Guild Wars 2

While I respect and understand what you’re saying about only needing a few members to do missions. The bottom line still is…my WvW guild will NOT ever run guild missions and that we are appalled that ANET would force us to complete them in order to get our guild hall outfitted with things like the War Room and Private Arena.

By requiring you to complete them for favor this forces players into being pigeon-holed to complete something that we don’t want to do in order to get our GH. So I still am sticking to my opinion that at least influence was fair. Yes you could buy it for gold but simply remove that option if you want it to be more important.

^^ yes! As a leader I would totally love to make an announcement to the entire guild like in guild wars 1. The login message would be displayed to all members and would really help coordinating special events, (ie. Dungeons, WvW this friday night). ANET this has been on my list of improvements for guilds. Please help us.

I actually posted this to my server’s community forums and they recommended that I put it hear if anyone feels like commenting or a rare unicorn Dev happens to read it. Yes I am aware that some of this has already been said this is just my personal opinion on it. I wrote this with as little pre-judgement as I possibly could and looked at this from both a commander and roamer standpoint. Some background, I lead a small guild with actively raids 15 + 5-10 pugs.

TLDR warning…I kindov wrote a block.

General Thoughts on Group Sizing (zerging or havok sized groups)
I am really discouraged about the total amount of supply that is needed to capture an objective. I feel like this map supports both zerging and havok. Havok for all of the smaller objectives and then a zerg for any tower or keep. Havoks would be very useful for either ganking your enemy’s shrines or maintaining your own. As a solo roamer I felt like unless there were 100+ on map you could go for minutes at a time and not see a soul. In this regard I think havoks (3-10) in size would be perfect for slipping by unnoticed and could fulfill the saboteur role.

Keeps:
Unless changes are made you will NOT capture a keep with <20 people in under 30 minutes. Because most of the walls/gates were immune to all but siege it required multiple superiors to make a dent and even that took ages. In my tests I found it was simpler to just make 5 omegas and break down a wall because at least then you could walk your siege to inner (not without sustaining moderate damage due to turrets/NPCs
-Example: Superior rams are needed to break gates, so I say you need 3 per + 1 ballista to take out cannons + oil = 180 sup and you need to do that at least twice! So 360 supply minimum. Being generous saying all members are running perma +5 and guild +5 means that you need 18 people with 20 supply in order to accomplish all this without a retreat to go resupply. This does not account for having any defenders and that you are able to build this all without any of it getting disabled or destroyed by the cannons/guards/turrets.

Resupply runs will be very common so a few well placed supply traps will decimate your enemy as they have to run back 5 mins to get more. I tagged up and lead a group of 10-15 and we got destroyed by 1 (thats right a single defender) and his NPC’s + auto turrets. He didn’t even build siege, he just used the cannons/oil.

Size:
I feel like the size of these maps should be combined into a single instance and have EB as the 2nd map. The population could easily be raised to 300-500 and there would still be loads of room. Now with that many people, mega-blobs would run rampant and I’m not even going to mention the skill lag that would occur but things would never get capped. I will say that I can’t imagine being able to cover multiple maps for any server below tier 2. Yes the maps can be looked at as deceivingly large or moderate in size (remember all the ~5 stories of verticality like Verdant Brink that is in this map). (PS I WANT gliders! I know it won’t happen but man that would be cool especially around the air keep)

Automatic Upgrades/Guild Claiming:
The good thing about automatic upgrades (defensively) is that once a keep gets to T3 and has the invul upgrades….its really effin hard to lose it. You could have only 5 defenders and they can easily thwart multiple attacks/golem rushes. The upgrades were really nice and the guild claiming system while a work in progress is a definite improvement. You can make the temporary buffs (tactics) able to be used by guild members only or accessible to the public. I could see a potential issue with a troll guild claiming a keep and locking the buffs so noone could use anything.
EDIT: Tyler clarified that they are adding a system in place to remove the majority of such trolls.
My favorite tactic was the temporary waypoint (when it worked). I do think that the visibility could be better to understand when defenders could pop these defensive tactics. I would do so in a similar way to Stronghold where at the top near your servers current tick was a small set of icons similar to your skill bar with timers listed (like siege decay). You could pop a WP that would remain uncontested for ~1min to let your forces pile into the map if you needed to wipe your attackers. Otherwise the buffs to gates and cannons is really nice as it prevents a blob from mindlessly PvD forever.

Turrets: (this gets its own section)
The automatic turrets are OP as kitten and broken, they are a T3 upgrade and cannot be damaged, destroyed, or removed. I brought a single omega to a gate to see how Ninja work would fair….I took the gate down to 60% after safely clearing the guards. That whole process took me ~5-10 minutes in which in a normal match someone would have come running to scout around and discovered me. The turrets type of damage range from keep to keep but basically they hit me for ~1-2k ea every 2-3 seconds (while in a golem) with whatever CC the keep corresponds to. Air was 1s stuns, Fire 1s burn, and Earth knockbacks (you literally CANNOT use rams on Earth keep with turrets because you get interrupted every other shot). I tried the same thing with 2 superior rams instead. They melted the siege in ~5 mins. With no way to block other than literally have people stand as a meatshield and try to tank/or reflect the bullet like you would a ballista it was very discouraging.

The Shrines:
These are an interesting mechanic and were somewhat reworked after the first beta. Now in order to receive the benefits you must own all 3. These buffs only work in their respective regions.
Air – No falling damage (even on golems…yes that was fun leaping a golem down 10 stories on a roamer and spinning)
Earth – Stealth while out of combat within the canyons (can you say Thief Shadow Arts zerg)?!?
Fire – Lava chutes, able to run across lava with impunity

I did feel that they need to be tweaked because for instance there were 2 times where I leaped off a cliff and lost a shrine mid-air and promptly died upon impact. This could easy be countered by say add a perma buff while you own all 3 and as soon as you lose 1 shrine give you a 10s warning to get to safety. That way you won’t either die from lava, lose stealth, or squish against the ground.

Siege:
The AC’s used the new LoS system and effectively removes most cheesy placement/camera angles. There were still a few spots that they would not be able to counter without a cata or treb but as long as its not abused I see no issue. Another thing, they reskinned all the regular and superior skins and man are they UGLY! I get that this is a new map and ANET wants to put some new life into it, but the design changes while refreshing to see something else, do not flatter me in the slightest. The only other instance I can think of was Chineese New Year when they reskinned siege to be red+gold, now that was a cool upgrade and a nice visual change. The current new siege skins look like the Zephyrite crash test salvage and I get it your group literally brought some wood and metal and is assembling rams but I think they look lame. (I can deal with it). I will say, the new system when you are placing siege A++. Getting a preview for the direction you are throwing siege with a shadow imprint (Trebs/Cata direction) is spot on, really nice to make sure you don’t accidentally place it backwards and have to spend 30 seconds turning it.

I may add more thoughts later but I think I touched up on most of the information that I observed with my 1 day of playing the beta.

This map needs some work but it is not without praise, they have done a lot of work on it but I think with some more tweaking and listening to us the playerbase (True real 99.99% WvWers that this could require a lot of new tactics and strategy.

Cheers!
-Vrontios
[CREW] Leader
Fort Aspenwood

I am using the nVidia equivilant (NVIDIA SURROUND) and mine is broken as well :/

Sorry to be bothersome but do you have any links to that anywhere or can anyone else confirm? From what I read it sounded exactly like that as well but then I could only find random Dev comments in POI’s and nothing actually text or from an article.

I really want a 100% yes Dev answer :P

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
A typical hour involves running with my close knit guild with a size of 15 looking for fights. We would do some PPT but generally only drop siege to lure out the blobs/defenders to come play. We would move around to multiple maps or if there was a callout to defend something would run to our home map to fend off the attackers. Generally a well rounded night running around 3-4 hours doing all sorts of tasks.

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
If we decide that we are staying on EB it means be prepared for fights. All it is involves running to the OJ’s and using our battle skills to fight our opponents in open field. As long as we held our corner for the most part we were content to sit with massive 3 way fights in SMC fighting for hours.

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
The new borderlands are beautifully designed but as I said in a previous closed beta test of the maps, they feel too big. I think that they are designed for 100-250 people in mind (per server) and not 75. It does have a sharp learning curve in map navigation which can turn people away but I feel that it has to many “PvE” mechanics. The central lazer event, the lack of wide open spaces, the excessive ways to turtle in and bunker down prevent fighting. In my previous report I said that it will take a minimum of 18 people to take a single keep all carrying 20 supply to attack effectively. People don’t want to fight on these maps because they “feel” empty. Without fail, every time I play on the desert maps, all I do is karma train with my guild, get bored after 20 mins and leave to EB to look for non-blobs to fight.

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
The other maps felt very open and fair. While the new maps promote a higher degree of skill/tactics, I honestly can’t say that I’ve been tested as a commander and have had to adapt. We have had only 2 good fights in the new desert maps since launch. Yes there is a lot of verticality and choke points and areas for you to come around and flank your opponents but I haven’t had enemy numbers to fight against.

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
The time it takes to capture a structure (keeps specifically) is astronomical. For keeps, the amount of health feels like I can ignore the attackers for a solid 10 minutes and then go run to defend. Camps/shrines/towers all feel about right from the health in the walls/gates and strength of the lord. Keeps take a long time and a large amount of supply to capture. The days of a small guild group (read 10) dropping 5 guild catas to ninja a keep is over. Before you had maybe 5 minutes to react and defend your keep, now you have a good 10 before you need to even begin getting worried.

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
The loot compared to the past is the same (which is actually negative), the gold loss per hour now is smaller, this is only the case if I make sure to stop in each objective and gather the nodes. Half the time I forget or am in a rush to go defend/fight on a different part of the map so I don’t want to spend 1 minute waiting for everyone to regroup and finish gathering. I have never been able to sustain myself on WvW alone. I always had to do dungeon speedruns or PvP to have the money to be able to afford my siege and food. I understand that I don’t need all the shinies but to afford sigils of energy, runes of strength, food that costs 40-50s/per hour is not sustainable in WvW alone. I have unlocked 2 classes entirely through the proofs of heroics but I am also rank 1600+ so the points are of no consequence to me. As a WvW fight guild commander if there aren’t enemy’s then I don’t get xp and I don’t get loot. I feel like I am forced to play other game modes just to play what I want. This is not the case in both PvE and PvP. Both provide amble gold/rewards/skins and get attention through balance patches/new content. I would like to be able to purchase large amounts of account bound armor/weapons/runes/food by my WvW rank points or badges of honor.

How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
They have been reduced. My guild is no longer raiding daily for 3-5 hours. Now we spend around 2-3 and aren’t having as much fun. WvW guilds/players have either left the game mode entirely, are grinding PvE to pay for the WvW guild buffs/items that we already had or waiting till you decide to rebalance everything.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
Get rid of 2/3 of the desert maps. There should be only 2 maps. The desert borderland: red – earth keep, blue – fire, and green – air; and EB. Each map should have an increased population cap of at least 150 fights PER SERVER.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
If someone has never set foot in WvW, all they will see is an empty map maybe with a commander tag where they cannot glide even though it looks like it was designed with that in mind.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
They will be frustrated, and confused as they compare it to the old maps. Once you spend 10 hours in it though you can understand all the secrets and things you need to know to navigate/play effectively.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
If I am playing WvW, it is 99% on EB because that is where I find fights and enemy servers. This game mode is bleeding more and more players each day because we don’t have any communication or transparency. I have had faith in ANET for 10 years as a long time veteran, I have seen them somehow pump out an expansion each year with LOADS of content and amazing features so it is sad to see Wvw getting the scraps of attention in over 3 years of GW2.

We want to be able to fight (you have developed an amazing combat system, let us use it!). We want to be able to buy normal gear (armor/runes/weapons/food) without leaving WvW. We want actual tournaments/competitve GvG focus for once.