Guild Wars 2

Besetment.9187:

KwayZee.5742:

To me its fairly obvious there’s either a Truce or its just a case of picking on the new guy. You’re never in each others BLs… Never flipping each others stuff in EB. But blue always crawling up one side of the DR while green crawling up the other.

Green attacking Bay? Go check hills or Garrison water gate cuz blue will be attacking with them at the same time. Almost always happens.

No truce. Devona’s Rest has the smallest population and narrowest coverage in this bracket, so it is the easiest one to get swallowed up. Its sad that this is what WvW is about but there it is.

Other servers we have played like to make excuses like its skill and organisation that leads to victory. They only lose because of rampant exploiting or whatever, or at least its the only thing they talk about when they are losing. Whatever.

The lame truth is that skill and organisation only matters when numbers and coverage are very closely matched or there is a very specific server dynamic where the deficiencies of each server cancel each other out.

I’ve never seen exploiting and hacking to an extent where it had any meaningful impact on the outcome of the match. However, we have played matches where huge amounts of players dogpiled onto one server and made it literally impossible for anyone else to win.

If you hadn’t realized already, WvW has an extremely dysfunctional and unsustainable meta. It is not worth making rank in a game where there is no level playing field.

Whats the best that a consistent winner in tier 5 can look forward to? They move up to tier 4 and get dominated by servers with bigger population and more coverage. The winner of that tier can look forward to getting smashed by Isle of Janthir or Tarnished Coast – whoever is destined to rule tier 3 and get murdered in tier 2. Whoever rules tier 2 (currently Blackgate) can look forward to playing Jade Quarry and Sea of Sorrows. Time will tell whether they get smashed or not, but its a pattern that repeats itself over and over, yet still more people want to play this game as if rank even matters.

Most of us on Mags just want good fair games where we can be really creative and our opponents can be really creative.

That was a very well done post in virtually every respect. Makes me hope we stay in the same tier with you guys for a while …

ktith.6197:

Wait wait wait. Is this the same DR that was too good for T8? Too good for all the other servers that they zerged to death up to this tier? The same DR that are “too sexy for their shirt”?

I haven’t been on Maguuma long, but I’ve never seen a “truce” from anyone on this server. They play, and they win or lose for the fun of it. Why can’t you guys that are having a problem with this match from DR just come to the conclusion that you aren’t the GODS you thought you were and that you’ve gone up about as far as you will with your current population and tactical education. Because obviously one guild isn’t the reason you all have won every week with their constant rants of how bad DR really is behind your backs. And, if that one guild was the reason you did win, are they prepared to accept that they could be the reason you are now stuck where you are? Not a troll but a face of reality that if you’re going to accept the title of being the sole reason a server is winning, then you’ll take the responsibility of being the reason the server is losing.

There’s nothing wrong with how far DR got…they did well (even though they didn’t have much to fight against in the tiers below this one, much like Kaineng is seeing now). But now it’s time for the reality check in the situation and just deal with it. YES DR is going to lose this week, but you’re 3 tiers higher than you were 3 weeks ago, so is it really a true “loss”? Why DR puts up with the antics of one said guild is beyond me….they never did before said guild arrived.

I’m not a member of PRO, and I do think that a couple of their most vocal members are jerks, but I think you’re pretty far off base characterizing that entire guild based upon those vocal few. My experience with PRO, both in game and here in these forums, is as varied as it is with any other guild … including my own.

Gospel.7630:

Here’s an idea. Make it so that after 30 minutes siege weapons can be broken down into supplies that are automatically added to the nearest ally controlled supply depot. Of course there must be other things taken into consideration, but that’s what this forum of whiners is here for so I’ll leave it up to y’all to scrutinize.

Translation: I’m proposing this change even though I haven’t thought it through at all and wouldn’t be surprised if it has some major flaws that I’ll rely on everyone else to think of.

Spurnshadow.3678:

Portals are dead.

-Violet Sorrows BG

I truly wish that were so. I greatly dislike the use of mesmer portals in WvW … I think it is a wholly artificial way to capture an objective. I don’t have any problem with it in the open field for movement speed, stealth, surprise, etc, but I think it defeats the entire purpose of building defenses and turns the game into even more mindless flipping of towers/keeps. I’d support the return to unlimited users of a portal (subject only to the timer) if ANet were to make it unusable to breach walls.

Bunzy.8674:

Besetment.9187:

I swear to god Bunzy, you are a walking PR disaster for this server…

<facepalm>

Just keep killing. You do that well. STOP talking. You are really bad at talking.

Who cares what other people think – that’s my motto

Clearly ….

epborden.7492:

Imbalance, it is killing WvW and player morale. You eventually fall into two camps: You’re on the winning side dominating everything, and eventually you do dominate everything, and at that point there is zero challenge because you’ve taken everything and there is nothing to do except catch roamers and defend from the occasional insurgence; or you’re getting dominated, eventually get completely dominated, and can’t retaliate in enough force to counter the oppositions force. I think we can all agree that when we do have three worlds competing, constantly taking land and losing land, that this is the most fun and also the most appropriate for WvW. I know I am not alone with this, and I also know there are those that would argue on the other side of the fence. I’d like to initiate some discussion on this since I have personally seen it yet on this board.

Look harder.

Kincaidia.3192:

I’m really tempted to transfer to a Tier 1 server and see how hard I can troll. I imagine that would get some needed attention.

Interesting idea for a solution though – the claiming guild has a public and a private supply stash, and only the claiming guild can order upgrades.

I like your first idea but hate your second one. There are MANY times during off hours that I am the only one upgrading a tower after a flip and guarding the supply yaks to it. Besides, what would prevent a saboteur from doing the claiming for some obscure guild that doesn’t even exist except for him and then refusing to order upgrades?

Somebody else once suggested that commanders should have the ability to destroy unwanted siege and recover the supply that was used to build it … limited to the upgrade level of the camp/fort/keep of course. The only problem I see with it is that a commander could himself be a rogue agent planted by the enemy to destroy important siege.

Some people have also said that spies and saboteurs exist in real life wars and therefore should be expected here as well, but that ignores the fact that in real life we have the ability to permanently kill them on the spot … in GW2 we don’t.

Tulisin.6945:

Oozo.7856:

Running away is not a loss. That is not how good elems and thieves view it. They consider it buying time, regaining health, and seeing if they have thinned out or created a seperation in some of the people chasing them so they can turn on them.

By that same logic, dying and then running back from a waypoint was just “testing their defenses” for the true attack that is totally gonna win.

No, running away means losing the fight. You can start another fight with what you learned, but that first fight has been lost. It doesn’t matter how someone views it personally, that is what it is.

It totally depends upon the situation, no matter how you personally view it.

In my opinion, anyone who complains about balance issues for 1v1 encounters in a team oriented activity like WvW does not fully comprehend which game they are playing.

Thunderbrew.7034:

Stacking I could care less about.

Its the following that I do:

1) Credit card commanders who have no idea how to lead, but people
zerg follow them

2) Mesmer bombing is an exploit until they fix culling, and the fights
it wins has nothing to do with skill

Way to stay on topic. Got any political views you want to share? How ’bout your favorite beer?

Adaneshade.2409:

This, but I take it one step beyond. If i see any 1v1, duel or not, I don’t interfere. If the player on my team isn’t good enough to beat the enemy, then they simply deserve to lose and learn from mistakes. If we step in and rescue the people who can’t stand on their own, how will they ever learn to?

Now there’s a clueless player that doesn’t understand what team play is all about. What if your team mate is defending a camp, or is on his way to deliver supplies to his commander, or trying to do something else valuable to your server’s cause?? What if he had just killed a different player and was still low on health with his CDs blown when the player you saw him fighting had just jumped him?? You just let him die?? I truly hope that I never see you wasting a queue spot on my server.

And you do know that not all classes are equally balanced against all other classes in all 1V1 situations anyway, right? Apparently you don’t.

DKz Lux.4125:

There are two possible outcomes for this matchup it seems.

1. DR and BP attack each other and Maguuma wins by a landslide.
2. DR and BP focus on Maguuma and we have a balanced match.

I’ll put my money on #1, unfortunately.

That’s curious advice coming from a BP player, since at almost the exact same time (about 1:30 AM server time) that you posted this BP was repeatedly (wave after wave) trying to sandwich DR while we were attacking (and eventually taking) the inner wall and Lord’s Room of SM. I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what the intent of that was because BP didn’t appear to have the numbers there to take SM themselves even if they killed us all off. I just found it pretty odd.

All in all, though, it’s been great fun so far.

StormWolf.7645:

TrueNoodles.3850:

Haha yeah I never fear diving in a zerg. Same guy lol.

Love seeing people with this same mindset. :p Only thing funner than diving head first into a zerg is doing so and surviving. While commanding I very quickly learned that PUGs will not charge…unless they see the Commander icon in the middle of the enemy. I always have the expectation of ending up dead, but with the hope of victory for the group. Longer I can keep attention on myself with my full-tank Guardian build, the more likely my allies are to be taking down more enemies. Of course I have the same kind of mindset with small groups too, just for different reasons. There I figure that if I hold the attention of a Zerg my allies can escape or at least kill off some of the enemy. Mainly because as a Tank Build I have very very little “Escape-ability”. XD Once everything’s in CD I’m screwed.

I’m always amazed at how many people are afraid to die in a team-based video game. There are often situations where I find I can help my team more by dying than I can by trying to stay alive. Being a hated thief (even though I don’t use CND/BS much) I often draw lots of fire and can sometimes get three, four, or even a half dozen enemy to chase me away from the rest of my group, giving them time to recover or kill whomever they happen to be fighting themselves. I can let go with Daggerstorm in an enemy zerg that does lots of damage and creates a lot of interrupts before I die. If I’m closer to my spawn than the enemy is to his the odds of being useful can swing to me even if I die, as long as I do enough damage first.

Staying alive is overrated.

Sylosi.6503:

elderan.2638:

Habib: The consensus here is pretty clear, since many people are suggesting essentially the same thing: that culling should be placed in settings where the user can control it. Those who have bandwidth or rendering issues can simply leave culling on and have the exact same performance they get now. Those who have systems that can handle the increased bandwidth/rendering would have the option to turn off culling completely. If this is at all possible, please consider implementing this.

No thanks, my system is way above min specs, but giving me and anyone else the option to turn it off and thereby creating a two tier PvP system with those that can see other players and those that can’t, is simply a bad idea.

^ this too ^

elderan.2638:

Habib: The consensus here is pretty clear, since many people are suggesting essentially the same thing: that culling should be placed in settings where the user can control it. Those who have bandwidth or rendering issues can simply leave culling on and have the exact same performance they get now. Those who have systems that can handle the increased bandwidth/rendering would have the option to turn off culling completely. If this is at all possible, please consider implementing this.

I don’t that that is practical, or even desirable. If anybody who didn’t want to use culling could just turn it off completely, ANet would have no control at all over how much bandwidth was being required at any one time for their servers. Habib said that ANet was willing to buy additional bandwidth (which they OBVIOUSLY really need), but he didn’t said that ANet was willing to buy infinite amounts of it. If ANet was not able in some manner to dynamically control the volume of input/output data being required from their systems (which is exactly what culling is there for), the game could literally lock up as if ANet was the target of a denial-of-service-attack.

Kintari.4172:

Habib,

Appreciate the detailed response, but it seems like it doesn’t address some important questions.

1) Why is there a 2-4 second delay between destealth and rendering in WvW, even under optimal circumstances (i.e. 1v1 out in the middle of nowhere, no other players present) This shouldn’t be ‘model loading’, because I’m talking about repeated stealth/destealth cycles in the same fight, when presumably all the assets for both characters are resident already. I’m playing on a high-end machine and I get this, and so does everybody I talk to. How do the changes you outline address this behavior?

2) Why is enemy player culling vastly less well-behaved in large fights than friendly player culling?

3) Can you say with a reasonable degree of confidence that the culling / visibility system is currently free of major bugs? Because it seems to me like it isn’t. I can be more specific, but it really looks to me like the model loading gets delayed or ‘stuck’ in some cases, and sometimes gets unstuck due to user input such as changing the view direction. This kind of behavior, combined with the seemingly random selection of enemies I see popping in and out during large fights, strongly suggests to me that the system is currently bugged. Are you doing anything to make sure the system really works the way it is supposed to work?

Thanks for looking at it, and here’s to hoping it gets fixed.

I’m not sure I totally understand how culling is applied in GW2, but this is what I think happens:

I’m pretty sure the culling algorithm simply excludes other characters from your view that the game thinks aren’t important >>for you to view<< at that moment. That would include another character that is too far away or sufficiently behind you that you can’t normally see it. If that character suddenly pops into range or into view, the game tries to render it but there is a significant lag in doing so. So …

1. I suspect that the game does not always properly differentiate between a character that is truly out of view and one that went stealth. If so, it doesn’t always matter what else is going on or whether there are many players or few in the area. The lag comes from the server and your game client (the portion resident on your computer) trying to agree on what you need to see.

2. My guess would be that enemy players pop into your view from further away than do friendly players. The culling algorithm probably has a priority system based upon the range from you for deciding which players to cull and which not. Players closer to you but still culled may have some of their data queued waiting to be sent to you while players further away may not. An enemy further away with a teleport ability may pop into range sooner than a closer enemy that has to run to you, thereby screwing up the culled data queue. That kind of thing probably happens less often for friendlies in a mass battle than for enemies.

3. I think the behavior of culling when quickly rotating the camera should be obvious … players that the game didn’t think you needed to see suddenly have to be rendered and the information sent to you. If there are a lot of characters in the area and you swing the camera back and forth quickly, data packets in transit suddenly are no longer needed and your game client needs to request a different view. It’s not difficult to imagine temporary confusion occurring between your computer and the server while it tries to decide what you really want to see … kind of like if I order a meal at a restaurant but then keep changing my order before anything gets cooked.

So I don’t think what you are observing are necessarily “bugs” with culling … they are instead a natural result of culling that would most likely go away if culling does.

Lopez.7369:

Habib, will the fixes for culling in WvW work for PvE events too? Culling can be pretty annoying in the PvE world too.

The root cause of the problem has almost nothing to do with the content, so yes … I would expect whatever fix they have for culling to affect both PvE and PvP.

What a silly OP. When will people quit complaining that they can’t turn a WvW map into something it was never intended to be?

And right now, with NSP still in control of SM, the running score is:

DR 330
AR 265
NSP 100

[quote=1137161;Rob.7624:
SM is like a working military base atm. Its is quite glorious to see again indeed.
Even though DR are trying to pull us out by taking our bl.

I think you and I both know that this means more to us than a bl.
[/quote]

Uhh … kk, but it sounds like more of a moral victory of sorts than a real one. As of the moment of this post the running score is:

DR 335
AR 225
NSP 135

No offense intended … as I posted above I was pretty impressed with NSP last night. I just don’t see how holding SM to the exclusion of all else buys you much, especially this late in the match.

OK … I’ve scoffed harder than anyone at all the end-of-the world prophecies that have been floating around the last several months, but I’ve just witnessed the most conclusive sign ever that armageddon is imminent. ANet in the form of Habib just quickly responded with a candid, comprehensively descriptive, insightful, and encouraging post on a significant issue for GW2. I truly never thought I would see this day, but if I could buy Habib a case of Negra Modelo I most certainly would do so.

Props to NSP in EB last night (about midnight server time). It seemed like they had a pretty organized plan to hit DR all over the map. We had poor defensive coverage in terms of manpower at several towers, and even though we could zerg some of them back NSP had small teams keeping supply camps locked up so that we really couldn’t reinforce. It was honestly the most coordinated effort I’ve seen from them all week.

Another observation: I was running all over the map trying to run supplies, defend attacks on camps, build defenses on towers, etc … and in over two hours of doing that I saw exactly one player from AR. It almost looked like NSP had some agreement with AR for them to each focus on different maps. If so, props again.

Nitro.4732:

Out-of-Memory errors are directly linked to 32bit Windows Operating Systems because windows 32 bit only allows the game to access 2GB of memory. If you have 4GB or more memory, the best option available is to upgrade to 64bit, if you cannot do that then you next option would be to try the “/3GB switch” (google it to know more).

4GB of ram is more than plenty for this game, anyone that says otherwise doesn’t understand why the out-of-memory errors relate.

Also upgrading your windows to 64bit does not cost, your windows activation code is 32/64bit you can simply take your windows 7 installation disc and choose 64bit and use the same activation code.

I’m still using Win7-32 bit with 4 gig of RAM, although I just ordered the components for a much better system. Since launch I experienced almost continuous out-of-memory crashes … about half of the time I used a portal and almost all of the time I found myself in a large event. Five crashes per hour was common. About two weeks ago I rather reluctantly did the /3g switch and literally have not had a single out-of-memory crash since in spite of increased playing time over the holidays. I did have one minor Windows memory dump crash while not playing the game, but other than that Windows has seemed stable enough.

In my opinion it is worth a try, and if you use the link that Nitro has previously posted (just click on his name to see his prior posts) there are simple instructions for both applying and removing the switch.

SolarNova.1052:

Culling is only applied outside a certain radius around ur character. Therefor it is possible to see 100 man/50 man battles if ur in the thick of it, if u sitting on top of a wall with a ballista/or using ranged attacks ..u likely will not see all/any of said army of people due to culling.
As for how fast culled players load up on screen, it really helps to have a good CPU (like those suggested) and a SSD so that as soon as they are able ‘from the server side’ to be loaded, they are then loaded quickly/instantly on ur client. With a old slower cpu culled players will remain effectively invisible whilst they fight until ur computer can catch up.
Unless i have server side lag-which does happen on occasion, i rarely have problems with loading up people who have moved close enough to my character so they r no longer culled.

I agree culling is a “enter filtered word here”
But Anet wont give the player the choice of cull radius because those with a computer able to handle 0 culling / extreme radius settings, will cause their servers excess load due to the extra information it will be sending out to those computers about all the players one screen. Hence why they are ‘trying’ to find a more balanced culling setting..one that works with server load and gives players enough sight ..atm they are failing miserably.

All of that is totally true.

It is very easy to have WvW battles with 50+ players on each side fighting in a tight radius right outside or in a contested tower. The information exchange required to update every player on every other player’s actions is a quadratic (i.e., skyrocketing) function of the number of players involved. ANet went cheap on their server-side ability (engine, server, bandwidth, etc) to handle all that data, though, so they introduced culling to limit the number of other players that any one player can see at a time.

The trouble is, players move in and out of that circle pretty quickly and culling has an unavoidable response time. There really is no sweet spot that makes all of the important players visible and still keeps the frame rates decent if the number of players exceeds the ability of Anet’s hardware to handle the data, and for ANet to tell us they are trying to find one is a bit disingenuous. The obvious solution would be for ANet to increase their data handling ability, but that could get expensive so we know that isn’t going to happen. Other players have suggested that ANet dynamically dumb down the graphics requirements (character/armor/race distinctions, scenery resolution, battle effects, etc) as a function of the number of players located in close proximity, but that would involve a LOT of coding changes so we know that isn’t going to happen either.

My wife had this problem since launch. Somebody here on the forums pointed out that GW2 handles 8 channel sound very poorly (as in not at all), so I changed her sound card settings (in Windows) from 5.1 channel to stereo and now everything works fine. Might be worth a try.

urdriel.8496:

only trait that can give you initiative is 20% to gain 1 initiative in each critical.

That isn’t true at all. Go back and read the list of thief traits on the wiki site.

Dovgan.8605:

To the AoD folks camping Speldan, I am just harassing you guys because I am painfully bored and it seems I can kill your yaks at will and still bow before your numbers take me down. Why can’t 5 of your elite skilled players stop one solo ranger from killing your supply lines? That little Asura thief though, we are 1 and 1, I will be looking for another go if I see you. I don’t think you knew what you were getting into round one.

I’m not sure why why this blustering tool thinks it’s such an accomplishment for a long ranged spec to take down a yak before being killed himself, but for the record I’m appreciative that he doesn’t seem at all representative of the AR folks I’ve come across, either in the game or here in the forums.

Three days later and nobody (until me) has commented. Pretty sure that means it isn’t a big issue.

Kodiack.2783:

Cactus.2710:

Why neither AR nor NSP don’t take more advantage of situations where DR is preoccupied with the other server is beyond me. There’s more to this game than simply complaining about population imbalances.

Have you seen the score?

Tactics and smart play go out the window when your behind by as much as we are.

-K

I suppose that’s true, and I’m sure lots of players get discouraged when they see the score without even porting in to any of the WvW maps. Many of the ones that do join probably do so just to some skirmish fun more than anything else. I will say, though, that AR has been doing a pretty good job keeping us at least somewhat off balance in EB … at least in the evenings the last couple of times I’ve been there. There must be a decent core there somewhere.

Laiboch.4380:

I still love how every server DR has gone against has always had people saying the same false things.

DR is a zerg server… Every server has zergs, and those can be used very effectively as a distraction while you take key points.

90% of what I have seen from AR and NSP is zerging glass cannons, and those glass cannons get wiped out over and over. So please stop with the zerg comments when that’s pretty much all AR and NSP has thrown at DR. Both AR and NSP do have some really good WvW players, and you can tell when you fight them. They are organized, skilled and use tactics, but they are the exception not the rule.

DR has a huge population. I cannot count the times in our current match-up where DR has faced much larger numbers and won. AR fields huge zergs at all hours when compared to what DR fields. Its not that we have OMGZergPoWa its simply that we are better than you. Take hills last night… I SOLOED an 18+ man zerg trying to ninja hills with 1 cannon…. Really? 1 cannon took out almost the entire zerg and all 4 of your cats. I was alone in hills for a good 20 min before backup arrived in the form of 1 commander (James Games) 3 members of [GASM] a [Pro] or two and 3 randoms.

Every server we have fought has used the same excuses as to why they lose against us. only 2 of those servers can honestly say they could not field the numbers to fight us, but those few were better than all but a small handful of NSP and AR players.

Its not going to stop after we leave either. Kain is moving up and I hate to say it AR and NSP, but they are going to ROFLStomp you guys as well. They have a huge night crew, and unlike most of the servers DR has fought in WvW they don’t just roll over in their shell and give up content to battle it out for second place.

I’m not sure I’d be that confrontational about it, because I’ve come up against some really competent players from both AR and NSP that quickly wiped my kitten There are some really good small teams from both servers there.

However, I do have to question at times what kind of tactics are being used here. A couple of days ago my son and I teamed up to attack various camps and yaks in AR BL. Nobody else from DR was there (they were mostly busy in EB) so we ran around for about 90 minutes attacking unattended objectives (including scouts since my son was still leveling his character). AR had a large zerg of 25 to 30 players who would run around recapping what we had taken, but at any point in time we probably held at least two camps. The thing is, if AR had split their zerg into two or three smaller groups they could have stopped us cold and controlled everything … but they didn’t, even though they had the players in the map to do it.

There was a similar situation in EB last night while DR and AR were battling for towers in the north and east. A small team from NSP could have kept Golanta in flux and prevented my son and I from fully upgrading Klovan like we did … but they didn’t, even though they had the players in the map to do it.

Why neither AR nor NSP don’t take more advantage of situations where DR is preoccupied with the other server is beyond me. There’s more to this game than simply complaining about population imbalances.

urdriel.8496:

Cactus.2710:

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

dude, is a problem of game balance, all classes need more than one or 2 viable specs, and now you have 1 or 2 ….

It seems pretty straightforward to me. You adjust your role to the playstyle you prefer to use. There is no way on earth that this or any other game can be “balanced” to allow every class to be fully competitive in all situations (zerg, siege, defense, roamer, etc) against every other class (1v1) or combination of classes (1vN). If you think otherwise you haven’t really thought it through very well.

The Glicko system itself was designed for competitions like chess or tennis, where everyone eventually has the opportunity to play everyone else. It totally falls apart when you try to apply it to a tiered system because teams from one tier don’t have the near-term opportunity to compete against teams in other tiers. ANet says they use a “modified Glicko” system so I suspect that they incorporate some other factor that tries to rank tiers, but whatever they use it is not very responsive to shifts in server demographics, and if they use the Glicko system itself for comparing tiers it is simply invalid.

The Glicko system also treats shifts in scores as an undesirable variability and assigns a ranking penalty when that happens. I don’t know what the time constant for that is (15 minutes, one hour, one day, one week??), but if it is anything less than a day it will penalize a server with less than 24 hour coverage.

Check out WikiPedia for a complete explanation for how the Glicko system works. There’s a lot of math there, but if you ignore that and just read the text it’s not hard to see that it is not appropriate for ranking multiple competitors isolated into tiers of three each. Somebody at ANet didn’t think things through very well when they decided to use it for WvW.

mjharrison.3209:

My other major issue with WVW is that as an Ele, I have only 1 decent spec I can run if I want to roam: D/D, when I would rather actually play a ranged caster.

Seriously? It’s the fault of WvW that you chose a class that doesn’t do what you want it to do?

Say what? You mean you might actually have to PvP to get your PvP badges? Such injustice!!

Mian.1945:

Not to mention Chuckles and his buddies are all sitting there on Teamspeak together all with preassigned roles and assist macros prewired for coordinated stunning and bursting against pugs who don’t know each other from Adam.

“Thief 1 cast Shadow refuge”
“Warrior 1 cast speed”
“Gogogogogogogogo”
“Target 1 – Ele – Thief 1 Basilisk”
“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE”
“Target 2 – Mesmer – Thief 2 Basilisk”
“SPIKE SPIKE SPIKE”
“MORE DOTS, MORE DOTS, AWAY FROM DA WELPS!!”
“Thief 3 – Shadow Refuge”
“Runrunrunrun”
“Yo dawwwwwwwg, we showed them fewls”.

“Sheeeeeeeeeeit, Jiggy got lowest DPS score for the round, -50DKP!!”

Uhh … that’s the way it’s SUPPOSED to work. Whether you like downed state or not, WvW is a team strategy/tactics game that places a premium on coordination and cooperation. Organized groups and VoIP chat are simply valid mechanisms for accomplishing that. I’m constantly amazed at how many people can’t seem to grasp that concept and instead want to turn WvW into simply a set of mass 1v1 encounters.

Archonis.7249:

Aberrant.6749:

Archonis.7249:

KensaiZen.3740:

FourTwenty.4268:

KensaiZen.3740:

Actually, you don’t have a 3 second window. The thief is perma invisible due to culling. That or using the move where they Phase out and can’t be hit. That or your already dead.

Which magical 3 second window is this?

everyone agrees culling needs to be fixed. no thief is denying this

Which is why the class is broken. Activating a skill that allows you to have extra stealth intended or not is a broken mechanic.

Being able to outrun every class while stealthed is a broken mechanic.

Being able to do pretty much insta kill on clothes and insane damage to heavies and get a garaunteed get out of jail free class is a broken mechanic.

I understand how thieves should be played and that they need their stealth. But to be able to stealth through out an entire fight is a rubbish mechanic. You have dodges and phasing and teleportations/shadow step as evasion tactics. To add stealth in there is just taking the biscuit.

I think stealth should just be on a much longer cool down. At least this way the thief get their chance to do the assassination style they love to do but the draw back is they have to do it in a certain amount of time without a get out of jail free card. If they fail they can still GTFO of dodge quicker then any class in the game.

So you suggest nerfing Thief because of a bug in culling that affects everyone?

That is so kittening dumb, I don’t even know what to say to you now?

It nulifies the revealed debuff.
It allows thieves to remain perma-invis with ease.
It gives players leaving stealth extra time to get in free hits.

This is why thief is OP right now.

The things that were put in place to stop the thief from doing what it’s doing right now are broken due to bugs. These bugs won’t be dealt with for some time. They need to do a short term fix until the bugs are dealt with.

So yea… it does affect everyone. Just some more than others.

So your fix is to kitten us in every other part of the game?

I swear people need to proof read for such illogical posts.

Proof reading for illogical arguments doesn’t help much if those people can’t think logically in the first place. At least you have to give Aberrant credit for choosing an appropriate name for himself.

Tenshi.3598:

How the hell did people turn this into yet another complain-about JP/thief thread, I wonder? Or did a mod make a very silly topic merge?

The OP did that to his own thread. I think maybe he has ADD. Or maybe he’s just really immature. Or maybe both, it’s hard to tell. I’m pretty sure he wasn’t/isn’t/won’t be his class valedictorian, though.

Sorry … I don’t see it. Why would I do the final upgrade if it meant making it more likely to be attacked by the enemy? Doesn’t make any sense to me. Besides, the easy counter would be simply to do that final upgrade to every keep/tower on my own BL map, with the result that the game simply slows down even more for everyone.

Bunzy.8674:

If you want a game where skill prevails over numbers its time to get rid of or drastically change the downed state.

The cards are in your hands anet, I hope for your sake you play them right.

While numbers do make a major difference, you need to revise your definition of “skill” if you’re talking WvW (you do know this is the WvW forum, right?) The dominant skills in WvW are the team strategies and tactics that it requires to take, fortify, and defend objectives. If you don’t believe that you’re on the wrong server, or more likely, on the wrong playground. It sounds like maybe you belong in sPvP.

solarisnox.8521:

Hmm…wow…thanks for clarifying that.
Then maybe, just maybe, the dev’s should give every class the ability to stealth out of combat, in order to make it “fair” and “balanced”, the way thieves can, if they are losing, and therefore not take any damage, not have any armor cost, and not die when they log out, and hey, then no one gets any loot or tokens, and no one wins, hurray, everybody let’s all be thieves, and then this problem is solved. Woot.

wow, thanks man, you’ve just proved my point.

Cactus.2710:

solarisnox.8521:

I got penalized for doing nothing but trying to peaceably avoid an irritating waste of time.

You don’t have the right to expect to peaceably avoid anything while in a war zone. You really need to figure out how to wrap your mind around that.

You already know why the “dead while porting out of combat” situation exists. It’s a tradeoff between a minor currency cost for (unless you’re stupid) infrequent (maybe even unfair) situations and a larger scale abuse that had everyone upset. If you can’t live with that, you probably should stay out of WvW because you clearly don’t know what it’s there for.

Sigh … the only thing any of this proves is that you can’t even stay on topic for a thread you generated. Thieves have nothing to do with this situation … it happens to everyone and if a thief in combat leaves the map he shows up dead whether he was stealthed or not. If you can’t whine intelligently, at least try to whine coherently, OK?

solarisnox.8521:

I got penalized for doing nothing but trying to peaceably avoid an irritating waste of time.

You don’t have the right to expect to peaceably avoid anything while in a war zone. You really need to figure out how to wrap your mind around that.

You already know why the “dead while porting out of combat” situation exists. It’s a tradeoff between a minor currency cost for (unless you’re stupid) infrequent (maybe even unfair) situations and a larger scale abuse that had everyone upset. If you can’t live with that, you probably should stay out of WvW because you clearly don’t know what it’s there for.

Persephone.7436:

I think the main reason GW2 separated EU and NA servers is the physical location of the server banks. All the EU servers are ran out of a server farm in Europe. Linking them together would add lag and longer data transfer time. GW2 already cant support the current data transfer and uses culling as a poor mans band-aid. Don’t lean on the broken rail.

Definitely true … all of it.

Cactus.2710:

That’s actually not quite the way Shadow Refuge (or the revealed debuff) works. Shadow Refuge is a pulsing ability that gives the thief (and anyone else in the circle) 3 seconds of invisibility for each of 5 pulses. The first pulse is instantaneous so the five pulses are complete in 4 seconds. Invisibility stacks in duration, so if the thief stays in the circle for the full 4 seconds he gets a total of 15 seconds of invisibility (4 in the circle and 11 out of it). If he leaves after 3 seconds he has 12 seconds of invisibility, etc. Leaving the circle before the full 4 seconds are up does NOT make him immediately visible … it merely means he will become visible before 15 seconds expire. There is, of course, a trait that can extend all of that for 1 second.

The revealed debuff does not, in spite of what the official Wiki says, turn the player visible. What it does is prevent the player from going invisible again for the duration of the debuff.

I hate to admit it, but I was wrong on all of that. The weird thing is that I had tested that before and convinced myself that I could leave the circle before the four seconds were up and not become visible, but I just did it again and popped into view as soon as I did. My sincere apologies for creating confusion.

Xter.6271:

Honestly i’m sick of seeing the whole thieves are overpowered thing. I play as a thief and I love my thief but we are not that overpowered. We are real squishy in a fight so we have to always be moving and dodging. Yeah, honestly the stealth thing is annoying when trying to kill us, I’ll admit it having 1v1 many thieves. But there is a solution.

Think what a thief does when low on health, he’s going to stealth and retreat, right? Well what’s the first place he’s going to go? Far away from you, in the opposite direction, and if he was a smart thief, he’d use Shadow Refuge for around 10-12 seconds of stealth depending on their traits. Before he gets that 12 seconds of stealth, he has to stay in that circle for roughly 4 seconds or he gets a debuff called revealed. Means he is forced out of stealth. So he is trapped in his little circle for about 4 seconds right? As a thief, I switch to my shortbow and using the Choking Gas, Poisons the thief there. Then I can spam my #2 skill which is an exploding arrow. So two things happen. #1 I kill the hiding thief because he was low on health and used that as an escape with almost any health or #2 He runs away is revealed and I kill him, or my conditions do. Either way, he never gets far.

That’s actually not quite the way Shadow Refuge (or the revealed debuff) works. Shadow Refuge is a pulsing ability that gives the thief (and anyone else in the circle) 3 seconds of invisibility for each of 5 pulses. The first pulse is instantaneous so the five pulses are complete in 4 seconds. Invisibility stacks in duration, so if the thief stays in the circle for the full 4 seconds he gets a total of 15 seconds of invisibility (4 in the circle and 11 out of it). If he leaves after 3 seconds he has 12 seconds of invisibility, etc. Leaving the circle before the full 4 seconds are up does NOT make him immediately visible … it merely means he will become visible before 15 seconds expire. There is, of course, a trait that can extend all of that for 1 second.

The revealed debuff does not, in spite of what the official Wiki says, turn the player visible. What it does is prevent the player from going invisible again for the duration of the debuff.

Most thieves, if they are really planning to escape, will try to use as much of the invisibility offered by Shadow Refuge as possible, which means they will probably hang around for most of that four seconds. As you say, AoE is the way to go, but surprisingly few enemies use that against me and the ones that do usually quit way before the four seconds are up. If I get caught in a zerg that’s throwing down lots of AoE, though, I’ll often be dead before I ever leave the circle.

Zynthetic.2954:

The glicko system works in most implementations, but not in GW2. Why?

It is assumed with the glicko system that you are matched up against different, but similarly rated opponents in every match, but in Guild Wars 2 this doesn’t happen. Instead, ratings are put into numerical ranking and every grouping of 3 servers gets to duke it out for the week.

If the matchup stays the same week after week after week, then the rating no longer applies to their ranking as a whole, but how well they compete against other 2 servers in the matchup.

<snip>

Also to all the people blaming server transfers….. People moving increases the volatility of the matches, because it’s still change. Change increases the likelihood of servers moving up or down the rankings. If anything closing transfers would make the problem worse as players would have no freedom of movement, just causing this whole dilemma to get worse.

TLDR: Glicko as a system works, but Anet’s implementation of it is poor.

This is exactly correct. The Glicko system (you can get the full description on WikiPedia) was designed for large pools of players as in chess, where everyone might eventually compete against each other. It pretty much falls apart when used in a tiered system because teams from one tier don’t compete against teams in other tiers. Your server’s rating becomes almost strictly a function of your score against only two other servers and loses relevance with other tiers.

I suspect that GW2 has some mechanism for Glicko ranking tiers against each other as well, but that’s hugely flawed in both theory and practice since tiers don’t actually compete against each other. If they use a server’s performance in a previous tier to do that you get the kind of horrendous unresponsiveness to changing demographics that now exists, as well as the obvious delay that occurs while the system has to wait for servers to actually change tiers.

It is also true that performance fluctuations (such as may be caused by server transfers) can actually reduce a server’s Glicko rating even if the score goes up because the Glicko system essentially adds in a penalty for variability.

All in all it seems ArenaNet totally misunderstood how the Glicko system works because it is fundamentally inappropriate for tiered WvW. They really need to go back to the drawing board to fix this, because merely freezing server transfers will not.

uhohhotdog.3598:

Cactus.2710:

hungryhippos.4980:

anet too busy to give a simple number guys.

Too busy doing what? They have people who moderate forum posts with response times measured in minutes, but you rarely see an answer on any issue … even a simple one like this one. Whatever any of us may think of GW2 as a product, I think ANet clearly has one of the worst customer service attitudes of any large scale commercial venture in any market.

I think your sarcasm detector needs new batteries.

I knew full well that hippos was being sarcastic, but I was pretty sure that ANet didn’t. My post was really directed at them, not him.

Vistal.2906:

Exploit is a exploit. People get sick and tired of Servers who brag and exploit, so i guess we will see tons more coming from servers who are against it. Isnt the saying a EYE for a EYE? Well guess what ? DR has a bunch .. not a few like 2-3 more like 15+ who been exploiting for 2 weeks now. Guess its the other servers turn to exploit right back.

Oh for god’s sake …

Aberrant.6749:

skinnyb.5920:

I die to every class every day while stealthed.

It takes like 5 hits to down me, I’m pure glass. If you can’t manage that, then L2P, cry more, etc.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LbhdsF4oEI8

^ This is the problem.

It’s not a l2p issue it’s a thief constantly exploits serious bugs issue.

Meaning it’s not an OP issue either.

I’ve never understood why people clamor harder for a nerf than they do for a bug fix when the bug is the real problem, but in all honesty you aren’t likely to see ANet do anything about either of them.

I don’t mind three dimensional fighting at all, but the visual perspective underwater in GW2 is absolute trash. Whoever coded it should be strung up by their thumbs.