Guild Wars 2

Deadcell.9052:

The thing is this game did not need another tier of gear to grind for, it’s just more fluff content. This game needed more engaging and challenging content, right now its just zerg zerg zerg for everything, living world – zerg "x"map for 2 weeks and then switch to the next, wvwvw zergfest capitol of GW2, dungeons just stand in corner stack and zerg down, world bosses – hit 1 and go get a drink as you and the rest of the zerg auto attack the boss down. With the exception of high level fractals there really is not much to this game that actually takes any thought or effort, nothing that gives you that “OMG (I / WE) DID IT!!!” feeling, and the things that are somewhat challenging are not rewarding in anyway due to everything being stuck behind the great wall of RNG.

GW2 needs tiers of content not gear, and if there is to be new gear it should be rewarded through accomplishments not grinds and RNG.

“GW2 needs tiers of content not gear, and if there is to be new gear it should be rewarded through accomplishments not grinds and RNG.”

That needs to be etched on a tablet of stone and sent to ANet headquarters.

chemiclord.3978:

Colin has to hedge his statements with a million qualifiers because Arena.net’s learned that if they make a statement without such qualifiers and discover later that their plans and design have to change that all of you will log in, screaming like spoiled children that were to “lied to” and “betrayed” and “slapped in the face.”

They’re kitten ed if they do, kitten ed if they don’t with some of you, I swear.

Swear all you want, we’re not talking some specific topic here. We’re talking overall game philosophy as espoused by Colin at launch, which has most clearly changed since launch and for which we are perfectly entitled to be dismayed.

Vol.5241:

If you’re a casual player and can’t get an ascended weapon within 2 months then probably they need to reassess what kind of risk/time/reward they want from this game, and probably settle for rares/exotics. I quite frankly don’t like players who want all end-game content handed to them just for logging in.

WTF?? You mean it is wrong for people playing a kitten game to expect to be able to actually play it on even ground until they’ve “earned” their way there? If I go to the park to play basketball am I wrong to expect to be able to play anyone else there without handicap? If I join a team to play softball should I be required to use a hammer handle instead of a bat until I’ve played a certain number of innings? ANet HEAVILY promoted GW2 as being an anti-grind game with a shallow path to endgame content, but they have backpedaled on almost every commitment they made to the point that player sentiment, both in game and on these forums, has dramatically changed in the last few months. That’s not a case of chronic whiners … that’s the result of players who previously had hope for the game becoming disenchanted.

I’ve played this game for over a year and I EXACTLY want end game content handed to me just for logging in.

This is what the game defaults to when the devs, who are dropping content patches very two weeks, aren’t clever enough to make that content fun and unique. Players like the OP have to generate their own tweaks to keep the game interesting, and WvW’ers organize duels, 5v5’s, and guild-versus-guild fights in otherwise unused portions of the maps.

Somewhere along the line the original premise and promise of GW2 has become strangled, subverted by poorly chosen changes and additional grind instead of additional content.

Silvercyclone.1462:

I think the only way this will be answered is if a dev chimes in ….

Good luck with that.

Zanthrax.6538:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Spiuk.8421:

Vorch.2985:

…WHY

…no seriously…WHY.

The only reason I could see is to have the ability to swap stats on a non-legendary skin that you REALLY like. Which I could understand, I guess…

Good question…but I would never do it. Try it and tell me how it works out for you.

Because most legendaries are fugly but the swap thing is convenient.

Don’t forget about guaranteed Best-in-Slot stats. You won’t have to re-grind when the next level past Ascended is introduced (or when level caps are raised).

1) There isn’t another level above ascended, colin said in an interview with matt visual he can’t speak for years and years down the future…but for a very long time if they stay the course they want to…no new stat gear…

2) Likewise no level gains ever….guild wars 1 didn’t do it and there has been no snippet of any suggestion that level cap will ever be increased.

LOL. You need to go back and read some of the Colin interviews from before launch. It didn’t take “years in the future” for him to backtrack on many of those commitments.

I’m not sure why anyone would suspect ANet to have implemented something rife with unintended consequences. It has never happened before, right?

Tom Gore.4035:

Cactus.2710:

Tom Gore.4035:

Colly.4073:

Tom Gore.4035:

Cactus and Colly, graphics have nothing to do with server side lag. The server doesn’t push any graphics to your machine.

No but is all stress on Anets server trying to compute everything, I never said anything about it being client side.

Read again.

Graphics has nothing, absolutely nothing at all to do with the server lag, OR client lag for that matter. All it affects is your own FPS, which is completely independent of the skill lag.

The server does not compute graphics. In fact, it probably doesn’t even have a dedicated graphics card in it.

The server doesn’t “compute” graphics, but it does have to process the information that tells the client what graphics to generate. If you had the slightest clue how the server computational requirements quadratically scale with player count AND the actions of each player (position, ability, buff, condition, etc) you’d know that every effect represents an additional nail in the coffin.

The graphical effects are just a byproduct created by your client according to the actual information that the server sends to the client. It could be represented as ASCII graphics on your client and the lag would still be just as bad. I understand perfectly how many calculations there is to be done, but it still doesn’t have anything to do with graphics.

Or are you telling me the server is sending the client information how and what kind of graphics the client needs to draw?

“Or are you telling me the server is sending the client information how and what kind of graphics the client needs to draw?”

Yes … that. Every action and effect that a player performs needs to be communicated to all other players within the affected area. The more effects that occur, the more the communication required between all parties involved … one that grows quadratically as a function of the number of players AND the number of actions/effects/buffs/conditions/responses that occur. The graphics themselves are generated locally at the client, but it is the burden on the server CPU and related systems (server capacity sharing software, server-side network bandwidth, etc) to communicate everything that causes lag. ANet themselves have admitted that, and every additional thing they try to communicate exacerbates the problem. It’s an n-squared issue, and the commands to execute fancy graphics add to the “n”.

Tom Gore.4035:

Colly.4073:

Tom Gore.4035:

Cactus and Colly, graphics have nothing to do with server side lag. The server doesn’t push any graphics to your machine.

No but is all stress on Anets server trying to compute everything, I never said anything about it being client side.

Read again.

Graphics has nothing, absolutely nothing at all to do with the server lag, OR client lag for that matter. All it affects is your own FPS, which is completely independent of the skill lag.

The server does not compute graphics. In fact, it probably doesn’t even have a dedicated graphics card in it.

The server doesn’t “compute” graphics, but it does have to process the information that tells the client what graphics to generate. If you had the slightest clue how the server computational requirements quadratically scale with player count AND the actions of each player (position, ability, buff, condition, etc) you’d know that every effect represents an additional nail in the coffin.

Colly.4073:

Tom Gore.4035:

Cactus and Colly, graphics have nothing to do with server side lag. The server doesn’t push any graphics to your machine.

No but is all stress on Anets server trying to compute everything, I never said anything about it being client side.

Exactly.

Wait just a minute. You mean that the every-other-week Living Story patches aren’t fun?? I’m shocked … shocked, I tell you.

I don’t care what folks like the OP say … this game was heavily marketed as being anti-grind and it has turned out to be anything but that. Even the recent Scarlet invasions were popular NOT because they were all that fun (they were pretty mindless and boring after the first few) … they were popular only because they gave lots of loot, in itself a form of grind.

I played Rift for about 18 months, and while I left that game for GW2 because I thought it would have much better WvW-style play (silly me), I will say that the devs in Rift were very communicative and headed off a lot of the confusion and frustration that exists here in GW2. The Rift forums had all sorts of timely posts from the devs acknowledging problems, explaining them clearly, describing fixes and probable time frames for them, or sometimes admitting that they simply couldn’t do anything about them for one reason or other. Rift has had lots of cutbacks and had to switch to F2P, but even so their forums still have WAAYYYY more open dialogue with the remaining devs than ANet ever has had.

The communication problem with GW2 isn’t resources … it’s cluelessness.

There’s really no reason for the situation to be this bad. It’s just bad game design and bad server-side capability. TESO has been doing some stress tests lately and claims that they have been able to handle more than 200 players at the same time in the same place with full graphics and full frame rates. Maybe TESO doesn’t try to push the same graphic content out to the clients (not sure since I’m not in the beta), but ANet really messed up if they designed the game to exceed the capability of the hardware they were willing to fund. Maybe Anet is simply that clueless … after all, they did admit that they originally thought WvW would handle 500 players and that has since been proven to be laughably incorrect.

What I don’t understand, though, is what the hell ANet keeps doing that makes it worse. It’s not like were seeing more players in WvW than we did right after they removed culling, but skill lag certainly has gotten worse and it even spills out into PvE.

No to the stat buff since it simply (and inexplicably) compounds the balance problem between servers.

There is one semi-positive aspect of the bloodlust buff, though. It proves rather conclusively to anyone who has played very long that the ANet devs are totally out of touch with WvW. If any of us had any hope that the original promise of WvW (large scale, strategy-based, multi-mode, open world medieval-type warfare) would be met, we pretty much know better now. We didn’t ask for this buff, we mostly don’t want it, and it’s going to compound other shortfalls in the game design … yet we’re going to get it anyway instead of countless other things that should be addressed.

Random and extreme changes are the crutch of the clueless.

Gamadorn.2659:

Magnetron.5823:

Alright first of all, I do understand that there are players like you who like to fight without buffs and without siege, and do not have the skill level required for Spvp.

That’s why you guys come to WvW and are hiding in desolate spots to have your own ‘private’ fights.

But please understand the words that I will put here now, and share them with the rest of your community.

This is WvW, and WvW should be about WvW only. The whole WvW game mode was intended for using sieges in defence and attack, it is an unique game mode for a MMO.

Please give the respect to the WvW team and let them work with only WvW because that is their passion.

There is no GvG mode in GW2. Maybe someday in the future, but not now. So please can you guys stop being so much trolls in every Livestream, Forum, Newspaper, Twitter or what ever and stop spamming GVG GVG GVG.

I am sick of it, and so are a lot of other players.

Interesting opinion….however wrong it may be.

You could say the same about people on siege? They don’t have enough skill for sPvp or open field fights…so they need siege to get badges….I don’t think this statement is a fair assessment and neither is yours.

But you are correct in saying the game was meant to be about siege warfare and large scale combat. That was the intention….the problem was, they gave no system to manage large scale combat and point system as it stands heavily favors numbers and coverage.

Now I give them credit for attempting to fix the point portion with the upcoming releases (thank god)…. hopefully its the first step of many, but the reasons GvG’s exist is because like it or not the majority of people that actually play WvW regularly are in a guild and probably a guild that plays regularly in WvW, whether you are a 5 man roaming team with a group of friends (probably your own small guild) or a larger zerg busting guild.. while I respect the individuals that play on their own they do not make up the majority of WvWer’s. In fact I bet if all the WvW guilds left any server, the server would immediately fall to the bottom of the rankings….

Point being is that I understand there are different play modes, but the bottom line is, WvW is mostly made up of guilds and even newer players coming in, will probably look to join a guild that is WvW oriented if they like WvW….so why is the largest base of players in the game completely ignored? Ignorance and stubborness…that’s all. Anet is catering to a large group of people that they think exists, but don’t.

I think this is pretty much the true situation here. I’m not a big fan of dueling and GvG within WvW but I understand why both exist. Aside from the fact that many players simply enjoy those modes, the fact is that ANet has so totally messed up their original concept of siege warfare (for which there is a year’s worth of unheeded forum complaints and suggestions) that hardly anybody wants to play it that way anymore.

I personally prefer strategy-based WvW that includes both large groups and small groups, scouts, control of objectives, use of offensive and defensive siege with moderation, teamwork, and positional awareness … more like chess on a battlefield than single or group gladiatorial combat. But for all its original promise WvW isn’t that at all, certainly not anymore, and I don’t criticize anyone for using the maps to better purpose.

The devs have only themselves to blame for creating this mess, both here on the forums and in game. Make two lists … one showing the key changes/improvements to WvW that have been requested over and over again by players who actually wanted to play WvW as it was originally designed and promoted by ANet, and another that shows the modifications and additions that have actually happened since launch. The correlation is so low that statistically they would be classified as unrelated.

Erastmus.3785:

Why is it that every time someone comes up with ideas that sounds really good for the game here on the forums then Anet will have to “discuss” it through, then one never hear about the idea again. But when game altering changes like what’s happening now, and in rapid succession, is never discussed WITH the playerbase but instead forced upon them.

Somebody who lives near ANet headquarters should take that paragraph and plaster it on a huge billboard across the street from them. I’ll contribute to the cost.

We’d have a considerably better game if ANet used those scare resources to work on the things we’ve asked for instead of the things we’ve never mentioned and don’t even want.

RvLeshrac.2673:

It implies that you’re in WvWvW for a reason not intended by the designers AND of no assistance to your world. Try PvP.

Uhh … yeah. That’s kind of the point. ANet has so screwed up their original concept for WvW (at least as was described by their early press releases and per the PPT system they installed to determine winners) that huge portions of the WvW community have taken it upon themselves to create peripheral modes of play as replacements. We would have fewer duels and less GvG if attacking/defending towers and keeps actually depended on strategic play and team work instead of the mess it has become. ANet dropped the ball big time and you can’t blame players for coming up with more interesting things to do on the maps.

Vena.8436:

Cactus.2710:

Nobody would be clamoring for the former if there was the slightest evidence of the latter.

Dev stream in t-minus 3 hours.

LOLOLOL

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Devon or another dev have already replied to a thread where they have admitted that their priorities have been elsewhere, PvE; and that the next WvW (after the 17th little patch) will not be under after December of this year.

If you ask me it’s a disgrace, they are ignoring this part of the community and concentrating on the others.
Many players, even entire guilds have left GW2 because they, like most of us, solely play in WvW.
Our complaints have largely been ignored or removed from the forums under the guise of infractions; but it doesnt change that players are hacking and exploiting even now.
There is also the issue where PvE players only come to WvW to do the JPs as it was an easy way to get badges for their legendaries, and provided no real WvW support, they just took up spots real WvW players need.
And let’s not forget that WvW has a direct influence over PvE via all the boosts it gives. It’s like were the slave labour for PvE players to get richer from our work, and we get peanuts from it! Whilst PvE players are rolling in gold. So I say get rid of those PvE boosts and apply them only to WvW.

I’m usually a PvE player as well, but the PvE in this game just seem rather dull, hence why I WvW. But what can I say, we’re like the black sheep of the family where we only get noticed on Thanksgiving and Xmas, the rest of the year they dont want to hear from us. Which is what the dev post basically said, “We’re working on other things, we’ll get back to you in December.”

It’s especially annoying since PvP and WvW were the biggest selling points in the ANet ads running up to launch. It’s like they originally planned for the game to be focused on combat game play but later discovered that either PvE was where most of their players spent their time, or that PvE development was easier.

SpehssMehreen.5897:

somewhere in your in your mind youve equated “dev response” to “dev give a kitten and working on it”.

Nobody would be clamoring for the former if there was the slightest evidence of the latter.

Straegen.2938:

Months of WvW play have finally hardened my heart towards holding objectives. Rather than QQ my suggestion is don’t defend. Let em have it. If we make everything really easy to flip for each other we get more loot/points, less stress trying to wrangle others who have given up defending and about as many points at the end of the week. Garri is an exception because that waypoint is sweet.

Want that ascended item quicker or higher WvW ranks? Get off that wall and tear up some paper! Want to see other players progress quickly? Leave the keys in the door on your way out.

ANet, do you hear that? That’s the sound of people who really, really wanted to play WvW the way you originally designed it no longer having the least bit of faith you know how to run it.

Zephyrus.9680:

Cactus.2710:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Anyone seen the cost of crafting one kitten ascended weapons? 200 Gold in total to reach 500 and craft one weapon. Subsequent weapons cost 50 g each. WvW players are completely shafted. Either give players bags of coins for each player kill or increase rewards for taking over areas or drop more heavy loot bags. This is getting out of hand.

You and people like you are the reason we are on this treadmill. Why aren’t you asking for new and better content instead of better gear and more loot??

Are you really kidding yourself into believing it actually takes effort to balance rewards between PvE and WvW? Changing a number from, say, 5, to say, 12?

This has nothing to do with new content or the exclusion thereof. It has to do with remaining competitive without having to grind PvE, which is what a lot of other hardcore WvW players would like to see I’m sure.

Treadmills you say… Would you rather WvW be about who grinded PvE most to win due to gear? Seen that in other games, I don’t play those games. Have, but don’t anymore.

Of course it would be relatively easy to simply change the number, but that doesn’t fix anything and wouldn’t be needed at all if you never wanted to do PvE. It just perpetuates the gear/loot treadmill when all we really care about is being able to compete straight up with other players in a fresh and meaningful environment.

Try to look at it this way … if everyone playing WvW had access to all of the abilities they do now but if EVERYONE never was able to use anything better than greens, would the game be less fun to play?? Not in the least, and if players were clamoring for better content and more intelligently configured matches where raw population didn’t figure so prominently, ANet wouldn’t be able to deflect the issue by putting us all on this treadmill. You and others who make this an issue of loot merely feed the root cause of the problem.

And how on earth can you say this?

“Would you rather WvW be about who grinded PvE most to win due to gear? Seen that in other games, I don’t play those games. Have, but don’t anymore.”

You sure as hell are playing it now, and if you don’t realize that you need to take a pill or something.

If ANet truly wanted to minimize zergs and encourage defense like they say they do they’d make loot gain some kind of function of PPT instead of tower flipping. That, of course, would simply highlight how screwed up WvW is in terms of the dominance of server population coverage so it won’t ever happen.

Somebody at ANet came up with a neat idea in the form of WvW, but nobody there seems to have the slightest clue how to properly implement it.

Blix.8021:

He’s right though, if people just abandoned the last 9 or 12 servers, the population of the top 12 would be much more evenly distributed.

Queues of course would skyrocket and WvW would become unplayable for most … which I suspect ANet would be happy to accept since they pretty clearly treat WvW like a bad decision they regret. Resources and focus tell that story.

Asudementio.8526:

Cactus.2710:

LoneWolfie.1852:

Anyone seen the cost of crafting one kitten ascended weapons? 200 Gold in total to reach 500 and craft one weapon. Subsequent weapons cost 50 g each. WvW players are completely shafted. Either give players bags of coins for each player kill or increase rewards for taking over areas or drop more heavy loot bags. This is getting out of hand.

You and people like you are the reason we are on this treadmill. Why aren’t you asking for new and better content instead of better gear and more loot??

Cause reward disparities that persist in new content diminish it significantly?

You’re going to have to detail out for me what kind of significant new content you think WvW has had over the past year because I really can’t think of any worth mentioning. If WvW were fun, entertaining, fresh, and exciting you wouldn’t give a rat’s kitten whether or not there was a reward disparity with PvE … which by the way suffers from the same lack of meaningful content since Living Story “content” is mostly a way for ANet to substitute a loot grind for clever game design. How many invasions would you have bothered to do if the loot hadn’t been there? Not many I’d venture, since zerging mobs out in the open got boring as hell after just a few of them.

LoneWolfie.1852:

Anyone seen the cost of crafting one kitten ascended weapons? 200 Gold in total to reach 500 and craft one weapon. Subsequent weapons cost 50 g each. WvW players are completely shafted. Either give players bags of coins for each player kill or increase rewards for taking over areas or drop more heavy loot bags. This is getting out of hand.

You and people like you are the reason we are on this treadmill. Why aren’t you asking for new and better content instead of better gear and more loot??

IndigoSundown.5419:

Cactus.2710:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

MikaHR.1978:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Cactus.2710:

They have to resort to cheap ploys like loot and progression to keep players engaged.

Except that these are all anyone seems to be asking for…

They’re simply giving their audience what they want, although perhaps not in the ways they prefer it.

What audience. If you mean east market youre on to something.

No, I wasn’t referring to that market….although that point is likely true too. However, I was referring to the numerous threads on here crying for it. Threads about longevity, threads about ‘gear grind or everyone leaves,’ threads about how they need to look at the loot tables again because some people aren’t ‘getting enough’ loot (and now we have threads whining we get too much), crying for loot overhauls because they want more guaranteed rares and exotics, about not having super lucrative farming. They’re all there….go back a dozen or so pages in the forum. Anet is simply listening to the people shrieking the loudest….

You’re missing the point entirely. If the devs make the game about loot, as they most assuredly have, then of course people will cry about imbalances and not getting enough of it. ANet could have focused on simply making the game fun to play with creative content and updated environments, but apparently they couldn’t think of anything clever so they took the easy way out and put in place grinds that they specifically promised they would never do. They had the chance to freeze gear and instead introduce new maps, new forms of play (instanced WvW??), new classes, new anything … for god’s sake just pretend they were merging with other games … but they didn’t and they obviously don’t plan to.

Lanfear is correct. Those aspects of the game you discussed are a direct result of player feedback. At launch, there was a lot of fun stuff to do. Loot, on the other hand, was terrible. Since, Anet has revised DE’s, put in new DE’s, added JP’s, and some other things, but there have been few comments about that. Posts about wanting more fun stuff to do were few and far between.

Instead, once players had their exotic gear (via dungeon set or w/ever) they only wanted to farm (presumably to pursue the legendary status symbol or some other rare look). ANet nerfed farm spot after farm spot, ostensibly because those places could be bot farmed. Players complained… and complained… and complained. You couldn’t go a day on the forums without a “Can’t gain gold” thread being active. So, ANet gave them what they wanted, in ways that are not as accessible to bots.

Now, we have the opposite faction coming out of the woodwork, saying, “We want the game to be about fun!” Where the heck were you last October, when the gear or bust movement swayed the direction of the game?

I was playing the game, enjoying it, and actually believed that ANet would follow through on their promise to hold the line against grinding. ANet COULD have lived up to their word … they just didn’t. For kitten’s sake, there are tons of other things players have requested on these forums that ANet has successfully and totally ignored. Why not that one?

kitanas.3596:

I would just like to ask a question here.

can you name an MMO that doesn’t rely on time gating?

Time Gating exists because there is a type of player, commonly called a “content locust”, who will burn though content at the fastest possible speed and then call (loudly) for more.

This isn’t necessarily a defense of a-net, more-so an explanation as t why I think Time Gating was Implemented.

If you think time-gating is content, you’re exactly the kind of player that ANet thinks we all are.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

MikaHR.1978:

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Cactus.2710:

They have to resort to cheap ploys like loot and progression to keep players engaged.

Except that these are all anyone seems to be asking for…

They’re simply giving their audience what they want, although perhaps not in the ways they prefer it.

What audience. If you mean east market youre on to something.

No, I wasn’t referring to that market….although that point is likely true too. However, I was referring to the numerous threads on here crying for it. Threads about longevity, threads about ‘gear grind or everyone leaves,’ threads about how they need to look at the loot tables again because some people aren’t ‘getting enough’ loot (and now we have threads whining we get too much), crying for loot overhauls because they want more guaranteed rares and exotics, about not having super lucrative farming. They’re all there….go back a dozen or so pages in the forum. Anet is simply listening to the people shrieking the loudest….

You’re missing the point entirely. If the devs make the game about loot, as they most assuredly have, then of course people will cry about imbalances and not getting enough of it. ANet could have focused on simply making the game fun to play with creative content and updated environments, but apparently they couldn’t think of anything clever so they took the easy way out and put in place grinds that they specifically promised they would never do. They had the chance to freeze gear and instead introduce new maps, new forms of play (instanced WvW??), new classes, new anything … for god’s sake just pretend they were merging with other games … but they didn’t and they obviously don’t plan to.

DiogoSilva.7089:

I wouldn’t mind spending a lot of time to get ascended gear as long as the experience was any fun and exciting.

It’s not the end that matters, but the journey

Anet put a new gear race upon old and exploitable content. They should have created or improved content to be more exciting first, and then add better rewards/ ascended farming alongside it. I wouldn’t mind farming for ascended, if the journey was a great experience. As it happens, though, auto-attacking swarms are not a great experience. They’re relaxing every once in a while, but when they dominate the entire game, it degenerates it into the worst kind of “kill x rats” generic mmo design.

This … exactly. Grinds and “progression” are what devs who lack cleverness resort to. If we really had exciting and enjoyable content … in WvW or sPvP or PvE … we wouldn’t need all this other crap. A truly fun game will get played even without rewards at all. Nobody plays sandlot sports expecting to come home with better clothes, yet hundreds of thousands do it.

Even the Living Story isn’t so much a story as it is simply a repeating mechanism for putting carrots in front of donkeys. GW2 promised so much initially, but I doubt half of us would have switched to it from whatever we were previously playing if we had known it was going to be headed in this direction now.

Time gating is just one of the more annoying ways that ANet has backpedaled on just about every major promise they made to us back before launch. If you were here then you know what I mean.

They would need to know what they are doing better in order to be able to tell you about it. Remember how neither we … nor ANet … found out what the criteria for completing invasions was until half way through the event? ANet has learned to be noncommittal for a reason.

TainoFuerte.8136:

I came here for WvW, and almost precisely because there would be no grind for gear. I knew going in that I’d reach 80, buy my exotics, and that would be it. Those were the reasons I came to this game.

<snip>

I could play games where my intelligence is respected and I’m not supposed to constantly move forward chasing a worthless carrot, which is what other MMO’s do, and this one promised not to.

Exactly this. I can remember playing Rift and discussing on those forums how GW2 was promising to provide an open world, strategy-based PvP environment with little (in the case of WvW) or no (in the case of sPvP) stat grind … simply a large scale way to compete against an intelligent and resourceful opponent.

Look what we’ve gotten instead. I don’t know whether upcoming games like TESO will live up to their promises any better than ANet has, but I sure as hell will be switching to find out.

TooBz.3065:

I always find these comments funny. I think that with an MMO most people expect to do a certain amount of tedious stuff in order to get something worthwhile. Like an endurance test or something.

I don’t want tedious stuff in my game. I certainly don’t want to pay someone for the privilege of doing the tedious stuff. If you look at almost any game review for any other type of game the stuff that’s accepted in an MMO would get the game crucified.

Games are suppose to be fun entertaining. They aren’t suppose to be tedious.

So true.

The curious thing is that in terms of game engineering, “entertaining” is much easier to do than “tedius”. With new “tedius” content the devs need to worry about stat balance and play style impacts, while with “entertaining” they simply add new content that is fun to play for its own sake. “Entertaining” can be accomplished with exactly the same mechanisms that already exist.

The problem with “entertaining” is that the game designers have to be clever and creative … something that ANet has proven over and over they cannot do effectively on a large scale. They have to resort to cheap ploys like loot and progression to keep players engaged.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

I am really curious how the ‘average’ player can handle these zerg-fests that ANet has been putting in the game lately. The crown pavilion and invasions were designed to be zerg fests. The champ trains. The new tequatl requiring 80+ people.

I have a pretty decent computer, not the highest end machine. But my machine still struggles during things like ‘Kill Scarlet’ with around 100 people on screen.

How can people with computer specs less than mine be enjoying this type of gameplay?

Sure, some may turn down their graphic setting a lot to handle the load. But in such a beautifully designed game, that is really a bad solution to the problem.

Solo farming has been pushed out and discouraged while the huge zerg-fest farming is in season.

My desire to play this game is currently at an all time low. One good thing, at least for my honey-do list, is that is making it easier to just turn the game off and walk away.

It doesn’t necessarily mean your computer can’t handle that kind of load when ANet has already admitted that their servers can’t.

lordkrall.7241:

The Gauntlet will return in the future.

LOL. You are so cute.

“In the future” sounds quite a bit further out than “soon”, and we all know by now what “soon” means.

FangedTerror.3852:

This is the post that helped me when I was stuck. Page 3 has the relevant information.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/merged-Invasion-Canceler-not-advancing/first

Apparently the champion twisted clockwork baddies are the key. Even though I was never one who ignored the portals and thought i always got a least one of these champions each map it happened to me. Once I started recording which zones again after defeating a champion I got it on the third map.

At least ANet told everyone about this up front. Oh wait …

RoyHarmon.5398:

I just wanted to share with you guys a glimpse of how this works. Maybe it’ll show you how overwhelming an issue it is.

I made this image just now in Paint.NET. It was quick and monochromatic, but it should get the point across.

With only one player in the area, there’s only one way skills can affect anyone. A player can cast a skill on itself (like the guardian’s “Contemplation of Purity”). With two players, Player A can cast a skill on Player B, and Player B can cast on Player A. Player A can also cast skills on himself, as can Player B.

When we add another player, things get a little more complicated. I’m not going to go into all of the details, since they’re easier to illustrate in the picture.

I stopped at 5 players, because beyond that, the interactions will be too many for me to illustrate clearly, and the diagram will begin to hurt my brain. Just know that the numbers get absurdly large when even a few more players come together, and I can’t imagine what a 20v20 fight would look like on paper.

With 5 players in the same vicinity, there are quite a few ways for them to interact. My diagram only shows single-target interactions, but there are many ways in which a skill can target multiple players at once. The server has to compute these interactions for each skill. Think about the guardian’s “Save Yourselves,” for instance. The server has to determine which targets are in range, which ones have conditions to draw, how that adds up for the guardian using the shout, whether any are affected by Pure of Voice, etc.

TL;DR: It’s really far more complicated than you’d expect, and as more people cluster together, the possible skill interactions add up to a ridiculously high number. You want less skill lag? Spread out. QED.

You are of course correct, except that there are way more bits of data that need to be communicated between players than just the skills and the math relationship is quadratic, not exponential. Position, armor/appearance, buffs/conditions, etc. all get passed. The required server-side bandwidth gets huge quickly, but ANet shot themselves in the foot by the way they chose and handled lots of these matters. I really don;t think that the people who were designing content and writing software were well coordinated with the people who engineered the supporting systems.

Deamhan.9538:

timidobserver.7925:

It is a hardware problem. The hardware starts to get pegged out when a bunch of people are using a bunch of skills on each other at the same time in the same place. Assuming that spending hundreds of thousands of dollars upgrading their hardware isn’t a viable solution at the moment, making a new map and creating more capture points is probably next best bet.

Upgrading the hardware isn’t really the answer. Thier servers handle it just fine, it’s the clients computers that can’t.

I’ve never had my fps drop below 10. I’ve talked to people in the exact same fight have their fps drop down to 1.

When you load into a map, you don’t load the entire map. This is why, when you enter into a map that has a massive zerg war going on, you don’t automatically bog down even when facing the direction the zerg battle is at.

Only when you get within a certain range do you begin to lag and this is because only at a certain distance is the zergfest finally loaded on your end.

The tricks they were using before with culling and now particle effects culling is to reduce the amount of information being processed client side.

What I think they should do is to kind of create a local overflow. Think of it like culling on steriods. Instead of both ally and enemy players not rendering, after the zerg gets to a certain size, a local overflow occurs and players from all three sides in the immediate area would enter the overflow.

As seen by the client side, it would appear to be culling, but unlike culling, it’s more than just a lack of rendering.

This is the most ignorant and uniformed post I’ve seen on this topic in a very long time.

Ixen Darastrix.8251:

As the title says, are there any servers that still have a decent number of people participating in the Crown Pavilion events?

EDIT: I am on Sea of Sorrows by the way, and every time I go in there its dead

I’m on Devona’s Rest and the same two bosses have been idle for at least the last two days with only an occasional suicide attempt by some solo player. My wife and son joined me last night to kill mobs at the fringes of the zones (the centaurs are the easiest) to get the various race champion achievements (more fun and quicker than running escorts), and we never saw a single other soul in the pavilion. It is simply far more profitable for players to farm for loot in the invasions … which makes it even mores stupid for ANet to discontinue the pavilion activities after the invasions stop on September 3.

Raven Paradox.1860:

I don’t champ farm at these events. I participate in them all and join at the start.

The achievement is bugged, and ArenaNet needs to either fix this or give us credit if we’ve done it. I once again went around and did every map since this post, and still am stuck at 11/13. I’m not in the mood to continuously spend 45 minutes grinding a map just to be stuck at 11/13 at the end of it again.

I expect to log in one day and have the achievement automatically given to me since I’ve done it over 3 times now.

Same here. I’ve done every zone multiple times and I always focus on crossed sword invasions ( minions). I make sure to ALWAYS get in on at least two champion kills, and I’ve been stuck on 12/13 for days. No way the post from Josh Davis tells the whole story, which is just another example of how Anet doesn’t understand how their own game works.

This is a bugged piece of crap, pure and simple.

mjasa.5821:

I have been waiting all day for MT Maelstrom what is up with it not showing up a whole day. I looked at the link for zones and it has not showed up for a long time.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Scarlet%27s_Minions_Invade!/history

I don’t think it really matters anymore. As best I can tell, I also need Mount Maelstrom for completion and it always fails. Tonight we started the third wave with almost 20 minutes left and at best finished two thirds of it before time ran out. The zergs just got larger and farmed harder (hard to blame them if they don’t care about the achievements), and Mount Maelstrom has so many difficult-to-access spots on the map that most don’t even bother trying to hit the minions there. The situation has gotten progressively worse as the days have passed and fewer people needed completion, and at this point I have zero confidence that we will be able to complete this zone even if it pops every three hours.

It’s a really kittened up game design all the way around.

Brow.9425:

Kanto.1659:

Simply tracking which maps are we missing would be tremendous! Like tracking which goggles we used/didn’t use, tracking which dungeon paths we did/didn’t do and a whole plethora of similar achievements, past and future.

I can’t believe I’m going to say this, but, wow. This is actually something Blizzard got right. I now realize I was taking their achievement tracking for granted.

Rift did as well. All of their achievements showed exactly what you needed to do, which pieces you had completed, and which you hadn’t. They had LOTS of available achievements, and while a very few were bugged such that you couldn’t reliably do them, I don’t remember a single one where you didn’t get credit for them if you did.

ANet seems to be breaking new ground here … kind of like building a grade school on top of an ancient Druid burial ground.

Shroedingers Chupacabra.2978:

I can verify that it has nothing to do with how much damage you do to her. I had just zoned my Ele into Lornar’s Pass to do the events and no one else was around. Scarlet spawned right on top of me and I ran without firing. She then spawned on top of me in excess of a dozen times, mostly when I was running from event to event, resulting in 3 deaths.

My question is, “Did you all complete Scarlet’s Playhouse?” My husband has pointed out some threatening language used by Scarlet after you defeat her the final time in the Playhouse.

btw, the character stalked by Scarlet was not the one I completed the Playhouse with.

I’ve completed the playhouse, but my wife never has and neither of us completed it before we somehow earned Scarlett’s wrathful focus in those earlier invasions. In fact, tonight I only did one invasion and never hit Scarlett at all, yet twice she singled me out for being netted even though I was on the opposite side of the large group both times and as best I could tell nobody else got the net. I escaped only because I could stealth.

locoman.1974:

Cactus.2710:

locoman.1974:

sostronk.8167:

Its not random. In one event I did, I was literally the only person she spawned on and it was directly on top of me knocking me down instantly. At the end when we killed her, she also spawned on me. She killed me around 15 times. The one coincidence was that in that round I fully DPS her at the start of the event and she despawned after saying she was putting me on her list. I believe there is a trigger where if you attack her she will lock on you. But if your the only one during the event who attacks her your in for a rough ride because she will only spawn on you. If others attack she may spawn on them instead. No way its a coincidence that she can only spawn on me for an entire event with hundreds of people on the map.

I don’t think it depends on the wether you attack her or not, as I said I do believe it’s random whoever she picks, but once she does, she keeps at them for the whole event (even spawn on them when the event ends and you have to kill her). She did it to me, spawned at least 8 times (most likely more since I had to leave the computer a few times and my char was in a different spot than where I left it), and I was just crafting in the zone, never did any of the events, attacked her or any mob related to the invasion at all.

I don’t think it’s random at all. When it happened to my wife she happened to hit Scarlet hard early in the event, at which point the emote happened. After that, Scarlet clearly homed in on her over everyone else every time … even attacked her out in the open once where there wasn’t an invasion at all.

I had pretty much the same thing happen to me in a later event. I happened to be the only one hitting Scarlet for a while the first time she spawned and got the emote about being put on her list. After that, she spawned on top of me several times, although as a Thief I could usually escape via stealth (Blinding Powder since it’s quick).

That’s the thing, I’ve gotten the same emote (being put on her list and stuff) without doing any damage at all. I was crafting in ebonhawke, had the TP and bank windows open covering most of the screen doing a checklist of all the materials I needed to level artificing to 400 and buying the ones I didn’t have when I noticed the screen below those windows start to move around, I closed them just in time to see scarlet hit my character again (I hadn’t even noticed the invasion had started on that map) say the “I’ve put you on my list” thing and dissapear, never once attacked her, there was nobody else around, and there wasn’t even any portal open nearby. After that she kept spawning on me, I had other things to do so I parked the character next to the ebonhawke waypoint, and sure enough when the event ended that’s where she spawned for everyone to kill.

Hhmmm … interesting. I wonder if there had been an open portal nearby and Scarlet simply didn’t have anyone other than you to attack. It is possible to solo close a portal (like the tunneling ones), so maybe an individual or small group closed one and then split before Scarlet spawned. Just speculating …

Kanto.1659:

Simply tracking which maps are we missing would be tremendous! Like tracking which goggles we used/didn’t use, tracking which dungeon paths we did/didn’t do and a whole plethora of similar achievements, past and future.

The crazy stupid part about all of this is that ANet already DOES track what they gave us credit for. I’m 12/13 on the zone invasions, so ANet knows exactly which ones they have given me credit for. They just were too clueless to anticipate that we might need that information, but it couldn’t have been that difficult to write some code to tell us … even as an after-the-fact patch.

It would be different if so many aspects of these invasions weren’t bugged, or properly communicated up front (like which fights actually give you credit for the completion), but of course they struck out there as well. That seems to be the ongoing story of GW2 … nice ideas and bad execution.

locoman.1974:

sostronk.8167:

Its not random. In one event I did, I was literally the only person she spawned on and it was directly on top of me knocking me down instantly. At the end when we killed her, she also spawned on me. She killed me around 15 times. The one coincidence was that in that round I fully DPS her at the start of the event and she despawned after saying she was putting me on her list. I believe there is a trigger where if you attack her she will lock on you. But if your the only one during the event who attacks her your in for a rough ride because she will only spawn on you. If others attack she may spawn on them instead. No way its a coincidence that she can only spawn on me for an entire event with hundreds of people on the map.

I don’t think it depends on the wether you attack her or not, as I said I do believe it’s random whoever she picks, but once she does, she keeps at them for the whole event (even spawn on them when the event ends and you have to kill her). She did it to me, spawned at least 8 times (most likely more since I had to leave the computer a few times and my char was in a different spot than where I left it), and I was just crafting in the zone, never did any of the events, attacked her or any mob related to the invasion at all.

I don’t think it’s random at all. When it happened to my wife she happened to hit Scarlet hard early in the event, at which point the emote happened. After that, Scarlet clearly homed in on her over everyone else every time … even attacked her out in the open once where there wasn’t an invasion at all.

I had pretty much the same thing happen to me in a later event. I happened to be the only one hitting Scarlet for a while the first time she spawned and got the emote about being put on her list. After that, she spawned on top of me several times, although as a Thief I could usually escape via stealth (Blinding Powder since it’s quick).

Warcry.1596:

Those that kitten about not being able to keep track…. just make a word document…. duh,i did that with dungeons too… how DARE Anet make us think for ourselves

That’s a really clueless comment. Keeping track has nothing to do with it. LOTS of us have kept track of every zone we were in and that doesn’t tell us anything. I’ve been in every zone multiple times, I’m sitting at 12/13, and don’t have a clue which one I didn’t get credit for.

Next time think before you try to be cute.

But … but … but … Devon told us we just needed to wait for the last live stream to see how pleased we’d be with the upcoming changes. Maybe we missed something, right?