Guild Wars 2

@Sorrow:

Let me be the first to disagree with the “everyone would love that” assumption!

I think your needs could be -much- better served by ANet introducing an actual GvG mode akin to the Guild Wars 1 one, rather than reshaping WvW into a “no need to participate unless you’re in a large guild” thing. And yes, elevating members of large guilds over smaller ones or guildless players by giving them more recognition and more reward would have exactly that effect. On TC, the -majority- of all WvWers is NOT in one of the larger WvW guilds. WvW is a community effort carried by the whole server. By all means, I will support GvG coming to this game despite I am guildless myself. But in WvW, the only leaderboard that matters is the server ranking list. A guildless person who runs supply or escorts yaks is just as vital to the server’s success as the member of a big WvW guild running with their zerg. I can’t see any good reason to treat players differently just because one is in a big guild and the other one isn’t. That doesn’t make the slightest sense for WvW as a game mode. Like I said, what you’re really looking for is a GvG mode.

Great post with a lot of valid points. I hope they improve the game, because I currently cannot talk myself into logging back on after 3 weeks away.

I have every square inch of WvW memorized and thousands of badges with nothing to do. But hey, Joe blow over there just spent $80 and bought Commander, so let’s follow him.

Dude I read everything and COMPLETELY agree with everything you said. My bro and I have been upset with and complaining about WvW for a few months now, basically saying everything you said and more. It’s sad really that the PvP in this game is such a joke because all ANet does is nerf things that don’t need to be nerfed (just to please the few casuals that come on the forums) and add in things while not fixing the main problems.

I’m really hoping they surprise me with this next update and add some depth to WvW, but we’ll see. Even if this update does go well, they’ll still have a long way to go before they make WvW what we all imagined and hoped it would be.

They need to make this game in general more challenging and deeper or it’ll die out before it turns a year old, and I don’t want this to happen at all!

Geotherma.2395:

That statement was made towards people who said that the November patch changed loot. Which it did not. The problem has been from the beginning, not from that day. So the statement still holds true.

You know what man, you can defend them, and they’re going to say whatever they PR people tell them to say, but as someone who has been around since ~August I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that something changed in November.

We already know they were messing with loot tables in the November 1st patch, where they increased unid dye drops. They probably meant to decrease it and “fat-fingered” the entry. Perhaps this is the patch that screwed things up and it took a couple weeks for people to really notice. Perhaps it was the November 5th patch which again, messed with the loot tables by decreasing the drop rate for unid dyes. Perhaps the Nov 14th patch for DR in dungeons had other consequences or was further reaching than they let on. Then there’s the infamous Nov 15th patch, which had all kinds of loot changes…most notably…

• The mighty Zommoros has slightly increased the drop rate on Legendary precursor weapons from the Mystic Forge from both Rares and Exotics. WRONG
• The drop rarity of Rare and Exotic weapons from certain places in the world (champions, veterans, and players in WvW) has been increased. Rares and Exotics should be much more likely to drop and every champion should be guaranteed to drop loot. This was to ensure that world loot drops were not a significantly worse way of acquiring rare and exotic items than crafting and running dungeons. WRONG
• The amount of loot that drops for downscaled players has been increased. You should now be able to receive level-equivalent loot until you are fighting at a downscaled level that is less than 2/3 of your actual level. You should also receive loot a greater percentage of the time as well as receiving a greater percentage of experience, gold, and karma. For level 80 characters, this means level 55+ areas will be able to drop level 80 gear and give about 75% or so of the other rewards. Previously, these areas would give level 77 gear at best and closer to 60% or so of your rewards. Not sure if this is working, but lots of messing with loot here

Then comes the Lost Shores event where veterans and champions essentially drop nothing for most people. I believe Nov 19th was the first report of the veteran/champion problem I saw, on Reddit, wasn’t it? The chest at the end had incredible rewards but not unreasonable if one had logged in and participated for the entire weekend…much to my wife’s chagrin. If you only logged in and participated on the last day, perhaps you didn’t deserve full rewards.

Shortly afterwards, reports of drastically reduced loot from both open world DEs, such as the Plinx meta in Cursed Shore, and dragon chests start to pour in.

November was a busy month for them and for them to even suggest they didn’t change loot is a complete falsity. What they really mean is that they didn’t change loot in any way they didn’t expect…other than the unid dyes of course…meaning they meant to lower drop rates.

I expect next week’s patch will improve veterans and champs, as per the November notes, however only slightly, but I don’t expect much else to change. i.e. Open world DEs, boss/dragon chests, dungeon chests, chest granting unnamed champions, etc.

Colin said: “Just a reminder, blue is the absolute minimum champs can drop, they have much better odds of dropping good loot than regular mobs, and once you’re properly getting kill credit for them hopefully this becomes more visible.”

I don’t understand why green can’t be the absolute minimum for champions. It takes so long to kill them, that it’s far more efficient to do almost anything else in the game for rewards. Why set up a system where it’s more profitable to kill trash than champions?

That’s a nice little recounting of what happened but you left out a few points:

- Anet acknowledged the possibility of a problem.
- Anet felt the existing thread was insufficient and wanted more data. This doesn’t mean they ignored the thread they closed, more is well… more not the the same stuff they have.
- They created a stickied thread with an Anet post to start it to make it more apparent, official, and hopefully get noticed easier.
- After declaring it an “X-files level conspiracy” they kept working on it. Seriously, think about that for a moment. The problem they found didn’t jump up and slap them in the face after they gave up. No, they kept looking in to the problem.
- Once they found a problem (may or may not be ’the problem) they were big enough people to admit it publicly. Again, think about this. They created another sticky post to say “Hey, we were wrong. There is a problem. Sorry about that.”

Just the fact they made a post to say “We were wrong” is more than you ever get from most companies. Heck it is more than you get from most people.

Sorry but if you’re going to talk about what happened you have to give credit were it’s due and Anet IS due some credit here. Sure they aren’t perfect but the way you tell it it’s like they covered their ears screaming “LALALALALA” until the code jumped out and slapped them forcing them to fix it. Which is obviously impossible and it’s disrespectful to the hard working people at Anet to ignore the time they put in to checking and double checking loot tables and lines of code to hunt down what amounts to a bug.

Colin just confirmed the “loot bug” and guess what, DR has nothing to do with it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Update-on-Loot-Drops-Investigation/first#post1462956

It took months, but we finally have vindication. Good job Anet, can’t wait for the next patch.

Focus discussion/feedback/tears of joy here.

Mirta.5029:

You’re playing with a random generator. The fact that your loot is not good always does not mean that there’s something wrong with it. I ran CoE for days now getting only blues. Went to metrica province to complete my daily, smacked a mob and got a yellow. It’s random. Sometimes you get unlucky for days, sometimes you get real luck streaks.

A valiant but futile effort. People don’t understand randomness.

IMHO: Until 5 players can take 5 of any profession or any mixture of professions and complete pre-programmed content (IE: PvE) with in +/- 20% the amount of time (fastest/slowest) this game is horridly unbalanced.

The last few day’s I’ve spun up Crysis2 and HL2 to ready myself for Crysis3 (midnight tonight). Tomorrow I’ll be playing a high tech FPS and GW2 (and its issues) will be but a memory.

Vol.5241:

Cactus.2710:

Not only did they push out the supposedly big WvW patch, they also toned down the expectations for it. I’m not expecting to be overwhelmed by it. The best case for me is that ANet makes the game tolerable enough to stick with until TESO comes out, but ANet’s lack of responsiveness on key issues doesn’t make that very likely.

So you’d prefer Arenanet to make a big fuss on a huge patch and then subsequently release it full of bugs resulting in a terrible experience.

Gotcha.

Nope. I would have preferred that they didn’t short sheet the game by buying an outdated game engine and scrimping on the bandwidth they purchased. I would have preferred that they had the smarts to code the game so that more of the rendering was handled locally instead of having to be sent each time another player came into view. I would have preferred that that they gave players options for how much of the ability effects were displayed so that there was some control over how much extraneous garbage needed to be processed at both ends. I would have preferred that they were more communicative with the WvW player base to acknowledge key problems, explain what needed to be done, provide some sort of expectation on when they might be fixed, and then actually follow through.

What we’ve gotten instead, six months after the fact, is a promise for a fix that has been watered down and pushed out. That “big fuss” already happened (the Habib Loew post), and the patch is supposed to fix the bugs and terrible experience that already exist …. or have you somehow not noticed all the threads complaining about culls and lags?

I want mobile siege equipment other than a golem! If it has wheels I want it to move!

I also want my dolyak escorts to be rewarded with karma!

Excess supplies that towers and keeps get should be pooled into repairs by the workers.

Only a WvW player would read a 6 page thread called ‘Only a WvW player…’

Only a WvW player would check their map to see the situation and get insta-ganked.

Only a WvW player waits excitedly for the January patch…then the February…then March… =[

Only a WvW player knows what it’s like to be the victim of a 2v1 every day of their lives, and believes they’re the only ones this happens to.

Because 1 person can defend it from 3 people with those guards and the supervisor?

Yes, I’m sure it’s been said plenty before, unfortunately I couldn’t find where or by who so I’ll just go ahead and say it here…

I don’t think world versus world should be required for map completion.

For me, the reasons are: I don’t have a computer that can handle wvw, my friends who I play with don’t have computers that can handle wvw, and I don’t find wvw entertaining. Now, if it was just run up and knock on the door of the forts/keeps/castles, I would happily suffer the humiliating lag-deaths that would ensue, but it’s actually taking the forts and then completing minor jumping puzzles that’s impossible for me. The badges, not as bad honestly. Just sit on siege weapons long enough, you’ll get the kills. However, the feats that require dexerity and a good internet connection are impossible (not that I dislike jumping puzzles in general, as long as I am not having lag/latency issues, they’re a rewarding challenge).

But no, when you sit for 30-45 minutes taking one fort with a random zerg of people, unable to do much but run back after dying or spend money on siege engines that also die for no apparent reason (until you check the combat log, that is), only to be stopped by a juvenile level jumping puzzle, it is extremely disheartening. Add in that your friends didn’t join you because they refuse to wade through the lag fest, and you just have a very, very sad time.

Please, think of the turtles. Because every time a panda gets sad, an octopus dies.

Absolutely agree to this. I’m a recent convert from LOTRO, and the cosmetic system there (while not perfect) is something I would love to see emulated in GW2.

For those unaware, LOTRO has a separate “wardrobe” bank for storage of purely cosmetic clothing/armour. It also has separate a separate section of your character window for cosmetic outfits that override the appearance of your actual equipped gear. For ANet, via the micro transaction market, you can purchase more space in the cosmetic bank and more empty tabs for cosmetic outfits. It also encourages players to spend more time/money on cosmetics collection/purchasing as they know the cosmetics will actually be put to use.

This is an exceptionally good idea that’s well thought out and brings the kind of awesome flexibility and collectibility I experienced in DCUO to GW2.

But whilst I’ve up-voted it, I still don’t see it happening.

ArenaNet probably believe that at the moment, if they leave it the way it is, it will foster infinite investment in fine transmutation stones.
Of course, it doesn’t really work that way, but in theory it does, and that’s good enough for their economist.

Let’s debunk the theory:
Once people have spent a huge amount of gold or time on one particular style, ArenaNet know that players will do a lot to keep that look, even pay for the privilege.
What ArenaNet DON’T see is that it stifles experimentation in both style and gameplay, as players are reluctant to throw away in-game time and gold as well as real world cash in order to try a different build whilst retaining the look they’ve invested so much in.

Let’s face it, even if you’re really fond of your Tier 3 Cultural set, you’re not going to spend 120 gold every time you acquire a new set of armour in order to give it your favourite look.
ArenaNet would LOVE it if you did, but players are so cash poor in this game, this’ll never become commonplace enough for them to profit off of it.

So eventually, because you’re reluctant to change your aesthetic style in order to try a new build, and because acquiring new, top-tier gear requires a big investment of time, chances are, the majority of players will get locked in to one build. And over time, you’ll get bored of that build.
And when you get bored enough, you’ll stop playing.
If you stop playing, you stop paying.

Adopting the OP’s idea would solve this problem and add a whole swath of new goals for the player base to pursue and encourage investment. Sure, it would also require a lot of work on the art team’s behalf in order to keep things fresh and interesting, but hey, you have to work to make money.

And there’s the other rub: now the game’s out of the door, it’s hard to justify spending more money in order to make more, and people like publishers and shareholders aren’t interested. They want their money, and they want it now for no further investment.
That’s why you see the crap you see in the gem store.
That’s why we have copious amounts of RNG.
That’s why we have the current, callous aesthetic model.

It’s all about investors interested in short-term gain with no interest in better, longer term gains through fostering good relations with the player-base.

What about the “day capping problem” ?

Regards,
Oceania

- Fix pet F2 responsiveness.
- Fix pet AoE survivability.
- Fix pet AI so that they don’t run off to random, far-away targets.
- Explain the 40ms shortbow nerf and why each shortbow#1 attack is a lot longer than 40ms.
- Adjust dps on longbow so that other longbow classes can stop laughing at us.
- Explain why BM traits are scattered everywhere instead of the BM tree.
- Fix ‘obstructed’ error with bows.
- Regardless of ETAs, can you please tell us that you acknowledge these problems? Everybody understands you can’t fix things with the wave of a wand, but it would mean a lot to everyone if they knew you were aware of these problems. Not saying anything only leaves us to assume that the developers don’t agree with our suggestions – and that’s OK. Just give us confirmation/closure and we’ll stop nagging.

Is that enough for you?

Daemon.4295:

Anet has been working hard on changes to WvW and PvP.

Wait what, you mean the silly titles and PvE content no one actually wants but that will still be added into Wv3? They surely are working hard!

3 1/2 months since the Oct. 23, 2012 post that changes are coming. Not w word since then. If you’re still hanging on to some little spec of hope then chances are you will be forever. Move on to another class or cough something else. I moved on and am having leaps and bounds of more fun and for free I might add. I stopped wasting my life away here hanging on to that thread of hope. Granted I visit once in a while to see what’s going on.

Sorry to burst anyone’s bubble.