Guild Wars 2

Points for kills isn’t going to fix anything either – it just promotes avoidance of fights unless you’re absolutely sure you’re going to win.

And means that groups who’ll hold off an enemy force for as long as they can become a liability rather than an asset.

John Corpening.9847:

Hey Guys,
I’d like to kick of a discussion on scoring in WvW.

Here is a summary of what you guys have brought up in our previous discussions:

• 24 hour coverage
  • How do we make play time in off hours valuable without blowing out the score?

I had some thought of scaling the PPT by (server1CurrentPlayers+s2CP+s3CP)/(maxPlayers*3) to reduce but not eliminate off-hours score, but I like phys’s suggestion more. However, if you’re playing for the point at the end of each 8 hours, servers who get to upgrade everything while their opponents are asleep get an advantage heading into the next point. It’s still better than what we’ve got now though.

• Snowballing
  • How do we give worlds a fighting chance throughout the duration of the match?
• Stagnation
  • How do I feel continuously challenged when my world is ahead?
  • How does my world break the hold that other worlds have on me when I’m behind?

Unfortunately these problems are inherent to the timed game mode. There is always going to be a point after which victory is obviously impossible, unless you use a different victory condition.

What you can do is move that point as close to the end of the match as possible. That would mean it has to be difficult to break away from other servers in score, which would realistically require some sort of point scaling, whether it’s passive (scaling the score according to population, either targetted at all three servers equally or in proportion to the individual server pop) or active (giving servers a point modifier based on who they’re attacking).

Tried to work out what an Ash Legion mesmer might wear.

I find that with light armour I have a reasonable choice in chest pieces, and that’s about it. Headpieces are usually okay but if you want to keep your horns / mane there’s only a handful that aren’t ridiculous masks or tiaras. Shoulders float on some skins but there are plenty of good mantles.

It’s gloves, leggings and boots where you have claws and tails poking through fabric in unnatural ways. Very very few options for those aside from the cultural sets. Medium armour is even worse.

If raids end up with combat where every part of the team needs to play well, as in Marionette where players were split into platforms and had to complete objectives in small groups, they’ll be a good addition.

If they end up like the bosses in Battle for LA and three-headed wurm where it’s just a DPS test, then they won’t.

GW2 requires a lot more skill in small group play than it does in zergs, and thus content that requires multiple teams to co-ordinate effectively is more satisfying to play. The open-world content lately has encouraged that, though now that most have given up on T6 in Dry Top it’s devolved back to zerging bosses in Prospect Valley for loot bags. Marionette was more equitable; Tequatl too, I suspect, though I only played it once. When I’m being asked to buy full armour, weapon, accessory and consumable sets just to optimise DPS against a glorified state machine AI, I tend to walk the other way.

There are two things that a raid system would have to address: providing roles for more cerebral gameplay than just hitting for big numbers, and equivalent rewards for each role.

X Factor.2641:

PVT tends to be somewhat pricey

Are you serious? PVT insignia are cheaper than anything on the market but the rubbish like Settler’s etc.

Counterweight.7192:

Zaxares.5419:

Contents are not worth the price, so I skipped this one.

Imho the price is not the issue. The issue is still that you can buy more power(with irl currency) in a game mode that is pvp focused.

It should be an issue, I suppose, but it’s been there since day one and has never been a problem.

It’s entirely due to price, though. Whoever sets the prices of one-use consumables on the BLTC needs a serious reality check. If they sold keys for a tenth of the price, they’d probably sell hundreds of times more.

The most hilarious example I’ve seen recently is groups from two servers holding the third server’s keep and killing the lord every 5 minutes to keep refreshing the walls and doors.

YB’s going to stay in T2 for a while – the population influx and extra guilds they’ve inherited from Maguuma will even make it seem like business as usual.

Sure, their population is going to drop after the season, but so will everyone else’s. It’s not just the appearance of a few PvE’ers that makes a server capable of focussing DB down below NSP, it’s a full-on bandwagon.

Wouldn’t exactly call DK capable of open-field… Janggun yes, back in the day, although I’d be curious to see how something the size of WM would work these days.

For the amount it costs I’d expect 5 full claim tickets, not 5 scraps.

timmyf.1490:

I get frustrated with the overreaching – Guild Halls as player housing, really? – because making these threads significantly longer and harder to read hurts the discussion and limits the ability for others to participate. When contributors drop 12,000 characters of a proposal that WILL. NEVER. HAPPEN., it just pushes away people with good, small, workable ideas.

Keeping ideas brief and realistic shows respect for the dozens or hundreds of individuals trying to participate.

That’s what the proposal overviews are for – if it doesn’t sound good to you, skip to the next post after that.

- Writers: make sure your overview is a good (hopefully attractive too) introduction.

Seriously, I’d love to meet/co-ordinate with guildies in a cozy airship. It wouldn’t be ideal for everyone but should at least be an option.

And for my contribution, short(ish) and sweet.

Proposal
WvW guild castles that contribute to the score.

Description
Inspired by forts in Aion, these castles would become vulnerable at a set time every day at different times for about an hour. There would be 6 (or larger multiple of 3) different maps, each adding to the controlling server’s score. Each would have its own player cap during the battle, varying between 10 and 50 to target different guild preferences.

Functionality
All castles are unclaimed at WvW reset. Guilds/alliances may challenge for the right to contest them; the successful guilds are given priority in the queue.
How to decide which challenger is chosen I am not sure. This must be resolved in a satisfactory way for it to work.
Each third of the castles gives priority to a different pair of servers, hence why there must be a multiple of 3; generally guilds do not prefer 3-way GvGs.
The battles are scheduled for different times throughout the day to cater to players in different time zones.
Smaller battles (10-15) are to the death. Larger battles (30-50) provide guild lords, and the largest allow limited siege weapons.
The winning alliance captures the castle, granting their server a point bonus for every opposing player who contested it.
While a guild/alliance owns the castle, it becomes functional as a WvW-based guild hall.

Advantages
Provides meaningful, defendable guild ownership of WvW assets.
Allows GvG-focussed guilds to contribute to their server/alliance, and makes them a source of pride for that server.
Provides additional, long-awaited variety in WvW combat.

Challenges and risks
Griefing/poor allocation: a guild could be awarded a battle only to throw the match, or the battle could be awarded to a less-competent guild in favour of one more likely to win.
The community may be able to police this through a voting or similar system.

Too few/many maps: Some battle types may not be available to certain guilds; e.g. the 50-player map may not be scheduled for an appropriate time for a SEA-based guild, or it might give priority to the other two servers. Providing more maps would alleviate this problem, but risk unchallenged or forfeit castles in lower tiers.
The number of maps could be assigned based on population, or a map could be opened whenever two guilds agree to contest it. The alliance system proposed in the WvW forums may also alleviate the problem.

MakubeC.3026:

Proposal Overview
Getting the concept of Guild Halls right.

Goal of Proposal
Few definitive bullets on how to approach Guild Halls.

Proposal Functionality

• GH should be instanced.
• The theme for the Instances should NOT be one singular place where every guild has a “different version of the same building”. Like a Mansion or a Cave .
• Rather they must be a place or Guilds could logically coexist, even if they in reality don’t (A Neighborhood full of mansions, a mountain full of caves, The Mists, One Airship out of hundreds in the airport).
• They should be highly customizable.
• Must have different themes (Asuran, Human, Norn, Charr).
• Should be tiered, unlocking greater locations but also leaving the option of not upgrading (Tier one: Guild Cave. Tier Two: Guild Airship. Tier Three: DR Mansion). But my guild is small and pirate themed, so even when we can upgrade to a mansion, we stayed with the airship.
• Should have a sparring area for guild members.
• Should have a section where you can see information about guild mates (AP, Number of Characters, Hours Played, Little Summary about him he wrote).

Associated Risks
Not considering any of these could result in something. And no, this is not a threat.

I’m quoting this because it aligns almost perfectly with my views and I’ll probably refer to it frequently in future.

I’m very concerned about feature creep in these guild halls. The idea of making your own city where every player in the guild has their own house sounds nice but if it’s going to take ANet the rest of their lives to finish it I’m going to say no. Efficient and useful for the majority of players is what I consider important.

Full services and a rallying point for embarking on PvE missions are a must. The actual size of the thing could be an airship – it only needs to be bigger for large guilds or if it’s a venue for GvGs.

Player housing:
I would prefer player home instances to be used as a personal space. I get that it would be convenient for guildies to visit, but we’ve already got home instances that need a little more ANet-love. Perhaps if you could access other guildies’ home instances via the guild hall?

Customisation: Yes to minor aesthetic changes. Reservations to building your own hall – if ArenaNet can find a way for players to do this without causing game-breaking errors then OK.

Guild hall ‘real estate’: emphatic no. I sympathise with the concept behind it but I guarantee it’s going to lead to a lot of complaints and feuding due to finite space.

Plus some peripheral maps for GvG castles and that would be WvW as I’d like to see it. Well, close enough.

If you could disable Heartseeker for 70 seconds in GW2 it would be amazing.

Coulter.2315:

didn’t go into Charr territory and slaughter them in their homes

Actually, humans did.

Rotating decals must be serious business.

Jerus.4350:

Soloing is much more difficult than you’re making it sound. But, absolutely as far as henchmen are concerned, I didn’t really play GW1 but I played EQ that got the same treatment and ugh… yeah same effect.

I think the current system is a solid one. Solos take a long time, but you get to do it at your own pace and in the end you can sell paths and make a decent profit, sometimes worth the time, sometimes not. You can also group it, have a much easier time, and have it go much quicker. I see no reason to punish solo content, it hasn’t hit anywhere near as hard as the heroes type of thing in GW1, some talented players solo, let them if they can handle the content that is strictly designed for 5 man. No reason to go out of the way just to prevent soloing.

When there’s only one or two classes that can actually solo dungeon paths, it’s not really talent. Just judicious use of game mechanics.
I have no objection to people playing instances scaled for 5 players solo. But let’s be honest, it’s not solo content until you can do it on classes like a necromancer without glitching or skipping.

The problem is everyone would solo it.

In order to keep encouraging group play, it’d be preferable to make groups more rewarding, but allow people who can’t/won’t/would rather not play in a group to complete the content for a lesser reward.

[Edit: I forgot to mention that this solo, 2-man, etc. version would be scaled down to a reasonable level for the number of people.
Also, the preference toward group play comes from problems with GW1’s heroes and henchmen – it was often possible to reject other players entirely, making it something of a massively single-player online RPG. GW2’s insistence that more players are a good thing was the right move in my view.]

Scale instanced content according to the number of players – if someone wants to solo fractals, let them, but it’s going to take 5 runs to get the same rewards.

Continue to build new maps with meta-events as you’ve done in Dry Top. Big move in the right direction. But give guilds a weekly mission to help guide these to the top achievement, so we always have a chance of achieving them, and so guilds get more kudos for helping out.

And Rotscale. You know you want it.

Tspatula.9086:

I am surprised more people aren’t jumping on this idea. The other big plus is that it is a small change to the existing structure and would be doable with the existing menus and megaserver code already written… They could even limit the maps you could look at based on whatever set of BLs and EBG you are currently on, and just use a drop down menu to move to another set.

It would be my favourite solution but I’m concerned ArenaNet would never finish it. The problem with those drop-down menus etc. is you can’t really see what’s going on in most of those maps without using an external website to get a better view. They’d have to put all 32 maps on one overworld display – even the existing WvW dialog doesn’t compare with the map for quickly seeing where the action is.

In my view WvW should always have been one huge campaign comprised of several maps, but they’re simply too slow at level design post-release to fix that now. Would need to streamline the process or get more hands on deck.

The Aetherblade pick gives you bonus sprockets, the Molten one doesn’t. I’d advise against picking it up even if it was on sale.

Bump.

15 charrs whose footprints still face backwards 756 days later

Every time I wonder why the RP community in GW2 is largely ignored for lore, faux-racism posts like those in this thread turn up to remind me.

Sounds like a perfect occasion to stop by with some pink feedback bubbles.

Some classes might scale better off that than others. Can you imagine a Lich Form necro on Maguuma being scaled to 84?

That’s how you do a PvP worldboss.

What I think should be done is consideration of server merges, and scaling PPT. I’m not saying merges should go right ahead, just that we should have a hard look at whether keeping 24 NA servers and 27 EU servers is doing more harm than good at this stage. The WvW tournaments would work fine if each league was approaching even, but there is no way in hell you’re going to get an even matchup out of a T3, a T4 and a T5 server no matter how hard players try. We need populations to be evened out more for this to even be fun, let alone winnable.

Scaling PPT is always going to be a curly one because of the compromise between rewarding players who play outside primetime and not penalising those who don’t. I suggest multiplying it by a scalar of the mean population of the three servers at the scoretick. This means a server playing with 250 players against 0 and 0 (to use an extreme example) is getting a third of the points they would if both other servers had 250. It means that outnumbering servers doesn’t reward you as heavily, but it’s still stupid not to defend if you have the people to do it.

Finally, if server merges ever did happen, I’d like them to coincide with some expansion of the WvW arena. Consider adding some smaller maps with low population caps that are aimed more at the people who want to be rewarded more for fighting other groups than capping structures. Consider also how GvG combat could be integrated into WvW through challenging guilds for the possession, at a set daily time, of guild keeps / halls (probably also on new maps).

Variety is the spice of life – you’ll find future WvW tournaments to be more compelling after the first week if there are a number of different ways to help your server out.

[Edit: One more thing. Thank you for listening. At least if we know you’re aware there’s a problem, there’s some hope for the future beyond looking for the next game to try the WvW mode.]

John Corpening.9847:

I’d like to join in this brainstorm with some questions on these. For merging servers, how do we determine who gets merged? Where would we merge them to? How do we maintain any sort of world pride or identity they have? How do we handle potentially merging with your mortal enemies?

Here’s the thing about world pride, enemies etc. -

It’s gone. Communities used to be more of an influence drawing everyone together for PvE back when we were all on separate worlds, but for better or worse we can all play together there now. Mostly for better, I might add – can you imagine 51 different communities all left to organise Tequatl runs on their own?

WvW has always been a much more fluid scene despite the transfer costs, because a sizable portion of players will just leave a server if they don’t like it anymore. The result is 3 fully-populated servers in NA, 5-6 marginally populated, and 15 ghost towns.

People transfer to worlds they’re playing against all the time, even (perhaps especially) in the very week they’re playing them.

I think we can rule out merging anyone into BG, JQ or TC at this point – their populations are fine (and most people saying “but the community…!” are on those very servers, ironically). For the other servers, look at their peak populations in WvW – with megaservers, PvE doesn’t matter anymore – the week after the tournament ends (to cancel the ‘shinies’ effect) and use those to inform how to level out the curve. Try to take servers from entirely different tiers in the merger, for example SoS, BP and ET, who haven’t seen each other at all for a very long time.

Owing to the fluidity of movement and the fact that all players are people drawn from the same populations, while there may be some initial disappointment in isolated communities being merged, they’re quite capable of getting along and in the end they will.

There are people out there who prefer playing on low-pop/dead servers, and mergers might drive them off. I must confess I don’t quite get that – if the only thing keeping them playing WvW is that they’re barely playing with anyone else, the game mode needs help badly. And from that standpoint it’s much easier to improve the game mode in future when you’re not trying to make changes that will have a much different effect on fully-populated servers compared with those who see only 20-50 players at primetime.

John Corpening.9847:

For population caps, how do we deal with the longer queues on the worlds that can field enough people? If it is dynamic, would players be able to manipulate it? For example, our world is ahead so we all agree to not play WvW so the other worlds are capped down and can’t counter us.

Short answer is players on overpopulated servers would have to transfer. It could be manipulated, but if you don’t kick people who are already logged in, worlds wouldn’t be able to force opposing worlds’ players out of a map that way.

However, on lower tiers, server A could send players over to a map on which they own nothing to start a golem rush, forcing server B to move players over to counter it or risk losing their stuff. The golem rush wouldn’t have to succeed – it would just have to get opposing players off the map to force the cap down. And then server A’s players can log off to go to bed, leaving server B with all their players on their own borderland with nothing in need of defense and no other map to go to, because they’re all queued.

So that’s the long answer – it can and will be exploited.

Apologies for the over-long post. I’ll have to throw my suggestions into a new one.

NA vs EU would create bigger lag problems though. Ever notice how difficult it is to get OCX/SEA guilds to transfer to EU servers? Playing on a 500+ ms ping is just not worth it.

It’s amazing how effective that is. Seen it happen to Evan once or twice (this was before the tournament) – so long as he can stay alive the rest of us can do whatever we like to his would-be assailants.

The devs aren’t allowed to say, regardless of whether they’re in the guild.

Tspatula.9086:

Are there any Devs on servers at the bottom of tiers?

Yes.

It’s the weekend, give it a few.

I suspect the easiest solution to the problem would be to pay Bags to transfer to YB. Can’t build troll siege there because everything’s already siege capped.

Is there any way to force connecting through a certain IP address / port to circumvent traffic shaping? This seems to only be an issue with a few servers – the vast majority of the time I’ll only see this error on switching maps, but doing so will usually make it impossible to load any map for hours at a stretch. I suspect that means traffic is being slowed/blocked on route changes that take it through certain hosts.

Given that it’s a campus network, the only reliable solution I’ve found so far has been connecting through a VPN, but paying a de facto subscription for GW2 alone is a bit ridiculous, particularly when it sometimes works just fine. Thus I’m wondering if there’s some other way to dodge the filter.

I know Colin’s guild, but have yet to spot him in-game…

…perhaps I shall have to enlist a spy or two.

kta.6502:

Safari.3021:

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW

Guild halls? no. Guild Airships!!!!!!

I agree! This is the best guild hall suggestion yet!

We need to have our own upgradable Guild Airships and GvG battles over these ships!

We should also be able to wp to any major city in Tyria from the Guild Airship.

The airship over the Vigil Keep would make a good venue for a placeholder hall, actually, even if just to give guilds a meeting point and services.

For the top 3:
1. In-game guild recruiting boards
2. Multi-guild chat channels
3. Alliance system

Should get at least one more match out of them, since it looks like we’re coming out of this match well-placed.

I’m not sure how DR’s NA for this season compares to last time SBI played them, but so far it looks like they’re doing pretty well and it’s really just the returned Korean presence that’s keeping SBI in contention for the top 4.

YB seems to have had a significant influx for the season and at this point you’d be brave to pick anything other than first place for them. I’m not sure how CD, DB and SBI are likely to fare though. It was looking like an even competition until the last-minute guild trading, but at least it’s not Gold League.

John Corpening.9847:

Later I was in on the golem attack. At one point though I stopped to res a fallen ally and ended up spending the next few minutes staring at the cliff that someone banished me over! I swear no good deed goes unpunished :P

The culprit tells me he couldn’t resist a target so conveniently placed near the cliff. Behind the lord room of that tower can get a bit messy with that number of players fighting in a tight space.

I think you lasted longer than I did though – doesn’t seem like DmD appreciated me dropping boon strips in the lord room.

Sure has. I don’t get credit for a number of them in group combat which has made building up stacks a lot slower.

John Corpening.9847:

Finally, I wanted to give a big thanks to my new guild. A kind soul (who likes soul-reaping) saw me in the window and took me home to the kind folks of DmD on Devona’s Rest. I had a great time playing with my new family and I’m really looking forward to the weeks ahead!

Thanks!
John

I’ll be thinking of you every time I ask ‘was that enough damage?’

DmD has a pretty impressive organisation – they had us bouncing all around the map yesterday around midnight, trying to figure out where they were taking their omega golems. At some point we figured they’d probably waypointed to take Bay. Sure enough, we were right… but we were right a couple minutes too late.

Late at night, but you were in for a treat if you took part in that one.

Grevender.9235:

Ohoni.6057:

I tend to think that home-guilders need to earn loyalty, not command it.

try saying that to your wife “ok dear, in the future I may or may not be loyal to you, but you have to earn it first! meanwhile – if you excuse me – I have to date Nancy, Stacy, Jilly and Mary. That’s today. KTX bye”.

Some countries have weird laws but I doubt you can marry your guild in any of them.

While some guilds might have an informal contract requiring full ‘loyalty’ from their members, it’s a rather unhealthy idea that I’d prefer GW2 didn’t support. Rather than dealing with the symptom – non-representation – it makes more sense to address the cause. Why are people not representing?

Most of the time it’s going to be because the guild can’t offer what they’re looking for all the time. Friends in other guilds, specialist activity guilds, even personal bank guilds.

I’m pretty sure no-one represents other guilds for the thrill of eloping. But I suppose stranger things have happened. After the World Cup semifinal I’m keeping an open mind.

Has been proposed, yes. Not everyone is a fan. I think the idea of a donation box got more support.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Ben K.6238:

Ailse.8190:

2) Sell additional guild slots as account upgrades

Have to admit I’d actually pay for that.

It makes everything more complex though!

Chris

True… and is one of the ‘nice to haves’ rather than a ‘must have’.

Ailse.8190:

2) Sell additional guild slots as account upgrades

Have to admit I’d actually pay for that.

So rather than showing every guildchat at once, the active tab selects which one? If there’s a highlight showing when new lines have arrived for each tab that could work.

Only other thing that comes to mind is hiding old lines from the same channel after 3-5 lines, depending on the number of channels they’re mixing with. Might be possible to toss in an integer field next to the display setting to set the number as well.

That’s leading into a general UI topic, but there’s one thought. Is it possible to separate channels into different windows, so game messages and combat log for example are not competing with chat?

I don’t follow why the log has to be readable with absolutely everything turned on under the most extreme conditions. I already have problems through the combat log alone, or game messages when I’m crafting materials.

While I can’t say I’ve been in 5 guilds full of motormouths myself, the very first thing I do when I’m getting too much clutter from some channel – whether it’s LA chat or system messages – is just turn the channel off.