Guild Wars 2

*This is a suggestion. *
For me its pretty good, so read it few times before you will start criticize it.

IDEA

Create elastic gear (since gear has stats) that would work well to help players use many builds, rest them and don’t punish them for mistakes, but help them learn and get better.

HOW?

The idea would be to create Ascended with one stats and then by mixing it in Mystic Forge with: new ascended insignias (so market is balanced), explorable item (scavenge hunt), and some skill points (sink) to unlock that new stats on that ascended weapon.

explorable item – would be different item (or a group of items to combine in MF) from many contents in the world (gatherables/bosses/temples/dungeons/etc) that would add a bit for exploration and scavenge hunt for people who want to upgrade their gear. (!) but not a grind, more like do something not only pay for it.

WHY?

For some of us changes to the trait system was step in the right direction, but for me the worst part of it I’m still bound to statistics on my armor/weapons and they impact a lot what I can to with my build.

Yes, thats a lot of pain and it sometimes forces you to make another set of gear.
But if you want to make ascended (that cost a lot) you don’t want to make new set with different stat – lets be real about it.

If you can make ascended into the elastic gear that will change for your needs – people will use it more often and will have new goals for them.
An ability to make one of them and then upgrade it to make them ideal for people who want to experiment with builds, and that is something that has to be encouraged in this game, especially with balance updates that sometimes make some builds from good to bad.

There of course will be people who will want to have all stats on each gear and thats great for them too. Everybody would win this way.

What about LEGENDARIES?

Legendaries are extremely pricey, but that cost should be a convenience like unlimited gathering tools.

Basically I would leave them as they are – an item that will always will be max level and with all possible stats as default without a need for any upgrade in the future.

This would work for everyone I guess.
Some people would make ascended items instead for legendaries, but the skin is also part of legendaries exclusivity.

INFUSIONS and SIGILS/RUNES?

I would use this system also on them to allow players unlock sigils on gear more than replace them over and over, especially when with wardrobe we lost ability to reuse once gained runes, that pains many players.

SUMMARY
I would love to see it come to the GW2 as a necessary step when game developers try to make this game more community friendly and that goes towards builds diversity. I see people want that, but without a good tools that would support this it’s still a not enough.

Please think about it.

Personally… I love EotM. I hate the players in EotM. I’ll first cover why I like it because I like it for many more reasons than I hate the players.

It’s a beautiful map for one. It’s a nice change from the redundant EB and BLs. I enjoy the different areas and the middle of the map and the aetherblades and all that mess. I enjoy the different champs and their uniqueness as to why you might want to cap them.

Also, as a commander in EotM, I enjoy the lack of TS use. In EB and the BLs everyone is on TS because they’re all on the same server. In EotM you can’t do that because you’re all from different servers. This calls for a little more strategy and tactical use of terrain and structure as you can’t just call out “Stack and push” and charge headlong into another zerg that is doing the same thing. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to look around for a choke point or high ground or a control point in our possession to set up siege and defense against an incoming larger zerg. It sets apart the good commanders from the great commanders in my opinion. If you can be an effective pugmander in EotM I will hold great respect for you. You have to be more active in team chat and it is a great thing, not to mention the feeling when you’re outnumbered and whoop the other zerg.

I DON’T like the fact that players in EotM are constantly saying things like “THIS IS EOTM THIS IS KTRAIN YARRRRRRGGGGGHHHHH”. They get genuinely angry at people and it’s a great way to turn away first-timers. I understand that people come to EotM to level up toons and, as a commander, I understand people want karma and champ bags and I do my best to give it to them. But when people constantly yell at other people who are defending or they call the commander bad because he/she turns to defend the keep really quick… it’s annoying and kind of childish.

The other day I was defending FR keep with a handful of defenders and OG was going up mid gate. Our cmd was on the other end of the map so I didn’t expect him to come help and I didn’t ask for it. What happened was the cmd wp-ed back, so since he was in our area I figured I’d point out that we were defending… The cmd ran his zerg right by OG which was committed to mid-gate. He could have easily trapped them and wiped them but no and his reasoning was “We can take it back later for karma”. What ticked the defenders off the most was that he was literally right there to wipe OG, he wasn’t on the other end of the map.

It’s mentalities like that that make me and other people who enjoy just doing their thing not like EotM as much as we might. As I said, I have nothing against ktrains and champ bag farming but recently, now that people notice what colors are good for what, ktrains are harder and harder to keep going. OG knows they’ll always outnumber FR and BL so it’s not uncommon for them to bag farm. BL knows their keep is easily capturable due to WS right next to it so they don’t bother and try to take other things. FR is usually outnumbered and tries to ktrain only to be either wiped by OG or end up having to take their keep back and fail due to the three defenders of the keep. As FR I only care about defending keep, as BL I only care about capping things, and as OG I don’t really care because our numbers are great enough to take anything. People are starting to realize what each team is good for and ktrains are starting to die out.

As far as relation to the OP goes… I like the way it is set up now I just wish the mentalities of the players in EotM would be a little more open-minded and wouldn’t mind a little change up every now and then. It is a game after all and the objective is to have fun. People’s idea of fun differs and, while yours might be constantly grinding from one champ to the next monotonously, another person’s might be occasionally breaking the monotonous action to engage another zerg in a pretty intense battle of non-ts using strategy and tactics.

Maybe if they made two EotMs… one for all levels and one for lvl 80s only… where the all lvl EotM is where you would go to Ktrain only and the lvl 80 is where you would go to run WvW with other server players and have fun. But no matter… people are entitled to their opinions and, even though it wasn’t originally designed as a ktrain only map, EotM will become what the people make of it.

No, the title is not sarcasm.

I often hear complaints about how EoTM degenerated into a farmest, and how that is Toxic to the WvW community… Well, why not embody that idea instead?

Here is my suggestion: A WvW Map dedicated entirely to farming.

In the center of the map is a castle where a TON of events and champions spawn, for a farm worth about 15-20g/hour. The twist is that 3 different servers must compete over control of this area, and the longer it is held, the higher the rewards. In other words, servers are rewarded for their skill.

Surrounding the castle are many different forts, which the controlling server must defend and reinforce in order to prevent the enemies from reaching the controlled castle.

In addition, the events themselves would require Supply in order to farm, such as a Champion Seige Golem who is only vulnerable when struck with a Ballista, or a Bone Wall we need rams to destroy. Some events naturally promote using an Arrow Cart when tons of mobs spawn.

In order to get the supply which the farming events need so much, the zerg controlling the castle would have to travel back and forth between the castle and an area within their forts containing a supply camp. However, enemies are able to capture this camp as well, essentially cutting off supply to the castle and starving them of supply needed to farm, giving the invaders a chance to defeat the castle defenders.

Capturing the castle itself is no easy task. The map would be mostly linear and comprised of mostly narrow passageways which intentionally provokes the 2 enemy server to cross paths and fight each other. In other words, the invading servers would not only worry about capturing forts from the castle-defenders, but also from the other invaders.

As a reward for both capturing and defending, players get to farm champion boxes, karma, t6 mats, and lewt.

I believe a “farm”-map like this would greatly reward players for working together with smart tactics and commanding, while also engaging them with skill-based combat against other players.

In addition, it would also allow ANET to turn the Edge of the Mists into a more “serious” game mode, while making Farmfest Castle into the dedicated “farming” map, which Edge of the Mists currently is.

I think it would also serve as a great bridge between WvW and PvE players, since it combines gameplay of both gametypes.

Also, it would improve server pride, in my opinion.

What do you think? Castle Farmfest sound good?

Dayra.7405:

My favored LS1 was the minion invasion from https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/august-20-2013/#events

This was the day that the zergs took form in open world, and never let up. They existed, sparingly before, but this is another day in infamy, along with the November 2012 patch.

World Bosses have been my favourite pastime before megaservers – they were challenging and fun when not many people were in, and you could track them and jump from one to another and feel like a small hero routinely saving the world.

Currently, I rarely do them at all – maybe sometimes Svanir Shaman, Ulgoth, or Caledon Wurm; everything else upscales to a boring lagging annoying experience I don’t want to see. Tequatl is another story, though – but my guild likes doing it on a daily basis.

The problem with Mag is the same thing that happened to FA.

In T2 for some time now you’ve had one server that’s basically T1.5(SoS now and TC before) who are just waiting for the next T1 server to implode.

The other two servers are/were full of guilds/players that are serious about fights, because they realize they don’t have and never will have the coverage to beat the T1.5 server. These players have been waiting for WvW to evolve from a coverage/population meta into a skill meta, or even GvG, but all we’ve been getting are minor changes and tournaments that continue to reward stacking over skill.

At some point these players lose faith that the game will become what they hope it can be and either take a break, move to find a happy place, or just leave the game.

We need more things to spend our badges of honor on. So here’s a few suggestions:

Ascended Armor Box: 5,000 badges of honor + 10 gold

Pick 1 ascended armor piece. Double click to choose its stats.

Ascended Weapon Box: 5,000 badges of honor + 10 gold

Pick 1 ascended weapon. Double click to choose its stats.

Tome of Knowledge: 100 badges of honor + 50 silver

Obsidian Shard: 50 badges of honor +2 silver

Jug of Liquid World Experience (3 WvW ranks): 1,000 badges of honor

World XP Booster: 250 badges of honor + 50 silver

EotM epitomises the design flaws in WvW in general.

Karma Training (only attacking undefended structures and never defending structures) is most highly rewarded by the game. Commanders want enemies to take structures from them because that allows the commander to take it back for another reward. Defending doesn’t give you as much karma or gold, it often isn’t measured well (only if you repair a structure or get kill credit for an enemy attacking that structure) and you can often actively defend and even save a structure without ever getting credit for it (having full AC mastery and firing a superior AC on a gate an enemy zerg is attacking can often stop their entire zerg in its tracks, but if none of them die you won’t get defend credit). Defending that structure hurts your server’s karma train because they gain nothing from a defended structure other than PPT which offers no personal rewards.

This is especially evident in EotM because general zerg organisation is lower and defending structures is much easier. Keep lords in EotM, combined with the regional buff/debuffs give quite a boost to defending players. Even with smaller numbers, an organised team defending a keep has a much higher chance of success due to the increased danger/durability of the lords. The red keep lord does a lot of area damage and the green keep lord can live for a very long time. If you have active defenders either “open field” fighting the enemy zerg or a few people building and manning arrow carts, it can be very easy to wipe enemy zergs inside your own keeps (compared to the much less durable keep lords on the normal maps). Despite how easy it is to do this, it’s far more rewarding to ignore your keep and instead chase enemy keeps that are undefended.

IMO three things need to happen to turn this situation around (both in EotM and normal WvW).

1. The incentive for defending needs to be increased and more inclusive ways of recognising defence need to be implemented. The rewards imbalance between a karma train and intelligent defence is always going to be a dominating problem unless it’s addressed.
2. The game needs to implement reasons to split up instead of zerging together. This is a big problem for all of GW2 but especially in WvW. There is something to be said about large scale fights, but the zerg meta is harmful to so many kinds of gameplay. Less is more. Numbers gives too many advantages.
   • Defending becomes near impossible because you can intelligently defend and simply lose to sheer numbers.
   • Zergs aren’t challenged by defence because they have huge amounts of supply (meaning mistakes aren’t punished as heavily) and in many cases can simply auto-attack a door down.
   • NPC allies are useless.
   • Open field combat is not an option for defenders because safety in numbers guarantees victory for the zerg.
3. Depending on how effective the first two points are, defending needs to become “easier”. Currently if the enemy zerg has enough players, the only viable defence is for the defending side to have equivalent numbers. A prolonged war of attrition will almost always favour the side with greater numbers. This encourages players to group together to win, it also discourages players from defending because it’s too easy to make defence ultimately futile.

Johje Holan.4607:

2. Scoring changes. I would be ok with some scoring changes. And it would help mitigate the feeling of getting crushed. But it doesn’t actually do anything about unbalanced matches, it just gives the illusion that the match is more balanced because the score is closer.

The score may be closer but all your stuff will still get lost when you go to sleep. And you will still get run over by massive zergs when the population is unbalanced. And both of these things are what people complain about.

I think it goes deeper than simply losing all your stuff when you go to sleep. In a previous post I had posited the question, “If a server who night capped all the towers and keeps on the map did not earn any points from that action, would players feel as chagrined as they do now?”. Though largely a rhetorical question, I would hazard a guess the majority of answers would be, “No.”

Yes, it sucks to see all one’s hard work turned to ash during those periods a player isn’t logged in to defend their holdings. I think the real issue, though, is less how that action punishes the players who’s work is being undone and more how it rewards one’s opponent. Even more to the point, there’s currently no means of countering this situation. This renders a player’s efforts meaningless; which is one of the worst things a game can do to a player.

It has to do with the psychology of gaming. Games are a means of entertainment and recreation. They’re also a form of wish fulfillment or escapism. In the real world, we’re often faced with situations over which we’re powerless to effect any change; where even doing the “right” thing is often punished, to speak nothing of being rewarded.

The game world is a place we come to vicariously live out the ideal where doing the “right” thing results in a reward. When, instead, the game world too closely mirrors the real world (doing the “right” thing is not rewarded and is even punished), this leads to anxiety, disappointment, and frustration; the very emotions we’re trying to escape from in the game space.

How to correct this? There’s no system that can stop coverage disparities in an equitable manner and still maintain a server’s identity and continuity of purpose against the same opponents for an entire week. Instead, the correction lies in addressing the core of the problem; an opponent being awarded more points for less effort (PvDooring the map in “off” hours due to coverage disparities and earning runaway PPT).

It sucks to have all your stuff capped during a period when your server is grossly outnumbered. However, I think outnumbered players accept they will lose all their holdings during their “off” hours. What’s unacceptable is the double whammy of the opposing server earning the same PPT for 5 minutes of “work” to capture a keep that took 6 hours to upgrade. It’s an invalidation of one’s time and effort. The lack of any viable counter then leads to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness on the part of the outnumbered server; the worst set of conditions a game can impose on its players.

If, instead, the server with the greater coverage was required to put in an equal amount of time, effort, and expense to upgrade a fortification to earn PPT from completed upgrades, this would be viewed as a more equitable rewards system by the outnumbered server. Add the potential to counter this PPT gain, and the outnumbered server would then feel like their efforts matter and that the outcome of the match is not a foregone conclusion.

Note, too, this works both ways. The term “outnumbered” is agnostic and not absolute; the server outnumbered at 5 AM may well be outnumbering their opponents at 5 PM. Thus, all servers in a match benefit equally from these changes. The server outnumbered at 5 AM is going to lose everything to their opponent with the greater coverage. That sucks, but they can at least make an effort with their skeleton crew of players to deny their opponent supply and the points that come from upgrading fortifications. At 5 PM, when they’ve capped everything back and are outnumbering their enemy, the opposing server can attempt to do the same in return.

Everyone has the same opportunities for earning points and/or denying points to their opponent regardless of coverage disparities. PPT is then a more accurate representation of the play and counter-play between servers rather than a measure of who has the biggest blob and the greatest coverage.

Players’ actions then become more important than who has the most numbers on the map at any given time. Which is kind of the point of playing a game; your actions as a player effect desirable outcomes and are rewarded. This is as close to “fair” or “balanced” as WvW is going to get so long as the server system remains in effect and ArenaNet uses transfer fees to monetize it.

It costs badges and gold to buy the wvw weapons/ armor. Why can’t we salvage them?

With the new wardrobe and balance changes I have a lot of sigils and runes “locked” to wvw gearsets. where the only option is to gem store an extractor per piece or rebuy entire runsets/sigils….

We can salvage dungeon token armor but not wvw token armor?

A revised scoring system that scales the points-per-tick with the current player activity.

A change like this would need further adjustments. Just think what it would mean for rams. Should a server take a tower by using rams, said rams would continue existing for an hour at least, giving possible Opponents an easy way to get in without the need of spending supply at all. And the worst part: you can’t even prevent it, since there is no way to destroy your own siege weaponary (aside from Golems, of course)

Nobody cares about what happens in T1.

Just destack your servers and you will have a better time.

Wait….who’s Red Guard?

Prior to getting into the topic I will give just a bit of history of my gaming experience. I am 57 years old and began online gaming back in the days of script based games, public dialports and BBS’s. I have played many,many different MMORPGs since that point in time and will probably continue to do so but GW2 is starting to leave a sour taste that I just cannot shake.

So the purpose of this thread is to point out, as constructively as possible, ANET’s flaws and mishandling of bugs/exploits/hacking although with their policies I suspect it will garner me an infraction or possibly my first ever ban from a gaming forum.

In most if not all of the other games I have played there was a direct option to report someone for using an exploit or hacking from within the game. In GW2 you have to jump through hoops to make a report. This needs to be fixed and sooner rather then later. ANET wants us to provide screenshots/video of possible infractions yet they do not support us in the effort to do so and that lack of support is glaring.

If I witness a possible case of someone using a hack in-game it happens over the course of a few minutes before that person is gone. At that point in time I have to have video capture software at my fingertips and be able to turn it on quickly and record what is happening on my screen. Other games made it possible to contact a GM who would “ride on your shoulder” or be there invisible in order to observe for themselves and to make a decision if what you were seeing was a verifiable hack.

Other games published the fact that they suspended “X” amount of people for hacking even to the point of what type of hack was used but here it is all hush hush. If I reported what I believe to be someone using a hack I do not even get the courtesy of a reply to let me know if I was correct in my assumption or not. Any forum posts are immediately infracted and locked/deleted. I want to know if what I just witnessed was an actual hack or just a misconception on my part.

Then there are the game “bugs” that go un-fixed. 4 months ago, in this thread,
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/ANET-Fix-Your-Towers/page/2#post2612972
I posted on the NW tower bug that allows people to bypass closed gates/walls. At that time I caught on a screenshot an ANET employee who told us that it would be made a top priority issue but 4 months later nothing has been done as it happened again 4 days ago.

There is the ongoing argument over mesmers dying at gates and being rezzed through them. Not once has ANET appeared in any of those threads to tell us it is or is not an exploit. There have been discussions on how those dead people can extend their “time out for inactivity” timer yet to this date you can still manipulate that timer.

Arrow carts with their ability to hit anywhere in a tower if one manipulates his windowed screen size is another issue ANET chooses to ignore rather then address again one way or the other.

So my suggestions:
1) Make it easier to report hacking suspects so it is quick and efficient
2) Post on whether or not something is an exploit or is working as intended
3) Provide feedback to people reporting hacks verifying that it was or was not a hack
4) Post the number of people banned for cheating/hacking on a regular bases
5) Provide in-game GMs that go go into the field to verify reports immediately on receiving them.
6) Provide even a quarterly report on game bugs that have been reported and a tentative “fix” date. (such as that bugged tower)

And above all quit infracting/banning people for posting about hacks/cheats/exploits as this only leads us to believe you value the possible revenue loss versus the satisfaction of the customer when it comes to the integrity of your game.

Thank you for your consideration.

Ekense.5279:

Kidink!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tX6-gZw2tog

Best EU commander.

kitten , I would leave TS in a second whith such an idiot commanding.

Come on Desolation! I cannot help you guys these few days! But keep on the music, keep it up!

We can beat them! ( If we stop PVE, Work, School, Girlfriends, Social life).

Come on!

This will be the last time I attempt a productive dialog with a development team that has been content to ignore the problems with WvW and the pleading of its community to get them resolved. Any and all posts from me here after from myself will either contain praise for finally implementing these fixes and updates or venomous ridicule as near to profanity as the forum code of conduct will allow. The ball is in your court:

Bug unable to kick logged off players from a party.
Bug stuck inside walls and doors when a point is captured and the previously destroyed objects render.
Bug supply dolyak position mismatches between client and server.
Bug some doors and walls can be bypassed with certain exploits.
Bug when certain NPC’s break aggro they disappear and render at their spawn location (typically when Immobilized during the agro break).
Bug sentry point capture ring in the southeast of the Borderlands does not render in one of the Borderlands.
Bug Supply mastery trait doesn’t grant the full 50% speed boost.
Bug queue time discriminates based on zone from which a player decides to enter a given queue.

Suggestion implement a commensurate reward structure, equally valuing the time spent in WvW to PvE.
Suggestion reduce sever population caps on each map and increase the total number of maps to 7 (two borderlands for each server, identical if need be, but preferably different and varied maps)
Suggestion make commander tags color customizable with a gem store purchase.
Suggestion make world rank account bound, or the entire WxP system, or limit the number of trait lines available to any one character to produce the desired effect of multiple builds.
Suggestion add a badge that corresponds to world rank similar to world completion next to player name.
Suggestion add a title track that corresponds to achieving world ranks.
Suggestion rework WvW achievements into repeatables similar to the Agent of Entropy achievement.

If there’s anything anyone else has to add, please post it here to make it easier for the developers to find. Oh, and I know its really hard to do when it comes to talking about ANet and WvW, but let’s at least keep this one thread primarily positive and constructive. There’s plenty of other threads to flame, rage, and rant on and I fully encourage that as well, since I’ll be there with you.

Only a WvW player can read a 6 month old thread in which all of the posts about failures in the design of WvW are still relevant.

Vabbi doesn’t care who we get put against. We’re taking SM atleast 5 times a week in events. If we fail we’ll bring more.

Thanks to everyone that helped [LST] complete its weekly WvW event.

Vabbi isn’t a dead server and it shouldnt be closed either, so go recruit off another world.

We’re in Vabbi to stay.

FoW and Vabbi have great potential, we play hard here against all odds.

P.S.
Fissure, she’s all yours! Enjoy taking SM

It’s just so stupid to whine about imbalanced matchups nowdays when we DO have random roll affecting server points. This new system isn’t about the same level servers facing each other, we had that system for ages and is just sucked. Now we finally have some variety and all the children are whining about losing? Grow some balls, new system is all about sometimes getting your kitten kicked, sometimes walking over others and sometimes even matches. You all wanted this a month back and now there’s crybabies all over the place

I was thrilled about this matchup ofcourse knowing elona would win and we would most probably lose. Really excited to face elona again and baruch bay for so long time with all those great guilds. Especially looking forward seeing DsD and BuLL in action! It was a pleasure to play with you back then and it will be pleasure to play against you now! Great guys!

Cheer up people!

DevonCarver.5370:

The matchups are not actually calculated until the reset, so we are currently unable to provide info about them until they start. We’ll definitely look into a way to try and get the information out ahead of time, but it’s complicated.

I know a lot of us are REALLY enjoying the surprise factor in reset nights currently. I kinda hope we don’t actually get the new match ups announced ahead of time. Waiting to see what name was going to come up on my loading screen last Friday was quite exciting :P

Split servers into 3 “Teams”, competing in 3 separate ladders.

Eg. (my server), Gandara 1, Gandara 2, and Gandara 3.

Gandara 1 vs Abaddons 1 vs Millers 1 from 2am to 10am GMT

Gandara 2 vs Piken 2 vs AuguryRock 2 from 10am to 6pm GMT

Gandara 3 vs AuroraGlade 3 vs Riverside 3 from 6pm to 2am GMT

Each server “team” has its own rating in the rankings, and will have its matchups decided according to those ratings, independant of the other server teams. So it may turn out that Gandara 2 is very strong, and will end up facing other strong servers. While Gandara 1 is very weak, and gets put in the special-kids tier.

Seeing as I’m on Gandara, I can participate in all 3 of these matches if I so wish. Nobody will ever be prevented from playing.
However, if I can only realistically play during one of those matches, I can comfortably spend my time there and then log off knowing that the enemy won’t have taken a 50k point lead overnight.

This would also go a long way to reducing stale matchups against the same servers.