Guild Wars 2

So tier 2 and tier 3 work the same towards legendary?

Shouldn’t the much larger ticket cost and rank 2000 time gate be legendary by default?

I am kind of confused how both tier 2 and tier 3 work the same considering the vast time investment difference between the two in WvW and the Tournament Restricted nature of the PvP version.

Right now, I’m rank 2826 and have 10k+ hours into the game. Most of that time has been spent in WvW. Enough of my time is spent in WvW that I would claim to have put thousands of hours into WvW over four plus years of routinely playing WvW.

I like the rewards themselves, but the execution is a big mistake. And as a Vet player, I’m rather insulted and disillusioned by ANet’s approach.

To help quantify the problem, I’ll mention that I have over 24k Badges of Honor. Badges of Honor were the main reward token that devoted WvW players received over the years. With Heart of Thorns, Proofs of Heroics were added as a second token. I have over 2200 Proofs currently. The most expensive Badge item is tier 3 cultural armor, which costs 700 badges and was added only recently to WvW. Before that, 100 badges got you a alpha golem worth 6s on the trading post. The most expensive Proof item costs 100 Proofs.

Either way, these two tokens have little value to the WvW player. The Proofs have value in letting us buy HoT runes and sigils, but the Badges have become meaningless. We’ve been grinding these items for four to five years.

Finally a reward update comes out and these items are just as useless as they were before.There is no reward to long time players and the tokens they have accumulated. No recognition for keeping a game alive pretty much by themselves*.

Badges once served a minor purpose of buying a Legendary crafting item, but that was moved to a reward track. Currently, they are as useless as Karma. The difference being that Karma was nerfed later in the game’s life while Badges were boosted.

Instead of rewarding long years of playing, these tokens were ignored and WvW tickets became the new token for which every new reward cost. Further, the Tickets have a weekly cap which nullifies the one advantage Vets have with their extra PiPs. Yes, I get four more pips than a new player, but that means I run out of progress faster than a new player. It’s completely backwards to force the casual players to play hardcore all week to get max rewards and then let the Vet players quit by the end of the weekend because the rewards stopped.

This isn’t even getting into the Outmanned buff being the biggest key to getting through these Skirmish levels. This rewards a type of play unnatural and harmful to WvW. People dodge active maps not to create action elsewhere, but to find an out manned map where they do the most minor of work to keep ticking pips. It’s AFKing for Legendaries.

I propose these changes:

-Remove the ticket cost from several items. In this group, I’d include everything under the Miscellaneous tab of the skirmish vendor. There is no reason things like Minis or Tonics or rng Siege boxes should cost tickets. I’d remove ticket cost from tier 2 exotics as well. Make these items costs Badges of Honor.

-Add a conversion option for Badges of Honor and Proofs of Heroics that convert these items into Tickets. You owe* WvW vets time served. We’ve already had these awards time gated for four plus years. Time gating us again is just savage.

-Lower the PiP bonus for Outmanned. Add a PiP Bonus for capturing a Keep and a PiP bonus for killing X amount of players in the skirmish. Reward active play.

-Improve continued play rewards for those that finish off Diamond quickly. This is a problem vets currently face. You could remove the ticket cap, but lower the Ticket reward on repeats of Diamond or if you allow the exchange of Badges or Proofs, you could up that reward on continual completion of Diamond ranks. Right now, its praying and hoping to get good stuff out of the material boxes.

*: These remarks are due to the sandbox nature of WvW. Without the vets running this game mode and organizing it, the whole thing is an undesirable mess. The audience for this game mode kept it alive when there really wasn’t much dev attention on it. If we had left, then the game itself would have been in trouble and in danger of closure. This isn’t like PvP, where matches automate with clear rules. WvW requires community action and organization to make it work. The community has kept it alive and is rewarded with a somewhat redudnant PiP bonus for it and a venemous amount of time gating after getting any rewards worth anything was essentially time gated for five years.

I haven’t bothered to post here in awhile because I felt none of the information I was giving was leading anywhere. Basically, telling ANet what’s up ended up being a waste of my time.

I will post on this though:

Manual Adjustments should only occur for movement down and never movement up. When a server loses a ton of players then it’s better to be adjusting down. However, a rising server getting a bump can lead to displacing another server that shouldn’t be displaced.

So if your problem is one server gained a lot of players and beats up its tier and your solution is to manually move them up, then you knock down another server…. that will just do the same thing and beat up the tier it was moved down into. It doesn’t change anything in the end. However, if you only adjust down then you’ll be more likely to balance a tier rather than just hot-swap out dominant servers.

Manually adjusting YB up so they could roll tier 1 is already having fallout. I’m not concerned about server movement in tiers as much as how YB leads to people quitting the game. TC or Mag or BG dropping isn’t the issue. It’s that YB’s mode of play is inherently poisonous to the game mode and community. This leads to people quitting, more player loss and more wonky tiers.

As for YB earning their spot by winning: they stayed in t1 last week by PVDing the hell out of the last 2-3 days when everyone else was in casual mode. This week they did mostly the same thing. They are essentially still “nightcapping”, as in they win by taking the undefended downtimes and sieging them up to keep them. They succeed by non-competing, or better put, by avoiding challenge. That problem of less difficulty leading to greater chance of success was the harmful mentality that created the need for the scoring change to skirmishes. YB just found another way to do the same thing in spite of the skirmish change.

This means that in order to keep people form quitting, you will see a PPT adjustment for heavier population times. There will be backlash for that, perhaps even anger from OCX and SEA. So expect more poo to hit the fan.

Also, saying KDR doesn’t matter with PPK is silly. You can see the PPK impact on reset and weekends and it tends to reflect KDR.

Can we get some more information on how the 1 person rally logic will work? Will it be completely random? Based off of damage done? Proximity to downed enemy?

If I heard correctly, it seems you can take both the GM trait that resummons Phantasms and the clone trait that produces a clone after-shattering a clone. I assume the clone trait would be a master trait.

If that is true, then this could make deceptive evasion non-essential to a shatter build. You could take Chronomancy with Illusions and Domination. Take the two GM traits for shatters, then the Phantasm GM trait. This would give you plenty of clone creation and allow many shatter combos.

Pop Mirror Images, hit F5. That gives you enough time to create three illusions to Mind wrack. Your traits repop the illusions and you CoF. Continium Shift ends and you can pop the illusions again to shatter.

For my POV: I played 20-30 matches overall. All of them as a Mesmer. I used the same build in all matches, as it was successful off the bat.

Impressions:

While what I wanted was a mode that would create team fight synergy, and this is not that mode, I did enjoy Stronghold far more than I have enjoyed Conquest. It’s just simply more fun, even with the added PVE element.

I also feel it needs a separated queue. There will be people who just want to play Stronghold. I feel it will attract a different sort of audience as opposed to what exists in Conquest. It may be time to switch focus for the spvp side.

Another reason I feel it needs its own queue is that I think it would work better with one added player per side. Five per side leaves some of the elements of the mode ignored. Currently, there’s supply, two lanes, NPCs to kill or escort, Heroes to summon and a Trebuchet. Five players spread out over those objectives tends to leave some of those objectives ignored. A team of six could put 2-3 per lane with one or two dealing with the other elements of the map. Five players is just a player short of the map getting full use.

I know part size is limited to five, so that creates a technical problem, but I feel ANet should really consider improving party options anyways, and it really needs to consider Stronghold having its own queue. Certain builds do not transfer between it and Conquest, and it takes nearly the whole minute of prep to completely switch a build.

Issues:

-Spawning Heroes awards too many points imo. Had many matches where individual scores were even, but overall score was 100+ points apart. Couldn’t figure it out complrely, but my guess is that this mainly had to do with Hero summons being worth more points than Hero kills.
-Shooting through gates nullifies Doorbreakers too easily. Engy Flamethrower can flamejet behind a gate and nullify NPCs.
-Treb hits on doorbreakers draws their aggro, causing them to ignore the gate and attack the treb.
-The issues with channel canceling. (Immob)
-Timer ran out often. Mode might need a Victory or Death scenario when the timer runs out. Far more interesting than one side turtling out a timer.

It overpowers combat. So the other side has three choices. Either go directly at the siege to kill it, build counter siege and get into a siege war, or ignore the siege and try fighting in the arrow and poison fire.

Option one gives away where you’re going and lets the other zerg know where exactly to hit. This limits your movement and positioning options. You commit to the siege spot and moving out of it nullifies the point of what you’re doing.

Option two prolongs the situation. It can work but it can also end up in a lot of standing around and staring at each other across distances. The general problem with siege fights is that there’s only so much siege and so many more players. 10% of the group will be firing on siege while the other 90% are staring into the abyss, essentially not actively playing the game.

Option three tends to just get you killed. Siege damage is too much coverage to ignore.

Belenwyn.8674:

Peterson.8345:

Not true at all mate. Stability was never as powerful as many think. There are many ways how to control enemy who has stability most notably via condition control (immob chill etc)… stability was never mindless or permanent – at least not after the boon duration nerf ages ago where the guards were no longer able to get over 75% boon duration resulting in ridiculously long stabilities…

Not anymore – not for a long time now…

Soon resistance will enter the stage. A boon that negates all conditions for a certain time. In future there is a very reduced possibility to control people with chill, immobilize, blind, fear etc. Depending on how great the accessibility is resistance will be as important/powerful as stability. Imagine a whole 20/30 man guild with 12 s stability (old form) and 12 s resistance. This would be too OP.

I think they changed stability to balance it against resistance.

I think resistance played a factor in this, but wouldn’t have been better to severely limit the access to resistance or just not have it? It’s a softer counter to condies when there’s classes with good condie removal.

If resistance was a boon mostly self-applied to perhaps a few ranged classes (mesmer, ranger, engy) and then a small bit to Guardians (3 second group resist), then you wouldn’t need this big stability change.

As it is now, I don’t see how zerg busting works with such limited movement. Even if you go backline heavy, the meta will still further shift towards blobbing.

And I don’t see 3 guards really helping zergbusting when the amount of CCs the blob can spit out is likely still too much.

New Sigil:

Sigil of the Swarm: All AOE skills on this weapon now hit 3 more targets (or 5 more, depending on what the server can handle).

This is a way to increase AoE size without making it a standard. This sort of sigil would perhaps be desirable to classes like Necromancer or such more than a Guardian. It adds increases to AoE limits without it getting out of hand. It all depends on balance and whether the client and servers can handle it.

New Siege:

Spiked Wall – This a piece of siege that creates a unpassable wall. Mastery in its siege line increases the size of the wall and then the health of the wall, with the final point giving it spikes that applies one stack of bleeding to foes that run into it. Like all siege, this wall can be damaged to be taken down.

I realize these last two don’t have to do directly with scoring, but in a way deal with other problems that impact scoring.

Thanks.

A New Outmanned Buff and a new Roflstomp Debuff.

I suggest adding a buff to outmanned that makes it so you a chance to get supply back from looting fallen enemies. When outmanned and defending, you often lose your supply lines and have nothing left but the depressing situation of waiting out the inevitable. If the larger server dies to siege fire or gets picked off, this allows an outmanned server that’s defending to keep supply up for repairs and siege.

I feel this change doesn’t encourage being outmanned, but does give some relief to outmanned defenders. It’s not too powerful while still being potentially helpful.

The New Roflstomp Debuff

I am sure you can think up a better name for this, but this is debuff that triggers once a server has a large enough lead in PPT. Say 30k for the old system and 8k for my revised 21-set system. Anytime a server has gained X amount of lead within the PPT, any new towers, Keeps or SM they take gains a debuff for 40 minutes. While this tower has this debuff, they are worth 50% more PPT points to any losing server that takes the tower.

This creates a situation where a server karma training through outmanned maps faces the possibility of losing PPT difference or buffing the other servers PPT by giving them increased points for paper towers and keeps. This also makes those towers and keeps worth defending for all sides. If a server roflstomping through keeps flipping things, they’ll be feeding the opposing servers. It makes karma training and defending an important choice to make. It’s risk/reward.

It feels like this may be the 8th or so time that I’ve posted this, but I’ll try to shrink it down since it can take up multiple posts.

The proposal is to take the current scoring system and week long match and break it up into a week long match decided by 21 sets of 8 hours each within the week.

Each set lasts 8 hours, starting from reset at 6pm server time to 2am server time. The points are scored via PPT as they do now. The winner of that set gets 2 win points and second place gets 1 win point. Then from 2:01am to 10am server time is the next set, with the next set going 10:01am to 6pm server time. This continues through the week, with 2 win points awarded for first place within the set, and 1 win point for second place.

At the end of the week, all win points are added up and the server with the most win points then wins the week. If there is a tie in win points, the tie is broken via the week long total PPT score.

This means that if you get ‘nightzerged’ or ‘pvdoored’ during your off hours, you lose at most 2 win points. This keeps matches closer and allows for easier comebacks. It’s also less a mental hump to try to comeback from 4 points down rather than 40,000 points down. A server can also specialize in being strong in two time regions rather than needing 24/7 coverage (which tends to burn people out).

That’s my main suggestion. I have other changes to follow.

So rather than a lead for red that grows expotentially over every day cycle, the match remains close, feels close because of the smaller numbers, and even allows for comebacks by any server pulling an all-nighter to win better positioning during a time period where they are normally weaker. If that same ratio holds for 3 days straight, the score would be Red 12, Blue 9, Green 6 . There’s some space being made, but Blue can win 1st in one set to quickly jump back in. If a set goes not according to the same pattern, You could have Red 12, Blue 11, Green 12. Everything tied up and close within one day cycle.

So with the new system, matches can stay tighter and comebacks are more plausible. As well, getting night zerged isn’t as damaging to your chance of winning, and because of that fighting over 24/7 coverage isn’t as important. If you can win 2/3rds of a day or even always win 1/3rd of a day and split the other two-thirds, then you’re able to be in competition to win the match. No longer do you absolutely need 24/7 coverage. You just need to win enough times of day to get your win points. This creates less need for full, constant coverage and less demand on the community to provide that coverage. This means less server stacking due to less need to server stack. Of course, you can still stack like crazy to dominate 24/7, but I have a feeling the scoring change would lighten the impetus to do so. As well, I am not sure there is a way to make extreme server stacking not work without breaking the entire game mode. The goal should be to make matches interesting outside of that phenomenon.

So you fix the PPT scoring issue and the population imbalance issue isn’t so much a problem anymore. You break the server hop, stack, and burnout cycle. You don’t have to merge servers or destroy server identities. You tear down the PPT wall and things will begin to resolve themselves.

continued

My solution is to break up the 7 day match into several mini-sets. You already have a four hour timer for EotM. This creates short bursts of play and a reset of the map. Because of this, EotM always feels like a fresh match. Regular WvWvW doesn’t feel this way. By Monday or Tuesday many matches are decided and people give up or take a break.

So let’s change the week long match-up with one final large sum score into a Match divided up into 21 different eight hour sets. The initial set begins at 6pm server reset time and lasts until 2am. From 2am until 10am is the next set. From 10am to 6pm server is the next set. This divides each day into three sections that closely resemble important coverage spans. The scoring during each set is done much the same way as it’s done now. There is a running PPT score. After the 8 hours are up, the PPT score of that set determines a 1st, 2nd and third placing for the set. Each server gets a Win Point for their placing in that 8 hour set. (For example, 1 Win point for first, zero for rest or 2 win points for first, 1 win point for second, zero for third.) After the 8 hour set finishes, the PPT total is reset but the map is not. A new tally of PPT begins for the next 8 hours, creating the next 1st, 2nd and 3rd place finish and the subsequent Win Points.

At the end of the week, the win points from every 8 hour set is added up to determine a winner. The server who has the most win points then wins the match. A week long PPT score will be held as well, the same as the WvWvW mode operates now, but only exists to serve as a tie-breaker. In the case of a system that awards 1 win point for 1st and no other points, a total of 21 win points would exist within a matchup, with a tie-breaker via week long PPT. In the 2 points for first and 1 point for second system, there would be 63 total win points during the week to be earned by any of the three servers. Again, week long PPT would act as a tie-breaker.

How does this change things?

In the current system, things get out of hand. Let’s say at reset, things are tough but one server jumps out ahead a bit. After the first 12 hours, they have a 500 point lead. Then during off hours, the third place server has overwhelming coverage advatange. By mid-day and 20 hours into the match. third place has jumped ahead to 2nd. By the third day of this pattern, the night coverage server has a 2000 point lead. By Tuesday this lead is 20,000 and growing. Soon, there is no interest in the match as it is already decided. The other servers can not make up the point difference from off-hours because they have to fight actual people during the rest of the day.

Let’s take that same coverage example and apply the new scoring system to the situation. During the first 8 hours, Server Blue wins total PPT and gains 2 points. Green gets 1 win point for second. Red has zero Win Points. In the next 8 hours, Red wins the PPT handedly and gains 2 win point. Blue barely hangs to second in that period of time and gets 1 win point. Green gets zero. In the next 8 hours, Green manages to secure 2nd for 1 win point while Red rides their off-hour coverage to a second first place finish. In the following 8 prime time hours, Blue gets 1st for 2 win points, and Green 2nd for 1 win point. So in the first 32 hours the score would be Blue 5, Red 4, Green 3.

John Corpening.9847:

Please keep this friendly, constructive and on topic. We had a really good discussion on the siege troll thread I’m hoping we can kick around some ideas and have another great discussion here. Feel free to add additional ideas that I didn’t list out but please make sure they are on topic.

Thanks,
John

The topic of population balance is an issue because of the way scoring works. To try things like server merges or pop limits is treating the symptom rather than addressing the cause.

So my advice is to drop the population “fixes” discussion entirely and focus on changing your PPT scoring method.

Here is the actual problem: 24/7 Coverage is the meta to win. That’s what you need to beat everyone else. This creates the need to stack on the same server and doing so pulls players from other servers. This creates a stronger server, and so the competition does the same thing. Top tier servers suck up players from servers below to keep fighting against the PPT wall. Players burn out from lack of updates and changes to WvWvW and from fighting the 24/7 PPT wall. The servers then have to recruit more players from elsewhere to replace the burnouts. This creates a cycle that continually shrinks the passionate WvWvW playerbase.

So even if you merge servers, you aren’t fixing the problem as populations will continue to drop and activity will drop as well, causing your mergers to become only temporary solutions.

So you address the problem: The Current PPT scoring system.

Following is how I would fix the PPT problem.

First, let’s look further in on why PPT creates problems and why coverage is the meta.

One of the major reasons that night coverage and PVDooring is a running joke within the community is because zerging during off-hours is the most effective means of securing victory. Points do not account for who you are fighting or what sort of resistance you meet. Due to this, fighting against zero resistance will allow you to take more objectives and gain more PPT. This means that the current meta dictates that off-hours and non-primetime hours are more valuable than primetime hours. Heavy populations during those off-hours means more than strong population during prime time. Most servers can manage a mixture of hardcore, casual and PVX sort of players during prime time to garner a decent if not astounding PPT tick. Servers that can gather that sort of population during off-hours can accumulate a significant PPT tick.

cont…

Nobody was asking for a pointless gold sink. It should have all the colors from the start. 300g per color is the dumbest and most useless idea yet. Since the start, people have been wanting more functionality for WvWvW. Never at the cost of something like 1500g.

I need to be able to function as a map commander, havok commander or guild group commander. I don’t have/need to throw 900g down to do this.

This is what will happen: The community will eventually standardize a color for a function. Blue = Standard commander for a map. Purple = havok group commander. Yellow = Guild Commander. Red = Map Hopping Commander.

Oh picked wrong color for the job? Your kitten out of luck. We need someone to tag up and havok camps? Oh wait nobody picked that color? Well we’re screwed.

It’s a just a terrible system for the acuality of the game.

Just make it fully functional from the start. You want more colors to mean something? Then make colors unlock via WvWvW rank.

The previous functionality of iLeap is pure muscle memory for me. I still do it even though I know it no longer functions. For any Mesmer, it’s muscle memory. It’s a vital part of shatter builds. A part of control. It’s a part of the playstyle of the entire class. The skill just doesn’t function well enough without it.

Also, I feel Mesmer single target DPS is being overrated. It’s high in theory, but those theoretical situations are not reliable within actual game situations. The Mesmer has to have a target to do it’s high damage or its high burst. It’s sustainability relies on there being no AOE and having a target. Overall, the class has way too many conditionals that must be met before it reaches its apex and that’s why it’s starting to fall behind and become a time warp/veil bot.

On the other hand, outside of the deception/evasion, special utility, and highly situational damage, the Mes has a lot of “holes” not listed in this discussion.

-They are terrible at group support.
-They are bad against burst. (mentioned, but roll down to the PU comment)
-And despite all the stealth and evade, they have poor escape due to being unable to get distance. They are great at movement within battle, but cannot disengage or move quickly outside of battle. This gets back to being slow, but I think people mistake evasion for escape. A thief has evasion and escape. A Mes is evasion without that level of escape.
-PU is its best survival build, but its actually a very poor build overall and doesn’t fit into high PVE or group PVP or zerg WvW. It’s basically for roaming and that’s it. It’s a low skill, passive build made to survive and be annoying while providing little else.
-Against good players, the “deception” factor of a Mes vanishes. I can’t think of another class like this. I still have to deal with a Guardians boons or a Warrior’s high armor, or an Ele’s ability to switch into support, or an Engies CC just as much when I’m experience now as when I did when I was new to the game. But once you figure out the Mesmer shell game, that’s it. You know the right target 98% of the time. It’s something wrong inherit to the design of the class. (As is clone dependency creating target dependency.)

I struggle to think up a weakness with Warrior. I recently got my War up to 80 after leveling up and playing at max level a Mesmer (main), Engy, Ele, Necro, Guardian and Ranger. Out of all those classes, War is the only class I struggle think of what their weakness actually is. My War sheds condies like nothing. It can trait heavily towards survival and still pump out lots of damage. It has high sustain and high burst. I can trait and build to support with shouts or banners. I have excellent mobility into fights and excellent escape from fights. And I absorb damage like a Guardian.

The Warrior is out of balance with the rest of the game. Pretty obviously so. And the worst part is that there is very little skill check on the Warrior. So much of what I do is passive through traits. So much damage is easily done just via weapons.

Being a Mes, where I find that I’m only around for class specific tricks like Time Warp, Feedback or Veil, I start to feel like the juggernaut when I switch to my Warrior.

I’m a noob War, but in a few days I’ve found the class to be imbalanced. It’s just too much reward for so low a skill check. This is my 7th 80, so I’ve played most of the other classes at max level and none of them compare ‘power’ wise to Warrior.

-Many natural strengths: High Damage, High Health and High Armor
-Adrenaline is the most mindless and easiest unique class mechanic to understand and maintain. I don’t ever worry about my adrenaline as I always have tons of adrenaline. I’m never punished for missing a Bust skill as I retain all my adrenaline. I pretty much don’t have to think about adrenaline.
-Can Support, Control, and DPS.
-Some of the highest DPS in PVE still
-Freaking easy OP mode in WvWvW. I can trait and spec pure survival and still maintain high damage. The one counter to the class is CC, condies and snares, but I can trait/build to have those counters almost completely negated while maintaining great mobility, damage and survival.

It’s pretty much the noob retainer. The class for mindless players to feel OP. If people are concerned about the playerbase thinking they get by too easily on minimal effort, then maybe they should look directly at how popular the Warrior is and how common the class is. I imagine if you’ve mostly played War then you’ve barely understood the game mechanics as you can just bypass through them or not worry about them.

It’s a harmful class overall. Not in the way thiefs are bad, because that’s just poor design concept. Wars are bad because they reward low level play.

Question: How long does revealed debuff last? I constantly knock a thief out of shadow refuge, it evades once and then its back to stealth. That’s not much of a debuff.

And for the person who doesn’t understand why constantly resetting a fight is a big advantage: It allows you to “lose” over and over, and continue the fight. You can wait around to engage on your own terms. If your burst is high enough that you don’t need more than a few hits from certain skills, then constant resets allow you to screw up more than other classes and survive.

morrolan.9608:

etiolate.9185:

The problem with 2v1 in the game right now is that on NA side, it tends to be the 1st and 3rd server vs the 2nd.

Not with the recent T1 alliance.

Doesn’t that depend on which week it is?

The problem with 2v1 in the game right now is that on NA side, it tends to be the 1st and 3rd server vs the 2nd. I never saw 3 way fights having this intention. 2v1 would logically be two weaker servers vs the strong server. Instead, it’s the weak server and strong server brokering a deal to nullify the 2nd server. This gives the third server a 2nd place and makes it even more easy mode for the strongest server.

Basically, the community screwed it up.

Yeah. Swordsman can half a burst thief in one hit. An iMage will leave some condy on the thief while he’s stomping you.

I’d like to add another rework"

Disruptor’s Sustainment:

Copy 4 of your Boons to nearby allies on interrupt.

This offers some interesting and active support playstyle, while synergizing with other traits and skills.

nibblesalil.3561:

etiolate.9185:

Brand new players will struggle to afford new utility skills and new traits if they follow the suggestion of buying the trait.

And if you’re new system of earning traits is turning people towards the less exciting option of talking to an NPC to buy the trait? Then you’re new system is failing.

the alternative is do the actually event to get the skill actually explore the map to get it you dont have to spend any money at all but doing the champ train will not work no more you will have to work for these traits thing is people dont want to work they want it all easy as it used to be work for it explore you get rewarded in that i only got one thing to say to you " get over it " people want to watch a movie i know a lot of people do this and they go round queensdale train mindless way to get the money to buy the book and it all be easy ride the train to 80 thats not the case anymore work to get the trait or stop whining " this is not easy anymore i cant watch my film " question why are you watching a film and playing an MMO in the first place ??

what? That reads like rambling gibberish.

Use some punctuation.

For what i could divine from all of that, I’ll say the Queensdale train has nothing to do with any of this.

Brand new players will struggle to afford new utility skills and new traits if they follow the suggestion of buying the trait.

And if you’re new system of earning traits is turning people towards the less exciting option of talking to an NPC to buy the trait? Then you’re new system is failing.

Traveler.

It’s what I run on my PVT set.

Overall negative opinion of new trait system:

-Level 30 is too long to wait to get traits.
-The unlocks for traits are not relevant to the level range you unlock them.
See here: http://thepaletree.net/2014/04/19/trait-disappointment-a-followup/
Adept trait requiring Zone Completion of level 70 area. huh?
-New trait system combined with Megaservers has made unlocking the new GM traits a guessing game. Can’t tell if Lyssa is open, closed or being attacked? You either sit a character in the zone and keep checking or give up and buy the trait.
-This then ends up discouraging people away from what should be a fun addition to play.
-The populace that wasn’t spending trait points correctly before will likely not be bothering to unlock most traits, thus ending up all with the same build that uses the default free trait.

-On top of this, the new trait UI is clunkier than the old trait UI. It requires more clicks to assign traits than it did before, thus making build switching more of a pain.

So the the overall effect is that the new trait system has made character growth feel more grindy due to common use of Zone Completion tasks and the slower rate of attaining traits, and, as well, less free and open for new characters, and this along with the clunkier interface will discourage build experimentation among many players.

Overall negative opinion of new trait system:

-Level 30 is too long to wait to get traits.
-The unlocks for traits are not relevant to the level range you unlock them.
See here: http://thepaletree.net/2014/04/19/trait-disappointment-a-followup/
Adept trait requiring Zone Completion of level 70 area. huh?
-New trait system combined with Megaservers has made unlocking the new GM traits a guessing game. Can’t tell if Lyssa is open, closed or being attacked? You either sit a character in the zone and keep checking or give up and buy the trait.
-This then ends up discouraging people away from what should be a fun addition to play.
-The populace that wasn’t spending trait points correctly before will likely not be bothering to unlock most traits, thus ending up all with the same build that uses the default free trait.

-On top of this, the new trait UI is clunkier than the old trait UI. It requires more clicks to assign traits than it did before, thus making build switching more of a pain.

So the the overall effect is that the new trait system has made character growth feel more grindy due to common use of Zone Completion tasks and the slower rate of attaining traits, and, as well, less free and open for new characters, and this along with the clunkier interface will discourage build experimentation among many players.

SrebX.6498:

Herr der Friedhoefe.2490:

We were given a new skill that was fairly good. Too good really, at least for some Dev playing on his thief, and he suddenly couldn’t just own anyone he liked.

They didn’t even let us keep this skill long enough to even suggest that thieves could work on their game a bit.

At the same there is quite a list of known bugged skills that are still bugged, but this one got first class priority on a 4 day long weekend (because the thieves were affected).

It was obviously an unintended bug. Whenyou first saw tthis skill did you really think it’ll work on thieves and foes with stability? Did you suddenly forget how interrupts work in this game?
Also it’s hard to say it’s useless now, it still works perfectly well on the other 7 professions you might have forgotten that exist…

It should work on thieves. A class shouldn’t be mostly immune to a part of counter play.

The real problem isn’t Power Block interrupting thieves. It’s that the entire design for thieves is bad and so a class being able to be interrupted is “an issue” when it should just be normal. But thief design is so bork that isn’t the case. =\

I can’t get a sense for the actual cooldown. There is one, but it feels incosistent. I want to say 3-5 seconds. It could be 10 seconds and it triggers at the start of the distortion, thus the oddities on when it starts up next.

Also, it does not trigger from bosses. Only regular mobs will proc Triumphant Distortion.

Tested it several times with Masterful Reflection and it did not work with Masterful Reflection. No crystal image graphic and no reflect.

It’s really the only thing that would make it somewhat viable, too.

When you accidentally do something good then you’re supposed to just let it be.

Welcome to PU or go home.

I have the Guild Archmage pants and chest, but not the Guild Archmage Shoulders in my wardrobe. I can’t figure out a way to access these shoulders to unlock them.

Is there any way to get these shoulders anymore?

Agreed. This is how traits SHOULD function. They should add new play options. Currently, Power Block adds new play options, and all the interrupts require heavy weapon/utility investment to keep up so there’s a natural trade-off in utility and damage.

It also introduces new ways to handle PVE encounters which is something the game SEVERELY needs.

Power Block and Maim the Disillusioned stand up well. Every other new GM Mes trait is lacking.enough to make it interesting. Even Triumphant Distortion has ICD and doesn’t even work with related distortion traits like Masterful Reflection, making it not worth GM tier status at all.

Keep Power Block close to how it is now. Please. We’re all freaking tired of running PU to death.

Gudradain.3892:

etiolate.9185:

Retain 24/7 match. Break up each 24 hour day into three 8 hour sets. Each 8 hour set is like a mini-match. A score is kept for the 8 hour set and the highest score wins the set. This gives the winning server of the 8 hour set a Win Point. As well, there is a running score for the entire week. The week-long score counts for one Win Point as well. At the end of the week, the server with the most Win Points then wins the match.

It’s a good idea and it would produce a result nearly identical to PPT cap. But it also has some flaws that PPT cap doesn’t suffer from :

1. The players that have their play time right in the middle of 2 time slot might feel like their contribution has less impact. For example, they might perform very well for the last 2 hours of a match up than very well for the first 2 hours of the next match up but still lose both match up. It might feel to them like all their work is loss because of this 8 hours match up system.

2. It might be too fair. It’s not as drastic as the population based solution but this one might also produce unwanted rankings.

For example, we have server A, B and C. A wins match up 1 with average PPT of 250, B wins match 2 with average PPT of 250 and C wins match up 3 with average PPT of 600.

Obviously, with the current ranking system, C would most likely win the match up. But with your system, it would have exactly the same number of points as A and B until the end when the final point is awarded. This doesn’t look like a very convincing win from C.

If a server is suppose to win, it should win. Same thing if a server is suppose to lose, it should lose. PPT cap does right that but it also make it more fair for the currently losing servers, hence it improves the current situation while not introducing new problems.

3. You need a new ranking/matching system. You basically get rid of the glicko ratings so what will you use now? How do you differentiate between the performance of A and B in the previous example, they have the same number of points… This question needs an answer before we can take an advised decision on this scoring system.

1. This is possible. One thing I hadn’t decided upon is whether I think the maps should reset every 8 hours. So far, i felt this should not happen, so that whatever work someone was doing at the end of a reset would still continue on to the next. This is also a reward for working hard the previous 8 hour set.

2. To me, “who should win” is decided by the rules in which you play. In any sport or league, a handful of rule changes can drastically alter who should win. In the NFL, new rules to protect players and open up offenses has changed the idea of who should win in a match. In the NBA, hand-checking rules and new alterations to the illegal defense rules changes how the league played, and this changed the idea of who should win. Passing become more important in the NFL and post play became less important in the NBA.

The same concept applies here. Currently, dominating against outmanned servers during a significant time period would lead a server to thinking they should win. My rule changes are making the statement that taking empty keeps all night shouldn’t be the deciding factor. The statement of the rule change is that tightly contested times of day should be on par with uneven times of day. It’s the statement that all times of day should have a roughly equal contribution to who wins. So who should win will win according to the new scoring rules.

That’s sort of the point of this whole discussion.

3. I have felt that ANet should use the weeks between seasons to test out new ideas and new scoring methods. At first, I would hide glicko rating while testing this new method out. It should be a trial run to see how it alters players approach to the game and how well its received. If it’s well liked, then a glicko rating + win/loss performance could be used for ranking. If these are seasons, or if this tournament is a “playoff”, then the rest of the time could be trial periods and pre-seasons. Wins and losses and placings matter.

Hell, if having 24/7 coverage matters less, then you may see a shift in the mentality of player movement. Again, what we value and what rules we make dictate who should win and which servers are best.

Suggested this in feedback threads and forum threads many times.

Adding Tennis/NA Playoff rules

Retain 24/7 match. Break up each 24 hour day into three 8 hour sets. Each 8 hour set is like a mini-match. A score is kept for the 8 hour set and the highest score wins the set. This gives the winning server of the 8 hour set a Win Point. As well, there is a running score for the entire week. The week-long score counts for one Win Point as well. At the end of the week, the server with the most Win Points then wins the match.

Imagined differences in outcomes:

Blue v Red v Green
Old System:
Blue and Green play evenly during prime time. Red falls behind. During off-peak hours, Green has maybe 10 players. Red has maybe 25. Blue is fielding 60 players during off-peak hours. Blue karma train rolls through the maps at night.

Blue and Green go from a close match, to Blue having a sizable lead. After the weekend, Blue has a 20k point lead. Neither Red or Green can dominate enough during prime-time hours to make up for this. Blues lead grows expotentially. Match becomes a blow out.

New System:

Blue and Green play evenly during prime time. Red falls behind. During off-peak hours, Green has maybe 10 players. Red has maybe 25. Blue is fielding 60 players during off-peak hours. Blue karma train rolls through the maps at night.

Green and Blue split the prime time hour fights over the three days of the weekend. Blue wins the night sets. At the end of the weekend, Blue 6 win points and Green has 3. Green works hard to win the prime time sets the next few days. At the sixth day, Blue has 9 win points and Green has 8 win points. Red manages to win an early day set and get 1 win pont. Last day, Green pushes 24/7 to try to get the final 3 win points. Blue actually has to work to win.

The main difference is it would make comebacks possible even if you don’t have night coverage. Currently, if you have any semi-signifigant coverage gap, you aren’t coming back. This makes many matchups boring. The new system would allow comebacks despite coverage gaps. Because of this, coverage wars would matter much less. Since any set is worth the same win points, no time of day is worth more than the other time of day. The only advantage is total week points, which counts for only one Win Point.

This can be adjusted to allow win points for 2nd place, but more for 1st place within a set. The only thing to worry about is making sure there wouldn’t be ties. The week long score Win Point is there to help break possible ties.

Second Proposal:
The outmanned buff is now almost entirely meaningless with the removal of repair costs. Instead of changing the outmanned buff on players, I would add a buff/debuff to objectives.

Strained Resources Debuff:
Any time a server has X amount of lead, any new Tower or Keep they take is given the Strained Resources Debuff for 20 minutes. Whenever a losing server takes a Tower or Keep with the Strained Resource Debuff, that Tower or Keep is worth 50% more PPT for the next 45 minutes.

Result:

Karma train flipping by a stomp-rolling server can be used by the other servers to gain points. Retaking a Keep or Tower with the debuff and defending it will get the server more PPT than the leading server constantly flipping it. Servers can still karma train for loot and karma if they want, but it could cost them PPT if they aren’t careful.

This change should also help incentivize defending.

People who argue against changing scoring rules to deal with the “nightcap” issue bewilder me. Are these players who want to pvd karma train without challenge? Are they afraid this will be taken away? Because none of their arguments hold up.

Improving scoring methods would improve the WvW game for everyone involved.

Here is the basic life of the WvW-only player:
1. Start out on some server. Start getting into WvW
2. Get serious about WvW, try to push server.
3. Server moves up or server stalls
4. Coverage gaps in server creates PPT wall the server can’t get past.
5. Coverage gaps create ridiculous score differences, lower impetus to play for many. Map and PPT situation gets even more difficult. Play time becomes work time.
6. Server either recruits or player switches server
7. Server recruits, moves up, still has coverage gaps vs Server X, goes back to step 5
8. Player switches server, goes to top tiers, ends up facing another wall of PPT and slight coverage gaps.
9. Player switches server again, moves up another notch.
10. Swathes of players and coverage suddenly makes player feel less vital. 24/7 grind by players to overcome coverage wars wears down player.
11. Player burns out, quits.

There are ways to address the over-importance of coverage wars. Right now, someone playing off-peak hours with a large group vs empty maps is worth more than those fighting against actual players. Player time is not equal. Coverage wars burn out players.

Changing the scoring system is the vest way to fix this.

Have a question in regards to the Inspiration trait Disruptor’s Sustainment: Does this have an internal CD?

Not sure if anybody’s asked this.

There are concerns/

1. ANet and the playerbase seem wide apart when it comes to WvWvW. Edge of the Mists is a good addition and a very interesting map, but it hurts WvWvW everywhere except tier 1.

2. Speaking of tier 1, the population has become so very top heavy. We’re only now starting to get higher transfer costs for WvW ranking, but that probably won’t even pan out that well. Everything outside of the top 6 is listless in WvWvW. EotM swallowed up the pugs and militias. Everyone else transferred to the top or quit the game.

3. A change to the scoring system must happen if the WvW mode wants to have continued health.

4. Leagues/Seasons/Tourneys have been bad for WvWvW. They create big metrics via people chasing achievements, but those populations didn’t remain in WvWvW. They left as soon as they filled out their score card, and they gained no greater knowledge of WvWvW other than “ITZ ZERGY”.

As for ESO, it’s got nice big maps and some cool siege warfare, but the combat is miles behind GW2 and it suffers heavily from skill lag within battles.

PPT matters to everyone because it impacts everyone. You can’t ignore PPT, and just play for fights because the PPT impacts the surrounding situation, and that situation impacts your ability to play for fights.

Are you going to be able to just find fights when you’ve lost most of the map? Not really. Do you get better fights randomly in open field or near structures?

Structures actually have some importance and act as a drawing point for conflict. The conflict leads to fights. If structures are ignored, conflicts don’t occur. If PPT is out of whack, then things derail from a coverage perspective and structures remain idle or futile.

Eventually, ignoring PPT leads you to situations you don’t want to be in. PPT matters to all. What people should be asking for is a change to the scoring system. People mostly just look for fights in EotM. The reason for this is that nobody cares about PPT in eotm. It doesn’t have much importance or reward tied to it, so people do more of what they want to do. It’s tough for things to go so bad in 4 hours that fights disappear. The same cannot be said of regular WvWvW.

I was hoping that the size increase from the chocolate box would at least be on par with the giant growth from the mystery box, but my character only grow a few inches in size. I was rather letdown about this.

I want to be a giant Asuran. Pretty please? At least bring it up to mystery box growth.

Same lag issues here. It’s centralized to WvWvW. I will be in PVE with no lag, hop over to a Borderlands and suddenly there’s skill lag with 4 people on screen. It’s not even zerg warfare that starts it. It’s shortly after joining WvWvW. PVE, dungeons, etc are all fine. It’s just WvWvW that features these lag spikes. They come and go.

Bass.1697:

Adahilia.3678:

Bass.1697:

Adahilia.3678:

robocafaz.9017:

Bass.1697:

I like the part where you show your server exploiting in the picture as well.

I missed that, can you circle it for me?

indeed, what I see are a mesmer, presents, a dead guy from POV and some dead ranger pets, oh and a bunch of YB building siege at the top of the citadel stairs. what did I miss?

So that’s not your treb in citadel is what you’re saying? Coz I’d seriously have to wonder why they’d set up a treb and not an AC or ballista.

you’d set up a treb to take out in the vendor area if that is where the stuff we have in there is placed.. dunno wasn’t there and neither I’m guessing were you, but does make me wonder why you’d defend them doing it…

Because I’ve seen SBI set up trebs in their Citadel repeatedly and defend that when it’s a known exploit and that’s the only way to counter it.

1. Yaks built the treb to hit SBI golems with splash damage. The second build site was probably a ballistae.

2. Of course, after taking the screenshot, we went up and killed them and ran them off.

Though maybe I misunderstand what they were doing. Perhaps Yaks Bend came up there to ask us to team up against the Legendary Defenders. Those guys are pretty tough.

Well you knew this would end up on the forum when you did it.

tsk tsk

Andrew Clear.1750:

WTF happened to us, SBI? I know I haven’t been able to play all week cause of school, but man, +35 in the morning today. That is sad

My perspective: I was looking forward to this week, but that’s when the outcome would have mattered. Now it doesn’t matter much. This is due to the shenanigans of last week, but last week didn’t just make this week meaningless, but also killed the whole vibe of the league nonsense. The various misdeeds of the past week soured the whole experience.

I’ve also been sick all week and downing the NyQuil. However, I am playing more lightly this week because there was just too much lame in the previous week.

Is the uplevel draining SBIBL garri supply a Yaks Bend player? Are they still doing that? FA doesn’t have a reason to bother with that, so I’m curious.

North Camp 4EVER

We (SBI) needed a shot to the mouth. Hopefully we do something with it.

I’ve run the final battle of the tower twice and both times I hardly took any damage from the boss. My guildmates and party members noticed this as well. So I looked at my combat log and saw that I was reflecting Serpent Strike damage for more than I was taking from Serpent Strike Damage.

At the very low end, I was taking 100 dmg from Serpent Strike from the Toxic Hybrid. At the high end, I was takin 749 damage from Toxic Hybrid.

With Feedback up, I was getting 2500 and 3000+ damage from Serpent Strike reflects.

I am probably clueless about how these things work, but this feels quite a ways off. My first thought is that it has something to do with Kasmeer’s Phantasmal Defender.