Guild Wars 2

ColinJohanson.2394:

It’s worth noting, while they said we’re not working on new versions of the home maps currently, they didn’t say anything about new maps in general…..

Also I’ll throw out that the work our WvW guys are doing on culling and progression systems are extremely large, these are feature systems unto themselves. For example a lot of the culling work requires re-building almost entirely the way our game compiles, loads, and handles assets in general. For many companies, this task could literally years, we’re trying to pull it off in a matter of months, these guys are rock stars.

I know some of you got the impression there isn’t much development going on here, but I was to clarify you couldn’t be more wrong. There is a boat load of very serious WvW being done, much of it they discussed in this interview. Major features require many month long projects, our hope is you’ll start seeing the major fruits of those labors starting in our February update.

You’ll hear more details from our WvW team once stuff gets closer to finalized and tested, but we think you’re going to be thrilled with the stuff that’s coming. As an old DAoC fan, I’m freaking stoked about what these guys are doing.

ah yes the standard mmo company line “we have so much good stuff but can’t tell you yet, please dont quit!”

An easy new set of maps to add, would be to do what the original Planetside did. Just make a series of new maps, one for each borderland and one for EB that are underground . The underground maps would limit areas where you actually need to code for siege, invulnerability areas, etc. and be pretty quick to implement.

You could then later add another set of maps that take place in the clouds above each BL and EB.

The biggest problem with WvW is that none of the developers working on it seem to be aware of what the people playing WvW actually want.

It would be benefical to them to look at this thread and to take from it not just the ideas, the the feeling – we are not happy with the changes you have made, we want different things than you are offering. We’re not asking for much, just a few simple changes to make it WvW – not PVE – and to make it more managable and enjoyable, which will in the long run keep more people playing.

As for things that are really in need of change in WvW – get rid of the PVE break out event (if only in the top 3 tiers) it’s so uneeded, as someone mentioned for culling placeholders would be a fairly simple fix to a huge problem, and fix the balance of money earnt / spent to upgrade in WvW. As a large WvW guild I cover around 50g a day to upgrade two borderlands, not including siege needed. I don’t PVE and neither does my guild so we don’t get free money from dungeons, a nice income from WvW would be appreciated. That last point is a selfish one, it costs a bomb to upgrade everything

But really the main thing – involve WvW guilds and players in the choices made in changing WvW.

//Wrex

In spite of all the short attention span insta gratification whining contained within this thread there are also some really great ideas so I suggest people who actually care about WvW maybe stop being so bitter and try to be a touch more realistic with their demands. I know 3.5 months seems like a long time for you younger generation gamers but for those of us who played games like UO, DAoC and EQ for 6 or more years, this is only the beginning and we are here for the long haul.

The only bit of this interview that stuck me a little bothersome was the overly optimistic idea of never needing to plan for game population shrinkage when of course no game can expect to be continually growing in population endlessly without peaks and valleys, especially one that is buy-to-play where population size is likely to be roller coaster for the long term (not there is anything wrong with that). With all their awesome on the fly population tech, they should be planning ahead ways to shrink and grow the worlds as needed for the best experience possible for all players month to month.

The way to effect real change is not to burst into temper tantrums and throw around negativity storms to scare other players away or create a false sense of failure but with positive reinforcement and constructive ideas. I am just going to quote 2 of the larger collections of solid ideas in this thread that WvW devs are likely looking to for their Feb update. I would be excited to see any one of these options added to the game and am looking forward to seeing what they have in store for us come February. Until then, there is still plenty of fun to be had out there in WvW so enjoy and chill a bit.

Ardrin.7491:

…an herald, some title/ranks that we can achieve by doing things (killing peeps, taking keep/garrison/tower/supply camp or even doing escort mission with dolyaks)…
Bring back the Orbs, changing the boost they give (like old DAoC relics), take away that crappy altar from up north and place there the Garrison as a Orb Keep, with better guards/door/walls… so taking it (and claiming the Orb) would be a real siege; and make that they works if you have your borderland Orb…
…get my ascended gear through WvWvW instead of doing everyday fractals..

jkctmc.8754:

Guild Commander Tags – These are tags only guild members can see. Make them show as a gold icon on the map.

Orbs – These should be keep specific items that are captured, and moved to a keep to strengthen those who fight “inside the keeps”.

Guild buffs placed on claimed keeps – These should be zone wide for the guild.

Reward system: Defense reward system kind of sucks because you constantly see the timer tick to zero, while the enemy is still beating on the gate, and you do not get rewarded. This is the best place to reward PUGs, or give PvE players a reason to leave PvE, and defend keeps/towers thier server owns. To encourage more participation in a defense, a person should be rewarded every single time the defense timer ticks to “zero”, even if the enemy is still beating on the wall/gates.

UI Changes: I think the most important UI change should be putting a place where we store our consumables so we don’t have to open our bags to use them.

Supplies, more importantly supply runs: The 15 supply buff from guilds should be a 20 supply buff “AT” supply camps, and players should be allowed to assist keep/tower workers in thier upgrades, allowing them to run to a supply camp, pick up supplies, and go click on the “structure” being upgraded inside the keep/tower. That alone would solve a lot of problems for guilds trying to do upgrades.

Road Marker “Banners”: These should emit a pulsing buff (600 radius) for 10 seconds of swiftness, instead of the need to click on them for a buff for 20 seconds of swiftness. This would require more to be used, and allow for a better synergy, with use. Also there is a major bug with these that makes them disappear too early.

Warrior I’m seeing fewer, and fewer banners in WvW, probably because they’re tedious. To assist Warriors out, I thik once they pick up a banner, it should put the banner on thier back, or the back of the person carrying the banner. Allowing for them to carry the banner, and utilize their weapon skill set. This is a UI change, basically making “F8” the banners special buff, like Banner of Disc’s “Fury Buff”, and making “F9” the Banners Swiftness buff. This would allow for one Warrior to provide multiple banners to be moved by multiple people in a large scale fight, without losing the weapons they’ve traited for. It would also be cool if the banners represented the guild the Warrior belongs to.

This thread is epic! A lot of people were throwing ideas in the same direction. Anet, please stop babbing around by yourself and start listening to your community!

Many great comments/suggestions were here! Please take time and read!

dreztina.4820:

Zerging will always be the preferred way of play in open combat, and zergers will always make up the majority of the playerbase. Instead of making the game worse for zergers, you should be looking at ways that’d make things a little easier for smaller groups without hurting the biggest part of the playerbase in a significant way.

Agreed. Unfortunately this is the same reason small groups are unlikely to receive attention.

I’m tired of zerging being the primary tactical of Meta of GW2, after nearly a thousand hours spent in WvW I’m tired of it. The bigger zerg usually(not always) wins, the lag is horrible, and culling effects are at their worst. But worse, it promotes a stagnant boring type of gameplay that is not conducive to making people enjoy WvW.

So lets break the zerg Meta. Let’s give Anet some easy workable solutions to start to push the Meta away from the zerg. Simple stuff that doesn’t require much coding or new content. Just tweaks of existing mechanics and content.

Here’s is the sort of stuff I would like to see,

-Take away orange swords on the map.
-Take away contested swords on the map.
-Add a true day/night cycle(like really, really dark).
-Add severe weather. Thick fog banks, or blizzards(like in certain Fractals).
-When hit by a catapult, players are instantly downed(not just knocked down).
-When hit by a trebuchet, players are killed instantly(no downed state).
-When hit by a siege weapon while in a downed state, players are instantly killed.
-No 5 target cap for siege weapon damage(Arrowcarts especially).
-No 5 target cap for AoE player spells.

Just these minor changes would radically change the tactical aspects of WvW for the better.

What do you guys think? I’m sure some of you have even better suggestions to help improve the tactical stagnation in WvW.

gee imagine low population during one of the biggest holidays of the year and while a PvE event is going on.

Riddickk.7091:

Just wanted to give some props to those who were defending FABL today. Good fights and good job on watching your keeps/towers. (PRO guild)Definitely spoiled a few ninja attempts from us. Even though we were outmanned the majority of the time we still kept trying to be a thorn in your side. I hope we earned your respect especially after a group of 10 of us were able to fend off 30-40 FA trying to recapture Greenvale via waypoint spawn rushing for the better part of an hour approx 4:30-5:40 est. Gave us a chance to showcase our strategy and tactics against a numerically superior force.

Thanks. We were actually defending for like 6 hours before you guys came too lol. IoJ threw golems at Briar tower with the breakout commander on three seperate occasions. IoJ eventually got that tower, didn’t find my mes so I ported our forces back inside, recapped it and they left the map shortly after. Shout out to [uA] and [AVTR] as well, good fights.

Some exciting fights in FA BL, both servers are like hungry wolves in our borderlands. I was the mesmer who kept finding you guys. I waved when you got caught with superiors at Bay water wall. You had us worried at Longview with gate at 10%, you sure aren’t shy of using superiors! CD is still bashing their faces on our other tower as we speak.. about 20-25 breakout attempts so far. We def had more numbers than you at the end when IoJ mostly map hopped.. really didn’t have 30-40 people on the map though, I wish we did! You should go play with CD BL next time, we enjoyed our stay in their garrison..

You must realize that you are missing out on a ton of gem purchases since your holiday fashions are relegated to being town clothes. Please return to a “costume” option for town clothes (or at least make them armor skins), and completely remove the less than stellar town brawls. Horridly horrid plan of action atm. Seriously.

Some dyes are coded as having metallic or leather texture. If the armor is also coded as metallic, you’ll get reflection like that.

What’s cool is some light armor has parts that are also metallic and will shiny if you dye it appropriately.

absolute spot on article and i fully support it. They forgot to mention that guild wars 2 has NO SPOT FOR GUILDS AT ALL. Guilds give you a glorified chat program, which is maybe a step up from shouting LFG in all channels. Instead, you have an extra channel with people who may or may not like you. And it only works for certain dungeons, ie. it does not work for fracts, because if someone in the damn group is 1-2 levels above you in fracs, hell 10 levels above you, they wont run it with you. WHy should they, they already had to stand in lions arch or using gw2lfg.com to find a damn group to do the stupid fracts already… i dont get mad at them because im standing in the same damn location shouting the same thing.

wake up anet, are you listening?

pot.6805:

All siege disappeared in SoR garrison because it was superior. SoR had no resistance taking back their garrison. So sick of these resets.

Same happened to us in your Garrison. Except we facerolled your zerg while having 4 walls down and the inner gate at <10%

All siege disappeared in SoR garrison because it was superior. SoR had no resistance taking back their garrison. So sick of these resets.

This song keeps going through my head as TCers rush back to point to fight the good fight:

No, no! TC is harmless! I promise! We’re here by mistake alone and will go back to where we belong in a week!

<— plays a Mesmer.

WvW needs a little more love and attention. Couldnt agree more.
- Stop Transfers…
- Get rid of AG-stats in WvW
- Get rid of roaming-and-Always-Adding-PvE Mobs
- …add more pve mobs to PvE Camps instead!

- More Raid/Squad leader functions (player roster/raid channel etc.)
- Make/introduce achievements with more visual style (having title is nice…but if it would come along with some emotes / ladder board / grafical aura…)

- …and culling-fix,ofc
- …and maybe additional tactical elements (barriers, deployable traps…)

VikToRiuS.5426:

Aye.8392:

Having played Guild Wars 1 I would have sworn that A-Net was one of the best game designers in the world, but this company, as it exists now, isn’t very good at what they do.

Wow, and all this because they didn’t make one activity perfect on the first try? Who are we to decide that a game company can’t make small mistakes too at times? They are only human.

In my opinion the one and only real reason why people are upset about getting in already running games is the achievement.

Sure, it would be fun to do with a group of friends too. And I hope they’ll implement it at one point. But I seriously doubt that this one activity would be a game breaker for any reasonable person.

Only real problem I have with it game design wise is that it takes too long to complete, and the pause between waves isn’t enough to do anything. It needs some more balancing.

And the achievement and dead doylak problem could be remedied easily as well by resurrecting all of them after each wave and giving out points for every good wave, as I’ve stated before already.

It’s just one more example of what appears to be a great company falling into a serious slump. It gives the impression that some designers/developers just have no pride in their work and are oblivious to the customers they are supposed to be designing content for.

They seem to like to insure us that they did indeed anticipate some of the issues ahead of time, so we don’t think they were blind to the obvious, but then that always raises the question “Then why didn’t you do it the right way from the start”?

I’m very happy that this rather large event was pretty much bug free. They also did listen to some of our input from the Karka disaster and from Halloween. That’s good and I applaud them. However, this tendency to do things they apparently know are going to cause ire among the community is just baffling and is the next major flaw that needs to be addressed with the live teams.

Look at things from the player’s perspective and design to them. If you really do realize in advance that a design decision will annoy and anger, usually for no good reason, than redesign it or avoid such designs in the first place!

It was obvious that friends would want to play this together. The universal lack of grouping support for activities is baffling to begin with and should be addressed. These are activities you play for fun, there really isn’t much reward associated with any of the activities we have seen since launch. They pretty much all have much more appeal to players if people can join with friends. So, the design flaws related to this go back a long ways and have only skated by unaddressed for so long because of the general lack of the promised number of activities that were hinted to be available at launch.

The best investment of resources might have been to fix that flaw of the activity system so that Toypocalypse could have been a party supporting activity. Barring that, it should never have been set up as an activity in the first place and should have been set up in the same exact frame work as the various other Tixx instanced events!

We all know it was doable. Why it wasn’t done properly is the question that digs at the fans and sours what should have been a fun experience.

Ardenwolfe.8590:

It does matter. It is one event. Not fifty. It’s not a requirement as far as character progression. There’s no noteworthy reward. As far as never being added, I disagree.

I suspect that this was added in this way for the casuals who returned to the game for the holidays and to see what’s what. So, in a way, it’s to help those without a guild, group, or friends who aren’t playing the game with them.

Yes, you can voice your disappointment. But, please understand just because you dislike something, doesn’t mean it’s game-breaking or a tragedy because it was added.

I know quite a few casuals who are grateful they didn’t have to beg for a group before trying this. And, if this lasts a week or so, the chances of getting group thins quite a bit.

That’s probably another reason for this.

There are PvP systems in the game that allow for a partial group to be finished with randoms. What they have done with Toypocalypse is display incredibly poor and short-sighted game design. Since it is their business to design games this is a rather serious issue. It calls into question the company’s ability to make core decisions such as which system to use to create new content. That’s a pretty basic concept. It isn’t just about one instance in one event — it’s about competency in game design.

Having played Guild Wars 1 I would have sworn that A-Net was one of the best game designers in the world, but this company, as it exists now, isn’t very good at what they do.

Hei guys, we already bought the game, so (as ARENANET said before SELLING the game) the gem store should have been a plus, not their main money income.
Now they throw in the gem store high demand items, some of them total RNG also account bound.
(“no dude, you cant sell your third snowman mini, pay another 30 bucks to try finding the other ones”)
And 350 gems for a mini IS a total rip-off.
Had they done a 3-mini bundle like the halloween one there would be little to no complain.

Doesn’t matter if it’s cosmetic or whatsoever, don’t say “nobody force you to have them” because also “nobody force you to play a game” and you’ll also complain when they’ll throw in something you want and thought you could get only by playing normally.

p.s. forcing us to farm gold to buy gems (with a variable change-rate) is not playing normally.
p.p.s. nobody wants things for free, if we had a daily for 50 cogs to build the toys minis no one would have said “give them us for freeee” beacuse complaining for the impossibility to get it normally isn’t the same as not have the will to “work” for it.

When I started playing this game it was the first thing I searched for and it still really annoys me that it still hasn’t been added yet, in fact it almost made me quit and get a refund. I know what everyone is going to say. “Every game started out without it and added it later,” yeah, but that’s not my point. This is a skill based game, those with disabilities shouldn’t be punished especially one that makes the gaming experience so awful.

It makes the game so incredibly hard especially for dungeons and it isn’t fun. One dungeon in particular is so stupid hard that I am never doing it again until a colorblind mode is added and that dungeon is FotM. I have done just about every dungeon and believe me when I say, dying to some bosses almost one shot ability because you couldn’t see either the red ring on the ground or and color change on the ground at all, makes the experience of game based on skill very, very bad. It causes me to die pretty often in dungeons, upsets the group and some groups even make fun of me for it. It can even make PvP very frustrating.

So far, this game is not a great experience. It was fun for a short time; experiencing the new style of dungeons with no set tank or healer, leveling I guess, if you liked the leveling, and new style of skill based PvP. But it’s not fun when you can’t really do them without 100+ deaths.

tl;dr: I can’t see anything, the game is not much fun anymore, I love getting punished for having a disability. Thanks Arenanet!

Don’t respond with, “If you take damage move” or anything along those lines. I in fact do. It’s the only thing I can do, but I am a great sword warrior dps so I’m melee and I’ll usually just end up running into more crap that I can’t see. Don’t say, “Change builds” no other warrior build is fun to me. Don’t say, “reroll a different class” no other class appeals to me besides a mesmer and that makes things worse. On top of that I find leveling in this game very boring and plus it is hard for me because I can’t see the enemies aoe attacks.

Some more info: If you ask me what my favorite color is, well it’s definitely a shade of grey. I’m not completely colorblind, but the majority of colors are invisible to me and the very few colors that are visible to me are just a jumbled up mess.

shadowsoul.2134:

in my opinion, the biggest problems are free transfers and nightcapping!!

But it’s still an amazing game!!!

It’s a worldwide game – it’s always night somewhere. How ya gonna fix that?

Raincrow.1840:

Latorn.4209:

Raincrow.1840:

Latorn.4209:

It’s not just one event, it’s the snowball mayhem and choir bell events too, there isn’t much else to Wintersday besides the dungeon; a majority of it is made up of solo activities.

Snowball is not a “solo activity” lol. If anything the event is too much forced grouping.

I agree that Toypocalypse should have allowed groups, as long as balance wasn’t effected….but snowball is perfect as is.

You can join Snowball Mayhem in groups, rather than being randomly assigned team members?

This is what I meant by solo activity, you cannot play it with your friends/guildmates.

A group of random team members is still a group. Just becuase you can’t be with established friends does not mean you’re playing it solo.

Might as well be solo when nobody talks, not even to discuss what we need to do.

this whole wintersday sucks becouse u cant play with premade teams so u get pugs that leave or go afk (snowball mayhem). i managed to finish the instance just to see the reward at the end (nothing) with 3 people alltogether at the end so i have to say that this is bigest fail i seen from GW1 and GW2.
this whole wintersday is disappointing.
ANET fix this please

Yet another who spoke to Tixx in The Mists first. A guild mate told me about the chest in LA, so I ported to The Mists to take the gate to LA, but then saw Tixx in The Mists too.. so I spoke to him there and got a usless PVP reward that I will never use. And of course when I get to LA and try and talk to him he says “only one gift per person”.. grrrrr!!!

Please let us use both chests!

For me wvw represents tactical battles and siege warfare with lots of people. Structure/Personal upgrades are a good way to improve the defensive value of a fortification even if it’s a camp. Also placing siege weapons in key locations is very important, for instance a trebuchet to counter catapults, catapults to counter door rams/golems and arrow-carts to keep invaders at bay.

As time passes you realize that the personal upgrades aren’t very good because the NPCs are week. The oil/canon/mortar are very easily killed by players and only provide an advantage when fighting against unorganized pugs. Camps are easily captured at least twice every 12 minutes in order to get the 5 points when the timer resets, so they are rarely upgraded even though with the 4 upgrades dolyaks can carry 140 supply instead of the initial 35.

In the end, the only upgrades that are worth the money and dolyak escorts are the walls/doors upgrades and the waypoint for the keeps.

Siege weapons are a necessity when defending locations. You must always have at least 1 catapult at each door. 2 catapults are better because you can time them correctly and keep the rams always knocked down and damage the golems really fast. When the door attack fails, usually the attackers go for catapults and if you don’t have a well placed trebuchet you have to resort to portal bombing their siege.

But the siege weapons are only good if you have at least reinforced walls/doors. Without them your siege weapons are pretty much worthless especially when defending a small tower.

Most people know most of these things, but the problem is that not many people spend the money upgrading or placing and building the siege weapons or escort the dolyaks. So people go where the rewards are better which is where usually the commanders are. And you can’t blame them since playing defensive is sometimes boring and doesn’t give any rewards, while at the same time you have to spend your money, blueprints and time.

I thought that when we will reach T1 I will see a lot more emphasis on the defense and zergs will not be that efficient. But on the contrary I was proven that WvW is all about the numbers and very importantly all clumped together in a big zerg. Some may argue that well placed siege and upgrades mean a lot but time and time again I have been proven that nothing can be done to an organized zerg. Guardian bubbles can prevent a lot of the knockback and damage from catapults when dealing with the zerg and with a couple of golems teleported by mesmers you can take the whole map. Also the aoe heals, the downed state, the resurrect spam, the mesmer teleports and the culling issue makes it very hard to see what’s going on to give you a chance to counter it.

If at the beginning of the game the term zerg was used as more of an insult, now zergs can be a lot more efficient than packs of people going around the map capturing points. A good strategy is to have 1-2 teams going around the map and destroyed the siege on the walls and then the zerg will follow and take the point.

To come to a conclusion I’m disappointed in WvW because it was built as a glorified capture the point system with the purpose of a gold sink for pve. Since the top server in T1 Europe uses mainly the zerg to capture points it is a fact that zergs are much more efficient than other ways and since everyone is in WvW for the rewards people are always attacking instead of defending so it’s easy for a zerg to capture wooden structures with barely any siege in key locations.

We will have to wait until February to see what the devs will change, but I have a sad feeling that not much will be changed and WvW will continue to function as a gold sink for some or a gold/karma farm for others.

Raven Paradox.1860:

Cirus.5748:

Interesting. IOJ enter Tier 1 and are flying, they are keeping up with the big boys. The Candycorn patch happens, and they disappear from WvW and get demoted to tier 2.

Then IOJ are in Tier 2 for many weeks, but then the Candy Cane patch happens, they disappear from WvW and get demoted to tier 3.

:P, we’ve found IOJ’s weakness!

IoJ wasn’t flying in T1. They also got kicked out in T1 before the Halloween update. That happened in the first week BG was in T1, but the result you said happened to us. After Halloween, we had no one show. The problem with our PuGs is consistency. The 1st week in T2, our numbers nearly doubled.

You are absolutely full of kitten. We were winning t1 (by a small margin) until the day of the Halloween event which was Wednesday 24th of october.. When we ended up loosing by 80k and your massive win got you into T1. Our coverage has never been the same since. We used to have 3 hour queues on reset, that lasted up to 24 hours, now we never have them at anytime.

You should take a look at yourself, go back and read over your posts and think have you ever had anything to say but stirring servers/people up and when you realize thats all you do then think about if that’s the type of person you want to be. If it is I won’t be surprised.

MuffinMan.3285:

As for CD and FA…prepare yourselves ;P

He means prepare yourselves for his guild to come and recruit spam on your server in the midst of intense battles, not for WvW score.

kanikani.2430:

-Nothing major till feb patch.

I hope they realise that February is make-or-break for vast swathes of the WvW community.

Arcadio.6875:

Their hint for the Feb patch is that it will address player progression. When asked about actual new content like maps, they say they need to prioritize and that it takes time to make those. It seems they can’t even find the time to make a website for live updates. What exactly are they working on then that’s supposed to be a big deal in Feb?

I will now make a predication.

The “big WvW patch” in February will do the following:

- Ascended Items are now available from vendors in your home Borderlands! Each piece requires 2000 badges of honour.