Guild Wars 2

Are we allowed to post videos that we created and posted online back in the day when WvW was fun and actively updated, or does it have to be all-new material?

Use Google Translate if you want your own Chinese subtitles for your videos. I can only assume this compilation will be a PR vehicle for our new Asian comrades, because it certainly isn’t going to make our socks roll up and down.

The fact that the game mode isn’t doing well has a little to do with the braindead additions they have made to it, but that’s not really the biggest issue. People keep talking about new maps, new rewards, new this, new that.

None of that matters if the fights are not fun.

The leader of my havoc guild used to make really cool videos from WvW footage, showcasing guilds on our server and so on. She recently came back and wanted to record fights and make new videos. What she found, however, is that the footage was boring as hell because the fights were boring as hell.

There is no balance, no diversity. It’s all particle showers and skill spam. Use whatever is off cooldown and let your passives take care of the rest. There is no push and pull, none of that “he used X so I’ll use Y”. There are no turtle guards who sacrifice damage for survival, instead there’s DH that has both. Or Daredevil. Or Scrapper. Or Berserker. Block block block evade evade evade invuln invuln invuln. 8k, 9k, 12k crits per skill.

WvW is all about the fights. The objectives, the map design, it’s all there to encourage encounters with the enemy. So when the experience of those encounters is nothing but the same condi-passive-block bullcrap over and over and over, is it no wonder that people leave?

The solution lies not with the WvW team, but with the apparently non-existent balance one.

Neat. From what year is the interview?

Nice that he finds the time to talk to the media at least, since talking to his customers is prohibited by the tight schedule.

EotM has nothing to do with WvW. It’s a Queensdale train and fast level up tool wrapped into one. If they nerfed the champs to give one box per day, EotM would be a desolate wasteland.

A nice start would be removing WXP gain from EotM. Used to be that fighting someone with a high rank meant that you were facing an experienced opponent. Now, when I watch from a distance as a Silver rank Guardian stands in front of one of my phantasms, spamming his staff auto to kill it, I don’t need to ponder where all those rank points were accumulated.

In my PvE guild, EotM is frequently recommended to new players as a way to level up a character fast. That, and loot farming, is all it is used for. I guess it’s useful for Arenanet because it falsely bolsters the numbers; you have loads of PvErs pretending to play WvW, so you can look at server stats and say the WvW community isn’t writhing crippled in its death throes.

I’m not sure what, if anything, you can do to salvage that particular map, beyond the obvious reward nerfs that ANet is never going to make.

There’s probably a developer somewhere swallowing tears along with his pride right about now.

“But I worked really, really h@rd on that thing, I really really did.”

Yeah, stealth is an exciting part of competitive play. Please add more of it. Give it to burnguards and other cheeseboxes. Also please add +40% stealth duration food for more excitement.

Harder to zerg? Please, I’m splitting my sides here. The whole map is MADE for karmatraining.

It seems empty because the roamers are gone, as are most of the defenders. Zergs don’t stick around on the map after they flip it. Duh.

Have you fought these guys yet? They’re amazingly pro. I challenge ArenaNet devs to beat ’em!

I am surprised to see a Necro consider the patch a success.

Really.

See me lifting my eyebrows in surprise? You have to look very closely.

Because we don’t need one. Anyone with an even somewhat functional neocortex can see the developers responsible for WvW development are asleep at the switch. I doubt there is a “team” reading Archon’s emails, so why would we need a second one?

Archon is great. He understands the community and the concerns we have. He gets what we hate and what makes us tick. It’s Arenanet that needs to add people into the equation, not the community.

Hate would require much more passion than I feel for this game now. Primarily for four reasons: 1) HoT destroyed class balance entirely. 2) WvW neglect. 3) Lack of communication from the developers. 4) Guild Hall bullkitten nerfed our guild into the ground, we had upgrades we’d worked and paid for that we will never get back.

Permastealth condi thief.

Why don’t you just go ahead and uninstall, seeing as you’ve stopped actively playing anyway.

The number of guilds who have or will ever have the capacity to apply these upgrades is small, at least compared to the number of active defense-oriented guilds we had before.

The new system leaves many defenders and their small guilds outside with their noses pressed against the window. It is not an uplifting experience.

This will not result in a resurgence of defenders in any meaningful capacity.

I have seen many towers claimed by our guilds under the new system. I am yet to see a single one of those guilds come defend it when it is under attack.

Solidbeatz.8571:

Devata.6589:

In my opinion everything that is part of the game should be in the game, not in some cash-shop. So when you get gems anyway I would only spend them on things that should not be in the game itself. Character slots or a name changer for example. I guess bank tabs are sort of oke. But it really depends on how you look towards it.

Anyway, that sort of things are really additions to the game and you don’t support taking elements that should be in the game out of the game and into the cash-shop.

Don’t call it a cash shop. You can get EVERYTHING in the gem store without spending a dime in real life.

You can become a doctor if you want to. You just have to go to medical school.

As a more-or-less WvW only player, the only thing of any use for me in the cash shop are the finishers. Let’s say I want the Whump Finisher. It costs 800 gems. That’s 76 gold by current exchange rate. Newsflash: WvW chests drop crap. 76 gold isn’t easy to come by on top of regular gear upgrades and food and other running expenses. 70+ is what I paid for my Traveler’s runes, and it was no small purchase for me.

Yes, they can all be purchased by grinding gold. I don’t argue with that. I do, however, take exception to the notion that the Gem Store isn’t a “cash shop”, because that is very clearly what it is intended to do: take cash from your wallet and put it into ANet’s. They wind up your desire/need to possess something, and then present it to you in two ways: you can either buy it with your allowance/life savings now, or you can submerge yourself in the tear-inducing boredom of the champ train and buy it much later.

Except that many promotional items can only be purchased during the short period of time they are available. The Grenth Hood was only available during the Wintersday event. If you didn’t have time then to grind up 47 gold, too bad. Could’ve bought it with your PayPal.

Just saying.

At this point it isn’t so much about getting new players into WvW, it’s about stopping the bleeding of veteran WvW leaving GW2.

My question is, who are these idiots that get on the map and think, “oh wow, only 22 commanders, I better tag up.”

Before the expansion, I played every night for hours. Since HoT hit, I’ve skipped entire evenings with no real desire to log on. The new WvW maps mark the end of small scale and roaming, not to mention defensive play; Spvp is a joke now that Ranked is unavailable which pushes all the premades with their DH clowns into Unranked.

The sad thing is, despite stating the post-release they would make WvW their top priority, I don’t think anything is going to happen to salvage this game mode I have LOVED SO MUCH for years now.

I appreciate that a great deal of time and effort must have gone into the development of the new map. The only problem is that it’s not a WvW map. They need to bring back whoever designed the original Alpine maps, because this new one is a disaster. But they won’t… It’s just PvE forced down our throats from here on out.

Entenkommando.5208:

You can complain after they implemented stupid things they didn’t ask us for but not when they do actually finally talk to us.

They’re not talking to us. They sent their PvE forum liaison – who is neither a developer or a customer representative – to deliver information she doesn’t even understand, being that she is never in this subforum and doesn’t play WvW.

It’s just to deliver a statement about changes which take the least amount of effort for a game mode they will soon discontinue. And this is supposed to make our socks roll up and down?

Please, enough with the “this is why they won’t talk to us” bullkitten.

I don’t take posts demanding refunds seriously.

However I think the posts complaining about the content delivered with HoT are perfectly reasonable.

I ordered a bacon burger, Arenanet delivered tuna.

You’re always creating PvE events on WvW maps.

How about an event where we can attack and kill people on PvE maps? Expand their horizons and shake their playing experience up for a week.

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

I was part of the home borderland defense team. There were 10+ of us and party composition rotated as people came and went. We ran 4-5 people and played havoc style mostly, but also upgrading, sieging, and escorting cows, scouting towers and keeps.

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

I avoided EB as I don’t care for zerg fights. I solo roamed there a few times but did not care for it very much.

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

Lots of walking. People log off early. Not much to do. No point in sieging. No need to escort cows or guard camps. Everything runs on auto-pilot. Presumably an enemy zerg comes by and caps stuff because sometimes things flip, but I haven’t seen any enemies.

>> 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.

I can’t knock anyone anywhere since the weapons I use have no such functionality. I played this game mode to fight people, not to troll them off cliffs. If you enjoy avoiding fights, I guess this map will be heaven for you.

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

If it happens, I’ll let you know.

>> 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?

What loot? There are no enemy players and the PvE cron scripts peppered across the map don’t seem to drop anything at all.

>> If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?

I don’t know that you can pursue any game goals playing this. How am I supposed to accomplish something when there’s nothing to do and no one to fight?

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

I went from spending 6+ hours per evening in WvW to not even wanting to log on. I’d say that’s an impact. My havoc group lasted almost an hour tonight before they left due to boredom. I am still on the BL map but just to chat with guildies that are doing PvE. Not sure what I am supposed to do on this ghost map.

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

The problem is that they can’t be. It would take measures far too drastic to fix this, and ANet will never do it. The distances are too long, there is way too much pointless, useless terrain to wade through to get to enemies that are not there. Too much dying from falling, too many PvE mobs, too much unnecessary distractions from the whole point of WvW: to kill other players in a competitive game mode. All this map does is get in the way of that. It would need a complete overhaul.

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

They won’t learn anything about WvW. It’s like EotM without rewards and with even less enemies.

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

They are boring and confusing and distract in every conceivable way from what I have grown to enjoy: killing enemy players. I have no idea what this PvE junk is about. Killing mobs so that I can claim a “shrine”? Why? What do I care about shrines? Where are the enemies?

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

Lion’s Arch. I like the guild office building. Not much to do there but to stare at the NPCs whose prices for upgrades and whatever are wildly outside the wallet of your de facto WvW player, but the building looks cool. I sit there while I chat with guildies about Camelot Unchained and how cool this game used to be.

They won’t. Because ego. Because Arenanet does no wrong, and it’s hard to come up with a good explanation as to why the Desert Boredomlands failed and being self-congratulatory at the same time.

gagi.4012:

People that cant be bothered to run shouldnt be bothered to log in!

People who don’t bother logging in also don’t bother buying gems, eventually finding other games to play.

Your idiotic suggestions in these threads would only serve to shorten the lifespan of this game. People who take the time to write these walls-o’-text do so because they care about the game and want to keep playing it. If you on the other hand want the game mode to die off completely, then by all means keep promoting your toxic b.s.

My replies, too, were getting deleted and infracted for no reason. I thought perhaps the thought police was on patrol again and had wandered into the WvW forum.

But then I realised I was being silly, wasting my time on exhibiting my displeasure on the forums when I could be playing the game like thousands of others, enjoying the exciting expansion content and grinding exploring in the new areas, unlocking the new elite specializations which enrich the game with more dynamic and engaging battles. Not to forget the latest great deals to be found at the Gem Store!

This has been going on for well over a year. Anet’s response has been a deafening silence.

Your assumption is based on the notion that they are going to address current problems. History has taught us that this isn’t what they excel at; they prefer to completely ignore existing issues and rely on redesigns which simply replace old problems with new ones.

In the absence of better information, I still find the “leak” the most likely scenario. In other words, killing off the servers entirely and replacing them with a megaserver GvG alliance system that will alienate a large portion of what little remains of their WvW community.

Well, a couple of reasons. I don’t follow the zerg, I roam and scout solo, and I feel I can put my scout reports just as well into the map chat where everyone can benefit from them.

Second, my server TS assigns class symbols and I end up frequently being asked to come portal golems, which I deem a waste of my time. Instead of saying no and being considered a prick, I opt to just not have to deal with it.

Finally, the music bots. I have a wildly different idea of what good music is than the idiots who queue up kitten for these things. Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga, One Direction, or any of the other talentless hacks give me migraines.

I thought the point of a balance patch was to improve balance, not to break broken necro garbage even further.

In the irony to end all ironies, the moderator will move this thread into the WvW forum

I’ve been a home border defender, scout, and roamer for about 3 years. In my opinion, the current upgrade system is fine. It is an improvement over the old in the sense that dolyaks are once again needed, but no one can blow 800 sups on a useless upgrade just as the enemy horde is advancing.

On the other hand, the upgrade system is rendered meaningless due to the fact that home defenders cannot use the keep waypoints and the travel time by foot through the hamster maze is far too long.

I’ve timed this. It takes a zerg less than 6 minutes from touching the outer gate of a fortified keep to lord down and ring up. If a tower is contested in the south when I am in the rampart, I know it’ll be lost by the time I reach it, so why bother upgrading it unless I am going to sit in it.

It is difficult to get zergs from EB to respond to calls for help without a waypoint, because, well, once again, the hamster maze. Add to this the constant threat of fall damage death, I’ve had to many times start over from spawn because I never made it to the contested keep at all due to some paw slip. The map is just one platform jumper game.

Traditionally, there have been just a small handful of roaming scouts responding to contested keeps and towers. With the old map, this was not much of an issue, because in any tower you could immediately see all the walls and gates, and it didn’t take a whole lot of walking to see which wall was damaged in Bay or Hills either. On the new map, especially Fire has way too many walls to check and long distances to travel between them. Start from spawn, walk to the keep, check all the walls and gates – all within the six minutes it takes for a zerg to cap a T3 keep. Go.

MailMail.6534:

Gaile seems like a nice and genuine dev.

She isn’t a dev.

The fact that people seriously entertain the notion of this going anywhere is further evidence as to just how bad things are.

Gaile is great, she is a great communicator and a very friendly person, but she is being used as a buffer between the developers – or “team” if there is such a thing – and the players. She was sent into the WvW forum to essentially read a statement so the “team” wouldn’t have to.

Collecting feedback and passing it on is precisely what the “forum specialists” do, and that venture is yet to show any meaningful results.

They threw her in front of the firing squad, although it could be the squad is too disinterested and disheartened by now to even lock and load.

TheDaiBish.9735:

If they did say ‘we are aware of the issues and are looking into it’, do you honestly believe that people would stop posting / whining about the same thing on a daily basis?

No, but they wouldn’t move on to other games which are still under active development.

Any mention of a re-haul sends a shiver down my spine when I consider the wonders they gave us with HoT. It’s apparent to me – since they’ve given me no reason to think otherwise – that whoever is in charge of WvW development right now has no concept of how the game mode is supposed to work.

A week versus FIVE French servers without siege disablers.

You win, Anet. You win.

Points Per Kill is going to be awesome.

Now I just need to find someone to kill.

Ahh, finally someone started a thread about the golem event.

I caught a few hackers on video, and reported them using the in-game tool. They just came back the next match, nothing happened to them, so I posted a video too, identifying them; I thought it might help find and punish them. The post was deleted and I got an infraction.

That’s when I realised that it all must have been a big misunderstanding. There are no hackers in this game. Why waste time on negativity and harboring black thoughts when we could be checking out the latest great promotions at the gem store? There’s a new Mini Beetle that you can have follow you around for just 500 gems.

Adry.7512:

you HAVE to be kidding….press ESC then go to options and at the bottom left shows the guild wars 2 population which is always an average of 25k-30k on each server. the same and/or better than before.

That’s not the number of users, that’s the build version of the game client. …. Jesus Christ.

White Knight Apologist:

Knee-jerk reactions are what gamers do best when it comes to change. Also, sweeping generalizations must be in season, because everyone is speaking on behalf of “everyone”. Those are are really rejecting the changes are the vocal minority who are frustrated enough to log into forums to complain. Many others are just doing Halloween/expansion content.

EDIT – Forgot the second part. Even after profuse complaining, many people will eventually come back and tool around. sPvP just doesn’t provide the experience you’re looking for when you are a WvWer, so though it is shiny and chrome right now, the pull will happen eventually.

No, they won’t. They’ll go to CU as soon as it hits beta or some other RvR. WvW fanatics don’t just suddenly become PvE enthusiasts because the same tired Halloween event returns.

The same people who fix this kitten brought us the Golem Week.

Ponder on that one for a minute.

Cecilia.5179:

How were you repairing the gate from 650 units away??

Read it again with your eyes open. He was running supplies to repair, he hadn’t actually reached the gate yet.

I hesitate to offer my opinion since people who do so seem to get shot down as “not ever happy with anything.” But at the same time, if concerns are not expressed, how will anything change?

I didn’t follow the development of GW2 at all, so it may be my own fault for not reading enough about the game beforehand. My previous MMO was pre-Abyssea FFXI, and after a game where just reaching the max level took me about 2 years, I thought the sound of a casual, no-grind MMO was good. I could pop in, do stuff, and still feel like I was getting somewhere, developing a character. Instead of an expansion each year at the price of a new game, there would be smaller, but constant updates.

What I failed to realize was that their idea of grinding was different from mine to begin with. In FFXI’s CoP Dynamis, from 18 to 64 guildies got together every weekend at the same time for several hours to farm an instance. For each run you attended, you were awarded a point. A certain number of points were required to cast a lot (with anyone else who had enough points) on a drop you wanted, if and when it actually dropped off a mob. At best, you were looking at least a year’s commitment to complete a set of armor. That was my idea of grinding; that your opportunities to gain the gear you wanted were not in your own hands, because nothing useful aside from leveling could be done in a PUG.

What ANet really meant by the non-grind was that instead of farming the gold painstakingly, you could swipe your credit card. Yes, you can play a profession “how you like” (more or less), but any build will have you buying the expensive gear over again, since everything is soulbound once you stick a rune on it. You can get a piece with P/V/T… If you want to try a HP Guardian build, you can buy new gear with HP in it, but you can’t sell the old stuff, oh no. But you don’t have to grind, you can just buy gems.

As for the living story, I’ve participated in each since the refugee one, and have not finished any of them. With the first one, I had trouble remembering what went on before by the time the second installment of it came out. Then, because I didn’t have enough time in-game to complete it all, the event was over. The same thing happened with the Superwhateverbox. I had fun with it, but had nowhere near enough time to dedicate to it every night, so I didn’t get a single gear piece out of it. The same thing with Southsun.

The real problem for me began with the Dragon Bash story, however. I did not buy a single rich coffer from the Gem Store. A friend of mine bought several, and got nothing at all to show for it. I know this has been beaten to death, but hear me out… A lot of guild mates wanted skins and have not gotten any at all. I popped open coffers as I killed minions and regular mobs, and I, a casual player, walked away with five skins. I would love to have been able to share them with guild mates. But no, so I’ve been spending them on weapons I don’t even use. The problem is, I feel like kitten when I wear them. I feel like a total kitten when I whip out that shield near guildies, knowing they wanted one so badly, they farmed their kitten off, bought coffers, to get nothing but candy that makes your character – ironically enough – vomit.

At least when you buy an expansion for any MMO, the contant is more or less permanent. You don’t have to get it done in six weeks or lose the chance altogether. This makes me feel uninterested in any new Living Story, because I feel like the “story” is written around whatever new skins or armor the gfx department came up with. Here’s new armor relating to the Pirates event, but sorry, it’s gems only. You can buy it for 800 gems, which is around 28 gold. Don’t have the time to grind? No matter, it’s just €10.

It really kills the immersion for me when each addition is a ruse to pump enthusiasm for Gem Story items, which are of course limited-time editions. You know a lot of casual, non-pro gamers who can farm 28 gold within whatever short time period the “event” is available?

Maybe if there was a subscription fee, the devs could focus on fixing existing content and balance issues, and adding the stuff that was promised ages ago, instead of trying to come up a story to somehow connect to the Gem Store Special of the Month.

No. Just no. And here’s why:

Samhayn.2385:

Sovta.4719:

Samhayn.2385:

Sovta.4719:

YES!!! We need this! If you think we don’t then you are noob. If someone took his time to learn to play and wants EFFICIENCY in dungeon he should not suffer by playing with noobs.

And here is the reason it should not be Implamented. Thanks for summing it up for everyone.

Thank you by showing how good are you.

Umm what?

Here is the thing, I have played a game with gear checking and gear scores and dps meters and people wanting you to have cookie cutter specs. The whole time I played it I was able to use non standerd gear (pvp gear) and a pvp spec and still out dps, not stand in fire and learn the bosses script as fast or faster then the hardcore pve expert. All this was fine in guild where people know me and how I play and accepted the fact that I did not need to be carried. The problem comes in when you want to put becuase either not enough guild members are on or they are doing something different at the time. So if I feel like running a dungeon I can but if they implement gear check I’m going to have to justify my gear and build to some guy/gal who read on some website that since I play “x” class I should have “y” build and “z” spec? kitten all that noise. The best part is I could with my non cookie spec be the one carrying the “expert” thru the dungeon becuase skill, knowledge of your class and proper timing mean way more then what spec you run.

Sorry for the wall of text but pve elitism is a hot butting issue with me.

I had enough of that elitist bullkitten in FFXI. The “why do you wear X when Y would be better?”-type discussions were never in a friendly tone. I think this game is better than that.

Would be interesting to know what their rationale is for the PU nerf. Do they actually have one, aside from “too many forum threads with PU in the title”? After all they increased the duration originally, presumably having done some testing on it, so what was the big issue that was later discovered which was not found during the original testing and was subsequently sufficient grounds for a nerf?

A considerable number of the buffs the trait rework granted us to much Mesmer community applause has been nerfed to near-uselessness, and the only reason I can think of for the lack of appropriate uproar is that people are still in a state of quasi-orgasmic excitement over the prospective Chronomancer builds.

Until those get promptly nerfed 3 hours after release.

Yeah, increase the map capacity so that everything turns into a slideshow. Maybe you’d like to take another stab at thinking it through.

It’s pretty amazing that all the maps had such long queues on your server. We only had a consistent queue on EB, the borderlands were fairly fast to get into. Then again if you’re used to following the tag around brainlessly, spamming staff auto like a lobotomized monkey with Alzheimer’s, moving from EB to the borderlands may not be a smooth transition…

I’d like a honeybee outfit for my Asura. It should be round and stout in the middle, black and yellow striped, with a black stinger sticking out of the back. The helmet should be yellow and black, round, with antennae sticking out. Preferably there’d also be translucent wings which could, if possible, flutter when you run.

I’ve not bought outfits from the gem store, because I only buy armour that I can mix and match. However, I would make an exception for the honeybee outfit. Asura only, please.

Thank you.

Every day we find enemies waypointing directly into Bay even though we own it. This bug has existed since the Alpines came back and there was no response or acknowledgment in the other thread so clearly not a huge priority.

Since there’s no hurry in fixing this glaring oversight, could we get the keep lord HP bars back that you could see in the event whateveryoucallit? Previously, you could see the lord’s health was dropping so no one could quietly ninja the lord unnoticed so long as someone was within the keep area. Now the bar only shows the “ring” or whatever you’d call it once the enemy has killed lord and is capping it, rendering it pretty much useless.

I’d rather just look at the lord’s health bar than run into the lord room every time the keep is contested to make sure the enemy didn’t just WP in again.

Thanks guys, keep up the great work.

I don’t know how you can tell the path is the right one when they haven’t even told us where it leads.