Guild Wars 2

Lol……..

There’s many people that enjoy large scale pvp and the teamwork that it requires.

Then there’s people that need to justify running over duelers. I mean you’re a zerg, you’re a train, it’s nothing unusual. Often times I’ll run over people without noticing and vice versa. It just happens; there’s no need to justify it and duelers dueling in a contested area are asking for it. Sure, but honestly I am not sure why one needs to claim the moral high ground, of accusing people of being selfish (Them not accommodating you is selfish, but you not accommodating them… no?) I mean why the vitrol? I mean do you keep tabs on them 24/7? What if they did your PPT 90% of the time and stopped to fight someone?

I mean that behavior is just totally toxic, and it seems that it happens when there needs to be something to blame, like a few people out of the whole map queue are causing failure, when it might, just might be the big zerg’s fault for not being good enough. Back when PvE and WvW were linked more closely, we’d have people going into PvE’ and berate them for not helping. Yep. Very helpful. But then again, if you’re using it to chase down solo players…

tl;dr lol #PPTingin2016

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Nerfs are coming for a number of the problematic guild upgrades like cloaking waters, chilling fog and airship defense.

For cloaking waters, the stealth duration is getting reduced dramatically. We recognize that it’s possible that any amount of stealth is too strong, but changing a number is something we can do quickly and safely. Whereas changing the upgrade to do something entirely different requires significantly more time, both in terms of general development (design/implementation/testing) and also in large part because it would require updated text, which in turn needs to go through our long editing and localization process. As for removing the upgrade entirely, that also isn’t really an option, due to how it’s intertwined with the Scribing and Guild Halls systems.

Is there a way you can tie these things into the outnumbered buff? It would make a lot more sense to give the smaller group a way to level the playing field rather than giving the larger group an even bigger advantage.

NA/Tier8/Eredon Terrace/Guest(sub)server currently linked with: Blackgate

Hello Everyone,

Last night I had the pleasure of speaking with an ArenaNet employee (on a boarderland wearing the ArenaNet tag), regarding concerns that ET has expressed on this and other forums about the beta population linking. We had a good conversation and I thank Hamm for taking the time to talk to us.

After we were done and as I was thinking about the conversation, I had some thoughts that I wanted to pass along to to the folks who are posting and reading this forum.

1. ArenaNet is paying attention. I strongly urge you continue to post on this forum. I also ask that you keep it positive and focused on addressing making things better.

2. One thing that might help is if you identify your situation (as I have at the start of this post) with if you are NA or EU, The tier you were in. Whether you are on a guest(sub) server and who you are linked with. This will give ArenaNet a better idea of who this has impacted the most and why we see things differently. The NA solution may end up looking different than the EU solution, for example, and it would be helpful is ArenaNet could see where you are.

3. I have spoken to a lot of folks and read so many posts that have great ideas and for the life of me, I could not think of them all last night. I think it would be VERY helpful to ArenaNet if you would have your best, brightest and most articulate folks post their thoughts on what a more productive approach to population balancing in WvW might look like. Maybe with the data, ideas and help from all of us, ArenaNet might be able to find something that is we could all live with happily. Which I do believe is their desire.

Two questions I think ArenaNet and all of us need to consider is does population balancing mean we need to all have exactly the same number of players, or is there there a way would could achieve a better population balance that still allows for some smaller (but more robust and not empty) servers to accommodate both sides of what is an obvious schism in how folks enjoy playing WvW? No one wants empty servers, they are not much fun. But not everyone wants servers that are so big everyone simply is a part of a huge collective rolling over other huge collectives on a map. And I believe there is truly a place for both.

The second is whether temporary server linking or permanent server mergers (with the hope that we will work out the population balancing issues first) would be the preferred method of putting the solutions into action?

Finally, ArenaNet, if there is anything I can do to help, please let me know. I love this silly game and my friends that I play it with. I understand that this is a tricky balancing act. Lets see what we can do when we work cooperatively.

Thank you all.

Make it a brawling area for all sides when you redo it while Alpine maps are live.

Label the WP with a warning or skull and crossbones or something, lol. Make it easily avoidable for players who do not want to participate in it, and wall it off so it cannot be used as a shortcut to the PPT objectives.

Would be fun as all kitten. Maybe something in the spirit of that idea would be better. Give it a borderlands bloodlust type objective so players than can contribute to the server.

kitten.7492:

Don’t forget the root right in front of the stairs of the south-west tower :P

You should be able to burn that kitten ed thing down.

And then jump on its ashes.

Norbe.7630:

Q1: Mr. Puck, do you agree with the pairings that occur in WvW in terms of population, coverage balance?

No. The idea may work but the current pairings were poorly done. They need to open 1 more tier, and unlink the most populated worlds, and they absolutely need acknowledge that the smaller servers still exist by changing the player tag instead of just having them absorbed.

Q2: Would you like the tiers and ranks to put a wall again between servers?

Separate tiers didn’t create the walls. Allowing free transfers for so long, having tournaments in a game mode where population>skill, Anets neglect, and the kittenty glicko system created the walls. There is nothing wrong with having tiers, having something to advance through gives the server incentive to organize and try to improve.

Q3:If you think your server is capable of taking down two merged servers, then lost a landslide, would you whine in the forums about that?

Nope. I personally don’t care about the overall weekly score. As long as my server is in a tier where we are decently matched and getting good fights I am happy.

Q4:Why do you hate killing stuffs and karma and EoTM too, you had a bad experience about that?

First off, what WvW player needs karma? Last I checked I had something like 10 million karma, and that’s after converting it to gold about a dozen times. And no I don’t really enjoy killing players in EotM because the general skill level there is so bad that I may as well be killing npc’s. EotM is hot join, it’s where bad players go to get their WvW rewards. I go to WvW and roam to find my fights.

Q5: last Q, do you play dota?

Mobas are boring.

Variety is the spice of life.

Borderlands get old, ANet changes them. Builds get old, ANet adds and changes them. Guess what happened when they did all of these changes? People left.

Guilds bandwagon to one server. Two reasons were given: 1. To help rotation (the dream, no strings attached, etc. etc. insert rhetoric here) 2. to play with friends.

In short, you can’t have it both ways. Yes that sucks, that’s how small the community is that’s left.

If you reset right now all glicko (not partial, not just increased volatility), you only temporarily provide variety. Because guilds have localized on a few servers (some by strong deliberate choice, others due to it being their original home and movement of other guilds slowly over time to specific servers), a reset will only temporarily provide variety. Stacked servers if remaining stacked will rise to the top. And then what? Reset again?

People posting here aren’t stupid or ignorant. You know this. So why are you pushing for it instead of spreading out if the dream is constant rotation? Has anyone reached out to EU to find out how they did it? My understanding is they spread out (not band wagoning) and they have a less PPT oriented environment, people care more about the fight engine and engagements.

I get that we have more activity now. Guys, it’s been a week since the patch. Let’s see how the community receives everything after one month let’s say? If the activity is there player wise, and Glicko is propped up, then maybe a hard reset makes sense. For now, and forever, we can’t see the future.

Or we can just try to keep gaming the system.

Honorade and stuff. Because you know Mal, for some of us (ok maybe just me) that’s my dream, and it’s real. No strings.

A mediocre band-aid.

What they need is a seamless map system that can scale with the overall population and separate players/guilds/claims by servers while dynamically matching them with ally servers to create a decently balanced matchup.

Maybe it sounds like EoTM megaserver with WvW matchups and server identities. That’s because it is. We already have the answer in front of us, we just wont accept it.

ok, thanks for explaining

I have my doubts about this system, considering there will be even less players joining the smallscale matches then there was playing in low tiers before linking. And it was really empty already. Maybe if they only get 1 single map, instead of 4 empty maps.

And personally I would probably not join the smallscale match, but I think there are still players who would. At least it is solid idea.

I like the idea of something that reduces incoming condition damage rather than temporarily negates it which is what resistance does. This way the condi still ticks but becomes more survivable.

I also like the idea of the healing stat being more useful. I have looked at healing stat armour before for a couple of different classes. Healing makes much less difference to the amount of healing I get than something like power or vitality affects damage or health. From this point of view it is not worth using the slot that a more effective stat can use.

I don’t think toughness should be used to reduce condi damage because then one stat would cover both direct and indirect damage – it would be too easy. Having healing reduce condi damage should encourage more strategic diversity.

Like I have said before in other threads I see no pros to this. none.

Can the people who like this change explain these things to me. I am genuinely interested in these answers.

Why, if you love big fights, did you not transfer to a server that had these?
they have existed in the higher tiers. and transferring is not actually that expensive at all. You can get enoug gold/gems with a couple of days of silverwaste farming if you are even remotely willing to put a little time into it and not want to spend a couple of bucks.

Why do you like queues?
While I get that they represent a map being full and having a fair fight.
it also represents people not able to play where they want to play(the red number to me is people wanting to go somewhere they are not allowed). First and foremost this is a game people play to have fun in some way. Red numbers to me look like people not having fun, or not having as much fun as they want to.

related to this: Prime time is not there because people only like the big fights. It’s there because that’s when the most people have time to play. If that’s when there are massive queues. That means that prime time players lose a significant chunk of their gaming time waiting to play.

Why is playing in smaller servers not a valid choice?
Many like the more focused smaller fights. Some of us transferred away from the big servers to the smaller ones for their own reasons.

and more practically. It can be a way to avoid problems.
We have lost guild mates to the simple fact that their computers or internet cannot handle the big fights now dominating even the borderlands. And they have computers above the recommended system specifications.

why do you think it’s a good idea to change the server linking every three months?
Communication among team speak and community guilds is already at risk of being spied at. We have people joining guilds and TeamSpeak servers of people we might fight against in a couple of months.
Right now i am in the community guild of another server. If they don’t scrub their guild the next time we’re against them. We can just casually follow their every move.

And the biggest question of all. What it all boils down to for me.

Why do you think it’s a good thing that we lost the ability to chose how we play?

Ranking, skill level, community thrown aside. All feelings of how you want to play thrown away.
How can you call it a good thing, that a way of playing the game, available for years now is shoved aside and removed.

We had the choice how to play. And now we don’t. I can not think of a single reason why this is good. Not as a player, not as a consumer and not for a company.

Norbe.7630:

Puck.9612:

I can get to the black lion trading post through my hero panel… does that make them the same thing?

as long as it pleases you its the same thing
same as glicko ,tiers, and scoring to bragging rights

sorry if i took your candy, but inequality is not my style
just bear with it atm, for EB and BLs doesnt generate your true meaning of tiers and scores, its just another Green Blue and Red matchup pairing ratings just like EoTM and lastly just like WvW

-that is my proof

PS: if by the time Anet pushed inequality again on WvW, thats the time i uninstall GW2 without a word or whining/ranting here on the forums and then going back to play dota2, right puck?
even on the infamous salt forums, the tier fanboys and rank fans are slowly diminishing that is a good sign

Your rambling again. The way discussions work is you have to come up with counter arguments to the points being made. Do you really think the current match ups aren’t being evaluated and that their results won’t affect future match ups? We are in a beta test…. They are testing linked servers in WvW for the first time…. The score this week probably matters more than it ever did.
Meanwhile EotM carries on with it’s normal karma train….
So go enjoy your Dota2, you clearly care a good deal about WvW if you are going to quit as soon as you don’t get your way. Leave the feedback and discussions to the adults.

I’m not from a low or a high tier server, and the pairing hasn’t bothered me that much. In our pairing I’m on the higher tier server. There have been crazy queues compared to what we were used to, but with the patch just launching Friday and it being weekend that doesn’t surprise me much. I think it will get better for us. I also don’t have any complaints about the server we got linked with. I do feel kind of bad for the smaller servers that their identity indeed seems to be wiped out a bit. It wasn’t supposed to be a server merge, but it kind of feels like that anyway. I saw a post in this topic a couple of pages back about how the smaller servers are pretty much just slaves for the bigger servers now and it seems about right. They hardly get any credit. You pretty much only see their name when you hover over the name of the bigger server in the WvW screen. xD I feel like there should be a more fair way to solve this if Anet wants to go through with the linking. Because I actually can understand where all these people who say they’ve lost their server identity are coming from.

Besides that I also agree with people who said that the linking will definitely not be a welcome change for everyone. I myself have always been fine on my mid tier server, but I know people who chose to be on high tier servers (and are used to queues and blobs and don’t mind them that much). I also know people who deliberately moved to lower tier servers because they just wanted to play in a less intense environment, without queues and sixty man blobs. I can imagine that these players are now lost. They enjoyed that form of WvW and they could choose to be on a server that allowed for it. The ones that didn’t enjoy it, could choose to be on higher tier servers. I don’t feel like one playstyle is less than the other, they were just different and you could choose what suit you best. Now that choice is gone because everything will be the same. Queues and big blobs, there is no room for those people who wanted the less intense environment anymore. I hope Anet will come up with a solution for them as well, even though I’m not one of them.

If you have 3 different home maps then you’ll get QQ over one map being easier to defend or attack, so the only way to ensure the map you get doesn’t affect the scoring is to run the matches over 3 weeks so everyone gets each map, and no one has an advantage overall.

In the interest of fairness I’d rather stick with one week matches and the same map – even though I like the idea that different themed home maps could give each team a unique feel.

EBG has always been the dumping ground for WvW. A place to be avoided if possible. The last thing WvW needs is more EBG.

Four different maps would be interesting, though. Forget “balance” and go for “variety”. Probably can’t have both.

Enus.2781:

I personally love this linking and haven’t been excited for wvw in a long time.

So please, Anet, realize people come on the forums to QQ than they do to recognize your hard work. You’re doing amazing and alot of people in game love the change, you can see it in your logs.

You love this change. That’s fine. But then you complain about complainers who may not like (yet) or just some part of the details – and thus giving feedback about that, which may seem as complaining or QQ (and some it is, because it’s not formulated in a constructive way: as in this I don’t like, because reasons, and this example could be a way to address it).
Complaining about complainers is wrong; and way more useless than their “QQ” – that at least is 1/3 of the constructive feedback, though that should be 3/3.

ArenaNet did well with these latest changes, though it’s far not enough yet, to save WvW. Population imbalance still persists and will become far worse in time if a server starts winning consistently and others losing constantly. More changes needed, especially addressing time zone coverage.

Also the scoring system needs reworked, changed. Class balance, gear and so on, still needs attention. Even rewards, maybe adding a long term chance for obtaining a legendary in WvW for example. And so on.

But what is good: they had the courage to start changing things. That’s awesome, even if it’s way too late for many, but at least those new to the game, may find a better game mode one day. Anet must keep doing changes, reverting or modifying as necessary, and then keeping the best working variant.

Everyone can’t be pleased with every change; ArenaNet should focus on the majority of players, on what’s best for keeping WvW alive and even fun. But “QQ” shouldn’t be ignored, because that “QQ” shows that there is a “collateral damage” despite the good intentions. Everyone can’t be saved: but the changes cannot stop because of that, WvW just received a breath of fresh air, which won’t last forever, if this “surgery” won’t succeed. Stopping now and here is not an option, fixes must keep coming until balance is achieved.

slimike.1693:

You enjoy small tier game play, that’s good, the bls still allow for that. It is 2 days after reset on the weekend and a wvw patch, your queues will go down. Wvw is finally alive again and there are fights, or ppt if that’s what you prefer, you can roam/havoc in the bls, zerg in eb, idk what you people are all crying so much for. Server loyalty died years ago.

There are tons of people who’s sole motivation is server pride and loyalty and the community that’s evolved from it.

I"m hoping Anet comes up with a way to let people keep wearing their server tags, even when combined. It won’t be that confusing. Red = enemy, no matter the tag name.

The true wvw player is at the game, not complaining here. But well, i am having fun reading all this. :p

My biggest problem now is that BP has no identity. Effectively I am a member of a different server but not “OF” that server, so just a guest helping out. It just makes me feel disconnected. I joined a group last night but it was like I was a dark sheep running with a bunch of white. Not matter how long this ‘merge’ continues I will always be BP and they will always know it and I know we will always be considered the “little” guys that are helping them out a bit… and THAT just isn’t fun for me.

Not sure where this will all go, or if this feeling will change. I hope that if these linking remains in place that it will simply be a permanent servers switch somewhere because being a guest sucks. At least if it’s ONE server then we will just become part of it and not have to feel that we will be moved somewhere else at some point down the road. At this point it’s hard to judge this as good or bad, but like I said above, it definitely makes me feel disjointed…

FogLeg.9354:

I am getting slightly annoyed about all the people whining about queues. You do not HAVE to go EB every time, for god’s sake learn to play on BL maps too. And secondly, many servers still have lower population, transfer into these and make matches more balanced.

The large queue is created by players all gathering up into few top servers. It is not Anet fault and is not telling anything about world linking. If you, as a player, choose to go into most populated server, you have picked to play with queue. Accept it or pick smaller server.

Yeah that argument doesn’t really work in this situation. Most players had already moved to a server that fit their play style. After moving around to a bunch of tiers I settled in T3 because I could find decent roaming all hours of the day. the merges pretty much killed that. If I did decide to move my account again, at my own expense, what’s to say they won’t link different worlds in a couple weeks and throw me back into a blobfest kitten show?

Pro’s
WvW has a lot more activity all hours of the day
Could potentially lead to more variety in match ups since the population difference won’t be as drastic

Con’s
They destroy’d low tier server identities
Very little variety between the tiers (small scale is harder to find)
Server side lag is back in a big way, hard crashes are more common
Still haven’t returned the Alpine leading to much larger EBG queues
Server organization problems due to temporary merges ( hesitant to give TS permissions or guild invites to players that may be your enemy in a couple weeks)

Possible fixes
Open 1 more tier (top populations didn’t need a merge)
Return Alpine (much better for small scale)
Character names are changed to color, rank, server initials , guild tag. An example would be Green Gold Soldier GoM TM (Create an option to see friendly tags that include rank and server). Capture message would be "Green team has captured… Everything else would be Ebay/HoD.

@Dank

Again, you’re speaking about guilds. Not everyone plays or wants to play in a guild. The vast majority of your server’s defense team fall into that category.

And those players are not only the backbone of you team’s WVW, but are the ones most invested in community.

Lose your defensive team and you’ll just get a giant pve champ train map.

Lose your guilds and people will get bored with nothing to fight.

Guilds may have loyalty within. But it’s important to recognize that there are other ways to play, and boths sides of that same coin are necessary in order to have a healthy, competitive game.

I don’t personally have a problem with the pairings. I think it would be nice if all players retained their server name, regardless of pairings. It would help alleviate a lot of things.

Why not just 3 maps layed out like EB with a team in each corner, but instead have EB, ABL and DBL.

Removing home borderland concept might help stop those “runaway” match ups where the strongest pop can hold an entire map against 1 enemy, there would be a second enemy presence to deal with, helping the flow of combat and in turn potentially making it harder for the server with more population.

It seems pretty clear that server identity needs to be better retained and possibly that different game styles be more respected ie players on lower level servers have to a certain extent stayed there because they like the more casual small scale combat.

This comes back to the fact that this server linking is a dynamic server merge that does nothing to fix the inflexibility of the server model and arguably introduces more problems in terms of mashing together players with incompatible motivations and the lack of respect being shown to the identity of the smaller servers.

I played in T1/2 from the beginning up to a year ago, so I know what queues do and it sucks trying to fit your guild in. Again this was the first night for the change, there’s any number of factors for the high population at reset. If in fact the queues hold up on T1 servers for some time and it’s unbearable I’m sure they could go back to unlinking T8 with T1, and maybe link T8 with the T4 servers if that looks more suitable.

But they won’t know exactly what the situation is until it’s been given some time to show them, growing pains. I’m not saying don’t express your concern, but let’s not overreact and flood the forums with 20 different qq threads about the queues everyday.

First of all, last night was VERY atypical. We went from usual 30 on EBG and no queue anywhere else to 150 EBG and 80 everywhere else. I queued at 80 (my fault for not being ready in Lion’s Arch for reset) and got in maybe an hour later, meanwhile I just hung out with guildies in TS and mashed faces with YB in OS. It is NOT that bad usually, yesterday was just a special night. Stop complaining and watch the queues settle down.

I can’t help but think that 4 matches was too little for NA servers. It should have been reduced to 5 or 6.

Additionally, I was surprised to see IoJ and JQ paired up if these pairings were truly done with time-sliced activity levels considered.

X T D.6458:

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding queues. Heres the thing, queues have always been a part of wvw. I remember when queues were a daily thing on most maps, queues themselves are not new. The issue is people are afraid of seeing an enourmous queue becoming a regular occurrence especially on reset night which is important for many. This is especially worrisome to those who run in guilds and will find themselves confined to one map unable to float to help groups in another map because many will get stuck in a queue.

Queues can be an indicator of a healthy wvw yes, but having to much of it will bore and frustrate people and turn them off of wvw. There are many people who have left their servers because of queues. We dont need people leaving the game because of queues now that there is no lower tier to escape to.

People keep saying oh the queues will die down and I just keep wanting go /facepalm because this is just such a narrow minded view…one the one hand your saying queues mean wvw is healthy then your saying oh it will die down soon…well dont you think there is a problem then? It means people people are frustrated and bored with waiting. Queues are important yes because maps can only handle so many people, but who wants to stand around on one toon waiting so long to play and hope they dont dc or have to start all over again. It should not be there to deter and discourage people from being able to play wvw.

I agree, we really do not want those players to leave the game for the queues to “die down” as that means the game will be declining, not improving.The goal should be to keep those players coming back playing, but being hit with this mess when they come in isn’t going to do that at all, it is going to send them right back out the door. They need to resolve the queue/ coverage wars long term, not just mush crap haphazardly together and expect players to deal with it. That only makes a game decline faster and shows the devs are not capable of properly managing the game.

The thing people should realize is the goal should be to have that many players in WvW EVERY NIGHT/DAY, not run them off. They have to resolve the system so that no matter how many players play / do not play the system still works and the game is still enjoyable and playable for those that are there. It isn’t like there are not solutions that would completely solve these issues as having the number of maps in play at once be reflected by the population in the match up would accomplish that goal.

There seems to be a lot of confusion regarding queues. Heres the thing, queues have always been a part of wvw. I remember when queues were a daily thing on most maps, queues themselves are not new. The issue is people are afraid of seeing an enourmous queue becoming a regular occurrence especially on reset night which is important for many. This is especially worrisome to those who run in guilds and will find themselves confined to one map unable to float to help groups in another map because many will get stuck in a queue.

Queues can be an indicator of a healthy wvw yes, but having to much of it will bore and frustrate people and turn them off of wvw. There are many people who have left their servers because of queues. We dont need people leaving the game because of queues now that there is no lower tier to escape to.

People keep saying oh the queues will die down and I just keep wanting go /facepalm because this is just such a narrow minded view…one the one hand your saying queues mean wvw is healthy then your saying oh it will die down soon…well dont you think there is a problem then? It means people people are frustrated and bored with waiting. Queues are important yes because maps can only handle so many people, but who wants to stand around on one toon waiting so long to play and hope they dont dc or have to start all over again. It should not be there to deter and discourage people from being able to play wvw.

lil devils x.6071:

They need to have the number of maps in play be determined by the number of people playing in the match at the time or it will never be resolved. That should have been done and tested PRIOR to merging as it will still cause problems for NA regardless. Merging does not solve the issues, it only creates more issues if they fail to adjust the system’s problems that are causing it. They need more maps in play during Peak hours and less maps during off hours to actually solve the queue/ coverage wars issues in NA.

I might agree with this had Anet not said that this was a ‘beta’. Being a beta, the testing is being done now, rather than how you insist it should have been done “prior” to merging. This is the whole point of this being called a beta, so that Anet can test it and make adjustments going forward.