Guild Wars 2

BrickFurious.7169:

It doesn’t make sense to me to implement a weighted scoring system advocating for population-based equality in a game mode that was never designed to have balanced populations in the first place.

And it doesn’t make sense to have a scoring system designed for teams of equal size in a game mode that doesn’t have teams of equal size. PPT is always weighted in favor of the team with the larger size, which has had the result of rendering it meaningless with veteran WvW players. Points-per-cap makes much more sense and also avoids the complexity that a population-weighted scoring system would have.

kiwituatara.6053:

I totally agree. I play in OCX time and every time I wake up I find my PPT efforts thwarted by NA night forces. They definitely need to reduce the proportion of PPT ticks during NA time.
Wait wha-?

That’s especially true if your own server’s NA is the weakest in the match. Which is why the discussion for weighted PPT scoring centers around times when the populations between all three servers are not of roughly equal size, not the specific timezone you play in. If the NA on your server is competitively balanced with the NA on the other servers (or your OCX population has good competition against the other servers OCX), then it isn’t “night-capping”.

So a recent thread discussing the arrowcart line of sight changes got me thinking…

What are some changes people would like to see regarding structures (towers, keeps, castles), camps and siege?

I’ll start with a few things I’d like to see personally:

Thicker walls!
Defensive siege needs to be vulnerable to damage from outside a structure otherwise defensive arrowcarts would make everything impossible to capture. So making them invulnerable to player damage definitely isn’t the solution. But thickening the walls might help a bit. At least that way you would be able to stand on the walls of a tower/keep/castle while it’s being attacked without immediately getting nuked with AOE’s, which also means more room to place siege such as arrowcarts. As it currently stands, I believe a typical wall is two players wide standing shoulder to shoulder. I could be wrong I’m not online right now but that sounds about right. I think thickening the walls to four players wide would really help with defense without breaking offense.
Note that thicker walls does not mean more health.

Next I would like to see,
a bigger damage reduction for people using Burning Oil. 65% sounds good to me since you’re in such a vulnerable position as well as being the first and primary target any time something is attacked from the gates.

A mastery that,
places a reflective dome around the user when manning a cannon similar to that of the dome that can be placed around you while using burning oil.

A mastery that,
gives the siege a player is using reduced incoming siege damage excluding that of ballistas. Example: Arrowcarts you use gain reduced incoming siege damage (maybe something like 25%). This would allow rams to take less damage from gate trebuchets and arrowcarts to take less damage from catapults, trebuchets or offensive (outside the structure) arrowcarts while still keeping the purpose of ballistas which is to destroy siege.

Stronger Veteran Supervisors.
Currently when a camp is upgraded the Supervisor gains no additional stats. I think considering they are the “oomph” of an unupgraded camp, they should keep that presence at an upgraded one. Perhaps leveling them to 82 along with the other guards and/or giving them additional attacks.

This one is more a personal pet peeve than anything but…
Make the Ogres more persistent. Currently when you capture a mercenary camp (Hylek, Dredge, Ogres) in Eternal Battlegrounds, said mercenaries will then assault the nearest camp. If they fail, they die and respawn to try again later. The Ogres however do not. I think the reason for this is because you can revive Ogres once they’ve died but you can only revive two of the weaker ones out of the bunch that they bring. I think the Ogres need to assault a camp more than once but the ones that die and can be revived should remain dead (that way when they attack a second time they attack with two less Ogres).

And lastly,
trebuchets, mortars and catapults need to have their turn speed increased. I’m not sure what a healthy buff would be but something like 15 – 25% sounds good to me. As is, it takes just way, way too long to turn one of these siege units when they’re facing the wrong way. If my keep is being attacked and I need to use a mortar to kill golems, rams or players but the mortar is facing the wrong way… The gate will literally be either down or very close to it by the time I get the mortar facing the correct direction. I understand that if they could turn too quickly they would be too powerful but as it stands they are pretty much useless in one too many scenarios.

Any other suggestions you have please leave them here. Some people may agree with these suggestions others may disagree. That’s the purpose of the thread, to brainstorm! I would love to see more ideas for improving WvW because a new borderland won’t suddenly solve all the problems the old ones have.

Sincerely; A (at least 4 of my 7k hours in Gw2 have been in WvW) veteran.

I’m both happy and unhappy with the changes but I’m most unhappy that they had to listen to the post I made because now I feel like it’s my fault… Not that I had any clue it would result in this nonsense but I should have known better.

I still think the easiest fix would be to make thicker walls on all the structures instead of the narrow ones we currently have. As is an AOE can cover more than the width of the wall. If I’m standing on top of it and I place a Mark Of Blood (Necromancer staff skill) it will be wider than the walls themselves.

There needs to be a way to counter defensive siege so using things like Meteor Shower is a legitimate strategy. However, it is too effective to the point that arrowcarts need to be placed in some really awkward spots to avoid getting killed immediately. But now with the line of sight changes… That can’t be done at all. The only thing you can do is man the AC’s and start firing them before the attackers have a chance to start bombing the walls but that’s a best case scenario and rarely happens. If I drop 5 AC’s on a wall and they’re all manned when the enemy arrives there’s almost no way they’ll manage to destroy them all. But in most cases, only one or two will be manned, the others will be killed and eventually the rest will follow.

My vote is still to just thicken the walls which I had suggested ages ago at this point. AC’s would still be killable with AOE pressure so it allows counterplay but it also gives enough room on the walls that you can at least stand on them without immediately getting pulled off by a Mesmer or bombed by AOE’s.

sephiroth.4217:

I’m only here to defend the oil…. Oil is awsome if you have your masteries maxed and happen to be playing a burn focused build lol

Lololol, you think that’s good you should try Fire Impact Incendiary Shells with the Mortar. I’ve downed the majority of a large zerg more than once just by spamming a tight area with a bunch of mortar shells. Sit back and watch three dozen 5 – 9k burning ticks roll by your screen.

It’s fairly clear to me that Anet at least reads what is posted here, and sometimes uses the ideas. In a way this worries me because I fear there is a bias in way WvW is portrayed. I have yet to see an ANET labelled player in T7 or T8, and I doubt I will unless they play “off peak” as I do. So I want to share with you what WvW means to me, and to give an open invite to ANET for anyone to come and join me for a couple of hours: walk a mile in my shoes and see the world you’ve given me.

Anet themselves talk about WvW as a place of “epic battles” and describe the large scale play that I assume is the sort of experience people get in T1 or T2 (never been that high – I’m on IoJ). I can see the fun in this, and respect the idea that many people enjoy it, however this is most definitely not the WvW I know.

There are plenty of reasons why people play WvW away from “prime” time including shift work, different time zones, personal choice. To suggest that the contribution these people bring to the game is somehow less important or less useful simply because they play at this time is just plain wrong.

World vs World off peak is a place of courage and tenacity. It is often a place of long hours, of hard graft, and of hope. I’ve seen so many small but important encounters that you would miss in a zerg. For me the real heroes are people like:
The Kaineng recruit who stayed under fire to res his mentor.
The Eradon Terrace defender who stayed to defend his keep against our attacking party – despite being out numbered 4 to 1.
The Devona’s Rest mesmer desperately trying to find somewhere safe to hide in Hills so he could port his team back in when we left.
The Gate of Madness elementalist who led us on a merry but mortal chase so his team could sneak in past our defending party.

These are the forgotten stories, where one person makes the difference, where bravery and a bit of luck can win the day for your side. These are our epic battles – off peak and often less than 5 people.

It makes me angry when people try to label those of us who play off peak as “just karma training” or “shouldn’t be allowed to affect the score”. This belittles the fact that we are here and trying to do the same as “prime time” players – but without the same level of support. WvW is a 24/7 matchup, and that 24 hours includes players like the heroes above. There is no reward for spending hours running around your home Borderlands upgrading things – in fact those of us who do have to pay for it – but we make the time to do it anyway so the next team can come on to a decent base.

So my few final thoughts:
Everyone on WvW is equally important and their contribution to the game should be respected (except maybe the trolls!).

Anet – I’m serious – spend some time off peak, and some time in the lower tiers. If you already do this then tell us and make sure we have some way to continue playing. Hint: bigger more challenging maps with more PvE mobs and minimum numbers to achieve things is not the answer we need! For higher tiers – yes, for lower tiers or off peak – you come and play it and show us how it should be done. (I’ll happily follow an ANET roamer while he/she shows me how two players can be effective in the new maps ….)

For all those people complaining about “night capping” I don’t see anyone complaining about their own off peak players giving their own server an unfair advantage… maybe, just maybe, we’re appreciated after all. So next time you log in, and find your home BL upgraded and the right colour, just remember the forgotten few who made this possible.

Finally, Anet – if only 10% of players post their views in these forums, prime time and queued servers would always be more vocal. Aim to find a balance that lets us ALL play when and how we can.

Hello guys,

This is tailored towards Thief stealth, but it works the same with Mesmer invis too if you know the duration’s.

Apologies for the clickbait title – There’s a character limit on the topic title so I couldn’t write what I wanted to.

A little backstory before I get to my point,

So today I was put into a situation whilst roaming as my Thief where I had to stealth up against a Warrior and he would run away until my stealth ended. He would turn around and come at me until i stealthed and he would run away again. This went on and off for a few minutes. Long story short, he decided to commit to the fight and I defeated him in the 1v1.

He invited me to a group and called me a Noob for Stealthing so much. He was joking as it was one of my stream viewers, but it raised several questions in my chat about stealth and why people very much dislike it. It shows that the uninformed really struggle against it because they have very little experience in using it.

I see it all over the forums and subreddit: Stealth is OP, anet pls nerf. And because of this, a lot of the new elite specs have build in, very potent and extremely strong AOE Reveals. This kind of sucks for Thieves as there is such a very simple counter:

Heartseeker -> Blackpowder = 3s of Stealth. This can be stacked 4 times (5 with quickness sometimes). Stacking Stealth also takes time so the first stack is generally ticking down as you’re applying more. So usually you’re ending the stack with 9-10 seconds of stealth.

Question: Did you pressure his Blackpowder?
- Yes -> Probably only stacked it a max of 3 times.
- No -> Has free reign to stack 4 times
- BUT – Has he used initiative on other skills?
- Yes -> Can realistically only stack it 2 or 3 times.
- No -> Could have stacked it 4 times
- BUT – Are you within 1200 Range?
- Yes -> Probably stacked it once or twice so he can use Shadow Shot/Backstab combo. Get ready to fight
- No -> Stacked stealth 3 or 4 times so he can get in range.

Which ever situation is your outcome, start counting down. When the duration of their stealth runs lower, the more pressured the Thief is to make the first move. Don’t spam spells other than your #1 skill. Prepare your instant response and be on the lookout for the Shadow Shot bullet. You can 100% nullify backstab if you’re prepared for it. If the count down gets so low that they only have 1 or 2 seconds left then you can assume either:

1. They plan to engage RIGHT NOW. Dodge roll at the ready. They will come out of stealth shorty after evading their backstabs.
2. They plan to restealth through 2/5 stacking. Be aware that a Thief CANNOT stack stealth 4 times after previously stacking 4 times. Their initiative regeneration will only give the Thief enough for a 3 stack. Then a 2 stack the next time, then finally once. They can burn things like Blinding Powder or Steal (Stealth) to delay for regeneration for another 4 stack.

The last things to remember are:

Their Target – Which is you.
Their angle of attack – Your back for Backstab.

You now know how to count down their stealth timer, their target and what angle they want to come at you from. You have all the base line tools to counter a Thieves backstab. With this, those uninformed players who struggle vs Stealth might stand more a chance if they take their time to learn the above.

I use these methods all the time vs other Thieves with good results every time.

Now, this post is relatively specific to D/P stacking but D/P is the most used weapon set for Thief roaming. If you’re upset with perma steath Ghost Thieves, just stand in their blackpowder and they’ll accidentally hit you with Heartseeker or they stop the stack and run of out stealth shortly after or they burn traps in the open on no target to keep stealth uptime.

This method isn’t foolproof as nothing really goes 100% as planned but its a solid point to start at.

Apologies for the long post but I thought I’d share this with everyone. Hopefully it helps deviate a bit of the stealth hate.

I’ll happily answer any questions you may have,
Thanks for reading.

Notsoperky.4291:

I do wonder why anyone bothers spending time coming up with these ideas when you have slightly more chance of winning the lottery than the idea being implemented.

I don’t mind coming up with these ideas, some people (like me) simply enjoy theorycrafting and enjoy discussing it with others. And also I advise against pessimism, it’s no fun ^^

dancingmonkey.4902:

Interesting how they very specifically stated that WvW isn’t intended to be FAIR, and you use that as your argument to incorrectly claim the scoring system needs to be changed, because you do not think it is “fair”

This just proved your reasoning for your own argument to be pointless, because you stated, and provided an official statement proving it is working as intended.

What fine reasoning skills you have! Can you please explain this post to me? https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Invitational-Statement-from-John-Corpening-game-director-for-World-vs-World/first#post5350913

I don’t get it where he says, “Hand in hand with population imbalance is scoring. The current scoring structure allows scores to run away…” Maybe you can help explain? The scoring system is completely fine and doesn’t need to be changed, as you and coglin have so eloquently argued. Like, what is ArenaNet thinking? Why would they think the scoring system needs to be improved? They said very specifically that WvW isn’t intended to be fair and that proves that the scoring system doesn’t need to be changed!

This just in: employees at ANet play their own game and use siege in WvW, to boot.

Get your pitchforks, because how dare they.

This is all part of the new plan for Anet to solve all the complaints about population imbalance.

When there are coverage gaps, Anet will form their own zerg and PvDoor as needed to balance the matchup.

In all seriousness, if you’re in WvW, I have no idea why you’d be angry at the enemy attacking your structures. They’re supposed to. Not attacking your structure when they have a chance would be not playing in good faith. If I were there, I’d wonder why you’re not stopping us.

Buy a siege disabler. That’s way more effective than making a thread. Or actually fight them.

Random.4691:

Well said, it’s good you took the time to do this, most of us just scream and yell and it gets us no where, myself included.

Maybe if we keep this one polite and constructive they will at the very least consider some tweeks.

I’ve found that ppl respond more positively to positive comments. Call me crazy…

When they remove the points system from WvW, then nightcaping will no longer matter. The point system is just bad in every aspect and is no indication of who’s the better server. Just remove it and make it that player kills count with outnumbered buff giving double. Would negate a lot of the annoying karma train BS and actually make people fight instead of running away, this is open world pvp after all!

Fixing nightcapping is the wrong way of doing things, you’re discriminating people only because they don’t live where the main communities do.

What it needs to be addressed is points gained when one server has way more coverage than the others, in any time of the day.

coglin.1867:

You have to keep the same scoring system at all times.

The entire scoring system has to be replaced. The scoring system DOES NOT work fine.

Many of you seem to think that “fixing” the population problems is going to solve the problem. It doesn’t because WvW was never meant to be played by teams of equal size.

FACT: The PPT scoring system is used in Conquest mode sPvP where matches are played by two teams of equal size.
INFERENCE: Teams of equal size are the intended use of the scoring system.

FACT: “Night-capping” can be seen in an sPvP match when a team loses one player to a disconnect.
INFERENCE: The other team is allowed to run away with the score.

Just look at the sPvP forum sometime of players qq-ing about matches with disconnects or players who afk at spawn. And it is thought that somehow population in WvW is going to be “fixed” so that the flaws of the scoring system don’t show?

OPINION: The most practical solution is to change the scoring system!

coglin.1867:

Dawdler.8521:

The answer to that is when a certain player count is reached, WvW goes into “nighttime mode” with lower ppt. This mode would be updated every hour (dont want it to swing back and forth).

That is a very bad suggestion. It is unreasonable to change the rules at various times. You have to keep the same scoring system at all times. This game mode is a 24/7/365 game mode, not one designed or intended to work around your, or anyone else’s schedule.

Any suggestion that offers a bias segregation is terrible.

This. Not only is it unreasonable to change the rules at various times, it’s also highly gameable/exploitable. What would stop servers who are behind on PPT from simply ceasing to play en masse in order to force the match into “nighttime” mode? All of these suggestions about changing PPT based on WvW population or implementing a handicap are subject to this kind of exploitation. Most importantly, they’re systems that in certain situations would reward players for NOT playing. Anet is never going to implement something that has the potential to engender that kind of player behavior.

Seriously, we’ve been back and forth about this with the devs since the game released. The most fair and non-exploitable fix to the scoring issues that we’ve come up with is to slice the match into scoring periods, so that the total amount of potential points a server can accrue during one time block is no more than any other time block (i.e., scores from 5pm to 9pm PST are worth the same amount to the match as scores from 1am to 5am PST).

I wrote up a detailed example of one implementation of this kind of system last time this topic came up in the WvW Scoring CDI discussion, you can look at it here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Scoring-Discussion/page/4#post4474765

Indeed, if they reset it will be months of bigger servers smashing and demoralizing other servers as they climb back up to where they previous held a spot. That, in itself, would likely chase off any new players who opted in for the HoT expansion. Nothing worse than being steamrolled when you’re just learning.

There’s a rumor going around that ArenaNet is going to do something major like reset the ratings off servers. Complete speculation as no one has offered any reasoning or proof for their rumor and IMHO it would be highly damaging to player enjoyment of WvW with weirdly matched servers and demoralizing blow-outs. I can’t see ArenaNet doing something like that.

Perhaps. The current status, however, if you are competitive is well interesting.

Either you get on a server that has overnight coverage.

Or you stop playing wvw and do something else for competitive gaming because there is a tendency for overnight timezones to become extremely lopsided due to the lack of population. Well, overnight is an odd term since these timezones are really during the day for me. It should be called overday.

The second option is the simplest for a player to implement. Honestly, the only reason I am still here is because running around with the guild is fun. The competitive factor in wvw has been a non factor for over a year now, maybe longer.

I always sigh when people are shocked at 40+ year-olds using actual gasp computers. Especially playing games, we are supposed to be using MS office and getting our kids to tell us why our email broke right? I bought my first computer and learned how to program it before high school. Ok, not so uncommon now, but try before the mac even existed.

Is it all too hard to believe that I might actually be playing games now? Get off my lawn.

I’m pretty sure the design effort being put in is not intended to see everyone in the same set of stats again. It’s less to kill zerker meta and more to kill Lone Wolf meta where everybody is the same DPS-with-whatever-support-you-can-cram-in. More than stat-diversification, I bet you they’d like to see some ROLE DIVERSIFICATION.

In that arrangement, there will be a need for skilled ’zerker wearing characters who can dodge every bit of dodgable damage dishing max DPS while a control specialist is negating some of the worst hits and some of the constant unavoidable pressure and a support character is empowering everyone , deflecting and nullifying some of the big hit and refilling HP a bit faster than everyone can (and had better be) healing themselves. And just like now, as your team gets better at the mechanics, everyone shades towards hit-it-harder.

‘Zerker armor is the tool and the reward for experience. New encounters should put us back at the learning stage again where you run soldiers until you’ve got it dialed in. But even then they’re looking to make content where not everyone slides over to ’zerker as they get more experienced.

People who are cheering the demise of the meta will find out in a month or two it will just be replaced with a different one. They nerf direct damage? It shifts to Condis. They introduce unavoidable damage? It shifts to classes that can best handle that damage while keeping up DPS or classes that can allow others to recover (such as 1 healer with 4 DPS being more DPS than 5 people who bring DPS and healing).

Blaming the developers and the content they design is pretty misleading. There’s (currently) no PvE worth being competitive about in GW2 yet it still exists and people still argue about best this or meta that.

It’s really a catch-22 for them because if they make it too hard players will create meta builds that are “required” to do the content at all and if they make it easy enough for any build to do it then people going to use maximum DPS to power through it fast as they can which people still then “require.” Metas are a creation of the player base.

Hey everyone, I thought I would toss this idea out there since we are on the cusp of HoT and the devs seem a lot more active on the World vs. World end of things (I’m optimistic basically). Before diving into it, this idea is not a massive rework of WvW, but could still potentially give good results. Easy to implement = low cost = easy to test. I think something like this would be acceptable and fair in WvW since we all know the scoring system is not competitive 3/4 of the time. Population/timezone imbalances are simply too hard to control. In doing this I would hope that this will smooth out population/timezone imbalance so it is not as pronounced, because there truly is no perfect solution to finding a balance through managing transfers, server WvW activity caps and map caps. I think this idea, while somewhat complicated and has its imperfections (like all great solutions), still gets us to where we relatively want to be while adding some more depth to the WvW experience. Read on!

Revenge
This will be a buff that will appear like the “Outnumbered” buff when the favourable conditions are present. In general it works like this: Gain points based on a percentage of the difference between the score of the server who’s ahead of you and your world’s score for capturing and holding objectives in their territory (referring to total current score, not PPT). For example, if Server A is at 100,000 points and Server B is at 75,000 points, the percentage of points gained from Revenge comes from the 25,000-point difference between the two servers.

When are you eligible to gain the Revenge buff?

• 1st Place: Cannot earn points from Revenge (ineligable)
• 2nd Place: Can earn points from capturing objectives in the first place server’s territory
• 3rd Place: Can earn points from capturing objectives in the first and second place server’s territories

What are the conditions to gaining the Revenge buff if you are eligible?

• You must hold your side of the map before you can gain and utilize Revenge to your advantage (excluding camps). Much like the Outmanned buff, it is effective only on the map you are currently on. You must hold your side on each of the other maps to gain Revenge on those particular maps.
• In Eternal Battlegrounds, your server needs to hold the four Towers and the one Keep that is closest to your spawn.
• In your home Borderland, your server needs to hold the two Towers adjacent to your spawn and the Garrison.
• In the enemy Borderlands, your server needs to hold either Bay Keep and Briar Tower or Hills Keep and Lake Tower depending what side your spawn is on.
• This is done to incentivize defending your own points before going on the offensive and gives counterplay to the other servers to potentially stop you from obtaining the buff. This does not stop the server from earning points from Revenge on an objective they already captured in the 1st place server’s territory.

Once the Revenge buff is active, how do you gain points?

• Example: If you are the blue team and you are in second place, while the green team is in first, you can take and hold objectives in the Lowlands of Eternal Battlegrounds, the two Towers adjacent to their spawn and Garrison on the green team’s home Borderlands and Bay Keep and Briar Tower or Hills Keep and Lake Tower on their enemy Borderlands (varies depending on what side their spawn is). Camps are not included.
• Points are awarded for the initial capture of the objective and each time it is automatically upgraded to another tier. It can therefore award points a maximum of 3 times.
• If you capture an objective in green territory while it is owned by the red team (3rd place), no points will be rewarded by Revenge on initial capture. However, you still earn points from Revenge upon the objective upgrading.

How much does each objective type award?

• Castle: Awards 20% of the difference between the scores of your server and the server you captured it from on initial capture and each time it is automatically upgraded to another tier.
• Keep: Awards 14% " ".
• Tower: Awards 6% " ".

What is the counterplay against with Revenge?

• The server who lost an objective against a server who possessed Revenge can recapture the objective, which will give a time penalty to the invading server depending on how upgraded it is. During this time period they cannot gain any points from Revenge on that particular map.
• This is in place to incentivize the invading server to defend those objectives and to be wary of overextending themselves.
• If the objective is recaptured when it is tier 1, the server is dealt a 30 minute penalty.
• If the objective is recaptured when it is tier 2, the server is dealt a 15 minute penalty.
• If the objective is recaptured when it is tier 3, the server is dealt a 5 minute penalty.
• No penalty will be dealt if the other invading server captures the point instead of the 1st place server (or 2nd place, depending).
• The penalty does not nullify points from Revenge on objectives that the server captured during the penalty that upgrade after the timer is lifted.

In summary, here are some advantages why ArenaNet should seriously consider introducing this after Heart of Thorns has launched: 1) It should do a nice job smoothing out population and timezone imbalances. 2) It is relatively easy to impliment and modify as the mechanic is not “physical” except perhaps some new dynamic events to show the presence of Revenge on an objective. 3) It promotes double-teaming the strongest server naturally without explicit coordination, which will greatly increase the closeness and excitment of matches. 4) It introduces more rules to the highly simple WvW rule-book, therefore adding more richness and depth to the experience. 5) It improves motivation and therefore competitive spirit of servers to win because they always have the feeling that they can close the gap, as opposed to right now which seems like an insurmountable challenge. 6) It gives clearer goals to servers on what to do, therefore allowing for easier participation (an emphasis on integrating GW2’s dynamic event system will be critical to ensure Revenge’s rules are clearly understood). 7) The matches are closer, but the win must still be earned because the bonus points from Revenge get smaller and smaller the closer the scores get (percentage based).

Finally, the Glicko2 rating system would no longer really be of use with this new Revenge mechanic because the scores are going to be inaccurate due to the fact that they will be much closer than they would be otherwise. Therefore, moving away from Glicko to a winner-up/loser-down system (or 1U1D) will be much better. I have made some changes to my idea since the original post and have 2 different options. You can read them below! 1U1D basically means that the 1st place server of a matchup moves up 1 tier, the 2nd place server stays within the tier, and the 3rd place server moves down 1 tier. This happens across the board, creating a large variance of matchups. I firmly believe that adding these two features will retain players better and create a more healthy, competitive and fun environment for WvW in GW2. Thanks for reading!

Update 09/28/2015: Standard 1U1D simply won’t do, because it is too volatile and gives servers too much control over matchups, so I am going to present 2 different variations here that may solve this:

1) A combination between current Glicko-based variance matchups and 1U1D. This will function similar to what ArenaNet has done with Tournaments. The 1U1D matches will come around every other month for 2 weeks, then standard Glicko-matchups will resume for 4 weeks til its time for the next 1U1D portion. What’s different is that there will be no Gold/Silver/Bronze so Glicko adjusts itself across all tiers in the most efficient way possible. Hopefully these bit-sized portions of 1U1D will incentivize the NA servers to better spread out, becuase half the matchups during 1U1D have the potential to be lopsided (or all of them if your regular matchups under Glicko are terribad). This is because the server who is weakest in the tier above you and strongest in the tier below you (assuming you earn second place in 1U1D meaning you stay in your tier) will pay you a visit every other week.

2) 1U1D determines matchups in the following week when a certain server or servers gain or lose Glicko rating above a certain threshold in the current week. I think this one is pretty smart, because the system actually recognizes innaccuracies when they happen and acts to adjust them immediately in the next week. The 1U1D determines the matches week after week until any servers stop losing or gaining above the threshold amount. It would essentially fix what is wrong with Glicko, because the system would actively eliminate innaccuracies, maintain even matchups when no changes are required and allow servers to move up and down the ladder when they need to. Right now I think a number like 25 could be good (as in if a server loses or gain above that value in 1 particular week).

Chaba.5410:

Jayne, just because you spent a lot of time early in this game recruiting for TC when TC didn’t need it doesn’t mean everyone else in NA does. You don’t think anyone in NA tells people not to come either? They come anyway!

Stagnation is caused by players wanting balance, not No. 1.

You say that players in NA just want to be No. 1, but over time many came to realize that that’s boring. So is being on the opposite end of that no fun. Players want balance because the matches are more fun so they’ll go to where they can get it. That’s why T1 became 100% glicko locked. That’s why T2 became 100% glicko locked for the first time in history. It’s also why T3 is now almost 100% glicko locked for the first time in history.

You were gone for a large amount of time from this game when the population in the lower tiers collapsed in such a way that T5 resembled T8 of the past. At one point there were literally no T3-sized servers. And yes, that has a lot to do with Dragonbrand’s SEA population holding that server up around T2-T3 when the rest of the timezones were more like T4-sized. That was not balance so players move. HoT announcement brought a lot of new players and returning players. Without it, WvW would look very different today.

I don’t think you’re correct on this one. What you say could be true if not for the fact that a massive amount, if the not the majority amount, of transfers are to bandwagon servers. Take, for example, Dragonbrand (multiple times, including now, which make no mistake they’re a huge bandwagon right now, Dh is a bandwagon and they slaughtered us), Maguuma (on their rise back to t3), CD (when they were in t4 and in season 2 which saw more of a mini bandwagon), HoD (recently in the HodB fusion, or even bigger during 2nd tourney).

There are many, many more examples I could list, but I hope my point is taken. I think it’s blatantly obvious that people in NA do not move for balance. If they did, we’d have more of an EU situation. Instead, people here tend to move for community and/or position (that is, they like/know/admire some people or the community of server X, OR they like the position and population of server X).

I’ll grant you there’s some definite transfers for balance. But not all are that way in NA, indeed not even most. That’s why we have so many lopsided matches, so many bandwagons going up and down (in fact, as I’ve been here since launch probably like you, in my time I don’t know if there was ever a period without at least one active bandwagon server, maybe for a short time here and there but otherwise don’t think so).

Also the lower tiers collapsed 100% because people transferred upwards (mostly into bandwagons). It wasn’t people quitting or anything like that, as someone who was a member of said lower tiers, it was mostly because people wanted to stack bandwagons or t2 servers.

Ok…so we already know Anets record with balancing this game.

Your solution is to create two more games for them to balance.

Eirdyne.9843:

In Prophecies you’ll experience all of the Lore related to Guild Wars 2. It’s also the most thoroughly complete expansion. It’s entirely possible to go on from that into Eye of North without losing anything on the experience of Guild Wars 1. However, I’d recommend getting Factions as it really was an incredible expansion.

Nightfall is utterly forgettable, time consuming, and nothing really good can be said about it when compared against the others. Each expansion diverged strongly from the original Prophecies toward forcing players into a single way of playing the game. It also forced players into an unnecessary bottleneck where they absolutely had to do missions/story to get very far. This was largely avoidable in Prophecies, Factions, and Eye of the North.

I honestly feel the opposite, at least as far as story goes. Prophecies drones on forever and ever and ever, even before you get to the main meat of the story (or even get your mission book). Nightfall went by quickly, but it still wasn’t so fast that it was forgettable to me. I enjoyed the story just as much as Prophecies (more when I consider how bored I got in Prophecies before getting to Lion’s Arch and then dealing with the Crystal Desert sections).

Plus, doing Nightfall gives you access to heroes right away. And going from there to EOTN as soon as you hit level 10 gives you even more heroes. So, yeah, I think Nightfall is pretty fun and also useful to helping you complete some of the tougher missions from all three main campaigns (as well as EOTN, of course).

You have to learn when to dodge. You have to learn how to move around well while dodging and using skills. You have to keep track of your combos and your CDs along with your movement within combat. This is the best combat system I have played within any MMO and its the reason I’m still playing. The game isn’t based just on hitting skills and keeping track of CDs because thats boring and doesn’t involve much skill…

The way you fight in this game shows your knowledge of the game and your class. You move and use skills well with good timings then you will be rewarded but make mistakes and the enemy can punish you. This keeps the combat fun and entertaining.

Recently (and I may be mistaken), it seems as though the the ArenaNet developers have been much more forthcoming with what’s going on in their fields of development.

For one, we’ve had all that information about what changes they’re making for the BWE’s. Bundled in with this has been clarifications on information on the Scrapper. And the changes back-and-forth with the Daredevil’s dodges. (I think I saw no less than 2 or 3 updates in 1 day on that!)

Further, the devs of PvP have been keeping in touch with the PvP community on how, apparently, the PvP matchmaking got borked. It’s not easy to admit when something gets messed up under your watch, but they admitted something happened, and were even pretty open with exact details!

In short, I have loved this, not only as a player of the game, but also as someone who has a strong interest game design. So I would like to thank the devs who have taken the time to communicate with the players! I very much appreciate it, and I’m quite certain that other people appreciate!

Harper.4173:

It’s too late now for the druid to be scrapped – what I do expect is stuff to be massively broken when strong healers are released – just think of WvW.

Wait for the large groups of druids trolling zergs for hours as the zerg tries to kill them. =P

TexZero.7910:

Purecura.1795:

TexZero.7910:

Purecura.1795:

Now that we have ROLES and harder content in HoT. We need to open up more to the playerbase. Why should every class focus on DPS? That Boring and so not creative in terms of gameplay.

Druid offers a unique approach to gameplay during raids. See it as something new, breaking the old. jesus you ppl whine and complain about stupid kitten

Remind me what’s unique about the Green Bar / Red Bar playstyle again ?
From what i can recall it’s been in every game since well….pong.

Not a very unique playstyle.

Opening up the game to more people i have no problem with, so long as they stop shifting the goalpost on what this game was designed to be.

This game was not designed to be a traditional trinity system….and so far we are coming ever closer to it. For what purpose ? Hard content, Incorporating more players ? Take your pick its as good as anyone else. However if it truly is the later, then these people need to do the proper research into a product before expecting it to be yet another Traditional MMO clone.

See, this is the thing. Guild Wars 2 wanted to get rid of the TRINITY, which resulted in the BIRTH of the super boring, uninspiring, BESERKER META. Which imo is less exciting than the age old TRINITY SYSTEM. There is a huge reason why ANET said that ELITE SPECS, are going to offer unique roles to combat in GW2. If they were fine, and the player base was fine with the ZERK META, then I believe these class changes would not be happening.

But clearly ANET and many others realize they missed their mark on letting the trinity go and incorporating something NEW. Iam not saying you need a TRINITY, but you need to offer something more than just DPS DPS DPS, STACK STACK STACK.

With the elite specs including druid’s healing role, it adds more variety to many unique players who dont want to be forced into ZERK GEAR ONLY PLS.

There was already plenty of variety to begin with.

Tell me how adding a trope of a spec is adding more ? I must surely be missing it.

Also, per forcing players into “Zerk Meta” im sorry, but no one has ever forced you to do anything of the sort. That choice is solely in the hands of players. It was your choice as a person to either conform or reject said meta. Unfortunately too many players are blind to the fact that the “Zerk Meta” is only relevant in speed clearing content and thus adopted it without understanding or knowing why its done.

So sure you may find the current “Zerk Meta” boring, but who are you to force your ideal onto others ? This is the underlying problem with the whole concept of this change. Not once was i asked if i found the Green Bar/Red Bar meta or traditional trinity boring … do i not get an equal voice ?

The thing that everyone misses is that ANET wasn’t intending to fully abandon the Trinity it intended to make a game where you don’t have to wait for a healer or tank or DPS player to be around for you to do missions. Thus in Dungeons any team of 5 can work with either a team with a Trinity style build, a pure Zerker team or an imaginative new team dynamic. Letting players change their roles with the same characters gave them flexibility. The Trinity was supposed to still happen in a way but organically not forced.

Maybe the devs think rangers aren’t getting kicked from groups often enough yet. :p