Guild Wars 2

Azjenco.9425:

Honestly I thought this crowd would be happy that they no longer have to stack these items like mad, and be glad they can now choose viable combat options on their gear.

IF they doubled the drop rates to match what I get from +100% Magic Find gear (which feels about right to me) and IF they suitably compensate me and others for what we invested in Magic Find gear (which may have included laurels and doing dungeons for, for example, Noble Runes or Fractal Relic gear) and IF they give people a way to sell the spare sets of Exotic equipment they accumulated so they could have a Magic Find and non-Magic Find set without saturating the Trading Post and sending prices dropping (the way Traveler Runes have dropped today), then I would be reasonably satisfied with the change BUT I still think it was better off being a choice of trade-offs in the player’s hands rather than having it taken away from them because of the whining of people angry that other people were getting better drops than they were because they weren’t willing to make the same trade-offs.

The vast majority of complaints about Magic Find was by people who weren’t using it and were unhappy that other people were getting better stuff than they were. And that those people frequently asked for a way to tell if others were using Magic Find gear so they could exclude them suggests to me that the loss of effectiveness from using Magic Find gear was not significant enough that they could tell, based on actual effectiveness in the field, who was or wasn’t using it. Play your own characters and stop telling me how to play mine.

Letting people whine about what other people are doing so that ANet will nerf them and stop them is a really bad way to balance a game and keep everyone happey and has been happening across the game, including in PvP, WvW, farming, and so on. If I lose my Magic Find gear and the drop rate reverts to what it is without it, I’m probably going to give up on farming. If ANet is trying to frustrate the farmers out of the game, they seem to be doing a pretty good job of it to me.

IndigoSundown.5419:

I’m hoping this means they will relax the overly punitive base drop rates. Under the current system the choice is to equip massive MF in order to get anything approaching a decent drop rate. In other words, MF was essentially a farming tax that had to be paid to get a better return on time. I’m happy to see the tax go away.

My +100% Magic Find (60% from 6 Runes, 20% from MF Infusion, 14% from Onyx Rings, the rest from miscellaneous smaller bonuses from Sygyzy, Quiver of a Thousand Arrows, etc.) feels about right to me, which doubles the existing drop odds. If ANet were to double the existing drop rates, I’d feel better about losing my Magic Find bonuses, but I still prefer it to be a choice, have no interest in consumable temporary bonuses (which I hate using and maintaining) and have concerns about how ANet is going to compensate me for the Magic Find gear I have (in particular, the 40 laurels I spent on Magic Find infusions and the 12 Magic Find runes I have).

I feel valid compensation for the loss of magic find armor in gear would be:

1) Refund the laurels for any gear bought with laurels with Magic Find (they can exempt Celestial gear because I doubt most people got it just for the Magic Find). In particular, the +20% Magic Find infusion and gear like the Golden Lotus should have the laurel cost refunded. (As others have pointed out, they should also get refunds for the other things spend on ascended gear).

2) Change the armor type of Magic Find armor and jewelry to a random type containing the same non-Magic Find modifiers (such that Explorers armor could become Berserkers or Knight’s). Replace runes and sigils with other runes and sigils at random (not including the slaying sigils and with the replacement rune containing the non-Magic Find modifier of the rune set it replaces — so that a Rune of the Traveler could be replaced at random by a Rune of the Dolyak, Ice, Lich, Sanctuary, Soldier, Speed, Warrior, Wurm, or Necromancer). Make the changed armor no longer soulbound unless it is reequpped so that it can be sold. This will allow players to sell their spare sets and changed armor they don’t want without flooding the market with hundreds of identical sets of armor. People with Runes of the Noble should get refunded.

zeromius.1604:

You’ve quoted me on a quite a few things except the parts where I said that with the revamping of the rewards, magic find will not play as big of a role. Rather, the random number generator will not play as big of a role, hence rendering magic find obsolete. When you’re guaranteed rare loot, like with champions and group events you don’t need magic find.

I actually outfitted my second level 80 in exotic MF gear after building them a set of exotic armor without MF to do existing group events with guaranteed rares such as The Frozen Maw and The Shadow Behemoth because the guaranteed rare and chest isn’t all you get from those events. I normally get 2-3 rares out of The Frozen Maw, for example, and have gotten exotics, too. Based on the complaints I’ve read in the WvW forums, I get a lot better drops than most there, too. I also do a lot of mob farming fo T6 materials. When I don’t have MF (and I’ve tried that option) the drops seem far worse.

If ANet roughly doubled the drop odds across the board (which is what +100% gives me), I’d get what I’m getting now, but I don’t expect that, and some more guaranteed rare events isn’t going to make that up. I’m also not confident that I’m going to be happy with ANet’s solution to compensate me for the gear I have. Fortunately, the majority of my MF bonuses are in runes and a two infusions, but I better be getting at least 40 laurels as part of this (I put the infusions in Sygyzy, which I would keep). So maybe this will work out well for you but I expect it to make things worse for me.

ZudetGambeous.9573:

They have to earn a luxury stat that has no effect on their power just like everyone else did?

Showing up for a certain period of time to get a reward isn’t earning it in any meaningful sense. I’m getting about as much of a sense that I “earned” a reward with the reward chests being dumped on me as I get from ANet tossing me freebies for spending money in their gem store or finishing a jumping puzzle with a Mesmer portal.

I do, however, feel that I earned my Quiver of a Thousand Arrows, which my MF gear likely helped me more quickly get the ingredients for.

zeromius.1604:

Having survivability stats goes beyond just keeping yourself alive. That extra vitality could buy you extra time to stand in the AOE to revive your teammate.

In the vast majority of cases where I’ve had any problem with that, the few extra points of Vitality or Toughness would not have made a huge difference for me. Survivability depends on many factors, only one of which is the fraction of points a player might sacrifice for Magic Find.

The primary issue seems to be jealousy over some people getting better loot. The solution to that is to get your own Magic Find gear and get better loot, too. Wouldn’t you be happy to get a Vial of Condensed Mists Essence in your second set of Fractals? I sure was.

But, instead, the solution is to stop making it a choice or a trade-off and, instead, make it something everyone can get for showing up with no significant thought or trade-offs. .

Crossplay.2067:

You guys seem to have missed what was stated. Magic find isn’t completely being dumped into achievement rewards. It’s being taken off armor (hopefully weapons too) and focused more on consumables. From what I understand, these consumables will stack but you will need more to achieve higher stacks.

tl;dr: You get to have your cake and eat it too.

If I wanted the MF bonus I get from my gear via consumables, I could, but I hate consumable. I hate having to buy or make them, having to watch when they expire, and having to take the time to consume more. That is specifically why my gear gives a + 100% bonus without consumables. I honestly wouldn’t care if ANet eliminated all consumables from the game because I don’t enjoy playing with them. But you’ll notice that I’m not whining for ANet to take them out of the game just because I don’t care for them.

zeromius.1604:

No, I agree that there is a lot of parts of the game you solo. However, consider that the open world isn’t really a solo experience. You have other players around for dynamic events. You still have WvW. You might argue that the world is devoid of players so it can be considered a solo experience in this regard. You can’t say that you won’t run into other players for group events and what not.

I play WvW in +100% MF armor and do pretty will. Whether I win or lose a 1 on 1 or do well in a zerg depends more on relative ability to manipulate controls and use the right skills than the numbers I’ve sacrificed to a MF and its entirely irrelevant when I’m manning siege weapons or building up sites. I’ve seen people playing in WvW in their character’s underwear and seen people finish dungeons the same way due to equipment damage. If people can do that, then how is wasting a slot on MF fatal to playing the game?

I also don’t go down that often in those big group events and do plenty of damage, including against the Claw of Jormag. If anything, a lot of the more popular events are over so fast that everyone could afford to need their damage a bit.

In short, you are complaining about a problem I don’t see, even on a relatively empty server. I’m also pretty awful at playing my character so I’m not bragging about playing at level of play beyond the reach of most people.

zeromius.1604:

could block or remove magic find gear from dungeons only and let you wear magic find elsewhere. The problem is this would just complicate things. You’re getting an account wide magic find boost, which in the long run will benefit people who have a lot of alts.

And are you going to prohibit certain classes from dungeons and certain skill choices from dungeon use, too, because they are widely considered sub-optimal or selfish? How about players who are simply bad at pushing buttons quickly because they’ll drag the rest of their party down?

zeromius.1604:

Let’s not even go into how some people are against magic find altogether. I think this is a good solution overall. You have two groups on opposite sides of the fence and ANet found a happy medium.

When only one side of an argument considers a solution a good compromise or a moderate solution, it usually means it isn’t either.

zeromius.1604:

Toughness, vitality, healing power, condition damage, etc., while perceived as inferior, contribute something to the group. Magic find contributes nothing to the group whatsoever.

At the end of the day, your ability to manipulate the game’s controls and use your character’s skills at the right time matter a lot more than the difference in ratings between MF and non-MF armor. When I go down, it’s generally because I’m doing a poor job of using my skills, moving, or managing resources and not because I could squeeze another 250 hit points out of my gear without MF.

But I also want to add that I actually want all of my friends to wear MF armor in dungeons, too. Why? I got the drop I needed to create my quiver on my second set of fractals. So maybe you can do 10 sets of fractals in the time it takes a group with MF gear to do 3, but if they get better loot than you do in fewer dungeons, how is that benefitting any of you?

I assure you that my inability to manipulate the game controls as well as some others can plays a much larger role in my success or failure in combat in both PvE and WvW than the partial Magic Find I’ve chosen as a tradeoff between combat ability and MF bonus (~100% without temporary bonus) does.

I’m also almost certainly better off in my full exotic and ascended MF gear than a player still equipped with rares or even masterwork gear. If people weren’t obsessed with maximizing a single trait to the expense of all else, they might notice that there are optimums and points of diminishing returns between the extremes.

As for MF doing nothing, I find the +100% makes a significant enough difference that I stopped doing events with an alternate character until I built them a second set of exotic Magic Find armor and when I got myself up to 400% during the recent Southsun Cove loot train event set, it was even more noticeable while, for example, farming sharks. And, finally, plenty of people playing WvW complain about how few rares they get. In less than 2 months of WvW play, I’ve not only gotten quite a few rares but also an exotic while wearing gear with a +100% MF bonus.

But the bottom line is that right now, I get to choose how much MF I want as part of a tradeoff instead of it simply being a non-choice that improves with play.

Jscull.2514:

For us its not finding a server with good small mans….it’s finding a tier that server is in to fight those small mans. We arent interested in teammates in the most non-selfish way, we simply want fights that use more than half our brain.

I see quite a few enemy small groups (2-8) while wandering around in WvW for ET. Because we’re small (and because our opponents can be small) small groups are a viable way to roam the map and can largely avoid zergs, as I’ve seen your guild do against us.

So is there a reason why an ET, FC, or other smaller population server that regularly faces at least one of us wouldn’t improve your situation? Or do we just not have enough people in general for you?

Shero.3106:

Some fun on the reset night

FYI, if everyone there uses:

/dance *

(/dance[space][asterisk]) to dance, it will synchronize the start to a 5 second internal interval allowing perfect synchronization of the dances. It looks very cool when everyone is doing the same dance perfectly in sync.

Aquilus.9423:

Obviously I can’t speak for my entire server, but every time I’ve been on, our Commanders(or at least the ones I see) are actively directing us away from ET and in our voip channel, they’re telling us to leave ET alone and focus on DR.

Tonight, while I was on WvW in EBG, we spent quite a bit of time fighting off a small SF zerg turning over stuff in our third of EBG instead of attacking DR and I see plenty of red popping up on our borderlands throughout the day.

We’re a low population server and we often can’t defend more than one map well, so if we keep getting pulled back to our borderlands to defend or retake, we’re not fighting as hard in EBG.

There seems to be a point in the day around 4PM – 6PM US Eastern time when DR has been walking all over us and I’m not sure if that’s because we have bad coverage or they have great coverage since I’m watching it via mos.millenium.org rather than being logged in. On the other hand, in US prime time, we seem to be able to take our third of EBG and even go a bit further than that.

Ynot.8397:

So are you saying you would mess up SF for me

I’m saying that if FC and ET find themselves up against SF next week, both would do better to focus on SF than each other.

katz.8376:

lol. teamed up with? hardly. at least till the final hours before reset. IoJ and DR were having their own little lover’s quarrel and mostly left ET to it’s own devices for almost the whole matchup. there was no “team” till the last day when there was a… tenuous at best (there was still plenty of killing each other going on)… truce between DR and ET to take all of IoJ’s stuff, putting DR in first.

Yes, the official team-up didn’t happen until the very end, but I think the observation remains valid that DR got themselves to the point where they could take the lead by focusing on IoJ rather than ET. When the second place server focuses on ET, it forces ET to defend against them which leaves the first place server to do whatever it wants. It’s tempting to go after the weaker target, but it doesn’t help close on the first place server.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Do you actually believe this?

Yes, DR teamed up with ET to attack IoJ and focused on IoJ rather than ET for much of the week.

Ynot.8397:

I just came in here to ask DR to kindly pummel SF into the ground so we can beat them in rank for next week. Would be kinda funny :p

If that happens, it will be at least in part because SF would rather attack us in our borderlands than DR, which not only doesn’t deny DR any points bukittens the ET people up taking stuff back from SF instead of attacking DR on the Eternal Battlegrounds or their own map. That seems to be exactly why FC and ET do so badly when they are in the same match-up and why this match-up is going badly for both ET and SF. The way to get more points is for the other two servers to attack the server with the most points, not the weakest server. In fact, that’s exactly how DR won last week.

Jscull.2514:

We don’t want to only fight Zergs. You and all other Zergers make this mistake of assuming the current meta is only a “bit” off.

When you get done riding that straw man of yours to Oz, tell the Wizard I said hello, Dorothy.

If there is a bias here that’s affecting my ability to understand your paint, it’s not that I’m a “Zerger” but that I’m on ET. The times I’ve seen your guild on our borderlands when we were in the same match-up, there were plenty of small groups your side roaming around our borderlands for ET trying to take back supply camps and so on, If they fail to engage you, it’s because your group has a reputation for being very good and very deadly. You’ve earned it, but it makes plenty of people reluctant to face you and I can see that in the map chat. They don’t expect a challenge or a learning experience. They expect a roflstomp, and thus it’s better to wait for whatever passes for a zerg at the time to deal with you.

Things may be different on the high population servers, but there are times when raising a zerg of 20-30 people would require everyone ET has in WvW, if that may are even playing at the time.

Jscull.2514:

The argument is being made by many competitive players across the game in general is to encourage smaller group play AS WELL.

And I’m fine with that, but how does stomping lone roamers with 5 guys and even evenly sized groups with less skilled players encourage that? Figure out how to make the experience of losing to you guys suck less, and it might encourage people to try again. Maybe only down them without killing them the first time and play with them a bit unless they run. Maybe attack them with even numbers or figure out how to play without a stealthed thief in the mix, which seems to be the thing that freaks people out the most in the forums because they don’t know how to stop it. The situation isn’t ideal but try to work with what you have to make it better.

Jscull.2514:

So telling me how best to “deter a Zerg” isn’t of interest as open field we take 20-25 couple times a week.

I’m not asking you to do the de-zerging personally. My argument was that removing siege removes the tools by which players in general can discourage zerging. If the AoE limit stinks, then removing the equipment that actually can get around that limit isn’t going to make things better. I’m not asking PAXA personally to spend a week camping a tower to discourage zergs.

Jscull.2514:

Anet needs to bring skilled players back to open world pvp or it is undoubtedly inevitable the next game that comes out will plummet wvw’s population. Tell us we are wrong all you want to, when you have no one to Zerg anymore… Let me know how fun those “objectives” are to take and how “epic” you feel.

Given how few like-minded groups you’ve identified in your other tread, I’m not sure the population will plummet all that much, especially if the zergers actually enjoy their zerging exactly the way it is. For every person complaining about the AoE cap and downed state, there are plenty more asking for various things (thieves, arrow carts, etc.) be nerfed to make the came easier for them so they die less. As much as it may disappoint you and even me, there are a lot of people out there who are quite happy pressing 1 to win, which is why so many people transfer to the winning servers. The goal should be to identify and encourage the people who will appreciate skill and challenge and I can’t imagine that making their first experiences an outnumbered stomping that they are helpless to stop is going to encourage that.

And what you seem to be missing is that zerging isn’t what I enjoy. I spend much of my time solo roaming, trying out unconventional tatics, and trying to fortify and hold what we have. I’d much rather be sitting in a tower or keep melting a zerg, and that will happen even if PAXA goes elsewhere.

But what it sounds like you and others really need is for ANet to give you a map that contains some terrain and perhaps some basic mobs and resource nodes and then define sides by guild and/or party such that anyone in another guild and/or party is red and fair game. This should be fairly simple for ANet to do. They could take the 5 starting maps, which are fairly large and diverse in terrain, and get rid of all of the events an everything other than (A) the basic mobs, (B) the resource nodes (expanded in range to cover all six tiers), © the jumping puzzles, and (D) the terrain and let every server enter to have open GvG and PvP fights on their own terms. Or is that still totally misunderstanding what you want?

Craig.2403:

However, when you put PAXA vs a pug zerg of more than 30 people, PAXA will still lose (unless the zerg is utterly terrible) even though PAXA clearly has better skill and organization. THIS SHOULD NOT BE THE CASE!!!

At some point, it should be nearly impossible to win and 6:1 being a near certain loss doesn’t seem unreasonable to me. I have seen well-trained teams defeat groups 2-3 times their size and that certainly seems reasonable to me. There also seems to be a lot of opportunity to pick off the tail of a zerg while they are moving from place to place, and I’ve seen that done and done it myself.

Craig.2403:

This is the point we are trying to get people to see. There is an imbalance in this game between player skill and group size that makes group size much more meaningful than player skill.

Do you think numbers should be entirely irrelevant and, if not, what do you think the correct ratio is for a smaller group of skilled players to defeat a larger number of unskilled pick-up players? 2:1? 3:1? 4:1? 5:1? 6:1? 10:1? 25:1? 50:1? 100:1? I’ve seen 2:1 and 3:1 and you say (below) that you’ve seen 8:1, so how high do you want it to be?

Craig.2403:

And yes, I’ve had 3 people kill a 25 man zerg before without siege just by using a series of choke points and great coordination against a pug zerg with no organization. Take into account, however, that this was not an open field fight, which is what we are discussing here.

Do you want the whole map to be one big flat featureless field, then?

Choke points are how outnumbered and skilled fighters have always taken out opponents that greatly outnumber them, and using terrain is a big part of skill, to, not simply knowing which sequence of buttons to push to get maximum DPS.

Ever hear of Leonidas of Sparta and his 300 Spartans at the Battle at Thermopylae (they made a little movie about it not too long ago)? The role of the terrain in that battle wasn’t entirely clear in the movie so maybe movies are to blame when they do things like turning the Battle of Stirling Bridge into an open field battle in Braveheart with no river in sight, but a lot of historical battles and skirmishes hinged on terrain and choke points (like Thermopylae, a narrow coastal pass, or Sterling Bridge) to allow underdogs to defeat much larger numbers. That’s simply part of how it’s done and should be part of how it’s done.

Craig.2403:

And, to drive the point home more: I went to the WvW general discussion forums to see what was there regariding this topic, and what do I see? First post: “Idea for encouraging small group play.” Hmmm, sound familiar? Then, curios, I check it out. The main criticism: “better idea: remove downed state and aoe cap.” Hmmm, this is getting freaky, it’s almost the exact arguments we are putting up, coming from completely different people, I wonder if it’s cause they’re legitimate.

They are legitimate, which may be why I actually agreed with those complaints. I specifically singled those two things out as legitimate complaints that I think should be changed, though I think the problem with the downed state is specifically rallying and that’s what I would change in WvW.

Craig.2403:

P.S. it’s not the amazing small man groups keeping other small man groups away. It’s the lack of reward, extremely high skill cap required to be successful against larger numbers, and lack of other small groups that make people run away from it. When TFI first started to get our group together, we asked for a 5v5 against PAXA to see how far we had to go. The complete and total clobbering they gave us didn’t make us give up, it only made us realize how far we had to go before we could truly call ourselves a party (which we still don’t yet). In fact, it had the opposite effect as what you described: it made us work harder. And you can’t say that these are just people who like a challenge, because about half of our group are more pve focussed than WvW focused, which as you know, is about as far from a challenge as you can get.

If everyone approached the game the way you do, there would be no shortage of the the type of play you are looking for, but they don’t and there is. And, yes, friends can drag other friends to try things that they wouldn’t normally try, as I’ve been encouraging my friends to try WvW.

Einstein is said to have defined insanity as trying the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. If you aren’t getting what you want out of the game now, why not try something a little different?

Craig.2403:

@BerkYou want PAXA to fight you 1v1 when they have told people countless times that they’re not built for 1v1?

Against a single opponent? Yes, if they want to encourage people to engage in PvP instead of joining the zerg. It’s much like not playing mopping the floor with my 7 year-old daughter while teacher her to play checkers even though I easily could do so. Roflstomping is not how you get people interested in something. What overwhelming a person teaches a person is that the way to win is with superior numbers. When they are attacked by several people and downed quickly, I doubt they are seeing the skill and training involved in the coordinated attack. What they are seeing is being outnumbered.

If that’s too much to ask, then how about stopping when the player is downed, letting them get up, and doing things more slowly to teach them what’s happening and give them a chance to defend against it? If they run away, then finish them. But does one lone roamer really have much of a chance against a coordinated 5-man squad?

What do they have to lose? I can’t imagine a full PAXA team swarming a single player who doesn’t put up much of a fight is much of a challenge so what’s the point of it? If you want any sympathy for the awful experience it is having your small group zerged to death, then how about some sympathy for the lone player being swarmed by a kill squad instead of driving them to zerg? Sure, you get a bag of loot for killing them and you’ll never see them again unless they come back with the zerg.

Craig.2403:

Anyways, the problem with your post about siege is that the larger group ALWAYS has more siege. So, you see, while this small group builds 1 or 2 arrow carts (because that’s all they have supply to build), the zerg is quickly building 10… and how does this help the small group? You make it sound like only the small group gets siege, which is clearly wrong.

That’s not what I’ve seen on ET. I’ve seen very few zergs from anyone that put up more than rams or catapults and of those who do more, only a few put them up very quickly (IoJ did a good job with this a few times). The key to defense isn’t the defenders building siege weapons after the attackers show up and start building theirs. The key is to have the defensive siege already pre-built, and more than just a couple of arrow carts, have the slow-turning siege equipment pointed the right way, have people trained to hit things with it quickly, and have a few people inside and on the siege equipment when the zerg first shows up. As soon as they see opposing siege going up, blast it. It’s not that hard to destroy or make the site too hot for them to complete it if the site is prepared first.

Craig.2403:

Next, PAXA and KoM are specific guilds that are coordinated and built to effectively work together. Put PAXA vs Red Guard and what would happen? PAXA would get destroyed. Why? Because Red Guard has the same organization PAXA does, but with more people, thus they will come out on top. Equal skill and unequal numbers should mean that the bigger numbers wins, which is correct in this case.

And what happens when a group like PAXA jumps a lone roamer who is new to WvW?

katz.8376:

blargh. why is this argument/discussion/whatever happening in our matchup thread >.>

I think it started with someone mentioning PAXA, but I’m enjoying the discussion.

Jscull.2514:

Just play general Patton every night and feel epic like youre living lord of the rings? 95-99% of this game hates competition. Hates when enemies kill/troll them in a jumping puzzle so they waste RL time and are “appalled” at the actions. Please graduate from lalaville and jump into wanting to use your own skill to kill other people. Not Anets seige skill. Like king AMA said, take out siege – I bet 40% or more would quit the game.

I could easily come up with a pop-psychology analysis of your motives that would make you sound pretty lame so please spare me the same. It’s a game that most people are playing for recreation, not a lifestyle or a second job. It doesn’t surprise me that a lot of people want a recreational activity that’s a pastime rather than a challenge and I also understand why other people want and enjoy a challenge. There are times when I’m looking for one or the other and one of the things that works well for me in GW2 is that I can find both in the game. When I want easy, I do the Frozen Maw. When I go into WvW, I’m not looking for easy but I’m also not looking for futile, which is where I think a lot of the highly skilled players make a mistake they might not even realize they are making.

The point where the game is challenging is somewhere between easy and futile and that’s going to vary from player to player based on a variety of factors including both experience and natural aptitude. If players perceive an encounter as futile, they’ll tend to give up and avoid it. If they perceive it as challenging, they’ll often work on getting better, even if they lose a lot at first.

When I encounter PAXA/KoM when I’m solo roaming, I usually either run or stand there and die. Why? Because I perceive the encounter as futile. Why? Because I’m predictably attacked by two people (outnumbered) working in coordination following a clearly well-practiced attack plan (it looks identical every time) that takes me down in a few blows. It might as well be a zerg running over me for all it matters. I don’t learn anything and don’t bother trying because it’s over so fast I’m luckly if I get an attack off or even see what is hitting me. It feels futile.

It’s not as if I’m not willing to fight one-on-one. I’ve done it and even won a few. It’s also not that I’m unwilling to take on larger numbers. Heck, I’ve even jumped into full parties to see if I could take someone down before they took me down. But in the case of the elite hunter-killer guilds, they are so good and so fast it’s futile for me to even try, and I’m going to avoid futile.

So here is my suggestion. If you want people to try, learn, and enjoy the sort of open-field PvP combat you enjoy, don’t make their first experiences with it feel like futility. If you see a lone player wandering around their borderlands, don’t blindside them with a stealthed thief that hits them with a few shots while a warrior rushes up to them and finishes them off before they know what hit them. Have the warrior walk up and one-on-one them. Basically go easy on the newbies. Why? For the same reason you don’t teach a young child to love chess by mating them in a few moves the first few times they play. That’s not how you get someone to love a game.

Are there risks involved in doing what I’m suggesting? Sure. If you pull your punches, you could wind up leaving yourself exposed to an opponent that’s actually quite good and defeats you. They might also have their own stealthed thief waiting for you.

But if you want me to stick around and fight you guys PvP instead of running or standing there while you slay me (I can’t imaging the latter being much fun for you guys, either) when I’m solo roaming, then try attacking me one-on-one rather than two-on-one or with your whole team. If you’ll notice in last week’s treat for the match-up involving ET, I mentioned getting taken down while harvesting gold and not looking for a fight but didn’t complain about it. I should have stood and at least tried to fight but part of the reason why I didn’t is that I’m so used to getting wiped out by a team that I do expect such encounters to be futile, so don’t have a lot of incentive left to try it and actually was more willing to try such things when I first started WvW than I am now.

Jscull.2514:

2. Berk- you are 1 of 95-99% of this game that doesn’t want to do anything else but use wvw as your “epic battlefield”. Dude it’s pvp… Player vs player… There are towers and keeps here And that is all you see. Forget the red players running around, theyre just annoying right? Forget that running around with 20+ people makes this game ez mode because of dumb mechanics like 5 person Aoe cap and downed state (worst idea ever in mmo history btw).

Not at all. I’ve done all sorts of things in WvW ranging from running with a zerg and camping sites to chasing a single player half-way across a map and taking him out at the end and charging a group of three alone and scaring them off. Heck, I’ve even repeatedly thrown myself into a spawn camping zerg with the Outmanned buff to see how I’d do for an hour or so.

I don’t think it’s just towers and keeps but I also don’t think they are just there for decoration. I’m fine with the PvP part but I think there is more to PvP than well-practiced teams fighting in an open field. I find the fortification and siege mechanics interesting when they are actually PvP instead of PvDoor. I think cracking a defended fortification is interesting, both as a defender and an attacker. And I think that part of the game suffers as much from players not knowing how to use all of the other tools the game gives them as much as the open field combat does.

When I first started playing WvW and reading the forums, I thought there were all sorts of things wrong with WvW ranging from balance to overpowered mechanics but as time goes on, I think many, if not most, of the problems in WvW are related to how the players play the game (there are still some true problems, such as the AoE limits which are the natural and realistic solution to a stacked zerg — the problem with the downed state in WvW is how rallying works, not the whole concept, in my opinion) and ANet’s problem is largely a matter of what they reward and “punish” (I lose gold whenever I play a defensive game). Players zerg because that’s how they make money. If you could earn a lot defending a tower or engaging in small group combat, more people might do those things.

I’ve demonstrated to my guild of friends that a fairly small number of people in a pre-siege equipped tower can melt zergs and they told me it worked exactly the way I told them it would. And the reason for that is that the siege weapons have a much higher AoE limit than my ranger’s Barrage does and that’s what busts zergs. I see siege weapons as the anti-zerg work-around for the ridiculously small AoE limit that ANet isn’t in any hurry to get rid of for characters.

Siege weapons also require a certain amount of skill to place and use and a lot of it gets used badly and sometimes, amazingly, not at all (I’ve been in plenty of attacks in towers or keeps with siege weapons not being used by players standing on the walls watching the attack). It’s not easy to kill player-characters with a cannon, for example, but I’ve done it. In fact, I’ve killed a team of two scouts when the thief wouldn’t leave their downed friend behind and wasn’t nearly as clever with their stealth as they thought they were. I’ve actually been training newbies about how to find and use the siege equipment properly because that’s the best change an outnumbered server like ET has to fight off the zergs.

Have people camp the towers and keeps with manned siege weapons and they’ll need to build their own in the field to crack the tower or keep. PvDoor disappears once the arrow carts and other siege weapons start raining death down on the zerg looking to press 1 to win. And when they build field siege weapons, that creates a great opportunity for open field combat with an objective. Some of the best open-field combat I’ve seen between large groups on ET has involved surging out to attack a siege weapon set up to take a tower, both as defender and attacker.

I’ve also been part of a group of people that I wasn’t even in a party with that held a tower despite the wall going down twice because we were ready for the enemy and took them out as they came in (not even using siege weapons) and they only took the tower with a much larger zerg on the third try. I find that defend and hold game, against other players, every bit as interesting as chasing the guy half-way across the map and taking him out. And I’ve also found it interesting being on the invading side of that same scenario and being driven out of a tower we didn’t have sufficient numbers to take. That’s not PvDoor. It is PvP. And my feeling about PvDoor is that if I wanted to attack NPCs that I’m guaranteed to beat for loot, I could go back to PvE and get a much better experience doing that.

King Amadaeus.8619:

The only time I really care for using (defensive) siege (personally) is when we are defending something and severely out-manned. (IE: 5vs30). And even then it is just to ruin 30 noobs day, or give our main force some time to get there and wipe them.

Let’s just say that seeing the Outmanned buff is not a rare occurrence for ET players and even when we don’t see it we are usually outnumbered. A big part of the problem is that personal AoE attacks hit a maximum of 5 people, making stacking together a good defensive strategy. It shouldn’t be. Siege weapons can hit up to 50 at once, making them the only real zerg-cluster-buster in the game.

King Amadaeus.8619:

I would be 100% fine if ANET deleted siege altogether from the game, changed the scaling on the dmg done to doors and left things like that (I mean if people wanted to pvdoor all day go ahead). IMO siege just ruins this game, whether it be OP crap like the former ACs, the fact that Trebs solve too many problems, field built siege ruining open field fights, etc.

I wouldn’t, since they are key to taking and holding sites, which is why they existed in the real world, too. The thing that ruins open field fights is a tightly packed map where just about every inch can be hit by siege equipment in a tower or keep. A bigger map with more open fields would create more opportunity for open field battles. If someone builds siege in an open field, there is your opportunity for a charge to take it out.

Jakare.6807:

Pretty much this. Use WvW for what it is, a massive roaming team deathmatch battleground. Learn your class, REALLY learn it, play it to it’s limits, put yourself in situations that actually have some kind of risk and actually push you to get better, because right now that’s basically the end game.

Everyone plays for different reasons. One person’s sole reason for playing might seem hopelessly dull or lame to someone else.

I enjoy the strategic game in WvW – holding sites, siege placement, deterring attacks, calling in a cavalry zerg to thwart an attack, and so on. My primary character is traited for support, my friends are casual players, and I’m pretty poor at button pushing so I’m never going to compete with a player who thrives on duels and such. I can win a 1 on 1 against certain classes, but it’s not why I play WvW.

Jakare.6807:

Every time you spam 1 on an AC in a tower, somewhere in the world a child dies.

Based on what I’ve seen, just pushing 1 on an AC makes one about as effective with it as just pushing 1 on a weapon skill in combat. Effective use of siege weapons, including placement and targeting, is a skill, too — and one that a lot of WvW players don’t seem to have.

I continue to be amazed when I’m defending a tower or keep and there is open siege all around and players not using it.

Yeah, that may spoil someone’s PvDoor experience, but one would think that players looking for a challenge would enjoy the challenge oh cracking a well-defended tower or keep. Isn’t that also part of the game, or do we get to be selective about how others are allowed to play?

Jakare.6807:

Don’t forgo the best challenge that you can get in this game because you’d rather press 1 to win than face losing a fight and paying a few silver repair costs, you can make that money back just getting stacks off of coyote’s for kitten’s sake.

Not my primary interest in WvW. I don’t mind dying, particularly to achieve an objective, but I don’t have the time, interest, dedication, or reflexes to compete with top end players and I’m fine with that. I play to my strengths and I’m fine with others playing toward theirs.

katz.8376:

on the other hand, all is fair in war.

No, not really. The people who engage in war without restraint or humanity tend to get remembered as monsters and war criminals, the Geneva Conventions exist for a reason, and things can get very nasty for everyone when people don’t restrain themselves at all, even in real war. Yes, this is a game and far less is at stake, but the psychology of what is decent and fair is similar.

I don’t personally have a problem with players attacking other players in the WvW jumping puzzle and I can even accept denial without a kill for loot as a legitimate goal but making a cooperative deal and then turning on a person who helped you is a jerk move no matter how you cut it.

And for the players who are defending this who enjoy dueling challenges, would you be fine with a commander showing up to Fight Night with a zerg to make it impossible to have it and for no other reason or would that be a jerk move? How about players who follow the duel protocol and then have their friends jump in to help if they start losing?

Pentzski.4620:

I’m sorry ): I was wandering ioj looking for any sort of fight and it’s kinda dead there so I pounced on any opportunity I could get. The mistfire wolf hurts so I figured I’d deal with that first while you were laying there.

Oh, no problem. I was fair game and shouldn’t have just turned my back on you when I saw you jump down. Never used to get the Mistfire Wolf off in a situation like that until they recently changed it so you could launch it while moving. It’s very effective in PvE and against NPCs in WvW and OK in crowds of players in WvW, but it seemed to have trouble hitting you with the AoE attack, which was interesting to see. The pets, in general, seem to have a lot of trouble hitting highly mobile targets. One of the reasons I don’t use a Reef Drake as my primary pet. It doesn’t fire fast enough to hit a player that knows what’s coming.

To the two DR guys who let me help them finish the skill challenges on their borderlands and IoJ’s borderlands without fighting me, thanks. I was looking for map completion on the DR borderlands, not a fight. To the DR EDGE guy who took me out in IoJ’s borderlands near the ruins, I was looking for some gold ore and not a challenge but I knew you were coming, it was fair game, and should have put up a better fight and I though it was interesting watching you deal with the Mistfire Wolf and my pet river drake while I was downed.

(By the way, I had piercing arrows so any hits you guys took during the skill challenge fights were because you crossed my line of fire, not because I was aiming for you. In fact, I was trying to fire perpendicular so I wouldn’t hit you. The game would be very different if friendly fire were turned on.)

Ynot.8397:

I am in T8 and happy about the randomized matchups. Look at how much fun FC and ET had when we are stuck together, oh wait, FC got stomped while ET didn’t come out to play. Now another server can take the heat off of FC or ET. Much better system for T8 than there was before.

As a relatively new WvW player on ET, I agree. It’s been good for both FC and ET to not be on the same matchup, and I hope that continues tonight.

If ANet wanted to encourage an evening out of populations, they should not only make transfers of accounts from top to bottom free but also transfer of guild ratings and assets.

But I find play at the bottom pretty interesting, even if it gets annoying from time to time. I like the absence of queues, the absence if lag, the absence of overflow, and the fact that one person can make a big difference quite a bit, so while I’d like to see a few more transfers to make us more competitive with other low-ranked servers, I don’t think I’d want to see us swamped with forced transfers.

I’d rather be fighting an uphill battle as an underdog than being bored by the lack of challenge or mired in skill lag after enduring a queue to even start playing.

Gab Superstar.4059:

Aside from occasionally resetting SM, ET has been focusing DR in EB 90% of the time.

I don’t think that’s true. We actually spent quite a lot of time and resources defending the ET corner of EB from IoJ incursions, particularly at Quentin and Danelon but also elsewhere. Every time we’d take back Danelon, IoJ would take it back unless we left a force there. We also did attack into IoJ territory but they were also pretty good at sending out a zerg to face us. We also clashed with IoJ a bit on our borderlands. So it’s not like we didn’t focus on IoJ at all, nor them us.

Gab Superstar.4059:

I personally don’t think you are gonna see much of that from DR, aside from maybe a few people who amused by the fact THAT A SERVER THAT QUEUES MAPS DURING EUROPEAN PRIMETIME ON SUNDAYS AND HAS SOME OF THE BEST OCEANIC COVERAGE LOSES TO TWO T8 SERVERS. LOL.

What I find interesting is that after some downplayed coverage as an excuse while it was to their advantage, IoJ seems to be falling victim to coverage problems. There is a “Fair sized guild Looking for new Server” from SBI on the World Recruitment forum that maybe people on IoJ might want to talk to, since they seem to have Oceanic covered but not NA.

But, overall, I think all three servers had some things to be proud of this week and it was a good match from my perspective.

I’d still like to see DR/SF/ET. What I don’t want to see are ET and FC against a larger server. Both ET and FC seem to be doing better when not together.

Guild Wars 2 is my first MMO, and since I started WvW a bit over a month ago on ET (after running two characters to level 80 + exotic gear in PvE) and I’ve been enjoying it because one player or a small guild can make a big difference on ET. We’ve been getting some transfers that should help us be more competitive. Also note that ET almost never suffers from skill lag or WvW queues which means you can pretty much play whenever you want.

I suggest sticking with ET as long as you are having fun there and, if you aren’t, research the trade offs before you transfer.

ET and FC could use the help and you not only won’t be bored from having too many point but you also will very rarely see a queue, overflow server, or skill lag.

SleepingDragon.1596:

Don’t try saying that to those who are able to PVD to win. They’ll take offense to it and call you a “troll”.

What I don’t understand is if someone wants a PvE experience, there are whole maps full of that stuff with a lot more variety to it. What, exactly, does anyone “win” doing PvDoor?

Teevell.1684:

Which is why I said hopefully. Coverage at any time is a problem for low-pop servers, that has nothing to do with time zones. Even if it’s peak hours, the higher pop server will be able to cover better. Hopefully Anet will do something to address this imbalance. But I don’t think the OPs suggestion is it.

But what I’ve seen watching ET through the day is that it does matter. We do fairly well during our prime time and have done reasonably well on weekends, but we loose a lot overnight, including fully upgraded towers and keeps that were stocked with siege equipment because nobody was there to hold them. Regardless of the reason, we are more competitive during some parts of the day than others.

Teevell.1684:

You’re not (hopefully) the only person in the match. You upgrade the keep and then night shift takes over.

And if the server has a low population and no regular “night shift”?

Yes, we know the high population top-rank servers don’t have this problem. Low ranked servers do and servers with imbalanced populations do. Sure, everyone could just keep piling on those top ranked servers as space opens up so that skill lag and long queues that top ranked servers complain about (and we almost never see at the bottom) get even worse, but that won’t improve the game.

Telling people on low population servers that this isn’t a problem and doesn’t need to be fixed is like me saying that skill lag and wait queues aren’t a problem and don’t need to be fixed because my server doesn’t have those problems.

If time zones and coverage really don’t matter, then they should eliminate the split between EU and NA and let, for example, ET and FC face Vabbi.

Corvus.3728:

To be honest, if you are in a server, where u can’t find 3/4 people to help defending, I suggest u should mail me and I will give u 100g because chances are unlikely. Every server can have 3/4 people to help you cover something you want to defend.

I think you still underestimate how small the number of players can get at the bottom. I’ve been on the borderlands map at the end of US prime time on ET when some asked for everyone still on to reply in map chat and they got 8 responses. I’ve asked for help manning open siege while defending a tower I’d been maintaining outside of prime time and gotten no takers. Yes, I can get a good defense request response when we have a decent number of people on but not when the population is sparse.

So, what do I need to send you to get 100g? A video of an attack taking out a tower in our own borderlands or our corner of EB (not some lost cause tower on enemy turf) after numerous requests for help in the map chat and no help? I’m pretty sure I can get that for you because I’ve already seen it. There are nights where we don’t even have someone keeping up the siege equipment at all of our holdings.

No, I don’t want to transfer servers, ET is working on recruitment (so is FC), and we’ve gotten some good recent transfers. I’m willing to wait to see if thing improve.

If I had to make 3 suggestions to improve WvW for low WvW participation servers at this point, they would be:

1) Make defense more profitable and interesting so that players on low population servers will be willing to camp a location and defend it instead of capping supply camps over and over. I liked the suggestion about making refreshing defensive siege an event. Letting players take out NPCs using siege weapons only (they often auto-heal now and can’t be killed that way) and the occasional NPC raid to drive back could also help. This would help finding 3-4 people to defend and hold things.

2) Scale the rewards and loot to the relative number of combatants. You should get more of a base reward got taking out a well defended site than one defended by NPCs and a better reward for defeating 3 attackers than being part of a team jumping a lone opponent. PvDoor should produce tiny rewards while attacking a well-defended site should give big rewards, unless the number of attackers is also very low. Yes, I know loot bags from kills do this to a degree already, but I’m talking about making it even stronger and applying it to the event rewards, too.

3) Limit the number of opponents on a server’s borderland only to 2-4 times the maximim number of defenders in the last hour, minimum of 10. If there are more attackers than the current limit, they get to stay until they die. This will make sure a low population server can at least be competitive on their own home borderland, have a good chance of holding it with an off-hours skeleton crew, and generally have a decent experience there.

Can you give more detail on what you don’t like about your current experience and want out of your fresh start? There are a variety of things one can get out of WvW and different servers and tiers have different pros and cons. There are people who transfer to high tier servers because they want to play on a winning server and people who transfer to the bottom (FC and ET) because everyone counts at the bottom. What exactly are you looking for?

This is my first MMO, I’ve been in WvW a bit more then a month, my video game reflexes are pretty awful, I mostly turn with my keyboard, I often activate skills with mouse clicks, I primarily run a longbow ranger who wears magic find armor (which might be why I’ve gotten quite a few rares and an exotic in WvW), yet I still manage to have fun, even roaming alone and despite doing everything wrong. Yeah, my characters die a lot at the hand of professional roamers, and I’m OK with that. Enjoy the kill guys.

Parktou.4263:

http://mos.millenium.org/na

If you scroll down, you’ll see that ET has the third highest evolution score, which means you guys are actually stepping up and making progress. Way to go guys, keep it up.

Their predicted rankings have FC swapping wit ET for last place, meaning we might not be last place next week.

Ynot.8397:

FCvDRvSF. I need some revenge against those guys

Based on this week’s scores, which are split almost identically between the 3 for GoM/DR/FC and HoD/SF/ET, it seems like it would be ideal for a GoM/HoD and a DR/SF match up next, with FC or ET as the third. It seems FC and ET do better apart like this. But given that FC still ranks above ET, I’d rather see ET face DR and SF than GoM and HoD and see FC face HoD and GoM. It doesn’t look like ET has faced DR yet.

The score similarities between HoD/SF/ET and GoM/DR/FC are actually tightening at the moment. Rounded, HoD has 233k to GoM’s 230k, SF has 187k to DR’s 189k, and ET has 158k to FC’s 160k. Should I be hoping for a SF/DR/ET matchup next week?

It happened to the guy in my guild, and I think one other person, while the gate was being rammed by someone else. He was playing an engineer, so I doubt he was doing a melee attack and it did him no favors to find himself alone inside unexpectedly where he was quickly slain by the people inside. If the door is coming down, anyway, it’s better to charge in with the group, so I’d consider this a problem for attacker as well as defender.

wolfie.7296:

Lag makes that impossible.

In the month or so I’ve been playing WvW on ET, I’ve seen a short queue once and serious skill lag once, both this week.

lilstev.3498:

Any suggestions on a server where there’s actual PvP? Btw I’m on Erradon Terrace.

What kind of experience are you looking for? There is plenty of PvP-type action on ET. My suggestion is to just stop following the zerg.

For example, there is a "fight club" tonight for individual duels and small balanced group skirmishing. You can hunt the individuals and small groups constantly lurking around and taking camps. You can sit at a heavily flipped site and take on the enemy that will eventually show up to take it and call in for help if they are big (I’ve benefitted from cavalry over the hill rescues on the ET borderlands after calling in a report of the catapult the enemy was building to take the keep I was in). We fought back a half-dozen zerg charges on a tower in the Eternal Battlegrounds this weekend.

There are plenty of individuals and small groups doing things to each other once you get away from the zerg. So can you give more detail about what you want?

Aurust.8961:

Been on SOR since 3 day headstart…… and it shouldnt matter in an rvr game.

It shouldn’t matter, but it does on your server. In the month or so I’ve been doing WvW, the only time I’ve seen a short queue on Eredon Terrace was last Friday night and the only time I’ve seen skill lag was when we were part of a 3-way battle for Stonemist Castle this week. I’m sure both happen now and then but they haven’t been an issue for me. If either were the norm, I’d be looking for something else to do. A guild transfer to ET (a medium population server) could make a big difference. I know you like the server you are on and your guild is built up there, but if the alternative is giving up, a transfer to a lower tier might be worth a look.

Aeolus.3615:

People will always choose to conquer an “abandoned” wvw map, in many cases i see A taking B borderland while A do not recover theyre borderland.

What I find fascinating about the people who seem to focus on undefended camps and towers is that taking an undefended tower is basically a PvE experience and the game is full of maps with that kind of objective with more variety and reward. I understand why a solo player or small group of roamers would do that but not larger groups. Taking an undefended camp, tower, or keep with a zerg reminds me of riding the loot train on Southsun Cove but with worse rewards.

I find it interesting how closely the GoM/DR/FC match up has been tracking with our HoD/SF/ET matchup. As I type this, each position’s score is within 4000 point of each other.

Sinester.3572:

I have one thing to say for SOME of ET u guys are using the glitch to get inside the doors all day long dont start doing that that dont lower ur standarts. And yes i did kill both of them :P

One of the people in my guild found himself inside the Keep tonight while bringing down the door and quickly died at the hands of those inside because he wasn’t expecting to find himself in combat. It wasn’t intentional. If what you saw was intentional, that’s wrong and should be reported, but are you sure it was intentional?

Apparently, the best way to help ET and FC is to keep them apart so we both don’t spend all of our time sniping at each other and defending our borderlands against one much larger enemy.