Guild Wars 2

GrandHaven.1052:

Even necro is getting more attention than Engi now. That’s just WOW.

Well Duh.

Because they are working on changes for the Elite Specialization. Once the engineers is out, it will get some attention as well.

I wonder if the new calculation considers the movement of population to different servers. Like, does it immediately remove a “WvW” player from a server’s total and add it to another server’s total when that player transfers? Or is it painfully slow to adjust to population movements like Glicko is?

CorrynnStarr.7942:

my personal favorite is the black lion pack on sale from 2000 gems down to 1600 gems… at a reported 44% off discount……………… maths not they strong suit I guess

Nope, that was 2880 down to 1600 so it was 44%. Since the before price has a strike though, the 8s looked very much like a 0. But you see the 8 is narrower than the 0.

While I’m not as active in WvW as I used to be, I think this is a great move. A lot of people are saying stuff like “but there are no other SEA/EU players below the locked servers”. While that might be true, at this moment, maybe it isn’t true in a month or two. Just picture this. 4-5 guilds move to a server with enough room, they join the community and they all start to organize. There is always people in the guilds who have odd working hours, so they cover the off time. More people are encouraged to join them as well.

The server will soon start doing a lot better and will eventually climb up higher up in tiers. Tadaa! Fresh blood to fight for everyone. Sure, the current T1 servers suffers from not being able to get fresh blood themselves, and have guilds transfering off, and so on, but why is that bad? Steamrolling everything with coverage and numbers have more than likely driven away just as much people as empty servers have.

Eventually the “full” status will be lifted off the old T1 dominator, and put on the newbie server, and the whole circle starts again. On another note. I’m not sure the population calculations are properly done yet. If it looks like this in like 2 months or so, then go find your pitchforks and torches. Right now though, chill and recognize that Arenanet is trying to do something about the population imbalance.

Piken Rules!

Malediktus.9250:

Easy fix if some servers are too empty. Merge them.
Better solution than punishing the top servers for better community management.

Not yet. It is completely illogical to merge servers this close to an expansion in which we know we will likely have a massive influx of new or returning players.

coglin.1867:

Avigrus.2871:

Fight Yaks Bend in it’s current iteration is too much to bare.

Mid fields siege, tower/keep camping, spawn camping and blobbing everywhere. 5 people trying to re-cap a keep get blobbed by 40…. no words.

I do not see a ligitimate complaint any where in this post. Are you suggesting that there is a problem simply because your losing? Or is the complaint that the tactics you are losing to are a problem? If the tactics are an issue, that is your problem, as I see it, not an issue with the game.

Complaining about the state of T2 at the moment is completely legitimate, Yaks is disgustingly stacked.

This situation is exactly why they changed the server statuses to reflect the WvW population. It helps keep the kittenty players from gaming the system and ruining WvW for everyone else. Unfortunately for T2 players the change came pretty late and they are stuck with the option of suffering through a crappy match up or transferring down.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

T1 Servers are fairly far away from dropping out of T1 so nobody is PPTing to avoid that.

As a regular commander on a NA T1 server, I want to suggest that you learn to speak for yourself, and stop implying you speak for everyone to add false weight to your opinion.

From my perspective, T1 servers appear to me to make a conscious effort to maintain the highest PPT they can. Unlike you though, I am speaking from my perspective and what I see and hear of those in my circles.

I do not see intentional K training from where I stand. It appears to me that this generally happens late at night when there are not enough on to put 4 maps of coverage out. Generally when I cam commanding, I try to focus on holding hills and bay where I can. I Make an effort to pressure the enemies bay and hills, and occasionally garrison. The only K training that might occur is the occasional flipping of camps and the lesser keeps on the way part to accomplish the aspects of my previously stated goal. If you and yours are karma training, that is on you, but you shouldn’t claim to speak for me, and then suggest my goals are the same as yours.

Wxp seems removed (used 150 candy corn), gotten 30 min speed boost, 20 min regeneration, 25 min of the magic find boost (that now though is better then in past, also works on gathering). The ‘dominant’ boost now seems EXP+PVP reward track exp. 1 hour 27 min (though it seems you only get 5 or 10 min from it rather then the old 15 min. Very bad since it will almost worn off before you get a ‘good amount of time’. Secondly, seeing how they merged everything but removed wxp, best solution would be to add wxp to the ‘+50% exp and pvp track’. Make it 50% exp/pvp exp and wxp. Problem solved.

To be honest I currently see very few use for the cobbler. Sad cause I had stocked up 40 000 candy corn… To use in edge of mist when I could further farm my achievements (aka when I could join SFR in there, rather then fight against them). But nope… To bad.

cpchow.7416:

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

I agree, this new classification/transfer system is very poor for Oceanic/SEA players.

I play in SEA T1. There is very small SEA population outside of tier 1.

This change has locked every SEA player and guild to whatever T1 server they are currently on.

If SEA players/guilds leave their current T1 server they end up in T3 or T2 (at best) and end up having very little opposition (and thus very little fun).

Guilds want big fights against top class opposition.

I’ve been playing on JQ since the early days. I have friends on JQ that I don’t want to leave and I have a new friend that has never played GW2 that I want to introduce to WvW.

My friend can never join us. I won’t be able to convince my JQ friends to move to some backwater server for someone they do not know.

This change is actually increasing the WvW population rot (I’m not going to get my friend to buy GW2 and play WvW because he can’t join us).

I would also dispute that Tier 1 is full – JQ never has all maps queued (except maybe 30 minutes after reset). This is not a full server. We could queue 3 more maps with players. We are maybe 1/4 to 1/2 full in terms of our queues.

The servers should be able to support 4 queued maps all having blob fights at the same time on each map. If it can’t do that then they need to fix their servers to handle load not invent “Full” classifications.

For those mocking T1 and calling it a ktrain – that is so far from the truth. 90% of time in T1 SEA is open field multi-guild fights. JQ was relatively empty during the golem ktrain because we all found it so boring compared to fighting.

This change hasn’t stopped server overpopulation. It has simply altered the strategy for how people overpopulate a particular server. Instead you now get a situation like Yak’s Bend where everyone transfers into an empty server before it gets classified as Full.

GW2 is about letting people play the game they want to play it. If people want to roam on empty maps then let them live in T3 and below. If people want to blob in T1 and sit in long queues then let them.

Existing players on T1 should at a minimum be able to invite their friends onto their server.

Just open up everything up and let people transfer where they want and let the queue lengths be the control that discourages overpopulation.

I totally agree with you. Let people what they want, we paid for the game. Don’t use "stupid’ game politics restrict the fun of us. Otherwise, more and more people will leave the game. I think population balancing is important but anet locks migration of high tier server is a terrible idea. It can’t solve the problem and make it worse. It is the same as golem week. Besides locking the server transfer, wvw guesting system would be a better way to solve the population problem. You just need to let players guest to other server and enjoy the wvw. Set home server player have the priority enter their bl. Set a 1 minute timer for guest server player to kick them out of the map if a home server is in queue for their home server bl.

Apparently, you are not around during launch or have played much MMOs. Players were allowed to transfer any where and everywhere during the launch, this create a very chaotic situation with matchup capable of becoming unbalance so easily. This also caused many hardcore guilds to disband and players to quit the game, those are hardcore players and not just casuals who think they are hardcores. It is because of the unbalance, anet then start to close the free transfer which has been overdue. Anet is always one step slower in everything they do.

Allowing players to take matters to their own hands and leaving players to their own devices can be extremely destructive in certain game modes. Competitive gaming scene can only be competitive because of certain regulations in place.

Now that the server full system is actually tied to WvW activity, it’s a good chance to try to shuffle players around a bit to balance server populations.

However, open free transfers lead to too much stacking and bandwagoning, and server merges upset those who are quite happy with their existing server, and it’s not right to force them to give up their server.

Similarly, splitting top tier servers is distruptive to communities and again, it’s not right to force people to give up their server.

One solution might be free transfers available only in certain situations.

Problem 1 – Empty bottom tier servers
There are some players who are unhappy being stuck in empty lower tier servers. Ideally they want to move up to a more populated server, but they feel insulted that they are being forced to pay for a problem that’s not really their fault.
Also, whilst it’s good overall for the game to condense some players into the middle tiers, we don’t want to allow free transfers because it might cause all players to stack on one middle tier server and unbalance populations even more.

Solution – soft-merge servers
Permanent free transfers along the following pattern:
[Tier 8 #3] + [Tier 7 #3] -> [Tier 6 #1]
[Tier 8 #2] + [Tier 7 #2] -> [Tier 6 #2]
[Tier 8 #1] + [Tier 7 #1] -> [Tier 6 #1]
(similarly for EU, add Tier 9)

In other words, players from the least populated Tier 7 and 8 servers (and 9 for EU), can transfer for free to the most populated Tier 6 server, etc.

People who want to stay on their servers are happy.
People who want to transfer up are happy.
People who want to force others to stay on their server are unhappy, but I dont think we need to cater for this desire.
People who already paid for a transfer are unhappy. Sorry.
Server communities are mostly preserved – entire lower tier communities can move together to their designated server
Population shifts are fairly balanced, spread evenly amongst the Tier 6 servers

Problem 2 – overfull top tier servers
Now that all upper tier servers are full and completely closed to transfers, we don’t have the risk of additional stacking anymore. But, some of those servers are more full than others, with population and coverage problems that are now more locked in because most people won’t want to give up their upper tier server with no hope of returning.

There might be some players that want to transfer to another high-tier server (but with fewer players), to avoid queues or whatever, which could balance things out. But currently the system prevents that – full servers are full, even if they’re less full.

Solution – Free transfer ticket lottery

• ANet chooses an overfull server (ignorant example – Jade Quarry?)
• ANet calculates a certain amount of players that need to transfer to make things more balanced (eg. 100)
• ANet chooses some Full servers that could still benefit from more players, to even out their tier. (ignorant example – FA and SoS?)
• ANet announced a “Free Transfer ticket lottery”. Any player who participates in WvW for a few hours that week, will be in the running to win one of 100 free transfer tickets.
• Free transfer tickets can only be owned by players in JQ.
• If you use the ticket, you can transfer for free to FA or SoS, or any non-full server.
• Tickets can be mailed/given to others, or sold on the marketplace.
• ANet can wait and see the effects, then hold more lotteries if needed.

This allows ANet to modify the population in top tier servers in a controlled way.
RNG is the only fair way to distribute a limited resource.
People who want a ticket can beg, buy or trade tickets from winners who don’t want one.

ExtraCosmic.9082:

Tigaseye.2047:

Why on earth would anyone want to make “sub-optimal” characters?

I totally understand enjoying a large amount of choice, but surely that approach only works if they are capable of balancing it?

I can’t speak for the person who said it, but “sub-optimal” doesn’t necessarily mean “intentionally bad”. It just means “not meta.” If I can take an axe trait that makes my DPS 1000, or a greatsword trait that makes it 1050, then the greatsword is optimal. However, the difference is small enough that the axe character can easily perform just as well in any game mode. If a player thinks the axe is more fun, they’re free to choose that with no real detriment to themselves.

That’s the loss that many people are mourning. There were many, many build options that were not meta, but could perform just fine, and which naturally had the highest usage among players who weren’t trying to crunch that extra 1-2% of damage out of their build. If character efficiency were on a percentage scale and 1% was the meta, the “sub-optimal” 90-99% are where the variety was gutted.

No one said sub-optimal was bad and your sub-optimal to meta description is wrong.

Let’s make this simpler, in the old system there were:

- meta builds depending on class and game type (a build is not defined by 1 simple set of traits and skills, but also alternatives to traits and skills)

- a couple of useful non meta builds which people run as niche or just for fun that worked just as well because without damage log parser and the casual approach of the game (and lots of open world pve zerg) no one cared

- a LOT of useless builds or very subpar builds composed only in theory since the traits for those would have never been picked (or shouldn’t have)

Your example would have been of someone taking a meta build and slightly altering it, or making up their own build which still fits in category 2 of useful and playable. What people are refering to when mentioning sub-optimal builds or useless builds are the ones in category 3 of which there were A LOT.

Each class had some very defining traits in each line which basically dictated what build they used while the rest was fluff. The new system gets rid of a lot of fluff and makes sure that more people are on even ground as far as trait setup goes.

Is this to your disadvantage? Sure, if you believe you’ve develeoped that unique snowflake build that no one else has ever come up (very unlikely considering the playerbase).

Is this to the games advantage (and ultimately yours too)? YES! It allows for better balance, easier use to casual players to “get a decent talent build” which in turn allows for anet to balance content differently because they better know what to expect from classes.

I’m not even going to get into their expansion approach with elite specializations which would have been a disaster in the old system.

Hi Tich

tichai.4351:

I don’t have solutions, I wish I did which is a shame for a game with so much potential and as I will be the last to leave the server as far as WvW is concerned, I will make sure to turn the light off

• It’s not your job to have solutions, it’s Arenanet’s responsibility to NC Soft.

tichai.4351:

Spin off WvW into a separate game and take on the likes of CU, you have more than a head start on the competition and there are still plenty of people who would buy the game. If CU can raise over $3 million for a concept there must be something in the format.

• I don’t think CU is seen by Anet as a competitor for GW2. It’s my assertion that Mike O’Brien thinks that because the payment models are different, the player bases will be. I think he will be surprised when a lot of the WvW guilds (emphasis on “whole guilds full of players”) show him that they are willing to pay a subscription fee and move over to (at least try) CU.

• I believe the reason Mike thinks WvW players like PvE is because they do it to suppliment their WvW play – for example, players might do PvE to get cool-looking gear to take into WvW, or to craft-up some food pots for WvW, or simply to earn gold to spend in WvW. Of course, there are some players who simply like to WvW because it adds variety to their PvE lives, but I consider them to be the minority (of WvW players), not the other way around.

• Having said all of this, it’s clear that the WvW population is considerably smaller than the PvE population – you only need to look at the number of players on each map. You’re looking at what… 100-200 players in total per server at prime time? So although we consider ourselves to be quite a considerable number, we are like the GW2 of NCSoft’s income. Tiny.

I am in a guild that currently raids 7+ hours a day. As you can imagine, we go through a large number of superior siege blueprints in that time. Around 200 sup rams, 50 sup catapults, 50 sup ACs, and maybe a few trebs, golems and ballistas.

In order to create 1 single superior siege blueprint, you must:
Go to siege, vendor, click 2 times to buy a regular blueprint.
Go to Miyani, click 2 times to buy a Siege Master’s Guide.
Go to Mystic forge, click 2 times on regular siege blueprint, 2 times on mithril ore, 2 times on elder wood logs, 2 times on Siege master’s guide, and 1 more time to accept.

This is a total of 13 times per superior siege blueprint, not including clicking to remove items from bank and using waypoints and interacting with NPCs.
On a typical night I have clicked over 4000 times in 40 minutes to create the siege my guild needs.

This isn’t just a convenience issue, this is a health issue.

We have been asking for years for a fix to this issue. If this isn’t fixed in HoT or before, not only will I be severely disappointed that a simple fix – adding recipes to crafting stations – has not been implemented, I may even risk injury because of it.

xuse.6817:

2 years without logging in at all and then after a 1 month notice that you need to log in, and then still not logging in, is not a “break”.

You would have no excuse in that scenario and I’m not even sure why/how you think you can defend that. Everyone in my skype room agrees with me.

Just because some entitled uncreative person wants my name, is absolutely NO reason that I should HAVE to log in to keep it. If I take a 2.5 year break and come back, that’s my business. I don’t need a “excuse” life happens, deal with it.

Nike.2631:

30 days. It take 30 days to charge up enough quartz for a full set of exotic armor, that then gets promoted to ascended status (with more time-gated mats you can be working on simultaneously) making it account bound and you never have to make another piece in that weight class ever again in the multi-year life of the game.

I think people have had maybe a little too much instant gratification. A whole month to achieve a terminal goal in an MMO is NOTHING.

I wouldn’t call a month “nothing”. I’ve played games that scaled exp so high, it would take a month to get 1 level.

I’m getting tired of pointing out time and time again that the game’s design proactively promotes crafting as the core of high level activity. Not only that, but sheer variety of crafting projects suggests they intended us to do multiple projects over the year. Now I can understand a Legendary taking time, because its requirements encompass the whole game. But more importantly, its considered the most frivolous of pursuits… done only by those who for prestige or profit.

Ascended armor on the other hand is in the realm of a practical project by its Stat rating. Its the highest form crafting that actually yields functional results. However, its requirements are incredibly steep, and ORIGINALLY had no bonus, nor any other purpose then to house infusions for high level fractals. But giving that bonus forced the game to elevate the build standard, even if its not cost effective. People tend to blow 5 increase in stats as being small…. but in the multiplicative nature of the formula they use for damage, that 5 bonus can translate to a couple hundred extra points of base damage per attack. So despite not being cost effective, we’d still take it once cost is no longer a hurdle.

But then you have a whole exotic line on this time gate. Thats 5 days to create 1 piece of gear, which wouldn’t sensible to use until you’ve assembled a full set. Its like paying for a car, and getting one piece of it every day for a month before you can use it. And if you get busy, or forget to pick up a piece for one day, the guy you’re getting from refuses to give you an extra for the day you missed. In this case its not just the time gating (which is bad enough), but the sheer insanity of how they scaled the material requirements for its use. This has only gotten worse after the event was over, as the source Crystals can’t even keep pace with the requirement needed to produce 1 charged crystals, UNLESS you spend the money for a home node AND religiously gather it, and 3 nodes in Dry Top, AND be lucky enough to have a Lvl 4 favored Sandstorm, AND be able to beat or sneak past the Skritt queen to get the rich node. Giving you a grand total 22 crystals. Oh wait!! you need 25 to fuse a charged crystal?

kitten , i thought this was going to be a discount on gems for old people. They bring back everything in the gem store. Keep an eye on the specials tab.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I don’t even use 20 slot bags as 10g for the rune to craft a 20-slot v. 2g for 18 seems pricy.

psssst. Buy 3000 candy corns or 3 candy corn cobs and exchange for a cheaper 20 slot bags

Fixing the Rewards

So fixing the content will help fix player retention, but how do we get more players back in to the format? We give people a reason to play.

I propose several very simple changes to make WvW a rewarding format (and yes, these will result in making a certain something slightly less rewarding)

 
1) Remove or highly reduce Karma and WXP gain from EotM.
EotM was never intended to be a farming map. It was intended to be a place to play WvW when you’re queuing or just want to jump in quickly and have a bit of fun. With the extreme ease of access to karma, this has meant that anyone looking for some serious karma and WXP gains (which WvW used to actually provide) will go straight to EotM.

 
2) Increase gold rewards on rank-up
I’m going off memory here but the average rank-up is around 15 – 25s. It’s really not much when you consider how expensive WvW can be. I propose this should be 50s – 1g per chest. Yes, this is pretty high, but look at how much gold you can get from PvE in such a short time. It’s incredible.

 
3) Remove or greatly reduce badge rewards from EotM.
For my next change this is extremely important. EotM is not “honourable” and it shouldn’t give you more WvW currency than actual WvW.

 
4) Unique Armour skins
WvW needs unique armour like PvP. It needs to require some serious investment and should take time to get a full set. This should be something like 2,000 badges per piece and limit it to 1 piece per 100 WvW ranks. This way players who do participate in WvW a lot can show it off outside of WvW. Yes, I know there is 1 or 2 sets that are in fact WvW exclusive, but these are extremely easy to get.

 
5) Provide an alternate way to obtain WvW weapon skins
This would need to be on a similar scale to the armour. Alternatively run tournament far more often.

 
6) Make WvW Armour Salvageable
I honestly don’t even know why this isn’t base-line.

 
7) Fix the Achievements
Again, I don’t know why this isn’t already in. WvW achievements should be absolutely nowhere near as high as they are now, and not only that but there should be non-title achievements and repeatable achievements, such as “Kill X players within X seconds” or a repeatable track for objective captures (perhaps post-title).

 
8) Increase drop rewards on player kills
There is nearly no reward for killing players. Yes they drop a bag but it’s basically the same as killing a regular mob in PvP. Players should drop silver and a blue or green, minimum & guaranteed. Alternatively allow kills to give a currency that can be exchanged for rewards.
 
9) Other Unique Rewards
Things like minis, back-pieces, finishers and foods should be obtainable from WvW. Yeah, I know you can get a mini and finisher from the tournaments but I’m talking general WvW play here.

 
I know that seems like a lot, but it’s actually not. It simply comes down to decreasing the crazy rewards of EotM, increasing the current base rewards for WvW and providing some unique things that other game-modes have versions of (armour, food, finishers, back-pieces & minis). I’m also not going to touch on making the match-win rewarding because that’s much, much harder to nail down.

Conclusion

When compared to other formats and areas of play, WvW is abysmally rewarding. The opportunity cost of playing WvW is beyond poor, it’s sad. There’s no incentive to spend your time there over another area of GW2. It lacks any incentive to go and play other than the actual game-mode itself. This issue, alongside other on-going problems are causing the mode to bleed players, with no real influx of new ones. By adjusting the rewards, adding some new ones, fixing the other problems WvW has and maybe making EotM slightly less rewarding, WvW could truly enter a new age of activity.

mexay.3902:

Yes there are people who play WvW for WvW but look how small that community is now.

The community is only small now because that is the result of three years of neglect in regard to the real issues that WvW has, when the game launched there were a whole bunch of guilds with 500+, some a 1000+ players who came specifically to play WvW, they left long ago, because it was clear WvW had fundamental issues and that Anet were not going to address those issues, lack of rewards has very little to do with it.

Saying that, GW2 doesn’t look very healthy fullstop, I saw a post by someone who is in multiple big PvE guilds claiming far fewer people are logging in, PvP forum has continual complaints about matchmaking caused in part by the small playerbase.

The whole point of WvW is to not have fair fights….
You use the “world” to get an advantage. And therefore you will 90% of the time not fight someone on even grounds. Go sPvP if you want something along those lines.

However talking about the mesmer class is another subject entirely than wvw balance.

Although I would agree with you that PU mesmers are a bit op atm. Especially placed in competent hands^^

But yeah off-topic title is off-topic

Alright, so I’ve been filling my bank with random gizmos, gadgets, and whozamuhwhatsits for the past couple years now (used storage toons as well) and yet I’ve still run clear out of space to store anymore; my toons are stacked to the brim and the 12 count storage space cap just isn’t cutting it any longer…

…What I wonder is, why is there even a cap? It’s just fictional space in a fictional place, it can’t take all too much extra data to keep all those 0s n’ 1s held in place considering the technically infinite amount of space available

So why then would I not be allowed to give the friendly folks at A-Net more money so that in turn I’ll be able to store more stuff; ergo, spend more money on said stuff?…

Short n’ dry of it: I feel that both others and myself would thoroughly appreciate the lifting and/or raising of the bank-storage cap (I promise to purchase at the very least 3 more) ;333

PS: And yes folks, I know you can indeed increase the collectible cap; this is not part of the issue, I’ve got far too many armor sets between all my toons, as well as runes, to keep together on top of all the random knick-knacks and the like that I’ve picked up along the way…

…Thoughts?

I’m sure this has been talked to death about. I’ve been playing since launch and this is still a problem to today. Of course i’m talking about the clowns that like to throw random siege down in front of a gate or in inconvenient locations. If anet will not do anything about it, then they should at least attach the players name to the siege so the zerg can shame and report that person.

I don’t pretend to be as informed as many wvw’ers. But, IMO, this change is a good thing. The 4 Tier 2 mess caused my original server to go into a downward spiral from which it has not recovered. My account sat inactive for months. I believed in server loyalty and my server friends. Friends left for greener pastures. Being a wvw addict, I started another account to fill the void. I tried 3 servers b4 I came to one in Tier 5/6. And to my surprise, I am enjoying wvw again. We don’t win every week, but usually come in second at the least. I have made new friends & joined a guild in which I am comfortable. We have fun. It wasn’t the end of the world although at the time, it felt that way. Maybe, the lock would have prevented all this. People transferred to higher tiers-their prerogative. Doesn’t matter-it’s all history now.
My point: Either you go with the flow or you quit playing. I chose the former. Tiers that are now considered “Medium” are not a form of the plague. I also use my original account again-it is Tier 2. Totally different from the play style of my second account. But, that doesn’t suggest either style is wrong.
Just speaking my mind after reading 10 pages of this thread. Some might agree-some probably will not-whatever…

Samuel Loretan.8601:

The intent is that since you can’t join or transfer to a “Full” server, their populations are going to diminish over time, until eventually they reach “Very High” again. At this point, all “Full” servers are going to be balanced. This won’t be right away, though, since we’re not kicking anyone out of their servers.

Good reply. This is how I also interpreted the changes. These won’t however do much to help the lowest tier servers.

Most WvWvW players want a “full” experience. Meaning that their server has reasonable amount of people on at any hour. Currently only the top EU servers can offer this and it is impossible to transfer to them. The current change benefits “Very High” status servers the most. I predict that several guilds and WvWvW players will move from the “full” servers to them, but now people need to think their server transfers more carefully, maybe it is not possible to return.

The only real way to solve the problem of diminishing WvWvW population is to increase the rewards and make the WvWvW feel more fair, balanced and fun. Merging low population servers might be needed in EU, but merging servers isn’t a long term solution if the player base is bleeding.

My suggestions to make WvWvW a better experience:
1. Increase rewards to same level as other game modes (I do not count EotM as WvWvW) e.g. each WvWvW chest should have 1 guaranteed rare, it still takes more time to earn one WvWvW chest than attend a world event in pve
2. Introduce (copy & paste) the reward tracks from spvp to WvWvW
3. Allow more varied gear, including ascended materials, back piece bought with laurels + gold + badges of honor e.g. ascended backpiece 30 laurels + 5000 badges + 50 g.
4. Make WvWvW gear salvegeable
5. Keep WvWvW unique, do NOT make it a watered down copy of pve or spvp. In other diminish both spvp and pve alike elements from WvWvW, less random pve mobs like the forest animals and less contesting the circle like conquest based spvp.
6. Have a separate WvWvW balance team. WvWvW skill balance and meta is different from pve or spvp e.g. stealth is more powerful in WvWvW than spvp and WvWvW has large group fights, still dominated by the GWEN and pirate ship metas.
7. Change the scoring system so that it leads to more even match ups. Encourage the #2 and #3 attack the currently leading server. e.g. if you take an objective from the server, which is leading the match up (determined real-time), you will get double rewards + bonus server points from capturing objectives from that server.
8. WvWvW achievements need to be put down to realistic level, not 1 million dolyak kills, but more like 5000. Introduce multiple level achievements and titles, like spvp has.
9. Quality of life changes, like addition of WvWvW blueprints to wallet

I am sure that after these changes, the numbers of happy WvWvW players will increase dramatically. Then Arenanet can think about moneytizing it.

This is definitely a good change. It would probably benefit hugely from a temporary reduction of transfer costs to high/medium servers too.

Kimmes the Historian: NO!!

Me: Why not?

KtH: Cuz I’m Dead! That’s why!

Me: That’s never stopped you before…

KtH: Do you want to know the truth?

Me: Sure

KtH: I hate your guts… you are a worthless whipping boy that comes around here way too often and demand your unlocks from back when I was alive and never once have you thanked me…

Me: um… thank you?

KtH: TOOOO LATE YOU WORTHLESS GOOD FOR NOTHING!

Me: BUT I NEED MY SKINS!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOW!!!!!!!!!

KtH: Too bad, so sad! It must suck to be you… MWA HA HA HA HA!!!!

on a more serious note though… it’s been ages since Kimmes has been basically giving us the finger, and i could really use my light armor skins right about now. when is he gonna start giving us our unlocks again? ETA please ArenaNet? it should just be a simple toggle switch, i really don’t know why he was turned off in the first place.

Posted in our match thread by Atoss from FSP.

Can’t stop laughing.

Think it’s much needed after this week.

God love EU players.

They really should just convert player “home” instances into a actual housing system. The current one is meaningless outside of added nodes that could be ported over. Or just add in a purchasable, customizable, etc house/room into the current home instance.

Knox.8962:

Damage reduction does not scale linearly with toughness, but going from 0-1% damage reduction reduces incoming damage by 1%. Going from 98-99% damage reduction reduces incoming damage by 50%.

Toughness and Vitality both scale linearly with time to live without factoring in healing. As you add healing into the equation, the relative value of toughness goes up.

The reason people think it has diminishing returns is because they use 2 points of references to measure a relative scale, and then try to compare then as if the values were of a linear scale. So if +100 on 1000 is a 10% increase, and +100 on 1500 is a 6%, no **** that the relative gain is different. Its also hard to explain flat % bonuses to these folks, as THOSE are the ones don’t stack linearly in the system.

That aside, there are a couple key thresholds in PVP/WvW worth noting. 2500 Armor is considered the “Break even” point against most power builds (which typically reach 2300-2500 power without boons). At that point your incoming damage is mostly against the weapon strength (~1000) and the skill coefficient. This does add survivability against weak AOE fields, but isn’t high enough to survive most burst attacks.

Around 3100 the damage reduction over the “break even” point becomes noticeable, as its high enough to blunt most Burst attacks from taking “all” of your HP in one go. But without Vit, follow up attacks are still enough to push you over the edge.

In both cases, its recommended to have at least 18k HP, as it buys some time to activate your healing and cleansing skills. Less then 15k, and bombs will still take you out too fast. Obviously more is better, but you have to start sacrificing your own damage thresholds to reach those high defense numbers.

In PvE its considered a moot point, as most mob scaled at Vet or higher hits hard enough 1 or 2 shot you in most cases, and nearly all professions lose sustainable defenses over time. Thats a big reason Zerks meta is effective, as shorter fights ensure survivability.