Guild Wars 2

You’ve got the problem in a nutshell, in my opinion, but tying loot to world score is just going to make world score more important, which is going to be a kick in the teeth for outnumbered servers.

I suspect this was a bug. Happened to me, and none of my account passwords had actually changed, GW2 or GW1.

If there’s more in EotM than WvW, that means EotM is working better. So removing it would be absurd

I completely agree that players’ ability to make a difference hasn’t changed significantly – the things that were taken away merely gave the illusion that they mattered.

So the solution isn’t really to bring back the same systems, but to provide ways to contribute that actually do matter.

There is something I missed in discounting the idea of player-initiated upgrades: the principle of agency. Apparently a sociology thing but it’s known in computer games to mean the ability of the player (sometimes AI too) to change the course of the game.

Upgrades gave single players a small way to change the outcome of the match. Much like using the +5 upgrade on your personal bank guild, it was often expensive but something in the reach of any player.

The lack of ability to affect the outcome of the match – due to outnumbering and server organisation – has been an issue for players right from the beginning, and perhaps any system that makes them feel like they can contribute is actually worth looking at.

Which would mean useful upgrades that are too expensive for small guilds to unlock are a bad thing, but being expensive to use once they are unlocked is maybe not so bad. And other things along similar lines.

So maybe the problem wasn’t that players had to spend gold to upgrade towers, it was that there was often nothing they could do to defend them.

Stealth trap is mostly just an anti-stealth spammer tool these days. Have used them a few times to dispose of bad players using it as a crutch, but the other scenario for which they were created – blocking veils and intercepting portallers – simply does not happen anymore because no-one in their right mind uses melee trains since the stability nerf.

X T D.6458:

One of my favorite aspects of wvw, aside from the massive fights of course, is the variety of roles a person can play. You can zerg, scout, do havok/small ops stuff, roam, escort dolyaks. This variety of roles helps foster a tremendous sense of server community, coordination, cooperation, and communication which made wvw fun for so many, and kept many of us coming back. I would like to see more focus on this kind of teamwork, and not a focus on grind and gimmicks.

That’s a nice idea and was a focus early on, but it kind of fell apart because there’s no reward for most of those roles. ‘Scouts’ never scouted properly, because the role lent itself to roamers and most roamers didn’t care who took what. Escorting dolyaks simply didn’t happen because it was so boring. Upgrading things did happen, slowly, but it was a drain on the people who did it because so few cared.

They’re problems that still haven’t been addressed but were glossed over with the HoT systems. We’re walking straight back into them.

All these nice things players can do for their servers – what’s the point? One more bonus chest at the end of the week?

I never really worried about the pay-to-upgrade system as I never upgraded anything. No-one defended it so it was a waste of gold.

I suppose that was one of the bonuses of solo roaming back then though – knowing that every fully upgraded camp you flipped wasted a fair sum of someone else’s money, and laughing at their insanity.

What Alpine had as advantages were more open space and (possibly) closer objectives that could interact with each other in siege scenarios.

It’s supposed to be better for roaming as well, but I found it was a lot easier to find enemies on DBL because I knew they’d be funnelled through certain parts of the map in order to get to others. So I don’t understand that one.

I’ll go there occasionally but in my tier you have to go to EB because there’s not enough population to spread across 4 maps. So unless we get a population boost it’s going to be much the same story.

It is tricky to just settle on one.

I’d have to say the combat system. It’s not perfect but it’s a lot more active than most RPGs I’ve played, without being too limited in what players can do, and without having dozens of keybinds you hardly ever need to use.

I didn’t realise how much I liked it until I opened up GW1 again and figured out that it wasn’t my ability to play the game that had degraded, it was just that you couldn’t actually do that much, and the tells on enemy actions didn’t even exist.

Skill balance is a different matter, but the basics of GW2 combat are the main reason I’d like to see WvW done right in GW2, and not somewhere else.

Alpine borderlands will be back.

The players won’t.

Calling it now.

I think “falling apart” is a rather weird choice of words, considering it’s not getting worse as time goes by. Sure, if the main reason you play is to build up materials for legendaries that don’t exist yet (I won’t even pretend to understand that, but people do it) then not getting any for a while is going to mean there’s less to do, but seriously, it’s playing for content that doesn’t exist. That’s the risk you take.

Personally I’m quite happy that we’re looking at more regular content that has wider appeal. Brings a lot more friends back to the game than being able to grind for more aesthetically unappealing weapons ever did.

To be fair, Garrison didn’t have a patch on Air keep for places to hide.

Catapults can be countered by shield generators too. If you have those in the right place it doesn’t really matter whether you can hit inner and outer walls from the same spot.

There’s two broad situations in which to consider the balance of these siege spots – with and without strong defense. The Rampart cata spot is pretty easy to counter so long as there’s anyone there to do it. If there isn’t, it’s by far the quickest way to break into any of the three keeps (but also takes the longest to walk to for invading servers).
The fire and air keep treb spots, by comparison, don’t get you in as fast but the only way to kill them is rushing them or open field siege.

Hadn’t actually seen a decent fight on the borderlands since before stability change on T3, so that must be around a year now. I’m wondering -

With such low population that everyone has to play on EB to find something to fight, would anyone even notice if it got changed back to Alpine?

Not sure this is a bad thing really considering you can break through the outer walls of the other two keeps using trebs that have no counter spots. No such high ground available against Rampart.

The cata spot is a lot closer to the north spawn than the side keep waypoints, too. Probably be 3 minutes from fire waypoint and 2 from air waypoint, if you had a reasonable zerg to break through the barricades. Otherwise it’d be closer to 5 and 4 minutes.

The towers are big enough you can still do it. Actually you can sneak most of the EB towers as well but you have to be lucky.

PvP and PvP activities becoming an integral part of WvW.

I could hardly care less about the siege wars, though they’re here to stay and fixing scoring /nightcapping/bandwagoning would do a lot to improve the situation for players that do enjoy siege. Personally it’s the battle I turn up for, not what it means. Would just as happily do a PvP dungeon.

It’s the running around in circles capping undefended points that needs to end.

If GvG is to play some kind of role in WvW, just add a set number of GvG slots per week, with the winner of each one pocketing a decent prize and giving their server a substantial points bonus.

And by substantial I mean that if you win every GvG, it’s very hard to lose the week.

• WvW skill balance. First because it’s easier than the rest and needs to be done to make fighting players fun again.
• Scoring change. Got to happen to make the system fair, which has to happen before:
• Better rewards. Make winning a week mean something.
• PvP reward track for killing players. Leave loot and champion bags as NPC kill rewards only.
• More map variety. Three identical borderlands might be more ‘fair’ but it’s hideously boring

joneirikb.7506:

There are more people playing in EotM than WvW entirely I’d guess. Problem is that if you delete EotM 99% of them are going back to PvE (guesstimate). Most of those people are there just to karma train, level up fast, and avoids any sort of PvP or heavens forbid defending like the plague.

I agree – scrapping EotM will not drive those players into WvW, it’ll just drive them to PvE or other games.

You can bring back the map, but Alpine alone won’t bring back the players. WvW was dying long before HoT.

I actually like the idea of using all 4 WvW maps as different terrains for whoever likes whatever style. What I don’t want to see however is one team feeling obliged to defend all of the EotM map because it’s their “home” borderland.

However, there are still two maps that have a spawn point advantage because they’re designed to be home BLs. You can adjust the exit points from the DBL citadel easily enough, but it would need crafting stations etc. set up on the other two spawn points as well in fairness.

Alpine would require the spawn point to be moved entirely, e.g. to North camp. Then the camp feeding the towers and Garrison would have to be moved into Citadel, and all the crafting stations etc. there accessible only to whoever holds Garrison. A little bit of work, but nothing too serious. What I’m wondering, though, is if that’d make a mess of the map balance.

However it’d work, the goal is 4 maps that are roughly even for each team in attacking and defending territory. That way there’s more variety without any servers getting shafted.

Kamohoali’i Kotaki is still my favourite legendary, and it literally can’t be part of a meta build. At least the precursor was cheap.

I got the impression it was the other way around – that the latest exodus was mainly over new and unimproved gameplay rather than population balance.

Balance has been the root of the problem from day 1 though. WvW didn’t hold interest because winning doesn’t matter, and ANet could never make winning matter because bandwagoning would make that horribly unfair.

Dusty Moon.4382:

Otay Ranchero.5487:

Just had a thought… you know how EotM shuts down every three hours and resets, right? What if all the WvW maps were on the same schedule…? Award points for winning these little “micro-weeks”. Servers get 3 points for winning the PPT in the “micro-week” three hour window, 2 points for second place, and 1 point for third. The final weekly winner would be the server that collected the most 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place points, instead of the raw PPT total score.

That would make off-hours ticks of 500+ worth the same as prime ticks of 270… it wouldn’t matter how much you win your time slot by, only the fact that you won, or came in second or third, would contribute to your server’s overall weekly score. All those hours your opponent is putting in to milk easy uncontested PPT wouldn’t count for anything more than the hours you put in doing work, defending and taking. Points Per Kill could be expressed as “the bonus point” for your window, whichever server carried the best Kills to Deaths ratio would be awarded one extra point for that time slot.

You really wouldn’t need to reset the maps, either, simply include a scorekeeping/countdown panel that tracked the current scoring vs the total weekly score.

Maybe 3 hour scoring windows are too small… Maybe 4 or 6 or 8 hour windows?

1 Week is plenty and Megaservers would only ruin the idea of Sever pride (which is what WvW is and does).

Please DO NOT PUT MEGASERVER INTO WvW.

I don’t think you actually read that post.

What it’s suggesting is giving victory over the week to whoever gains the greatest share of 56 available points, which you get by leading PPT for three hours. Aside from that it’s the same as before.

Ellieanna.5027:

I get all a little boy a lot in many games because I’m female and “OMG GRILLS DON’T VIDEO GAEM”

So I never can guess how old people are. Those are usually 20-somethings saying it, and you would think they would have some intelligence (I mean the ones thinking girls don’t play video games)

They think they’re being funny. (That might be even more pathetic actually.)

Rytlock spends so much time with this “Destiny’s Edge 2” that he could easily be considered a member thereof. I can’t say I’m bothered by failure to reach this Minimum Maleness Quota though… and it seems to me that Canach, Braham and Rytlock aren’t bothered either. Nor are Marjory, Kasmeer, Taimi or Rox. And Frostbite doesn’t even understand the question.

lil devils x.6071:

Rolling back WvW pre HoT immediately while you work on what is making players consider it unplayable would be the first thing you could do to help. Players are not going to just come play an unplayable game mode just because you add HoT participation rewards to it.

Rubbish – you’d have to take out the entire class specialization system as well for that to work. You seem to have convinced yourself that the Desert BL and guild upgrades are the source of WvW’s problems. You can keep repeating it, but each time is just as false as the first.

The source of the problems with WvW goes back to day 1 – there’s nothing to the game mode besides killing stuff, and transfers beat skill when it comes to killing stuff. There’s no reward for doing anything else. So their highest priority fix for WvW is precisely what it should be – addressing population imbalances and rewarding gameplay other than zerging.

Quaygal.5327:

My assessment is that the new map, the new upgrades, the shrines, and most everything else new that I’ve seen is just trying to add depth and polish to something that still lacked the breadth of gameplay that truly attracts players.

Yup. To use a slightly base metaphor, the new borderland was an exercise in polishing a kitten . Now it looks really nice but there’s even less to do than there was before – between the stability change and the specialization power creep, ANet has done a number on the quality of fights. Which sadly was the only thing going for WvW.

I’ll probably be around by the time the WvW changes turn up, but I have no idea what to expect. If it’s not starting from scratch it probably won’t be enough. Like you said, the game mode is missing something fundamental to make the meta-game (as in the WvW match, not player builds) worth participating in on a week-to-week basis.

Just having Bubbles as an elite might help out.

Let’s be honest, quaggans are prey animals and makers of bad decisions but very good sushi.

Gwen as a Jekyll and Hyde surly mesmer / insane pyromaniac would actually be so good I’d pay for it.

Another one that might be interesting is the Demonic Fortune Teller that led Shiro to insanity.
…I wonder if it’s possible to ‘taunt’ Shiro-channelling Revenants against their own team?

WvW died because it was never a very compelling game mode for most of the player base, and the few that did like it started leaving because the class balance got ruined. PvE add-ons were sometimes a nuisance, sometimes ignored – but never bad enough to drive players away.

It needs a rebuild from the ground up to make it compelling. Some actual reason to care who holds what for how long. If you only revert it to the launch state, it’ll still be dead.

Just a flesh wound.3589:

“The overall design for Guild Wars 2 does not support fully open world PvP and it would take a prohibitive amount of work to even make it possible…..”

Funny he should say that, because they managed to do it by accident in the Silverwastes.

Rhendak the Crazed for the off-schedule bosses – perhaps more for the mini-dungeon than the boss.

Playing almost exclusively charrs, I don’t see a lot of point in a 3rd pair of long ears, so I wouldn’t buy.

Going to add my support for the magic carpet and broom as special glider skins as well.

Hardly – Alpine BL towers were the irrelevant ones. They provided no influence to the rest of the map aside from somewhere to put up trebs and run into if you were being chased. The sentries were a doddle to walk around, with no knowledge of the map required to avoid them. Basically the entire map was set up so you could wander wherever you wanted with minimum interruption.

Anyone looking to break into any of the three keeps could just ignore them completely. SE tower provided absolutely no advantage, SW gave a place to treb Bay open but in practice was vastly inferior to the cata spot next to the door. NW and NE tower could both be used for trebbing Garri – and being trebbed by it – but once again, were utterly inferior to just setting up catas or golem rushing it.

I don’t get how you think the north towers and garrison were easier to defend on Alpine. It takes a lot longer for enemies to reach them on the Desert BL but not for the defender – it was Alpine where I was capping towers (and Garrison a few times) before defenders could contest them effectively. The players who think they have a harder time dealing with the same number of invaders when they have better gate configurations, twice the cannons, and a tower / keep lord that actually provides a challenge for small groups… those players frankly have no idea what they’re doing.

The biggest problem with them right now is … well, they’re too big. At least for the population currently in WvW. Alpine wouldn’t be much better there, though, except for easier karma training.

A lot of the OP’s dislikes are actually things I like about the desert borderland, so I have difficulty concluding that everyone thinks they don’t work. Most of my guild thinks they do, but there are too many maps for it to matter.

Towers, I feel, have gained significant strategic value because they impede movement a lot more. Taking one essentially gives you freedom of movement in its local area, hinders enemy roamers, provides means of tracking enemy zergs, and makes it easier to keep distance while scouting them. In the Alpine BLs, towers were just safe zones to run into, and occasionally set up siege in. They didn’t contribute to defending territory at all, with the exception of treb wars between towers and keeps which I’m actually happy to see the end of. If you’re going to take something, you should have to risk putting siege in the open where it can be countered.

I can’t say I get the complaints about home borderland defense either, aside from the waypoints no longer being available. It means you need more advance warning to contest a cap, but the number of tools available on the Desert BL is so much greater that there’s always time to intercept unless no-one was paying attention to them. It takes enemy zergs a lot longer to break into keeps, scouting them is a lot easier, and sentries do most of the work for you.

The one thing I’m not keen on is the shrine system. A bit gimmicky in general, and it seems like complexity for complexity’s sake. Garrison is particularly egregious in this regard with cripple traps and walls appearing all over the place. The other two are slightly better, where their effects are providing little advantages to the defender rather than making the map annoying for the other two servers.

SoulSin.5682:

It does.
On TP time will fix everything.

Even if ANET released a new iten today, even if the first person try putting a overprice for it, the rest of the community will quickly drop it. Because in the end, people want to sell then as fast as possible.

More that people want to sell them at all. Particularly with 5% of the tax paid on listing, you don’t want to price something so high that it’ll never sell. If you’re willing to bet the price will come up, that’s another thing, but personally I don’t even list an item until I’m reasonably sure the price is going to hit that point.

But yeah, while the TP doesn’t prevent getting ripped off it makes it a lot less likely, because someone has to manipulate the market to do that, and for items with high trade volumes that’s very difficult indeed.

Drarnor Kunoram.5180:

Better idea: make the NPC’s run on all fours when not wielding weapons.

And this seems to be the option ANet chose!

Following HoT release I’m seeing that running gait can’t be used to tell guards apart from players beyond targetting range in WvW anymore.

The only way the TP isn’t a free market is that you can’t buy something for more than the lowest offered price (which actually makes the market more efficient, economically speaking) and you can’t sell it for less than its vendor price. Neither of these adversely impact on its function, they just prevent people getting ripped off. A 15% sales tax does not break a free market.

But then, Randroids are notoriously impervious to reason.

It’s the best I’ve played, but I’ve only played three. So… that’s not going to be a useful sample.

What it does right is rewarding players primarily based on skill, not gear. This is actually rather rare, even though it seems to me it shouldn’t be. The skill cap is a bit low in PvE, but it’s otherwise not too bad. The combat is also fairly unrestricted and enjoyable as RPGs go, though the same can’t be said about the skill system which I wish allowed more player choice.

Combat aside, the other thing I like in an RPG is a rich world with a lot of history and stories to discover. GW2 has a fairly good base of lore, but its interactions with NPCs fall very flat indeed. I’d like to be able to talk and adventure with NPCs a lot more – if you’re going to have an interactive story you want to have the option of getting to know the characters. I could go on for ages about that one, but it suffices to say that character development and WvW are the two major areas I hope to see worked on.

I can’t say how it compares to others – see above, haven’t played enough of them – but all up I’d call GW2 a solid gameplay experience that just needs a deeper game to play it in. It’s not a write-off, which I hear is pretty rare for an MMO these days.

Hyperinflation requires exponential increase in the supply of currency. You don’t get that in GW2 unless people are getting an exponential increase in drops. There is going to be some extent of inflation so long as people are selling more to merchants than they’re buying.

The idea of NPC merchants being bound by limited money and a need to do something with all the junk they buy is an interesting one, but I suspect the improvement in players’ gameplay experience might be questionable.

I wish thief was a lazy class – it’s absolutely terrible for survival. Dangerous in a 1v1, great at escaping, but actually winning a fight against numbers? Never mind PvP, I can’t even figure out how it’s supposed to be done in PvE. In my experience it’s the hardest class in the game to play well, closely followed by Engi (apparently the scrapper is supposed to be impossible to kill too – it’s not when I’m playing it).

There’s not a lot of ways to keep yourself amused by staying in the guild hall, unless you’re in a guild that uses the arena all the time.

Hmm.. kind of. The only way it could hurt the GW2 “poor” is because they’d be paying 15% extra. But at the same time it makes commodity prices less volatile than they would be because you have to bridge that 15% when flipping them before you’re making any money. So it also makes pump and dump a lot riskier, which I’d figure means the GW2 “poor” are paying lower prices on average for rare items.

Shayne Hawke.9160:

…socialism…
…free market…
…players of all levels are robbed of their agency.

Hehe.

I’m getting plenty of ‘agency’ on the existing trading post. The tax is higher than most markets, but given it’s not going to those with less resources than I have, it’s a pretty poor kind of socialism. And I mean that in the same way as a car without wheels and an engine is a pretty poor kind of car.

But regardless of where that 15% goes, I’m still getting rich off it.

Or just stun/daze them. Hard CC is worth taking for all kinds of reasons.