Guild Wars 2

Can I get a show of hands from those who still played back in the day when you lost money in WvW instead of making it, by paying to upgrade objectives, repair armor and spending hours scouting objectives while they upgraded.

I’d still play WvW if it awarded nothing. It isn’t a job, I don’t do it to support something, I do it because I enjoy it, it’s stress relieving, it’s great for socializing.

Rewards are great and they should be there. It’s proper design to have all areas of the game giving adequate loot to sustain yourself. It’s more important for some people than others and that’s okay, everyone has fun in a different way. But for those who are more focused on the grind, remind yourself that when you reach your goal, you’ll probably leave WvW behind forever. Why should the devs cater to the people who are only there temporarily? The players who have stuck it out through thick and thin, or the new players who have discovered something they love, are the ones that deserve a long term goal and goodies on the journey for their troubles.

You deserve your cut as well even if you’re only there to suck the loot out of it. But don’t expect sympathy when that’s your only motivation. I’m not going to welcome someone to my party who’s only there for cake and beer.

DeceiverX.8361:

The balance and class diversity on top of general gameplay were bar-none the best in the game of all formats, and any group of any size could be impactful.

I could take literally any build concept and make it work in WvW at one point, in any circumstance. Even in the days of tank hammertrain thieves and gank classes if played properly could single-handedly account for winning or losing a ZvZ/GvG.

The power creep and general poor profession design decisions from HoT, the guild upgrades and locking of +5 supply behind expensive guild halls, and un-fun mechanics like Watchtower and DBL keeping roamers from the game leading to the omniblob make the game substantially less fun for a majority of players.

All they had to do was make food free and siege blueprints no longer consumable to fix WvW rewards. That’s it. Boom, there’s the loot and profitability. Attention is just in all the wrong places, notably profession and gear balance.

Highlighted main points.

Agreed with all of this/have said something similar in the past.

WvW was best pre-HoT, of course with the exception of the upgrading system, which did need to be changed, albeit differently from what it got would have been better.

Thanks to powercreep and the huge imbalance between professions, it has become excruciatingly difficult to roam unless you’re one of 3 professions, and near impossible to havoc unless you’re 15 – 20 deep (which is a zerg anyway). Which leaves only the zerg meta that for some, becomes stale very quickly (I know that’s ironic coming from someone with my rank, but I rarely stick with a zerg for longer than an hour. I tend to float between roaming/scouting/zerging).

I still love GW2 and WvW but I’d be lying if I said it’s better now, or that I’m having as much/more fun now. I miss pre-HoT, I miss when I could roam freely, I miss 5-man havoc, I miss defeating groups triple our size with just a couple friends. But… Can’t live in the past forever, so, just looking forward to the next expansion now.

Junkpile.7439:

Vicious.3042:

EOTM is dead. It is inferior, therefore it didn’t survive the pipstress, rip.

At least players quality was higher there.

hahahahahha….
Oh you were being serious? Let me laugh even harder.
HAHHAHAHAHHAHAHA

https://youtu.be/aMLREFYUPB4

Just some duels vs ma BOI hollts! I plan on making more of these videos where I duel known/prominent players, so if there’s anybody you’d like to see me duel let me know and I’ll try make it happen!

What are you talking about? First, they have to run back to the fight, which is in and of itself a major cost to the fight. Second, you want people to be even more gutless than they are now, hiding on walls and avoiding fights at all costs until they have numerical advantage?

Don’t know why I have to keep digging this out of my archives.

From a red post in the thread Whens the next WvW tournament?

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Our primary motivation for avoiding running another tournament, is that at the end of every tournament we saw a permanent dip in the number of players playing WvW. Presumably this was due to players burning themselves out during the tournament.

However, we can still run a poll to see if the majority of the community wants another 4 week tournament, even if it might be bad for the long term WvW population numbers. Though even if ‘running another tournament’ won the poll, we’d probably hold off until we get the scoring updates in.

Just curious, of all the reasons why anyone would want another WvW tournament, which one(s) are better then Tyler’s statement against having another tournament?

Jumpin Lumpix.6108:

Would make wvw exciting again, and would make winning at the end of the week mean something.

Would also be a great way to add skirmish tickets which many have been complaining about.

NO. Learn from PvP. The more you try to make a game mode “competitive”, the more it’s going to fail. WvW has already been down that road with the tournaments. Let’s not repeat history.

Amaimon.7823:

Sarika.3756:

Amaimon.7823:

Sarika.3756:

Amaimon.7823:

Chaba.5410:

Amaimon.7823:

if you’re not rank 3000 by now, there’s no way in seven realms of oblivion and the gazing abyss behind it that you can complete the wooden chest in one week.

No need for the hyperbole. I finished Silver on an account with rank 780 in 6-8 hours of WvW by getting either 3 pips per tick (2 for rank, 1 for third place) or 8 with outnumbered buff.

Except when youre on a skritt server that is just active enough to never have the outnumbered bonus, but inactive enough to always fail, so im cursed with 1 pip per tick, meaning i have to sacrifice my entire working week for getting the wooden chest, and thats just ridiculously disproportionate

I have a level 150 ish alt on a server that’s often in third place. I can expect 3 pips at a time, one for rank, one for placement, one for loyalty. I usually get the wood chest at the end of the first nights guild raid.

I don’t see how getting wood on a low level account can take an entire work week. Where is my math wrong here?

Your math i’s stuck where you get three pips and i get one pip

Ok. There are 100 pips in the wood chest.

At 1 pip per tick, that’s 500 minutes. Assuming that you only get one pip per tick the entire time.

500 minutes = 8.33 hours.

That’s a little over 2 hours a day for four days.

Do I think that’s too much time for the wood chest? Yes.

But that’s not an entire work week, unless you work a lot less in a week than I do.

Do that for one week.
The next week, you’ll get the loyalty pip, which will get you 2 pips a tick. So 250 minutes, or a bit over 4 hours. Now you’re down to 2 2-ish hour runs, again assuming only 2 pips per tick.

If i work all week i have an hour, maybe 2 in the evening. I dont always want to dedicate all my evenings to one game, much less one game mode. 8 hours on a weekend day is also harsh, i want to go out with my friends on the weekends.
In pve i can do bits of things, the rewards pile up.
In pvp i can do bits of things, the rewards pile up.
In wvw i can’t do bits of things because only complete things are rewarded and then reset.

Now that I think about, wouldnt it make sense for the pips to reset every 4 weeks with the matchmaking, rather than weekly? Just like the pvp track resets per season and not per week

You’re a casual at least by the time spent playing definition.

I’m also a casual by the time spent playing definition.

We casuals can’t expect all rewards to be earned in a reasonable time frame for us. And that the rewards aren’t worth the time and/or effort required.

Like for me. I’d love legendary armor. But I don’t have the desire to put forth the effort to learn raids at the moment. Nor do I have the inclination to pay to be carried. So for me, legendary armor just isn’t obtainable for me. And it’s something that I accept and I don’t cry to ANet to make it obtainable for me.

And unlike for legendary armor, rewards earned by what you get from PIPS is just earned more slowly for you than others. So make those rewards your long term goals. Shorter term goals could include increasing your WvW rank to make PIP earning faster.

according to reddits research:
How long does it take to get all 175 WvW Skirmish Claim Tickets (1450 pips) in one Week?

0 pips: infinite
1 pip : 1450 ticks, it takes 5d 0h 50m (120h 50m) or around 17h 15m per day
2 pips: 725 ticks, it takes 2d 12h 25m (60h 25m) or around 8h 40m per day
3 pips: 484 ticks, it takes 1d 16h 20m (40h 20m) or around 5h 45m per day
4 pips: 363 ticks, it takes 1d 6h 15m (30h 15m) or around 4h 20m per day
5 pips: 290 ticks, it takes 1d 0h 10m (24h 10m) or around 3h 30m per day
6 pips: 242 ticks, it takes 20h 10m or around 2h 55m per day
7 pips: 208 ticks, it takes 17h 20m or around 2h 30m per day
8 pips: 182 ticks, it takes 15h 10m or around 2h 10m per day
9 pips: 162 ticks, it takes 13h 30m or around 1h 55m per day
10 pips: 145 ticks, it takes 12h 5m or around 1h 45m per day
11 pips: 132 ticks, it takes 11h 0m or around 1h 35m per day
12 pips: 121 ticks, it takes 10h 5m or around 1h 25m per day
13 pips: 112 ticks, it takes 9h 20m or around 1h 20m per day
14 pips: 104 ticks, it takes 8h 40m or around 1h 15m per day
15 pips: 97 ticks, it takes 8h 5m or around 1h 10m per day
16 pips: 91 ticks, it takes 7h 35m or around 1h 5m per day
17 pips: 86 ticks, it takes 7h 10m or around 1h per day

Problem is, you can have outnumbered for 4 out of 5 minutes, and then lose it just as the tick happens, probably because of people shopping around to get the buff on the tick and ruining it for the people who actually deserved it.

The real issue, I think, is that for players with lower WvW ranks, having Outnumbered literally doubles (or more!) your pips per tick. That makes it very frustrating when you lose it at the last moment, and encourages exactly the sort of ‘shopping’ that causes that to happen. IMO, the system should be rejigged so that you get more pips by default, and having the Outnumbered buff is a smaller contribution. I think increasing the base rate by two and decreasing the Outnumbered buff by two would probably be in the right ballpark – still an incentive, but it doesn’t create the situation where players with lower ranks feel they have to have the buff for it to be worthwhile.

Seriously, at the moment, a player who’s yet to reach Bronze can get as few as one or two pips per tick (depending on their server’s performance and whether they have the commitment bonus), while Outnumbered jacks it up to six or seven. That’s a big incentive to play ‘hunt-the-buff’ rather than playing WvW as intended.

Nitron.6405:

Instead of releasing outfits, give us full armour set skins instead, like the way things were at launch with the Phalanx and Krytan armour sets etc. This might not seem like an issue, but the entire end game of GW2 is centred around cool looking skins. Being able to mix and match different armour set pieces is half the fun, and lets people get creative with their own unique looks. If the reason is clipping, it’s honestly not that big an issue. I’d rather have my own unique look that has slight clipping issues, than being forced to have the same boring look as everyone else.

No matter how good a released outfit, I always find at least ONE part I don’t like that prevents me from purchasing it. This wouldn’t be a problem if I wasn’t forced to go all or nothing. The wardrobe system was a brilliant implementation, however it’s potential is wasted through the mass production of sub-perfect outfits.

My thief has been wearing the same T3 Human coat for years. Make sets instead of outfits, please!

Or give me a REALLY good reason as to why that’s impossible.

Here is your answer from Anet and the source:

Armor sets are by far the most expensive reward we can make. A full set includes heavy, medium, light, times five races, times two sexes, so it’s like developing 30 sets. It takes nine months to develop. (That’s for a normal armor set — legendary is much longer.) It’s not something we can do for Living World episodes. Individual pieces are good rewards for Living World episodes; full sets are more something for expansion packs.

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4uqx15/out_of_the_shadows_devs_here_ask_us_anything/d5s52tj

Whoever stated that should have left out the races and sexes since those are the same for outfits. What really makes the difference is Light / Medium / Heavy and then each individual piece has to be tailored to be used with other armor besides that set.

I don’t like it either. I would at least like them to change the ratio to less outfits and more armor. But no more trenchcoats :P

They really aren’t rare at all. I’m even wondering what was the point of them.

I fear this suggestion encourages K-training and zerging. Prefer the current system more than would want to encourage the “we can flip it back” mentality.

As the above has mention, this has a fatal flaw: players. Because players are greedy kittens, this would be exploited up the wazoo from day 1. We already have a greyzone in the karma gains from flipping keeps, if you add precious pips into the mix players would simply invite the enemies to come cap the keep so that they can recap it. Everybody wins.

If you ask yourself the question “am I doing this for my loot or am I doing this for my server” and you overwhelmingly reply the first part, WvW has gone astray.

As muerte.3842 said, the fatal flaw in this design is that it promotes K-Training for pips. I want to like it, honestly, but history has shown that if you make K-Training the best method for rewards then it will flourish.

Perhaps these bonus pips could be awarded at the end of the week and have a cap on how many you could get? The incentive to do active things remains, then, but if the cap is low enough then perhaps it won’t be such an issue.

Aury.1367:

In my opinion, the pip system right now is making it to attractive for people to go AFK on an outnumbered map. Also you just have to keep up your Participation.

This could be a solution:

1.) Increase the needed pips for single chests by ~20% to compensate for 2.)

2.) Put an additional Tab at the WvW window for extra pip aquisitions like:

- each 20 Playerkills -> 1 pip
- Capture Stonemist Castle -> 3 pips
- Capture a keep -> 2 pips
- Capture a tower -> 1 pip
- Revive 10 players -> 1 pip

And to compensate the outnumbered farm:

Remove the outnumbered +5 pips per tick. Instead, outnumbered players gain double pips by the extra quests named in 2.)
This will cause people to be active on outnumbered maps, whilst still getting more rewards/pips

This adds a little tournamentish tone to WvW. The additional tab could be made similar to the achievements, with filling bars. Once you filled the bar you get the pips.

There is far too many threads like this that suggest gaining pips for capturing towers etc. This will never work as this would just promote constant flipping of objectives like sm. Why would you want to defend an upgraded sm for 0 pips, when you can flip it for 3 pips? This will just turn wvw into eotm where blobs avoid each other purely for pips.

I’m not here suggesting the current method is working, which it isnt but this is not the solution.

Server pride died when players left or get bought and defected to the big servers.

Deihnyx.6318:

Hey, here’s an idea, can you get the “play for skin shaming” in another thread? That would sanitize this one and let people actually talk about the inherent issues of the current system.

No matter how hard you try to make it sound like, wanting rewards is not the problem. Both sides want them so quit with the hypocrisy around rewards. If people were “just playing for fun” they wouldn’t give a kitten about this thread or finding middle ground. Wake up.

Wanting rewards is absolutely the problem.

Trying to skew the subject because it doesn’t agree with your agenda is straw man.

Telling people to “wake up” is just rude.

Why can’t you accept that there might be one thing you can’t have immediately?

It’s not like you’re being prohibited from getting it.

And therein is where your argument fails.

Sviel.7493:

Rather, it would encourage players to do nothing but flip keeps. Probably by running in circles with the other servers capping keeps while refusing to defend their own.

Otherwise known as a Ktrain, which belongs in eotm.

Anet intentionally made it so you don’t get pips like you do with wvw exp. A player that only wants to flip camps can (with a few variables) earn an equal amount to a zergling.

Rather, it would encourage players to do nothing but flip keeps. Probably by running in circles with the other servers capping keeps while refusing to defend their own.

Conditions aren’t a problem. The true problem is how broken is stealth in this game (which happens in most of MMOs: invisibility is alway a pest, and most of developers aren’t unable to balance it in action games).

Thief is the clas with wider access to stealth, so in good hands the only two outcomes of a 1 vs 1 againts a thief are either 1) defeat or 2) the Thief reset the fight using his mobility or steatlh and then comes again with his stats/cooldowns restored.

Turk.5460:

I don’t see why any veteran WvW player would oppose changes to base pips, giving new players a little more incentive to continue with the game mode and hopefully help revitalize it. Our veteran bonuses wouldn’t change, we’d still get rewards faster than the newbies.

If these “veteran” players really don’t care about the rewards like they claim not to, then I don’t see why they’re even posting in this thread to begin with. It seems like they do actually care about rewards, but by golly I don’t think they’ll admit that. Would they?

A question to all WvW players opposing changes to base pips to make it easier on the newcomers: Do you care about WvW rewards more than the WvW game mode?

I love having new people in game.

But we have seen with past WvW-only loot, people come in, don’t contribute, and leave once they grind it out in as few as a couple days. Then complain that there’s no content.

Remember the uproar about removing crafting tables?

I think the longer it takes to earn something, the more likely you begin to understand the game mode, creating resiliency and affording longterm population. There’s already been several posts by people saying they didn’t realize how much fun it is.

At the end of the day, the resistance by the “vets” stems around not wanting to enable this “because I want it” mentality and instead encourages a measure of investment.

The bottom line is nobody needs these new thing in order to play the game.

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

Turk.5460:

Sirbeaumerdier.3740:

PabbyGaul.9682:

Turk.5460:

I don’t see why any veteran WvW player would oppose changes to base pips, giving new players a little more incentive to continue with the game mode and hopefully help revitalize it. Our veteran bonuses wouldn’t change, we’d still get rewards faster than the newbies.

If these “veteran” players really don’t care about the rewards like they claim not to, then I don’t see why they’re even posting in this thread to begin with. It seems like they do actually care about rewards, but by golly I don’t think they’ll admit that. Would they?

A question to all WvW players opposing changes to base pips to make it easier on the newcomers: Do you care about WvW rewards more than the WvW game mode?

I am opposed because i dont want wvw to become eotm. If its not something people plan on playing longterm for how does that help wvw? Ppl come in get candy and leave. E.g. Tournaments.

Exactly!

The last thing the game mode needs is more skin scavengers. It is because I care more for the game mode than the reward that I do not want the reward to be more accessible.

I’ve seen what it did with pvp and the ascension. Let’s learn from that. People who don’t care about the game mode won’t stay. If you enjoy WvW, you will stay regardless of the presence of a reward or not.

Do you like having fresh new allies and fresh new meat to kill? Do you not realize that the point of the skins is to get the “scavengers” to try out the game mode? If they enter WvW for the rewards, then leave a day or two later due to the rewards being too difficult – that is not a proper WvW experience. I certainly wouldn’t have gotten a feel for WvW (which is now my only game mode) if I only tried it out for a couple of days.

People grinded out ascension in what, a month? Sure, lets not have that type of thing here in WvW, but there is absolutely no reason that it should take years of reaching for a goal for certain people to reap the benefits. – Yes, I know, we played for years without rewards, but this goal did not exist for us to even reach for at that time.

I welcome new players who are interrested in the game mode. The rest? Not so much.

This game is nicknamed Fashion Wars 2 for a reason. Expecting all players of a mode to not be skin chasers is unrealistic. Most players are not the type who aren’t affected by low rewards. Most players, even if they say they don’t care about rewards, deep down if the rewards are too lacking, they’ll move on to something more rewarding.

And that is a scary position for a game mode to be in. You need players to convince developers to spend money and time on it, but if all you do is chase players away due to lack of rewards…

Turk.5460:

I don’t see why any veteran WvW player would oppose changes to base pips, giving new players a little more incentive to continue with the game mode and hopefully help revitalize it. Our veteran bonuses wouldn’t change, we’d still get rewards faster than the newbies.

If these “veteran” players really don’t care about the rewards like they claim not to, then I don’t see why they’re even posting in this thread to begin with. It seems like they do actually care about rewards, but by golly I don’t think they’ll admit that. Would they?

A question to all WvW players opposing changes to base pips to make it easier on the newcomers: Do you care about WvW rewards more than the WvW game mode?

WvW vets care more about the game mode than the rewards, and by thus we don’t want to WvW to turn an EotM 2.0 where people play it only for the rewards.

Said in other words. Vets want people to play WvW, and get some reward for it so there’s no need to go to PvE to get income. Not people playing WvW to get some shiny skins… You already have PvE for that.

This thread is literally just 3 people throwing a tantrum because they’re being forced to finally enter wvw, posting the same thing over and over, not learning from anybody who bothers to respond, staying completely ignorant.

If you can’t just sit down play the game and have fun then i’m seriously wondering what on earth you keep bothering to post for, just pack your bags and leave,. these forums and this game will be alot better for it.

Deadhorse.gif

Musica Arcaida.4685:

Where did I imply ALL rewards should be acquired fast, or fall within a current time frame for casual players? Of course rewards such as the last tier or third will take a long time, and there’s nothing wrong with that. It takes 4+months to get the legendary armor, and a few months to get the backpieces. Yet, you’re able to expedite that process reasonably well.

The point is being made is acquiring pips, to go through a tier and pass through wood for example requires a great amount of time, which others have noted as 40hrs+. I asked you where is that present in any game mode that actually has also long term goals, you couldn’t even answer and act obtuse like I’m asking for a 30kAP armor set to be awarded to people who don’t put the time into AP chasing. I even made it clear to you that I’m not talking about T3 armor, I’m talking about T2 or weapons for example, and put it into prospective that it takes a week to just get one T2 boot.

And I answered your question about where there is anything else like it: ANet is allowed to add things that do not have comparable things in other modes.

YOU SAID IT! That you think all rewards should be able to be earned with a reasonable time frame.

Let’s assume the following conditions:

1. You’re able to get to max PIPS and max ticket count every time.
2. You work towards one goal at a time.
3. You don’t miss a week.
4. You hit the required rank the moment you hit the right number of tickets
5. Perfect world scenario for anything I missed

Max Tickets per week is 175.
Each year has 52 weeks.
Total tickets per year is 9100
Total tickets in 2 years is: 18200
Total tickets in 3 years is 27300

People say it takes 2 years to get the 2K armor set. Regardless of whether or not that’s accurate, we’re going to use it for the sake of making sure we’re both on the same page.

And let’s assume for the sake of argument that it takes 1 year to get the T2 armor – no one’s coughed up a time frame. Insert however much time you believe it takes currently where ever you see 1 year for this part of the example. You believe that 1 year is unreasonable. So if another reward comes around that takes 1 year + 1 day to get, wouldn’t that also be unreasonable? So if they put in a reward that takes getting to max rank to achieve and that takes 9 years (assuming each tier takes Tier – 1 years to make), that would therefore be unreasonable.

If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’m very literal. If you say X time is unreasonable, I’m going to assume that you feel X+1 time is unreasonable, too.

Edited to fix the quoting

lol WvWers are very familiar with “we are monitoring things and will make adjustments as needed.”

I’m very proud of Anet for sticking to this one. They’d have caved by now to the yelling and screaming, and it looks like they’ll keep this one non-mandatory shiny as something to work towards.

It’s painful standing ground the first time. But over time it winds up providing better gameplay.

All I see is a bad player got killed

I actually still think ANet has pretty well calculated the amount of playtime it takes to hit the pip cap. Yes, it takes long and it suckes for all WvW Vets, who get finaly rewarded, but only slowly and with much investment.
But just imagine everybody could hit the cap easily in a relative short time. The WvW would be crowded with players just for the grind and probably with no love for the game mode at all. Getting to the cap has to be a bit ludicrous to discourage this kind of behavior or WvW would turn into an ascended gear farm.