Guild Wars 2

Davey.7029:

I personally don’t mind low population servers, as it’s actually the only place where people can roam alone and in small groups (although sometimes they will only see an enemy every 10-20 minutes). It’s a different playstyle from zerging and it’s fun in it’s own right. The problem is when you put a low population server against a high population one.

This, but there is also a coverage aspect to it.

This is an infographic from a Bronze League match-up my server payed in last week . Near the bottom is a section with the maximum PPT reached by each server:

• Eredon Terrace topped out at 680 points at 17:19 on 10/3 (Friday)
• Sorrows Furnace topped out at 600 points at 5:30 on 9/29 (Monday)
• Anvil Rock topped out at 510 points at 12:24 on 10/3 (Friday)

In the first few hours of our current match-up, Eredon Terrace had double the points of the next server and then was behind on Saturday. We got within a few hundred points of first place on Saturday night and were around 8,000 points behind this morning.

So each server had slices of time where they could dominate in PPT and also where they were dominated.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Players are just going to have to accept the fact that the communities as they know currently will have to end and new ones need to form in whatever format Anet decides to put forward.

Players don’t have to accept anything. This is a recreational activity. They can simply stop playing and/or go play another game.

The argument that the players should have read the notices and taken action before the deadline reminds me of this:

munkiman.3068:

I have still yet to read a good reason why population imbalance is a problem.

First, I’ve yet to hear from a player who enjoys being farmed.

The NPCs show up to be slaughtered again and again by more powerful players in PvE and WvW because they don’t care about their quality of play. But I doubt you’ll find a human that wants to sit at a spot on the map waiting for someone else to show up and inevitably kill them so they other person can have fun, at least not without playing them for ti. Years ago, on a tabletop role-playing game forum, a player commented that he didn’t play role-playing games to be the guy who grabs his chest, yells “I’ve been hit!”, and dies. I doubt many players are playing MMOs to be the guy who gets pummeled to death by a zerg while trying to solo-defend a tower against them so they can get more loot bags.

Second, the power dynamic in mismatched match-ups a lot like bullying.

Larger more powerful entities beating up on less powerful entities that can’t effectively defend themselves is normally described as bullying. Further, the games dynamics often encourage the two more populated servers to beat up on the least powerful server. Maybe many MMO players get off on being bullies, but (related to the first point) it’s not a lot of fun being bullied. It’s also not fun for most people to feel helpless. People don’t play to be victims, especially not for the enjoyment of others.

Third, in imbalanced match-ups, the rewards go to the players who have it easiest, not the underdog that fights against bad odds.

The unfairness and lack of enjoyment might be mitigated if the players expending the most effort under the worst situation received greater rewards for their effort than the blob following the tag around to stomp empty towers and outnumbered opponents, but that’s not what happens. What happens is that server that just about everyone can predict will win before a point is scored gets more rewards essentially for showing up. So what incentive do the servers that know they are destined to lose have for showing up?

Please note that I play on Eredon Terrace, a bottom-ranked server where a lot of people do show up every week despite the horrible odds. Of course there are players who will still show up and see how well they can do, even if the game doesn’t reward them and the score tells them they are losers. But I’d be lying if I told you that players don’t start leaving once playing starts to feel futile enough because it does happen. Better compensation for being a punching bag could help make it feel a little more worthwhile and appreciated to play the role of NPCs for another server to farm.

Fury.6281:

Servers placing 3rd in their respective tiers over a 8 week period will be closed down, and players forced to jump servers to one of a different tier for no charge!

You think your server is worth fighting for? Prove it!

Wire the players on Eredon Terrace millions of dollars so they can quit their day jobs and cover the server 7×24, and we’ll do just fine. Or, better yet, hire us a small army of SEA players to cover our overnight and we’ll also do just fine.

On reset night this week, we had more than twice the points of our two opponents. By Saturday morning, we were in second place. We got within a couple hundred points of the first place server again on Saturday and now Sunday morning, we are nearly 8,000 points behind. Our problem is not that we don’t care about our server or don’t fight hard for it. The problem is that we have a lot of players in the same time zones who have real lives and can’t play 7×24. I suspect Kaineng could similarly complain about being zerged by ET during our primetime and not their primetime. In other words, the problem is not a matter of effort but a matter of coverage disparities and there simply aren’t enough SEA/OCX players to give every server Blackgate-like coverage through the night.

Fury.6281:

On a side note, I am on Blackgate, but this is not an idea that spawns from that.

Then what does it spawn from? Don’t the players on Blackgate already give the game their all when they play?

Jeknar.6184:

But they did received plenty of warnings… From the annoucement of the season to a mail in-game. People can’t blame Anet for not paying attention.

No, but people can still complain it’s a stupid way to gain rewards. I don’t know about when you are on, but my experience is that there aren’t that many quiet moments on ET where I hang out at spawn and think about the NPCs there and chat with them (other than to repair my armor when the Outnumbered buff isn’t up) so, yeah, I forgot about it. Fortunately, someone on ET sent out a reminder for the second week just before reset. Unfortunately, about 20 people and a commander decided to cluster around the NPC at spawn and GW2 wouldn’t let me switch maps to try to find them on another map so I couldn’t find them until after the reset.

Is there some game value to making players collect their reward from an NPC for a limited time, some game reality logic behind it (Do they have a sell-by date in game?), or some value in punishing players for forgetting to find and talk to an NPC or they don’t get rewards they’d otherwise be entitled to? Or is watching other players get frustrated and upset the juice that makes MMOs go. GW2 is the first MMO I’ve ever played, and the amount of enjoyment people seem to get out of other people’s lack of enjoyment and frustration really amazes me sometimes.

DevilishLyx.2340:

Devs want to have fun too; why should they join a low population WvW server and not have fun?!

Beyond the fact that I don’t think play is necessarily not fun on a low-population server, they should spend some time on low population servers to understand how their game plays across the board, not just at the highest populations. If they did this, they might not have implemented word bosses and Living Story event that could not scale enough for low-population casual servers to complete them before megaservers and wouldn’t have implemented megaservers with such a high population cap that world events are mostly now zerg-fests, even for people who didn’t want them, at least some of whom now play less or not at all. They might also realize that some of their fixes destroy other aspects of the game or make problems worse in other parts of the game. In other words, maybe it would dawn on them that not everyone is looking for the same cookie-cutter high-population zerg-fest experience. Not in PvE. Not in WvW.

Sin.4130:

For claiming every object server gets points once.
Camp- 5
Tower -1 0
Keep – 25
SM – 35
As usual, but only once, so server which does pvd (player vs door) will get only max 695 points for all night for example, not like now that one or two nights with pvd and match is over.
Feel free to modify this system in anyway.

Overall, I think this is a bad idea (it essentially makes all of the objectives into the equivalent of sentry checkpoints, which have a minimal effect on the score since any points you get from taking one are matched when your opponent takes them back).

Better might be to base the points per tick of an objective based on how upgraded it is, so objectives only tick off big points when they are upgraded:

Camp – 1 point + 1 point per upgrade (1-5 points)
Tower – 3 points + 1 point per upgrade (3-15 points)
Keep – 6 points + 2 points per upgrade (6-30 points)
Castle – 9 points + 3 points per upgrade (9-45 points)

If an attacker that runs around an enemy borderland off-hours flipping objectives, they wouldn’t get that many points unless they put an effort into upgrading them. The potential problem there is that it will only make it harder for a weak server to get their stuff back if their opponents do upgrade it.

I often think of Led Zeppelin’s Immigrant Song in the Norn territories. Not a perfect fit, but some of it fits GW2 pretty well:

Ah, ah,

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs blow.

The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands,
To fight the horde, sing and cry: Valhalla, I am coming!

On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

Ah, ah,

We come from the land of the ice and snow,
From the midnight sun where the hot springs flow.

How soft your fields, so green,
Can whisper tales of gore,
Of how we calmed the tides of war.
We are your overlords.

On we sweep with threshing oar,
Our only goal will be the western shore.

So now you’d better stop and rebuild all your ruins,
For peace and trust can win the day despite of all your losing

Sarrs.4831:

Something I found very silly; why didn’t they use these armor skins for the new variable-stat armor?

The top goes well enough with Acolyte pants and boots that I’d probably keep them even if I could get the full set, but I’d still like access to the full set as an option.

misterman.1530:

Just watched a mesmer heal, stealth, and cast illusions seemingly with no cooldown.

This points to an even broader problem, which is that because the players see examples of overt hacking and little seems to be done about it, it can lead to players assuming that any questionable abilities that they see (moving a little too fast, staying in stealth a little too long, etc.) are due to hacking. It undermines confidence that other players are following the rules.

Blaeys.3102:

Most importantly, it would do for WvW what megaservers did for PVE – it would give everyone, regardless of server size or active WvW community, the same potential experience in WvW. That is crucial to the long term success of this game.

I absolutely despise the what the megaservers have done to PvE experience, and I am not alone. It is one of the main reasons why the person who introduced me to GW2, who once played every day, and who has over 10,000 achievement points hasn’t played in around two months. It’s why I took a month off from GW2. It’s why other friends no longer play as often as they used to.

Yes, there were frustrations about being able to complete certain events on a low-population server, but the megaserver cure has been worse. Maybe I’m an outlying minority in my tastes, but given the comments I’ve seen and heard, I don’t think I’m anywhere near alone. There are, in fact, people who transfer off of T1 servers because they don’t like the play there.

More broadly, giving the customer a one-size-fits-all experience is generally not the path to success in any business unless you have a really huge customer base looking for that one experience because the customers not looking for the one experience offered will find somewhere else to go that offers what they want.

Blaeys.3102:

And that equality between servers is crucial. People on T1 servers keep saying the lower level servers are looking for a “quiet” wvw" experience, but the reality is more often the exact opposite – we want challenging large scale pvp the same as everyone else (that’s what WvW is).

I’m on a bottom-ranked server and and I much prefer mid-ranged engagements (5-20 on each side) to massive zerg clashes in WvW and I really do not want a T1 experience. You will also find people who have left T1 because they didn’t want that experience. I see little evidence that everyone wants the same experience in WvW.

Blaeys.3102:

Do devs really want a situation where the top 3-6 servers are fun in WvW, while the lower servers (where the new players will probably end up and experience their first WvW fights) struggle with ever dwindling numbers. Its very easy for people on the bandwagon servers to criticize or say this isnt needed, but it really (desperately) is.

We have a lot of fun on Eredon Terrace. Really. Yes, there are periods of frustration when we get rolled over by a much more numerous opponent (especially during tournaments), don’t have enough people to do everything we want to do, and watch opponents rack up points overnight when our coverage is weak, but we also have some really great fights, especially during primetime, and I do like the quieter times, too, when the battles are small and personal. We could certainly use a few more people, especially to cover our overnights and off hours, but I don’t think we need a T1 population to have fun.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Berk.8561:

1. Must be gradual rather than having sharp tipping points, so that the presence or absence of one player never makes a huge difference and changes the game significantly.

Moving Average

What I specifically meant was that any handicap should not suddenly kick with a big effect at a specific tipping point, which is independent of how the population disparity is calculated. For example, if everyone were to get a +50% Magic Find bonus when one population is 50% greater than another, a single person entering the map for the low population server could remove the bonus single-handedly and be blamed for losing it. But if the bonus were to increase by +1% for every 1% difference in population such that it gradually reaches a +50% bonus at a 50% population disparity, then no one person entering or leaving WvW will be responsible for a huge bonus disappearing or appearing and the effect of each person will be minimal.

What any handicapping needs to avoid is the behavior of one person entering or leaving WvW or a map being responsible for losing or gaining an entire large handicap. Instead, each person should contribute a small amount of the bonus until the bonus scales large because the disparity is large. This is to avoid the problem seen in some events (such as the final Lion’s Arch living story events or defending the weapons at Taquatl) where a person or two could suddenly cause the appearance of champions into an event making it much harder to complete. ANet should avoid single person tipping point cut-offs wherever possible, so one person is never to blame for changing the character of an event or battle.

nirvana.8245:

Interesting points. One thing it does overlook is float teams, which are a common organization within T1 servers in every timezone. This would skew some of the figures and add an element of random luck to PPT.

I think it may be better to look at overall WvW population rather than map-by-map population, since the time to switch maps is fairly negligible and there should be some reward for good scouting and coverage. In the past, I’ve suggested the possibility of eliminating the 30 second delay before swords appear on an objective under attack for greatly outnumbered servers to improve their ability to respond to PvDoor attacks.

The latter would reduce the effectiveness of surprise float team attacks, but I’m not sure that’s a bad thing when their opponent is outnumbered. But if the population is calculated across all maps rather than single maps, it would change very little between three T1 servers who are fielding roughly similar numbers in WvW.

nirvana.8245:

Also, it would remove a tactical approach to WvW in terms of objective prioritization by making it less beneficial to defend some of them due to population constraints IE may not be worth holding natural keep on an enemy BL.

Not if population is calculated across all maps, rather than map-by-map, which would give no priority to any particular map or objective. But note that if handicap were calculated on a map-by-map basis, it would almost always be more beneficial to struggle to take and keep objectives where your forces are outnumbered than to take and hold objectives where you have a numerical advantage.

PabbyGaul.9682:

Dynamic objective scoring based on number-defending/attacking could also work but on the other-hand completely does not give experience for feinting, one of the most valuable tactics in a commander’s tool box. So…just because someone isn’t defending an objective shouldn’t determine its value…But how many people COULD defend it does. Why should you not get the points if you tricked the enemy commander into leaving t3 SMC undefended because you attacked their Garri about 30s earlier for the sole purpose of getting him to move? Good tactics deserve good rewards. BUT in this case the Population is still their…just on a different map.

This is the big challenge for implementing any sort of population-based handicapping. Another problem is that the enemy, upon anticipating that they’ll be unable to stop you from flipping their SMC, will abandon the map completely to reduce the reward for flipping the objective. If it’s beneficial for an overpowered server to sandbag and leave WvW, players will do that as a tactic to deny their opponent points, and that could create exactly the sort of hostility that ANet wants to avoid — players abusing other players for playing WvW when doing so might help the enemy’s score.

To be viable, any population-based handicapping:

1. Must react quickly to upward population shifts but slowly to downward population shifts to reduce the benefit of quickly abandoning a map or WvW or rapidly surging into a map on WvW. In the past, I’ve recommended calculating a server’s WvW strength as a 1 hour rolling average (average population for the last hour) or current population, whichever is greater across all of WvW.
2. Must never make it more beneficial to for players to leave WvW and let opponents rampage less impeded instead of staying in WvW and fighting to slow them down. This likely means a handicap that provides a partial benefit to the weaker opponent but does not entirely erase the disadvantage. This likely also means retaining some benefit to PvDoor so that an abandoned map remains beneficial to control.
3. Must be gradual rather than having sharp tipping points, so that the presence or absence of one player never makes a huge difference and changes the game significantly.
4. Will likely need to include incentives to make the players on the underdog server(s) show up and play even when they are outnumbered and have trouble winning.

It’s possible that part of the answer to getting the population to spread out and to get people into WvW on low population servers is it base the in game rewards, the loot and chances for ascended gear and precursors, on effort such that one gets noticeably better drops for a desperate fight against a more numerous opponent than one gets being on a more populated server getting an easy win.

Personally, I wonder why ANet doesn’t create a map with WvW structures and siege weapons but with only NPC defenders and no human opponents. A lot of players seem to crave this sort of play and such a map would give it to them.

Personally, I wonder why ANet doesn’t create a map with WvW structures and siege weapons but with only NPC defenders and no human opponents. A lot of players seem to crave this sort of play and such a map would give it to them.

nirvana.8245:

The fact 5 hours of me playing WvW on a given night is only worth half what 5 hours of an American player is worth just doesn’t go so well with me.

But that’s simply not true. If we have 50 people in during NA primetime and tick 250 points, that’s 5 points per player per tick. If you have 5 Oceanic players on during NA off hours and tick 250 points, that’s 50 points per player per tick. And if you manage to PvDoor your way around empty enemy borderlands, you can be worth even more than that. When I can go to bed with my server a few hundred points ahead and wake up with my server a few thousand points behind, it’s pretty clear that Oceanic players are deciding the outcome way out of proportion to their numbers.

Yes, I know you want to feel that you are making an important contribution to your server’s outcome, but the current system means that primetime players don’t really contribute all that much to their server’s outcome, especially if the primetime populations are fairly balanced.

Boreal.9826:

Why not a simple, perhaps elegant even, solution like:

(#1 + #24) vs (#2 + #23) vs (#3 + #22)
(#4 + #21) vs (#5 + #20) vs (#6 + #19)
(#7 + #18) vs (#8 + #17) vs (#9 + #16)
(#10 + #15) vs (#11 + #14) vs (#12 + #13)

This would be much more balanced, top to bottom. BL caps would have to be increased, but lag hasn’t really been an issue (for me) in many months… and I play in the T1.

I play in T8. It I wanted to play on Blackgate (and that’s what merging ET with Blackgate would amount to), I’d transfer to Blackgate. There are quite a few people in the lower tiers who are there specifically because they don’t like or want the play they get on T1. If you like T1 play and are having fun, that’s great. Not everyone wants the same thing, which is why I also think the megaservers are a disaster (everyone gets high-population play now in PvE, whether they wanted it or not). I would think it’s in ANet’s interest to cater to a wide variety of player preferences to reach the largest audience possible rather than a single narrow preference that appeals to a more narrow audience.

Dayra.7405:

Isn’t that a bit to emotional reaction?

If anything, it probably understates how strongly I feel about it. I play Guild Wars 2 for recreational enjoyment, and the megaservers sucked most of the enjoyment out of PvE for me and other people I know who played on Eredon Terrace. Everywhere I go, zergs.

I know a lot of people here apparently love the massive play but I don’t. I get a taste of that even on ET and I personally don’t think the game plays well at that scale for a variety of reasons (poor graphics performance, lag, inability to distinguish opponents, random rallying, etc.).

Dayra.7405:

Mega-server still mean you may or may not meet your people, while in a community preserving merge, you are guaranteed to meet all ET people, just some others as well.

And how, exactly, do you envision a T8 server being absorbed into a T1 server? As equals?

But that’s beside the point. If I wanted T1 massive battle play, I’d transfer to a T1 server. I’m quite happy with the play I get on ET. The only thing I’m not really happy about is that we have overnight coverage, so any point lead we might achieve or upgrades we might complete while we have people on will inevitably be erased by one or both of our opponents that have better coverage than we do. The time slice solution would solve that problem. But the play I see during primetime, even when we aren’t leading in points, is great as far as I’m concerned.

Dayra.7405:

It like a merge of two schools where classes remain the same (WvW merge) vs a merge of two schools where classes are mixed on order of entrance (mega-server and EotM).

That solution is like merging a small local college with a bottom ranked sports team with a massive state university with a top ranked sports team. What do you think would happen to the athletes and community of the small local college during such a merge?

yanniell.1236:

TC + ET = Eredon Cost

If they do this, I will stop playing Guild Wars 2. I despise what the megaservers have done to PvE, found out that’s one of the main reasons the person who got me into GW2 hasn’t played in 2 months despite formerly having played every day and having more than 10,000 achievement points, and it’s why other friends play less. If they do the same thing to WvW, I’m outta here.

Lucia The Lightbringer.2568:

How about you guys?

Pearls from the lakes that no longer exist on the Borderlands maps in WvW.

Swamurabi.7890:

Would Anet be open to having different cap levels for the different leagues?

I think that whatever they do needs to preserve multiple densities of play and they shouldn’t assume everyone is looking for a T1 experience. That’s the assumptions they made with the population caps on the megaservers in PvE and there are plenty of people who don’t like that at all.

John Corpening.9847:

One note though, I really feel that scoring is a separate issue that needs to be addressed on it’s own. We will discuss that one after we wrap this one up. Even if we were to overhaul the scoring system population imbalance will still be an issue.

Honestly, I think that if you can fix the scoring and rewards so that a scrappy underdog server can win by playing and fighting well when they have people on and get well rewarded for their efforts while playing, the population imbalance becomes much less of an issue to me. And as I’ve said in an earlier reply, I don’t want WvW play homogenized around the idea that everyone is looking for a stacked T1 experience because I’m not, nor are the players who have transferred to lower tiers out of T1.

That said, if my suggestion for addressing the server population imbalance is to not only make transfers down free but actually pay (in gems) a limited number of players each week to transfer down, and charge them more to transfer back up. If a player transfers down 1 league (at least 4 ranks down) into an open slot, they get 200 gems. If they transfer down 2 leagues into an open slot, they get 400 gems (the reward for 10,000 achievement points or about $5). If there are no open slots, the transfer is free but they don’t get gems in return, so a larger guild could transfer but only some of the players might get gems if there aren’t enough open slots. If they transfer up 1 league, it costs 800 gems. If they transfer 2 leagues, it costs 1600 gems. The number of slots available increases the lower a sever is in its league. So for NA, you might have something like:

Rank League   Slots
01        Gold       N/A
02        Gold       N/A
03        Gold       N/A
04        Gold       N/A
05        Gold       N/A
06        Gold       N/A
07        Silver      0
08        Silver      2  
09        Silver      4  
10        Silver      6
11        Silver      8 
12        Silver      10 
13        Silver      12 
14        Silver      14 
15        Silver      16 
16        Bronze    0  
17        Bronze    2  
18        Bronze    4  
19        Bronze    5  
20        Bronze    8 
21        Bronze    10 
22        Bronze    12 
23        Bronze    14
24        Bronze    16 

I despise what the megaservers did to PvE, so much so that I took a month off from the game when they were implemented. I’m not the only one on my server who feels that way. I don’t want to endure the same thing in WvW, because then I’d likely quit the game. I have no desire to play a visually beautiful game at 1-2 frames per second (or with settings dialed down so that everything looks awful) with a screen full of chaotic flashes and skills that don’t work. I might was well watch a screen saver at that point. I’m fine rarely running into that during a large battle for a keep or Stonemist Castle, but I have no desire to see that as the norm.

Yes, before megaservers, it was sometimes annoying that a lot of events were difficult or impossible to complete on a low-population server, but I consider the cure worse. Events that used to work great, where I used to have fun struggling to complete with a dozen people (e.g., the Frozen Maw or the Shadow Behemoth) are now mobbed with zergs and commanders, the pre-events are over in seconds and I never see loot from the defeated Champion anymore in the Frozen Maw because there are too many people doing it. I’d hate to be a new player with a low-level character running into that and being unable to tag anything with enough damage to even get credit for the event. Seriously, the near-empty maps were far more enjoyable.

I’ve read about T1 play. I’ve talked to people in T1. I have zero interest in T1-type play. I actually enjoy the pay on ET, down at the very bottom of T8, during prime time. No queues. Lag is rare. Skills work when activated. I get a decent frame rate even with the detail dialed up. If I wanted T1 play, I could afford to transfer, and I’ve been asked. I don’t want to play WvW like that. Similarly, there are players who hate T8 and transfer up because they get bored or want something bigger and it sounds like plenty of people on T1 love what they’ve got. So instead of trying to make WvW a uniform experience, especially a uniform T1 experience like we’ve been reamed with in PvE, how about preserving the different levels of play so players who want huge zergs smashing into each other can have that and they players wanting small scrappy groups can have that, instead?

Think about it like housing. People can choose to live in areas that are rural, suburban, and urban and each has trade-offs. Jut because rural or suburban people have problems doesn’t mean that they all secretly want to live in a city and people who live in cities don’t want to be forcibly relocated to the suburbs or out into the country. People have different tastes. Whatever solution you choose to pick the scoring and population imbalance problems, please do not implement a solution that assumes everyone wants to play on Blackgate or Jade Quarry. I don’t. If I did, I’d have transferred already. And if people on Blackgate or Jade Quarry wanted an Eredon Terrace experience, they’ve had plenty of opportunity to transfer cheap or for free.

hannah mee.7925:

Several brands have left such a deep mark in the field that the brand is informally interchangeable with the product. Sort of goes to show how language can evolve, though, just by simple association.

The reason why companies fight that is that when their name becomes generic, they lose their trademark status and anyone can use the word. In other words, if the word “legos” became a generic word for any building block, then anyone could go to court and argue that they can call their products “legos” and sell them that way. So for a company, this is a very bad thing and that’s why they fight it.

Branden Gee.2150:

Due to some guild issues. I am now repping Nobleese Oblige [Nob] on Eredon Terrace. Thank you for hosting me!

Welcome to ET and thanks for coming to see what play is like down in the bottom tier. [Nob] is a great bunch of people to play with. Enjoy your time on ET!

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

That doesn’t mean dwarfs is any less gross sounding, which was the point of that particular post I made. “Correct” or not, dwarves just sounds better to a lot of people.

By “gross” I assumed you meant that it didn’t sound right to you, as opposed to it literally unsettling your stomach and making you want to vomit. My point is that, grammatically, the version that sounds “gross” to you is, indeed, correct in many contexts (including talking about how a large object “dwarfs” a smaller object). That it sounds better with a “v” to many people is exactly why Tolkien changed it and it’s why people do all sorts of non-standard things in English.

My favorite is how the second-person plural pronoun (you) completely replaced the second person singular pronoun (thou) so people are creating new second-person plural pronouns (y’all, yous, yinz) and then sometime using that new second-person plural as a singular for politeness (“How y’all doing?” when talking to one person).

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Technically it should always be written as LEGO bricks as LEGO is the brand name.

In the 1970s, Lego actually included fliers in their sets explaining that “Legos” was not a proper use of their name to protect their trademark.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

No, it shouldn’t. There are TONS of exceptions to every single “rule” in English.

I don’t think you understand what I mean by the word “should” (as in, “If English is going to be a consistent language, it should pluralize nouns in a standard way.”). I’ve already explained that’s because English is a creole, not an actual language.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Just about every other language on the planet has very set rules as to what is “correct” when constructing tenses of words, and none of them have exceptions the way English does (to such an insane extent, I mean).

Exactly. This is why the pluralization of “focus” should be “focuses”. Please understand the meaning of the word “should” in this context.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

In no way is the word “focuses” proper English.

Why not? And if that’s true, why do dictionaries list it as an acceptable pluralization?

I think there are people who view guild membership as a casual association (like a circle of friends) and people who view guild membership as part of their identity in the game (more like a family that you are always a part of). I think the only way to make both groups happy will be to allow both types of associations. It may be as simple as having a single primary guild that you represent by default and an open number of affiliations that you can belong to, with a form of chat that’s guild only and a form of chat that goes out to all of the affiliated players. Of course that could be a problem for the people who have personal guilds for the guild bank.

ShadowDragoonFTW.3418:

Did they really?? Ugh, that’s so gross. It’s like using Elfs/Dwarfs as the plural instead of Elves/Dwarves. Just… just no.

Actually, dwarfs is the standard plural for dwarf. You can thank J.R.R. Tolkien for “dwarves”.

LittleFoot MacLoyd.6032:

While I don’t fully understand what you are saying, Focus is singular where Foci is plural.

The plural of “focus”, in English, should be “focuses”. It’s “foci” in Latin. Dictionaries list both as acceptable pluralizations. That many English speakers adopt the pluralized form of the word from the root language for loan words is yet another bit of evidence that English is a creole and not an true language.

Harper.4173:

But eventually you’re going to have to dodge and learn how to do it – you can’t just gear up to deny a core mechanic of the game because you “want not do dodge” or " to be a tank".

In some cases, it’s not even a matter of dodging but simply not standing in the red circles until you die. Move.

Kite.2510:

EVERYBODY wants a berserker gear! And who can blame them!?
In GW2 if you play your cards right, you can destroy whatever enemy is in front of you without getting hit once!

Doesn’t work as well in WvW or with bosses that do a lot of AoE damage that can’t be avoided. That’s why a lot of players in WvW play with Soldier’s (PVT) gear or other gear that boosts Vitality and/or Toughness and why I saw PVT gear recommended for the Tequatl event. That there are already parts of the game where Berzerker gear is not always ideal points to how one can devalue Berzerker gear in other parts of the game like dungeons.

nirvana.8245:

I played on ET for a while for the experience your talking about. The problem is, it got boring. I wanted the whole experience. And T1 offers everything lower tier servers have and alot more. The only way your going to get any measurable amount of people to your server to help with coverage is if Anet give significant incentives to moving to a lower tier, which is highly unlikely considering their previous direction.

Oh, I think the incentives definitely work against us, just as they work against defensive play. I’m always busy when I’m on, see lots of victories, and have lots of fun, but the score tells us we are losers and the worst server in the game because we lose everything overnight, fight part of the day outnumbered, and sometimes get tag teamed during primetime because the incentives also encourage the strongest servers to attack the weakest server instead of each other. And I would be lying if I said our opponents haven’t gotten better at exploiting our weaknesses, too.

Personally, I don’t think I’ve ever been bored on ET. Frustrated? Sometimes, especially when we are very badly outnumbered or I see credible evidence of hacking being used against us.

I’ve talked to people on and from T1 about the style of play there, have read comments about it here, have confirmed elements of it by watching the live match-up maps (e.g., the churn on the Bay and Hill keeps on each server’s home borderlands), and we have people who have come down to us from T1, and I’m honestly not really sure what part of the whole experience I’m missing other than maybe better overnight coverage and a more consistent experience, the latter of which isn’t all a positive to me.

I know that individual preferences come into play and I do believe you are getting something out of T1 play that you didn’t get and wouldn’t get on ET, but I’m not hearing anything specific that makes me think I’d get a better experience there. If the bigger and more organized zergs covering the world events on the megaservers to the point of unplayable frame rates and lag are a taste of what I’d be getting on T1, I would personally consider the negatives bigger than the positives.

I think it’s actually good for Guild Wars 2 to support a variety of tastes and play styles with a range of populations and play types and that’s one of the reasons I don’t like the megaservers and don’t want to see a forcible merging of servers in WvW. While there were many world events that were rarely done on ET, I liked being part of a dozen people trying to complete the Frozen Maw or the old Taquatl and now there are massive lag and frame-rate killing zergs at every world event I go to throwing out so much damage I often don’t get the champion drops from the event. I’m sure there are people who love that experience but I really wish I could choose smaller population megaservers just like I’m happy to stay on a smaller population WvW server.

If the T1 players really like T1 play and don’t find the suggestion to transfer to a much lower level server appealing, maybe the solution is for the overflow to stack on the best T2 server to make it competitive in T1, but I’m guessing the problem there is that it’s hard to get the critical mass necessary for OCX/SEA coverage to compete in T1.

Virtute.8251:

Hi, tier 8! Congratulations! You’re yet again complaining about “stacked servers” while trying to convince people to transfer to yours! Good job on the double-thought arms race.

Excluded middle argument. There is a huge amount of space between what we have now and a “stacked server” with queue problems.

I don’t want everyone to stack on Eredon Terrace. I don’t want the T1 play style. Really I don’t. I would have transferred already if I did. Personally, I think the massive zerging in the megaservers in PvE are enough of a disaster because of the high population caps. The Frozen Maw was more fun with 12 people than the lag-inducing huge zergs that are now common on the megaservers.

But that doesn’t mean we couldn’t use some more WvW players than we have, so if you are an individual or smaller guild looking for a smaller scale of play where everyone can matter and make a difference, where your skills generally work when you activate them, and where queues are almost non-existent, then give Eredon Terrace a look.

Virtute.8251:

Don’t stack on them, stack on us, because stacking is ruining the game!

No, don’t stack on us, either, as far as I’m concerned (I can only speak for myself). Spread out more. Not the same thing.

Virtute.8251:

It’s so much fun down here just as it is. Join us, and make our server more like yours!

Again, excluded middle argument. I don’t want our server to be more like T1. If I wanted the T1 experience, I would have transferred by now (I’ve been asked to go by a small guild I belong to that did eventually wind up in T1). But we could use some more people to help equalize our population a bit with the other servers we typically play against and to help with our coverage problems. Not the same thing as “stacking”.

Jackmo.3428:

However in World Vs World the downed state is a pointless mechanic that only brings to the table an opportunity for large groups to exploit and abuse it.

I think the bigger problem in WvW is rallying off of kills, which makes beginning players, uplevels, and players with weak builds a liability. Without rallying off of kills, it wouldn’t matter so much if a weak character on your side died. That’s the part that really needs to be changed.

Jeknar.6184:

I haven’t seen a queue on Eredon Terrace since season 2.

We had one briefly in the past few weeks on reset night. I wondered what the icon and number were on the WvW interface were.

The word “toon” sounds like a pejorative to me because the words I’d free associate with “toon” are pretty much all things I don’t want my character or character’s graphic representation to be in a computer game — funny looking, not serious, comic, etc. If I wanted to play a “toon”, I’d play a game like Wildstar.

Zaxares.5419:

Despite everything else that EotM is, one can’t argue that it’s a great way to ensure the map is always populated.

Yes, actually I can argue it’s an awful way to fill a map, because map population is meaningless if the team populations go out of their way to avoid each other to run a karma train and players on opposing teams rarely ever clash (except for the lone person or small group that gets caught trying to cross the map to join up with their karma train). That’s the vast majority of what I saw on EotM.

If the goal isn’t to fight, then they could replace EotM with a PvE map where WvW siege works, every capture is PvDoor, and objectives flip back to NPC control after a short period of time so they can be retaken so that everyone can just karma train around on the same team without ever having to worry about the other team getting in the way.

Jeknar.6184:

If you can’t kill a single player in the circle, you don’t deserve that capture… It would be worse if we still had warriors with banner ress the lord (thank you Anet for removing that broken feature) which would buy much more time than simply trying to survive inside the circle.

This.

What you call “Denying capture”, I call “Successful Defense”. You are not entitled to a quick and easy capture. And if one or two people can drive off your attack with a Superior AC or two and/or a door Treb, you don’t want it badly enough or don’t have enough people, either.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Yeah, and never fight anyone ever again too. Best PvDoor2014 though.

While it can get pretty dead on the off hours, we have lots of good fights during primetime. Even when we aren’t winning, there are plenty of good fights to be had, and most of them are small enough that the lag is minimal so you can actually see what’s going, control your character, and skills go off as intended. We even, every now and then, queue a single map.

Zoso.8279:

Is key farming an exploit yes or no? Create toon-farm-delete toon (repeat)

If it were an exploit in the official sense, people would have been banned for it, which they weren’t. But I think it’s irrelevant. What’s relevant is that ArenaNet makes money through the gem store and selling keys is part of that, so they have a vested interest in making it more difficult for people to buy keys with cash instead of farming them. As someone who generally does just that (I’d rather not spend my play time key farming and so long as I’m enjoying the game, I do want to financially support it), I don’t think there is anything wrong with ArenaNet wanting to make money from the game. Guild Wars 2 is not a charity operation. For it to keep going, ArenaNet and NCSoft need to make money doing it. There is nothing in the Black Lion chests that you need to play or win the game, so they are not making the game a play-to-win game. And for whatever it’s worth, I got a key from a starting area map completion yesterday, so maybe that’s a viable way to farm keys.

Avit.3165:

With Bear pet, right?

Only underwater, where nobody laughs at me, and that’s a polar bear.

jclink.6308:

I actually let my 4 year old daughter sit on my lap. We make a new Asura and Char for her about every other week. I’ve run through the NP Tutorial well over 50 times at this point-

I actually read the user agreement. FYI, Section 9c of the User Agreement:

“You acknowledge that the Game is not intended for minors under age 13, and You will not allow access to the Game, or the viewing of any display thereof, by any minor under age 13.”

Personally, I think it’s silly, I’m sure plenty of people don’t comply, and this is probably more of a CYA clause (so a parent can’t sue that their child was traumatized) than anything else, but I’m not sure I’d admit to violating the User Agreement on the official ANet forum.

phys.7689:

not sure why they seem to try to encourage it so much via megaserver size, and scheduling of events

I never had any problem getting Champion loot on Eredon Terrace before the megaserver. Now I frequently don’t get any. Too many people in the events. The problem could largely be resolved just by lowering the megaserver maximum population cap to a more reasonable level.

Windu The Forbidden One.6045:

I believe the ability to join multiple guilds on this game is should not have existed at all. Very simply, it discourages guild loyalty and defeats the entire purpose of joining a guild in the first place.

Guilds are supposed to be a dedicated, close knit group of people. An ideal scenario would be a flourishing, active community in-game AND outside of the game, supported by communication programs such as IRC/forums/voice. The system now? Guilds having half the people not representing. Highly inactive/non-existent offsite interaction. Guilds are typically a hi-bye affair in the game.

The main guild I rep is a guild of my friends. The main channel I sit in in TeamSpeak is that build channel, so I can chat with my friends, some of which no longer live near me. There are times when I join the main WvW channels on our servers TeamSpeak, but I also enjoy talking about all sorts of things with my friends that really don’t belong in a server-wide TeamSpeak channel.

I’m willing to belong to and help other guilds, but I’m really not looking for another job that requires me to play during certain hours, I’m not looking to join an army where I have to follow orders, I don’t want my guild telling me which server I need to play WvW on (I’ve been asked to leave by one I’ve worked with and declined), nor am I really looking for a new set of friends, though I’ve met some people I really like online while playing that I would be happy to meet outside of the game and hang out with. Just not what I’m looking for in a recreational activity I do for fun.

Please note that I’m not saying that people who want a hardcore dedicated guild are doing anything wrong or bad. They aren’t. And if they have fun playing that way, that’s exactly how they should play. In many ways, I find their dedication and skill quite admirable and I in no way want to break that style of play for them.

It’s simply not what I am looking for. And if the game forced me into a single guild, I’d probably stay in my small personal friend guild rather than join a big dedicated guild. And I doubt I’m alone feeling that way. You can’t really force someone to be dedicated and close-knit if that’s not what they are looking for. But maybe the answer is to find some sort of middle ground where you can get the more casual players to be more dedicated in their contributions to a larger guild.

I think the way to do that can be found in several of the suggestions here, which is to improve communication across all of the guilds a player belongs to rather than just the one they represent. The way I sometimes resolve my desire to banter with friends and desire to follow a WvW commander in TeamSpeak, when there aren’t too many people in TeamSpeak such that I might be keeping someone else out, is to open up two connections and listen in the WvW channel and talk and listen to my friends at the same time. In other words, make it easier for me to communicate with a more dedicated guilds and my friends at the same time rather than telling me I need to dump my friends, several of which have limited or no interest in WvW, to join.

Proposal Overview

Automated guild switching on player actions in the game. Examples include automatically switching to a commander’s guild when you join a squad, if you are a member of their guild, or automatically switching guilds upon switching play areas (e.g., PvE to WvW or WvW to PvE) so you can belong to a WvW-focused guild and a PvE focused guild.

Goal of Proposal

To let players choose a guild focused on a particular aspect of the game that they can switch automatically to instead of manually having to control which guild they represent at all times.

Proposal Functionality

Set a default guild (that can be manually overridden) for different parts of the game. The most useful to me would be a divide between PvE and WvW because there are, for example, WvW-only guilds that only request representation in WvW. Dungeons would be another good switch trigger. Another option would be to match commander, when you share a guild, upon joining a squad for guild events in WvW or PvE. Other possible switch conditions could include guild settings by map and guild setting by event (for events on the API). One other option that could be interesting would be to automatically switch to the guild with the most or least players on at the time.

Associated Risks

More complicated to use than simply representing a guild.

Vavume.8065:

Thanks for trolling me anet, everytime I see a large chest drop and think I just got an exotic it ends up being this spoon worth 10s, it’s bad enough that when ascended mats drop, which I have over 80 thousand of, I see the exotic chest drop, and now you add this too…. really?

I once fought may way back into the Lord’s room of a contested keep where I’d died next to a chest, hoping it would be something good, only to find out it was a Rare Queen’s Guantlet Entry Ticket. Yeah, ANet has to stop making garbage “rare” so it gets wrapped in a chest or they need to have trophy items not influence the container type.