Let’s be generous and say you also get some guards or other players and make it 600WXP. WIth the boosters that’s 1.5k WXP per tower.
205 ranks accumulate to approximately 1mio WXP (200*5000) which in turn equals to ~ 667 towers (1mio/1.5k).

If you play 16 hours a day for 5 days you get 80h of playtime.
Even if you really played all day long(I assume if you play 16h/day and still eat and sleep, playing’s pretty much everything you’d do while awake) you’d still have to take over 8 towers per hour (667 towers/80h).

It isn’t that I don’t believe you. I just can’t see how to make so much WXP (the 150 levels by just playing “for a few hours every evening” are probably even way more incredible.). Do you just run from structure to structure and kill one guard so you’ll get credit when someone takes it? I’m flabbergasted!

As to OP’s question: I don’t mind the bronze/silver/etc. tiers. I’d just be happy if the order of ranks within one tier would make a bit more sense

Kincaidia.3192:

Frankly, anyone who has been playing any character in wvw since wxp was added has 400+ ranks by now.

I’m not even hardcore and I’m almost at 700 on one character and another 25 on others.

Not much will change, but I’ll be able to go try another character with the stacks instead of being stuck on the one character.

The following is not directed at you especially but it gives me a good starting point about why I don’t like those buffs. So, I’ll use it but please don’t feel like I’m trying to argue against you or anything like that

It may be much easier for zerglings to get levles but as a roamer I tick at around maybe one level per hour if things are going great. After they increased the amount of WXP you get, that is.

Let’s say you’re just a camp caper. A camp gives you around 500WXP if you also manage to tag all normal guards, the supervisor and 2 dolyaks are standing there. To even get one level/hour. This means you have to take 10 camps an hour (or one every 6 minutes). Okay, maybe you get a sentry or the occasional player kill every now and then but then you still have to take roughyl 5 camps/h to get 1 level/h.

You have to be pretty fast to keep that up. Often times camps already belong to you, were just captured by your own server or still have a buff becaus of enemy takeover. So, 1level/h is really more considered as a good to best case for me as a roamer.

Like you said it’s still possible to get the 230 points of course but it’s not like roamers are draining in WvW levels. Even if WXP was as attainable from the start as it is now, I’d have had to play for at least 2h a day since the time it was introduced to get your lv 700 rank. To get the 230 points needed for the buff will probably take me somewhere between 250 and 300 hours in total. Doable – as stated above.

But those two traitlines are just far superior in comparison to any other traitline that it’s almost a must to chose them. This in turn means that I practicaly have to spend roughly 250 hours before I can chose what I think would be fun to trait in.

I know that there are people that will say that I’m free to spec however I want. But let’s be realistic here: Every other line is very situational and far inferior. I can spec in offensive siege. But when I roam I so rarely use any rams, catapults or even trebuchets. And when I’m running with the zerg there are 30 other people trying to get on a few rams. Chances are minimal and it doesn’t even matter if I’m good at it or not. If I’m not, there’s always someone else who has the ram/cata/whatever buff or doesn’t care anyway that he hasn’t and just uses the siege.
With the PvD mentality often found there’s also not too much use in the arrowcart/canon/etc skills imho. Supply mastery could be useful but if you’re not drowning in WvW levels, it costs just way too much and makes too little of a difference to spend a lot of points on it.
Building/reparing things faster also is worth maybe the first few points because that’s where you get the most benefits. But all in all I had maybe 2 situations where I thought that things might have turned out differently if I was able to build faster.

But the applied buffs, those work everywhere and not just every know and then. The buffs make you stronger in a fight. And no matter what you do in WvW you have to fight.
- Escort a Dolyak? Fight of attackers
- Attack a sentry/camp/tower/keep/stonemist? Fight defenders
- Defend a sentry/camp/tower/keep/stonemist? Fight off the attackers
- Do supply runs? Fight the hunters trying to bring you down and cut the supply line
- Run as a roamer? Fight roamers
- Run with the zerg? Fight zergs
- Scout? Survive fights with enemies hunting scouts
- Portal bomb enemy siege? Have enough survivability to make it to the siege in the first place and do enough damage to take it down.

Fighting is just so universally connected with absolutely everything you do in WvW and that’s why I think that those skills buffing you are so much superior to everything else and practically leave you no choice but to chose them. Before they were introduced I was like “Defending ist quiet fun, I’ll spec in arrow carts and canons!”. After they were introduced I realized “I sure love ACs but from a unbiased standpoint I’ll get much more of an advantage out of these buffs”.

And that’s exactly why I don’t like those skills!

Onshidesigns.1069:

We need ways to upgrade exotic armor and weapons to ascended.

Actually, that’s a great idea and would dispel most of my bad sentiments towards ascended armor. If it was affordable, that is.

Ace.1726:

You obviously don’t understand what a gear treadmill is because adding another tier above ascended wouldn’t be a gear treadmill.

A gear treadmill is when content is continuously increased in difficulty and new gear tiers are constantly being required to complete this content. Hence it being called a gear treadmill because it goes on and on.

One might argue that the introduction of higher tiers is a kind of gear treadmill from a WvW player’s perspective.
If better gear comes out and others get it and you don’t, beating them (aka the content) now certainly became harder for you than before and if you want to keep up a 100%, you have to get new gear now. Which in my case would be for 7 characters, which I’m not too happy about since I want to spend my time fighting in WvW as good as I can and not upgrading all my toons.

Of course there are people that say it won’t make a huge difference. But especially with things like critical damage percentage, it can make quiet a difference.

And the fact remains that you will become weaker in comparison to those upgrading their armors.

For some people it’s very frustrating to lose a fight only by a slight margin and wondering themselves if they might have won with better gear. I don’t mind losing but I mind sometimes doing so just because I didn’t want to put up with hours and hours of boring grind (WvW players aren’t exactly known to be the rich ones) just to upgrade my armor. Which then might be made worthless again because of another tier or, which happened to me twice, a nerf which renders all builds for a certain class and stats combination useless and you now have to go through all of it again if you want to stay competitive. In the second case I’d be ever so great to be able to unlock stats for armor or something like that. The armor’s just totally useless. You can’t use it for your build anymore, you can’t give it to another toon because it’s soul bound and if you have the slightes hope for balancing to change again, you can’t even get the skin off of it and unto your new gear because that would destroy the old one.

The last part was a bit off topic but that this game can be very grindy (depending on your luck) as a WvW player even without the ascended tear doesn’t exactly help to be excited about better gear being released. It also doesn’t help that a lot of ascended gear uses laurels. Even if you were unemployed, living in your mom’s basement and playing 18 hours a day, you couldn’t fit out more than a few characters because laurels are time gated.

Eulolia.2467:

Did you check your graphics settings? The patch set all my graphics to high, which makes it take longer to load. One of the settings has a huge impact. Texture detail maybe.

I can only speak for my self but I’m an enthusiast and got a high-end PC; anything was on the highest settings anyway.

But thanks for the idea! Hope this gets fixed soon.

I can confirm this as well. Bought a new SSD in June and measured how long LA took to load back then. Took about 6-8 seconds for the “main” WPs (e.g. the one near the bank/mystic forge), which take the longest to load for me.
Never felt like load times increased until the queen’s jubilee story update where things took a noticeable turn for the worse (not only in LA).
Since i measured the MF/Bank WP, that’s the only one I have accurate data for.

Before patch: 6-8 seconds
After Patch: 15-20 seconds.

It really changed right with the patch and I’m absolutely sure it’s not my PC. Everything else still runs just fine and disk benchamrks show no decrease in performance.

Fishbait.6723:

Make a build specific doesn`t really cut it tbh.
If you`re support staff ele & helping with the pewpews in WvWs & die, running back to that keep anyone can pounce you & you`re a gonner, you can`t really retrait tanky just because you`ve got to run back now can you
Imagine (I`ve had this loads in spvp, wvws etc) where someone is hitting you from range & you`re stuck on some ledge whilst in d/d, you`re basically kittened
Keep surrounded by enemy & you`re in d/d or at a push s/d-s/f & want staff. Best chance you have is going to top of keep behind lord, /twiddle waiting to leave combat, prat about in bags, tidy spare weapons & then go back to the fight, by which time door is probably down & you want your proper weapons equipped again ;p

Exactly this! You accurately described every besiegment ever I had with my elementalist.
Of course we have 20 skills but as you demonstrated: All 20 skills are tied to the same type of fighting (e.g. D/D = meele) and we have absolutely no chance of adapting to chanching situations once we enter a battle. If I’m in D/D and getting attacked from afar, there’s not much use in being able to switch from a more offensive meele skillset to a more deffensive meele skillset or vice versa.

Wizzlock.3492:

Malcastus.6240:

…And no, they wouldn’t kill off a class. No sane game developer would kill off a profession. That is going against everything you work to strive for…

cough Paragon cough GW1 cough

To be fair, there was one viable build and you could even vary one skill which makes it almost like 2 builds!

SilverUniverse.7103:

Stealth.9324:

Is there any record for this live steam. I want to see some comedy act. If anyone has it recorded, please do share and thank in advance.

i uploaded a copy on youtube (had problems watching on twitch)
http://youtu.be/jvx44s4-Czo
i also wrote some notes about what he said on the 2nd page of this thread

Edit: YUKI! /shakefist

So sorry
Well, at least you provided alternatives, which is always a good thing. And I’m sure, Stealth appreciates the effort

Here you go, Stealth: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2/c/2491717

Have fun learning about the totally new thing called “combo fields”, that you can kite 10-15 people with a staff and how they “trimmed down mobility a little bit here and there”. WvW isn’t any fun after this. It’s almost like playing god mode with all this great insights. Only 10 minutes ago i singlehandedly busted a zerg before they were even within meele range.

Terrorsquad.2349:

Have fun gandara o/

There are some things you simply don’t joke about!

Wow, didn’t experience lag this bad since.. well, since last time we fought AM. Same all over again. No fun at all. You guys really know how to suck all the fun out of WvW. You’re the dementors of GW2.

Another week I’ll just leave WvW be and cross my fingers we’ll get any server next week except AM. Not AM. Not this again =(

My apologies go out to Riverside which I accused of heay blobbing in the past (although the last fight against them felt way better than the ones before ). I had NO idea how much worse it could be. Now I’d take 2x RS over AM any time of the day.

‘t was about 10 minutes after reset and I had a lag spike I swear I never had before. About 3-5 secs nothing moved except me… and it didn’t get much better after that. This is just ridiculous!

I’d totally go earth in WvW if they would uppen it to the 10%. Until then I feel like I’m at least as good off with 30 water instead of 20 water and 10 earth.

It seems to work in other attunements too. Not sure about water/wind but it definitely works with fire.

For what it’s worth, I can confirm this.

Your build ideas sound very intriguing! Eagerly awaiting your reports after some more testing

I hope to find the time to test some of the ideas postet here myself this weekend and to post a little feedback myself.

@daphoenix
You don’t seem to talk about D/D at all in your post patch comments (or I missread it); only S/D and Staff.
Did you quit on D/D? If not, what are your current thoughts on D/D?
And are you using the traits linked here for D/D? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/external?l=http%3A%2F%2Ftinyurl.com%2FdaphoenixBuild6

Thanks in advance!