Guild Wars 2

Gaile Gray.6029:

OneYenShort.3189:

If they want to go gender neutral they could use “Cat Wrangler” instead.

I prefer “Cat Herder.”

I’m familiar… or would that be I’m a minion? After all you never own the cat/s.

jul.7602:

I think we share common ground in that wvw would benefit from an improved algorithm that better estimates sever population and coverage and reacts to changes in these parameters, but I disagree with you (and others) that say a faulty algorithm is the cause of population balance, and here is why.

To make my point more clear, I will cite previous wvw match ups and servers because they are just as relevant in explaining the fundamental problem in population balance.

The power differential between servers is so huge that it I believe it is impossible to create truly competitive and balanced match ups between servers, even with links. For example, in the current state no individual server can field enough players to be competitive with Blackgate. The next largest server, Jade Quarry, while not as big as Blackgate is substantially more active than arguably the next largest server Fort Aspenwood. The rest of the servers follow a similar pattern.

Even if we had the best possible matchmaking algorithm money can buy, it will be impossible to create a competitive and balanced match up when the servers themselves have huge disparities between them when it comes to population and coverage. Take the following made up distribution

#1.Blackgate: Population strength10 l Coverage-8
#2.Jade Quarry: Population strength 6 l Coverage-8
#3.Fort Aspenwood: Population strength 5 l Coverage- 4

#4.Sea of Sorrows : Population strength 4 l coverage-3
#5.Maguuma: Population strength 4 l coverage 3
ect. ect.

Analyzing this distribution which more or less describes recent match ups, there is simply no way to create a balanced match up because there is too much disparity between successive ranks of servers. Even if we could someone match the “closest” servers together you could very easily end up with a complete wash. This problem continues even at lower “tiers”- the top ranked server of one tier has historically almost always been annihilated if the move up a tier.

Admittedly, this is probably the chief reason why we have server links in the first place because it allows anet to automatically boost a server’s manpower between matches to allow them to be more competitive, but again this comes with it’s own set of drawbacks which I’ll outline briefly.

1. Server relinks are too slow and by the time anet gets around to relinking them, people quit the game, guilds transfer and communities dissolve.
2. Server relinks absolutely destroy server identity for the linked servers. If you’re not proud of your server’s identity, there is very little to stop the average person from bandwagonning. Not that I blame them for playing with friends, just saying in the long run it can cause problems
3. Introduces too much randomness. Linked servers are cheaper to transfer to and can fluctuate almost immediately after server links which because of problem #1 make match ups even worse.

To conclude this long post, my belief is that if we can reset the servers, get rid of half of the servers, and enforce server population caps (which seem a little sketchy, how can JQ and BG both be full when JQ is barely competitive with two servers to help them.) so that it closes immediately upon reaching a threshold, the we will end up with a lot less servers, but these servers will have the games population distributed among them more evenly. With properly distributed servers, we can enjoy more competitive and varied matches.

That’s the thing; it’ll always be flawed given 1:1 pairings. I think a major stride ANet made was linking different numbers of servers together to face another one.

So it could be something like BG vs all of T1/T2 vs the entire rest of the game one week, maybe splitting hairs on low-impact servers into other tiers another week. In all reality, the very notion of tiered lists doesn’t need to exist, and should be susceptible to change dynamically week-to-week.

Friendly fire would be a nice addition to kick fellow players off a wall into the fights.

Friendly fire would certainly break the zerg meta. Roamers would be gods and I would demand bags as tribute.

No stealth week would be nice.

I like the siege ideas!

How about each person claiming the Obsidian Sanctum chest grants your server points and/or some other server benefit? That’d make that map a combat zone in a hurry.

Go big or go home – players deal siege damage and siege deals player damage.

Stack on gates and walls to melt them, no structure is safe.

Siege scales based on player stats, healer builds can get huge heals from treb #5 on zergs, glassy builds can one shot groups with cannons, etc.

Most people hate when Anet adds these gimmick weeks but I find them fun. Ridiculous or not, it’s a fun change of pace and it’s only temporary. I’d totally be fine with another trollish event that makes 75% of the playerbase angry because they can’t take a joke.

Oh yeah… definitely Friendly Fire for a few hours… because there would be too much rage if it went longer than that.

Blast them fields boys!!

Or maybe Friendly Fire from siege, so fighting under AC or Cannons hurts both sides. Close catas to the walls splash damage would kill you too…

I like the post Haematic, can we have it in french?

In a recently deleted thread, I pointed out that Anet needs to do more to encourage guild-centric play in WvW.

Why?

Because WvW is boring without guild rallies – no matter the size. When all a server has to offer is a casual militia blob, that kills the fun for a lot of players as well as makes the activity on the server dependent upon a small number of pugmanders rather than a larger number of guilds. WvW should not be a numbers arms race.

Sabull said it best in his posts on this old thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/pvp/Food-for-thought-for-ArenaNet/page/2#post5011003

“Essentially our dream (and I’m sure many of you hold the same) was and is that lets say with a zone cap of “100” we have 4 guilds of 20 guys from each server in the zone, with 20 left for roaming/camp parties and afkers (20/20/20/20/20). Instead what we have had (50/30/0/0/20).”

This is what “guild-centric” WvW looks like, with protections from a blob being created for roamers, scouts, and small havoc guilds to play WvW their way.

Guilds running separate not only allow for more fight options in WvW, they also help equalize numbers in fights so that population imbalances don’t seem so outsized. It also reduces skill lag because fights remain at a size the servers are capable of processing.

“GvG was born because WvW should be more like “GvG” (equal numbers, 20man guild centered).” “GvG (or large-scale TDM) did not born for e-sports, it was never about e-sports, ques, instanced arenas, pricepools, money. It was born to make WvWvW BETTER!”

Many ideas have been floated in the past to help steer WvW towards more guild-centric play. My post isn’t to summarize those ideas, only to shout out once again to Anet that guild-centric play is what really makes WvW tick and that’s what you need to focus on encouraging. You only have to examine the server transfer trends into other tiers/servers where there are actual guilds to fight against, not casual militia blobs.

That’s probably my favourite ever April Fools joke. It was doubly funny for me because I saw the announcement saying you’d be able to preview it in GW1 and to look for the guy next to the helicopter, so I went to the zone ready to laugh at people trying to find him and nearly fell off my chair laughing when I found there actually was a helicopter and a commando and you really could play as one.

But the whole announcement is brilliant. People had been saying every new profession they unveiled was obviously OP and would have a massive unfair advantage…and then they came out with that.

I am currently trying that with FF14, and while I have to say a lot of things Gw2 does spoil me for other MMOs, at the same time I cannot help but think just how much more developer attention is visible in FF14. Probably as a result of having a subscription and hence a lot more money and a more dependable income to work with.

And that’s FF14. A game already criticized for not getting enough attention from their developers.

So yeah, good things and bad things. I feel GW2 should learn more from other MMOs. Much as the unique elements like zone downleveling or freely shared combat participation are awesome, class design and skill/talent balance and design works better in other MMOs, and there’s no shame in copying systems proven to work.

it would also be a way to completely destroy the content as all purpose and sense of accomplishment will get smeared out like 1 spoon of butter on a million slices of bread

ArchonWing.9480:

OriOri.8724:

The fundamental problem with just making bags bigger is that eventually people are going to fill them up too, and demand even bigger bags. And it all comes down to inventory management.

There are people going back and forth in this thread about what is and isn’t essential, but I can guarantee that even if we had 40 slot bags, there would be a similar argument after people got used to being able to carry twice as much kitten in their bags. Then even more items would be considered “essential” to always carry around. Its all a matter of convenience.

Yes, there are a lot of things Anet could do to help (all currencies in the wallet, all crafting mats in mat storage, tonic/toy wardrobe etc….), but making bag sizes bigger won’t fix the inventory management problem.

Of course, someone will complain no matter what, but I don’t think those people should be considered in any legitimate discussion. There are people that will be able to intelligently make use of whatever new space they have.

I mean what’s there to really lose? Let’s say instead, they pick the better alternative of making us able to have 10 bags (so 200 max). They might make more gem sales, and some people might be made happier. The people that can’t manage their inventory will remain unhappy, but that’s nothing lost since they’d be unhappy anyways. Who would it really kitten off? People that are really proud of inventory management? There might be technical issues with the matter, but that is something that only Anet can decide.

I do think people shouldn’t be phrasing things as “need”, since reality dictates you don’t really need much in a video game, but wants can and will drive things.

Then how come 160 slots isn’t enough space for them to “intelligently make use of the space they have”? Why would more bag space help them if it all comes down to just intelligently using the space you are given? It wouldn’t. It would just delay the problem.

Inventory management is the problem here, and the game doesn’t make it easy that’s for sure. There are a lot of things Anet should be doing to make it easier, but in the end making bags bigger, or offering more bags, won’t solve the actual problem. All it will do is hide it from people for a bit longer.

Let me prestate, that personally I find ArchonWings inventory management fine. With 52/160 slots used he is no where near where I would consider a bigger inventory is required. The suggestions I made were mostly of a possible nature to give people reading the thread an idea of what CAN be done inventory management wise.

OriOri.8724:

The fundamental problem with just making bags bigger is that eventually people are going to fill them up too, and demand even bigger bags. And it all comes down to inventory management.

A very good point. I was trying to show that essentially it comes down to inventory management and when its necessity arises. The reason I’m sort of picky in this regard is because I was at the exactly same spot, I would literally save every single item that MIGHT be useful. Once I realize that 70% of the stuff was “there just in case” but maybe saw use once every full moon, I reorganized and rethought what I lug around. Does it bother me that I don’t carry around the birthday blaster? Sure it did in the beginning, now not so much. Would I love to have the exact boost with me in form of food or boosters on those occasional grind/farm trips? Sure, but the world or the game won’t end for me if I don’t.

Elothar.4382:

Take item A that drops here and combine it with item B that drops there and make item C which is then used with item K to make food to feed some plant with a special feeder that you carry. Oh…and while this is going on, you have item G that you must use with item X to have a chance to get item Z that might help you make item A.

This is the actual culprit. In my opinion wacky gamedesign. The amount of influx in temporary material items that need to get carried around and new currencies that have no materialbank slot yet. This is no inventory problem though and if not fixed will cause an even bigger problem in the future even with bigger inventories (which are automatically more expensive to get).
We should be asking for better gamedesign from arenanet in this area, not for bandaid fixes in form of temporary size increases.

OriOri.8724:

We don’t need bigger bags, we need better inventory management. Currencies should all go in the wallet. All base and 1st tier refined crafting items should be in mat storage. That would already free up a lot of spaces in most people’s inventories. The rest is just on you

Let’s not forget a Bookcase for all those logs/journals/historical items, instead of carrying them around. Especially since every new LS3 map seems to have a journal set as a collection. I don’t mind the extra lore component, but it’s a chunk of inventory bloat that could be better managed.
Something like: 1- Complete book item/collection, 2- Right click completed Book, Send to Library. Boom, item disappears and the entry shows up in the home instance library or some kind of Lore tab.

Bigger bags is a bandaid. The fix would be:

• Not spamming us with crazy amounts of green and blue items.
• Drop cash, directly.
• Drop crafting mats, directly.
• That’s it. Done.

Illconceived Was Na.9781:

We each make individual choices about what we consider essential, useful, or unnecessary. It hardly matters if any of us agree with ArchonWing’s choices, as long as ArchonWing agrees with them.

The question is whether the game needs to support people carrying everything with them or not. Clearly, ANet’s answer is “no” — the game expects us to make choices about skills & traits; this is hardly different.

The follow-up is therefore: how many items should we be able to carry with us? Currently, that limit is 177 = 8 bags of 20 slots + 17 shared inventory slots.

Surely, that’s enough for anyone who doesn’t regularly swap entire sets of armor via their bank.

So we can restate the issue as: should the game make it easy to swap entire sets of armor without the inconvenience of visiting the bank?

---

Again, I’ll be first in line to purchase more slots; I can always use more space. However, I think the game already has one of the most generous limits, especially considering how convenient it is to get to a bank, merchant and especially since we have salvage-all and deposit-all.

I think nearly everyone who thinks they need more slots would actually be better served by spending a little time learning faster/easier/more-efficient inventory management. Like any other skill, some people pick it up easily and some people need some training.

Well, the way I see it, the game has changed over time, and I don’t think it’s unreasonable to think certain things don’t have to be sacred. I mean, look at bank tabs for example, which have been growing over time. I think they’ve seen a need for people to carry more crap even though I really feel that there’s no real need to store 14 tabs worth of crap unless you’re really into speculating stuff. And even that is dubious in many cases." So I have 10000 mithril that tripled in price! That’s…. 100 more gold. Yea…"

No doubt people would be better off simply learning to play the game, and it’s something I actively encourage instead of , heh, complaining but I do see where people are coming from. Shared Inventory Slots are very expensive, and bag slots being bound to a single character also make it quite the expensive proposition.

And convenience for the sake of a want, not a need, has long been a thing in the gem store. I bought the node pack as it was on sale lately and also got the winterberry bush, so I can easily do the gatherer daily from town. Do I really need that to do a gatherer daily? No, I wouldn’t even recommend doing such a thing to anyone. But it’s just nice to have.

So I think it’s just better to talk in terms of QoL rather than in-game efficiency since while these complaints definitely overlap with these things, there are also situations which it really doesn’t as Tom.6478 has brought up.

OriOri.8724:

The fundamental problem with just making bags bigger is that eventually people are going to fill them up too, and demand even bigger bags. And it all comes down to inventory management.

There are people going back and forth in this thread about what is and isn’t essential, but I can guarantee that even if we had 40 slot bags, there would be a similar argument after people got used to being able to carry twice as much kitten in their bags. Then even more items would be considered “essential” to always carry around. Its all a matter of convenience.

Yes, there are a lot of things Anet could do to help (all currencies in the wallet, all crafting mats in mat storage, tonic/toy wardrobe etc….), but making bag sizes bigger won’t fix the inventory management problem.

Of course, someone will complain no matter what, but I don’t think those people should be considered in any legitimate discussion. There are people that will be able to intelligently make use of whatever new space they have.

I mean what’s there to really lose? Let’s say instead, they pick the better alternative of making us able to have 10 bags (so 200 max). They might make more gem sales, and some people might be made happier. The people that can’t manage their inventory will remain unhappy, but that’s nothing lost since they’d be unhappy anyways. Who would it really kitten off? People that are really proud of inventory management? There might be technical issues with the matter, but that is something that only Anet can decide.

I do think people shouldn’t be phrasing things as “need”, since reality dictates you don’t really need much in a video game, but wants can and will drive things.

The fundamental problem with just making bags bigger is that eventually people are going to fill them up too, and demand even bigger bags. And it all comes down to inventory management.

There are people going back and forth in this thread about what is and isn’t essential, but I can guarantee that even if we had 40 slot bags, there would be a similar argument after people got used to being able to carry twice as much kitten in their bags. Then even more items would be considered “essential” to always carry around. Its all a matter of convenience.

Yes, there are a lot of things Anet could do to help (all currencies in the wallet, all crafting mats in mat storage, tonic/toy wardrobe etc….), but making bag sizes bigger won’t fix the inventory management problem.

Fluffball.8307:

Katastroff.1045:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compulsive_hoarding

What would you throw away in Archon Wing’s screenshot? The siege because you don’t play WvW? The armor because you only use one set in one game mode? More than half my inventory is full before I even leave LA with stuff I use regularly.

And then the bag within a bag plagues the rest of my experience.

The funny thing is a lot of serious pve’rs would note the lack of dungeon specific potions stuff and multiple redundant weapons with night sigils or whathaveyou. That kind of stuff gives me headaches, and I’ve spent many of my years playing this game trying to think of stuff that doesn’t need to be there.

More casual folks are still going to have instruments, tonics and toys that they would appreciate easy access to. This isn’t even about hoarding. This is about using the expensive toys they paid gems for.

And also note that I’m usually the one to go to people “omg throw that away; how do you even play with 120 slots taken!” And yes, I know of people that keep random story items because one day Anet might remember! I also think it’s a really stupid idea to devote bank tabs storing t7 mats, and hearing people buy tabs for that is pretty cringe.

But yea, with a few exceptions, I can explain fairly easily every single item is there. And if I were to suddenly add 1-2 more builds I wanted to use, then that would suddenly bloat things fast.

Always has and always was a community issue. People choose to over stack servers, not Anet.

Swamurabi.7890:

It should have said, " Entrance into SAB is now in Eternal Battlegrounds"

Or even better, end of OS jump puzzle. All that ganking going around again.

I think it’s about time it should be megaservered.

Anet, pls, make this happen
+1

Pandas, thank you for writing this up! This would be fantastic on so many levels.

+1