Guild Wars 2

Didnt you hear? You arent just paying for the new siege.

You are paying for the new skills, masteries, specialisations, the new map, the potential living story updates.

Surely that is worth the £35 price tag of an expansion which some have already finished the storyline and complaining it’s way too short for an expansion?

Also £20 from here http://www.gamesdeal.com/guild-wars-2-heart-of-thorns-addon-pc.html

In the spirit of yesterday Colin blog post I want to provide my preliminary feedback on Guild Claiming and War Room upgrades.

I’m part of a WvW guild (~20 active players) and we set our priority to unlock all the upgrades for WvW (+ arena), so we rushed all possible upgrades and this morning we unlocked the War Room (thanks for correcting the bug with last patch!), starting the long journey to have everything unlocked to give our contribution to our server (GO WSR!).

I strongly back John Coperning statement that “Guilds are the lifeblood of Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns™, and it’s our desire that they become a greater part of World vs. World.” and I think it’s really important that guilds see their contribution matters, at all levels. Coordination between guilds should win matches, not numbers and coverage (but that’s another sad story which we hope it will be tackled soon as John stated elsewhere)

The good

Claiming announcement
After unlocking camps claiming, I went straight to capture a camp and claim it. We can’t yet do anything with it, but just seeing my guild name on the announcement was glorious. It reminded me of Hall of Heroes victories in old Guild Wars.

Gating claiming rights
I like a lot the idea of gating a bit claiming rights in WvW. Having a troll claim or simply a claim from an unknown guild just because some new players stumbled on Garrison lord was harsh.
It also rewards guilds for putting efforts and becoming a “qualified WvW guild”, being able to show to fellow server members that. Note: I’m not saying that if you don’t pursue those upgrades you are not a “real WvW guild” (it might be case for guilds focused on fights), it’s a different concept.
Camps and Towers are not hard to reach, Keeps is a bit down the line but obtainable. SMC is like a “prize”.

Upgrading itself
Not WvW related, but unlocking stuff in the guild hall is really rewarding, it’s not cheap but seeing our hall becoming better and better it’s a nice feeling!

Auras
Having stats buff in form of auras that will always be available on claimed structures it’s a good plus. It won’t change much but it’s a nice addition (except for Supply Capacity, see below).

Guild catapults nerf
They were simply too overpowered, 4 people could take a keep really quickly. Too much.

Too early to call

Tactics and Improvements
I was able to toy a bit with those during stress test. We’ll surely need to test banners and vehicles in “real action”. But I like the idea of those.

Guild Siege
Without unlocked recipes, it’s hard to know whether they will be worth over regular or superior siege. It could be another tool for guilds, we’ll see.

The bad

Supply Capacity
With the old guild upgrade system, Fort +5 Supply was a 200 influence (aka 10 events with 2 people, so about 20 minutes of playing) upgrade. It was available at Art of War 2 and amongst the first ugprades.
Now we have Auras, that have the undoubtedly advantage of being permanent. However, Supply Capacity has been moved to the last tier of upgrades, requiring Guild Level 37 and a good amount of upgrades!
I made some rough estimation yesterday, and I don’t see this upgrade being obtainable in less than 2 months (not mentioning the costs for all the upgrades, probably in the thousands of gold, which could be troublesome for some). Sure it will be permanent, but it’s 2 months!
Guild Arena in 2 months was a bad idea and as a matter of fact it was reverted to a smaller timeframe now (thank you)

While all other auras have limited utility (but being permanent will become nice addictions) Supply Capacity is the back bone of WvW upgrades. It’s like “WvW 101”

Having small groups (4-5 players) being able to play at 75% of their full capacity (while just a week ago the upgrade was a no-brainer) after ~3 years of the same is a questionable design decision. I’m worried that small guilds (~10 people) who enjoyed small operation will have another reason to abandon WvW, draining overall population.

It’s ok to have some progression, it’s ok to put some prize at the end of journey, it’s a terrible decision to strip us something we were used to do every day and put that behind a huge pay wall and time gate.

This decision will have (actually, already has) a huge impact on all levels, while favouring mindless blobbing over small organised play. Please, stop this policy right now. Make guilds have an effect on the game, all type of guilds, including small ones. Everyone wants to contribute with their possibility.

(I don’t even want to mention the fact that we will get +MF and +XP in the middle, like WvW guilds care about those)

Final Words

I like the changes of the new system (with the notable exception of +5), I think that will reward guilds more in the future.

However, supply capacity alone is keeping down everything. I can’t overlook it, it’s so important that everything else of the new system seems worthless to me.

TL;DR: Please switch back Supply Capacity back at the beginning of upgrade line.

“Low hanging fruit”

At least they’re updating it. The Alpine BL still had several features shown in the map that no longer existed.

To reiterate what I said in another thread the new population calculation is being successfully gamed and it will lead to worse imbalances in T1 and T2 so if this is such a big issue for anet why are they not acting quickly?

Thank goodness! FInally!! Someone who actually gave it a chance like me!!!

Yes, the new map is confusing. It’ new so of course it would be! I spent two hours solo roam, knowing the inside and outs of the entire map. Now i’m using that knowledge to my advantage while i solo roam. Pooka, you must be a Ranger. If not, you’re a Ranger at heart without knowing it.

I’m actually really liking the new WvW Maps. Thanks Anet for providing some variety. That laser thing is still weird, but now they are vastly more intricate maps and strategies to use.

I may have been a baby before giving it a real chance. Having played it for many hours now, I am really enjoying it. Plus, if i get irritated with something i don’t know or understand.. I can always go to EB for some familiarity.

Plus the main reason I was kittened was because of my solo guilds being less valued. (ie: no more upgrades and buffs to provide) but,this has actually provided me an opportunity to interact with people whom I normally wouldn’t have.

so.. I was wrong to jump to conclusions.

Pooka is Sorry and…

Good Job!

I agree.

THE ISSUE

Having a Supply Capacity Aura so deep into upgrades is seriously bad for organised play in WvW.

Supply capacity is absolutely necessary for small to medium groups! Magic Find Aura is NOT what we need, we don’t care. Heck, I never saw any guilds on my server activate anything else but +5 on camps (resupply) and tower/keeps (repair or supply drain of enemy structures), some rare occasions the stats buffs on keeps.

This is not a new content that require works. This what we were used to do all the time up to last Thursday. And now it’s behind a huge paywall and time gate. To me this is hundred times worse than the dreaded “elite specialisation” matter.

PROPOSAL

Just swap magic find and supply capacity.

And please, fix the war room. I want to start those upgrade ASAP.

The team with the most players is always going to win the competition to get the laser… which then reduces all gates by at least 50%…. it gives the team that needs the least advantage a massive advantage to just steamroll the map and the only thing stopping them is that they get lost but that won’t be the case forever. I am already starting to figure out large parts of the map and there are some seriously nasty ninja spots – you can tell you had a dev on Kodash.

I can learn to live with the new borderlands as much as I dislike the design… but that laser has to go… it is not needed for the side most likely to win it. Replace it with extra guards like the days of quaggans, or extra supply in all the keeps you currently own, but to reduce all enemy gates to 50% when you are already the dominant side on the map is…. lost for words at how bad an idea that is.

u could prob glide into alot of towers/keeps

what does ‘feel like wvw’ even mean? sure feels like wvw’ when me and the guild roll out to cap towers and stomp thieves.

I think camp ones could be weaker, but really, even if you were gathering there constantly, you would obtain a lot more stuff outside of wvw.

They already showed they are willing to give to give free transfers. This whole theory of them needing transfers to keep the lights on just doesn’t seem true.

FYI people get a free transfer credit when they upgrade from a F2P account. Please build upon the transfer credit system.

Free transfers went wrong because it was done on a server level instead of an account level.

You can still give out transfer credits while allowing people to pay for them if they so choose.

Just wanted to take some time to thank the devs for all the work they have put into WvW as a gamemode since launch and look forward to the changes in the future. Some people haven’t been around long and don’t know what all was there from the start and what has be added. Feel free to add any I may have missed.

Over the 3 years since release WvW has seen changes:

• orb of power removed due to frustrating hacking
• blood-lust nodes created (including new center to map)
• EotM (although not really a favorite of WvWers but was created by the ‘WvW team’ just a interesting choice of design)
• new wvw traps (disablers, stealth-reveal, supply drain)
• siegrazer events when you don’t control any objective (highly underutilized)
• WvW ranks (and the tweaks to them)
• sentrys (yep they use to not exist)
• Obisidium Sanctum (EB jumping puzzle it’s own map and the addition of a ‘guild arena’) (again not a big WvW change but preformed by the ‘WvW team’)
• Champion bags from tower, keep, and sm lord (If I recall they had to get added to WvW after champion bags got added to the game by default).
• Few spots on the map have been tweaked to get rid of players being able to glitch into objectives when no walls or gates were down (one I remember is Quintin Lake use to have a bridge)
• WvW tournaments (along with unique skin for participating)
• Different siege models/projectiles for holidays (launching presents with a catapult is fun)
• Unique WvW ‘event’ weeks (for better or worse)
• New population calculations
• The changes to the ‘b’ key menu (made a few tabs and ability to see what map had what ppt)
• The changes/fix to the que system (fix is kinda expected/should have been that way since release, but they added the ability to see what position in the que you were)
• Culling changes (you could actually see you enemy before you were on top of each other)
• Skills capped at 5 players (I think aoe’s actually worked differently in that they split their damage among all the players hit so they hit for little to no damage when cast on a large group)
• Stability changes (stacking instead of one buff that prevented all cc for the duration)
• Commander tag colors
• Forced respawn (after 5 minutes dead)
• Dead players tag going grey
• Buffed arrowcart damage
• Decreased gate health

And they have shown quite a bit of love for the expansion:

• New borderlands map with more ‘unique’ feeling towers instead of just ‘copy paste’ style towers
• Guild Claiming changes
• New guild missions
• Automatic Upgrades
• New siege models
• New siege device (shield thingy)
• Squad UI
• New WvW tradeable currency (possible linked to new unique WvW gear)
• Salvagable WvW gear

Other Sections of Guild Wars 2:

• PvE Changes
• sPvP Changes

DeWolfe.2174:

It’s very simple, SM is rarely held or upgraded any longer. That Castle is supposed to be the “Big Thing” of WvW to grab and hold. Way pointing SM used to be a huge accomplishment. Now, no one ever really tries to way point it at all. It just acts as a huge supply shed and something to KTrain. They are adding bonuses to it to make it worth holding. There’s nothing wrong with that at all.

For the conversation of SM not being held or flipped often, I just checked Millenium for how long SM has been held for. Here’s are the minutes held in descending tier order.

NA : 9, 19, 19 18, 70, 196, 69, 349
EU: 13, 52, 5, 12, 52, 773, 1, 7, 13

So except for the 3 outlier’s, SM is rarely ever held and upgraded any longer.

That is weird, last couple days i woke up to see a waypoint in SM in our match up. and the match ups before it so this is not really true. Maybe in t1 it might be but not on lower tiers and match up blow outs.

Dragonhunter will be really good at shooting teq at 1600 units away. Dat max range chanp farm meta is strong. Then have staff for trash mop marking. You are now the open world champ farm king. Outside of that….. base guard trait lines synergize together in a way Dragonhunter cannot compete with.

Anet should shut down WvW to prevent night capping… Atleast that way us Aussies can play without Americans screwing everything up as usual….

#AmIdoinitright?

I recommend that EU players that play in full servers could get free transfers to very high status servers.

To make it short.

When EotM was released, WvW lost a big chunk of its population and an entire group of players; the karma trainers. WvWers really like to complain about them but even if they don’t realize it they love them. WvW lost a part of his soul and lost his way to get new blood into the game mode. Nearly every WvWer started as a k-trainer but now the train is gone…

And then came megaserver…

Deleted the top 4 ranked servers and force players on those to choose from the remainder.

Svarty.8019:

I wanted to try and get a toxic skin, so I was saving them. I now have 125.

Is there any point saving these, bearing in mind that the event may or may not be repeated?

I’d rephrase the question. After the black eye this event gave ANet — having a dedicated, massively policed for right-think “positive feedback/suggestions” thread is just shy of a “the building’s on fire” level of damage control for ArenaNet — we’re NOT going to see the event again. We might see a substantially revamped version if they can come up with some proper tech to dis-incentivize the tap-&-run tactics.

The right question is “Will there be sources of the blooms-currency in the future?”

It’s just practice. The longer you do it, the better you’ll get (most times).

Everyone who’s played has done 1,000 faceplants. Once you let go of the fear of dying, you’ll do much better.

Hang in there.

How would people feel if a future expansion would give Scarlett as a Legend to evoke?
I’d love to a Scarlett Spec that would introduce “Minions” as utilities for the Revenant, giving us access to many of her Clockwork monstrosities.

Perhaps the weapon could be the rifle?

Idea’s? Thoughts?

New Revenant legend, TRAHERNE!

+1

Ascended drop rates are extremely low, and earning a ring can take a month… That’s 1 ring that will fill up 1/6 slots for 1 character on 1 build.

If I have to salvage an Exotic and don’t get any Dark Matter, ok, fine, I’m down a couple gold, too bad. But if I’m forced to salvage an Ascended item for new mats, I’d better be getting 100% of the total possible reward every single time. I want this to kittened in stone before the feature launches, so they don’t have to feel bad about people that burned through all their supplies on day one.

It is the stealth system that is broken. You lose target and do not regain it when they stealth. Meanwhile the stealth player has you targeted the entire time. So the time you can get them targeted they can hide again….So they get free shot after free shot on you.

Its a great design that utilizes lag to the classes advantage. Just like the beer commercial. Brilliant!

apharma.3741:

You should also add that some runes are prohibitively expensive with alternatives being either not very cheap or sometimes require you to PvE a fair bit to get. For example nightmare runes, hoelbrak, strength etc.

That’s without mentioning ones you can’t get any more like generosity or the recipes aren’t around like tormenting and perplexity which also require items which are hard to get.

I think the cost of runes and sigils is a direct consequence of wrong design choices. They already reworked many runes, and still the vast majority is considered either a “cheap alternative” or downright “useless”.

There’s a reason if everyone wants Strength runes for PVE (and some WvW builds too): they give the best overall damage. Why can’t we have alternatives that can give the same amount of damage with some secondary effect variation?

Hoelbrak… good damage boost and 20% negative condi duration. Very strong for WvW, so people will seek those runes and avoid the rest. It’s not by random chance that many frontliners use Hoelbrak or Melandru… why not rework some of the runesets now considered “useless” to give some variation around the negative condi duration?

Same goes with the price of food btw… you have 3 or 4 food buffs that cost tens of times more than the others. Why? Because they grant negative condi duration or the best damage in game. Everything else is sub-par. The nice thing is that they introduced some more recipes with negative condi duration, the only problem is that those are even more expensive to craft than the old one