Guild Wars 2

LumAnth.5124:

They said it breaks immersion, in the past. Which is why they won’t add it

I’m not a big fan of first person view because I’m not all that keyed into immersion, but that’s an incredibly stupid comment from ANet if someone there actually said it. First person view would be the ultimate in immersion … that’s how we all see the world in real life!

Deamhan.9538:

Cactus.2710:

Zaxares.5419:

Early feedback from those who’ve been playing the ESO beta has been… less than promising. I wasn’t going to get it anyway since it’s subscription based, but more than that, I have a feeling that ESO is not going to be a success because part of what made the Elder Scrolls games so amazing was the sheer RP immersion you could get in it (and the tons of mods that improved the process).

You’re not going to get that kind of immersion in an MMO. Mods will be non-existent, and you’re going to have players running/jumping down the streets, with ridiculous names like Xx Legolass xX and Captin Jack Sprrw and DaRtH SlAyEr 69, pickpocketing every NPC in sight and being chased by hordes of angry town guards. (Possibly training these guards onto you too?)

So no, I think ESO will fail to capture the interest of players like me, who buy these games specifically BECAUSE they’re not an MMO.

It depends upon who you’re talking to. Lots of long time Elder Scrolls fans have mixed (or even negative) feelings about ESO simply because it’s an MMO period … they feel the multi-player aspect will diminish the immersion that they have come to love. That’s kind of like saying you don’t think football will be successful because you happen to like basketball.

Other beta testers have been quite positive about the game … they like the way it appears to be geared toward expansive PvP and they like the graphics compared to some of the other new games coming out soon. Almost everyone seems to be concerned about one aspect or another of the combat mechanics, but there is still time to refine them prior to launch so nobody really knows what to expect.

The one thing I can say with assurance is that not everyone is looking ahead to ESO with the same set of desires and expectations. Some of us will be pleased, some of us not … but there are a lot of people quite dissatisfied with GW2 and ANet is likely to lose a lot of players to either ESO, WS, or EQN over the next few months. I loved the Elder Scroll series but in all honesty I would almost for sure have stuck with GW2 if ANet hadn’t messed up WvW so badly. As it is, I will give ESO every chance in the world based upon its emphasis on RvR (ZeniMax has quite obviously been paying attention to all the things players don’t like about WvW), and if that doesn’t work for me I will look elsewhere instead of coming back here. ANet had their chances, and at least for me they blew it time after time after time.

Keeping in mind that it’s still beta. From my time playing the beta I’ve noted the following:

I made a nord and when making the character, the skin tones were pretty much the same (you could select different skin tones but it didn’t change the actual skin tone of the character). No mouth shape option. No way to change the eyebrow angle. The voices to choose from sounded like they were done by the same person who did a poor job at actually changing their voice.

Graphics, I would say the graphics sit somewhere between Morrowind and Oblivion and I had it set to the highest setting. My computer runs Skyrim smoothly on Ultra with HD graphic mods. The view distance was rather short.

Quest mechanics are traditional MMO. Talk to npc to pick up quest, carry out quest, talk to npc again to claim reward.

The combat mechanics are very clumsy, especially when compared to GW2.

Over-all, they have a lot of work to do if they expect it to be better than current MMOs. With just a short time left before release, I have my doubts. It’s a traditional (WoW style) MMO with a TES face that is only skin deep.

I think MMO fans will get bored after a couple months and TES fans will be disappointed.

Did you have a chance to play the large-scale open-world PvP? I think they just call it The Alliance Wars. I really enjoyed Oblivion and Skyrim, but my major interest in ESO is for the PvP. WvW was the reason I left Rift (Conquest sucks so hard … worse even than WvW), but I’m still looking for a game with decent graphics that does RvRvR properly … ability to handle LOTS of players without glitches, intelligently crafted strategy-based warfare involving mass battles as well as sabotage and small squad skirmishes, lots of depth and breadth in the way points can be scored, instanced matches that can be run in parallel during peak hours, etc. I have no clue whether ESO will provide that or not, but I know that WvW certainly does not (which is a criminal shame since it could if the devs were so inclined). So I’d honestly appreciate your or anyone else’s impressions of ESO in that regard.

Zaxares.5419:

Early feedback from those who’ve been playing the ESO beta has been… less than promising. I wasn’t going to get it anyway since it’s subscription based, but more than that, I have a feeling that ESO is not going to be a success because part of what made the Elder Scrolls games so amazing was the sheer RP immersion you could get in it (and the tons of mods that improved the process).

You’re not going to get that kind of immersion in an MMO. Mods will be non-existent, and you’re going to have players running/jumping down the streets, with ridiculous names like Xx Legolass xX and Captin Jack Sprrw and DaRtH SlAyEr 69, pickpocketing every NPC in sight and being chased by hordes of angry town guards. (Possibly training these guards onto you too?)

So no, I think ESO will fail to capture the interest of players like me, who buy these games specifically BECAUSE they’re not an MMO.

It depends upon who you’re talking to. Lots of long time Elder Scrolls fans have mixed (or even negative) feelings about ESO simply because it’s an MMO period … they feel the multi-player aspect will diminish the immersion that they have come to love. That’s kind of like saying you don’t think football will be successful because you happen to like basketball.

Other beta testers have been quite positive about the game … they like the way it appears to be geared toward expansive PvP and they like the graphics compared to some of the other new games coming out soon. Almost everyone seems to be concerned about one aspect or another of the combat mechanics, but there is still time to refine them prior to launch so nobody really knows what to expect.

The one thing I can say with assurance is that not everyone is looking ahead to ESO with the same set of desires and expectations. Some of us will be pleased, some of us not … but there are a lot of people quite dissatisfied with GW2 and ANet is likely to lose a lot of players to either ESO, WS, or EQN over the next few months. I loved the Elder Scroll series but in all honesty I would almost for sure have stuck with GW2 if ANet hadn’t messed up WvW so badly. As it is, I will give ESO every chance in the world based upon its emphasis on RvR (ZeniMax has quite obviously been paying attention to all the things players don’t like about WvW), and if that doesn’t work for me I will look elsewhere instead of coming back here. ANet had their chances, and at least for me they blew it time after time after time.

Scourge.4317:

Cactus.2710:

Interestingly enough, somebody over at mmorpg.com (a fairly popular MMO website) just recently started a thread asking players which MMO most disappointed them. Not the worst game, but the MMO that least lived up to player expectations for it and least fulfilled it’s potential. Tons of players posted their choice, and GW2 was the runaway winner … even beating out SWTOR.

MMORPG.com is a joke. Please don’t mention that website lol. Its full of bitter Doac, UO, AC and Sandbox players who are waiting for some magical dev to create their dream MMO. And any mmo they don’t like is deemed a failure. There are people on that forum who have been dogging GW2 since it came out even though they don’t play it anymore.

The game definitely needs some work and i can agree with those who are upset about how it seems like Arenanet got rid of most of the things that made guild wars……guild wars but the rest is so over the top its ridiculous.

You guys keep saying that, and I’m not trying to defend that site in general, but I’ve seen FAR more objective comparisons of of various games there than I ever have here. Here’s an example … this one discussing ESO versus the other new games coming up:

http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/403814/page/1

Do those posters sound like trolls? Do they sound like bitter players? I see much less hyperbole and rancor from those posts and a lot more objective commentary than I do from the one you just posted.

As far as I’m concerned, there are valid reasons for “dogging” GW2. The players who post here now are players who came to GW2 for a reason. The players who are still here griping about GW2 aren’t those who just like to sit back and kitten about a game for the hell of it. Those players are long gone. The ones who are still here kittening are players who WANTED this game to be better than it is and are disappointed that it isn’t. There is zero evidence that anything is going to change for the better (don’t you dare quote the CDIs in rebuttal … you’ll just look foolish). The best we can hope for is more of the same lame LS and dysfunctional PvP. There is nothing “over the top” in being unhappy about that.

Baels.3469:

ESO and DAOC will take many RvR and ESO lore loving players.

WildStar will take the players thirsting for challenging raid content and PvP.

Some of these players will come crawling back to Guild Wars 2 when they’re bored of those new games. Guild Wars 2 will probably have the features it’s been lacking by then, maybe. Guild Wars 2 is B2P. This is it’s advantage.

Many Guild Wars 1 vet’s played it alongside another MMO, or went back and forth. It was always the games pull. The same is already true for it’s successor.

Not saying I don’t think ArenaNet should pull their heads out of their ………. though. Wouldn’t mind actually seeing something of substance added to WvW in the next 37 years.

I played Rift for 18 months and greatly enjoyed many aspects of that game, but was totally disenchanted with the stupid waste of potential that was Conquest … the game’s version of WvW. Many of us looked forward to the large scale PvP that GW2 was promising for WvW, and the Rift forums were packed with predictions that we’d “all come crawling back”. Guess what … we didn’t. The same thing is likely to happen here with GW2 now that ANet has demonstrated so conclusively that they have neither the interest nor the insight to address the many shortfalls of GW2, particularly WvW. Disenchanted players will choose an upcoming alternative, and unless it sucks as badly as SWTOR they aren’t likely to abandon their new game until something better yet comes along. Second chances are a rare thing in this market.

Ironically enough, GW2 had the potential to keep me here forever, but somehow ANet couldn’t see the same potential that the rest of us did. If you step back and look at what ANet has done to the game … short-sheeting PvE with LS, crippling sPvP with brain dead maps and game play, and actually screwing WvW up worse than it was at launch (how does any game designer manage to do that?) … it’s like ANet gave up on the game before we did. Truly sad.

Godmoney.2048:

Cactus.2710:

Interestingly enough, somebody over at mmorpg.com (a fairly popular MMO website) just recently started a thread asking players which MMO most disappointed them. Not the worst game, but the MMO that least lived up to player expectations for it and least fulfilled it’s potential. Tons of players posted their choice, and GW2 was the runaway winner … even beating out SWTOR.

LOL that website also is full of mmo trolls that don’t even play mmo’s because they sit on mmorpg.com complaining.

Don’t come in here and tell us that website is anything to be concerned with. I’ve watched that website for years now and have come to the conclusion that the people on it hardly play mmo’s. They just critique them and climb back into their caves.

I’ve played GW2 every day since launch for at least a hour or 2 most days 3 to 6 hours. No other mmo ever held my attention for more than 6 months and max raid gear.

I love this game and appreciate they experiment and try stuff instead of doing what’s safe.

GW2 is the most successful MMO since WoW and that’s not taken lightly by me. Even if GW2 doesn’t grow at all from this point it’s still going to be super health for at least 3-5 more years.

People are still playing SWTOR and that game is downright bad.

I honestly don’t know whether MMORPG.com is a troll site or not (I do know that it draws a lot of fans and often has some useful features), but you could say the exact same thing about this forum. A very high percentage of the people who post here are unhappy with the state of the game … that’s the nature of forums.

It doesn’t really matter anyway since the question was asked by a fan … it wasn’t an editorial. The question asked was (paraphrasing) —- which single MMO most disappointed you in terms of what it delivered versus your expectation for it? GW2 came out on top by a landslide. You could ask a bunch of prison inmates which was their favorite basketball player and you’d likely get virtually the same result as if you’d asked a bunch of Walmart employees (not to imply that the population groups are mutually exclusive).

Here’s the link to the thread …. http://www.mmorpg.com/discussion2.cfm/thread/403593/page/1

If you had actually checked out the thread you’d see that there were a wide variety of reasons why people voted GW2 the most disappointing, many of which neither you nor I would agree with, but the common impression expressed by all was that GW2 had far more potential than ANet capitalized on. People simply expected more based upon the early hype and promise. As best I can tell, the devs who created this game are not the same as those who are currently calling the shots for its continued development. I see very few of the same names as I did back around launch, and in my opinion there have been far more fumbles than touchdowns since then.

By the way, you say you love this game, and that’s fine, but you also point out that lots of people still play SWTOR even though that game truly sucks. Kinda negates your point. Right now, lots of people (including me) are still playing GW2 because there isn’t anything much better out there … but that doesn’t mean that we’re happy with the game or will stay with it much longer. ANet should be pretty concerned about that even if you and the other fanboys aren’t.

Cruril Darksbane.2318:

Is this legit, having two servers team up and run togeather aginste other servers? Shouldn’t this be enforced somehow?

Why else would they design for three faction PvP instead of just two factions unless they were trying to allow for the possibility of temporary alliances?

How is that different than having the entire game be world PvP … just with more “factions”? Not saying it would be bad (many other MMO’s have done it that way), but it doesn’t sound like much of a new idea.

Nikkinella.8254:

the woodfist.6972:

Wow, I nearly transferred to SBI, looks like the wvw is more stale there than sf.

you’d probably be incredibly bored there. I cant see how they’re having much fun running around in their 80 man zergs 24/7 fighting a grand total of 15 of us who come out of our spawn only to get steamrolled while they spam /laugh because its such a huge victory when 80 kill 15. They’re probably still sore about us stomping them in the league though but they have ALOT more bandwagoners now than they did at that time, so we can’t put up the fight we did before.

I reluctantly followed my guild to SBI because I wanted to get back to some meaningful WvW instead of getting stuck in deserted maps on DR. What I found each night when I got there was nothing other than hit/run tactics on towers and keeps even when we had a significant map population. No strategy for what we took, no defending at all, not even a search for fights even when we knew enemy groups were on the map. Just look for an undefended structure and try to cap it before a defending zerg showed up … and our opponents did exactly the same thing. There was no more skill, strategy, action, or excitement to it than doing one of the champ runs in Queensdale or Frostgorge. It is truly sad what WvW has devolved into.

Jocksy.3415:

hummm…
He did not start the thread, he just wrote, in a poll thread, that :

Polls are great, but they can get muddled with order bias. How about this – create a thread that asks for players to list their three favorite things about WvW, along with their three least favorite things. “Hey ArenaNet, do more of this, less of that.”

Just my 2c!

(https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Please-Go-Vote/first#post3544702)

I think he got a good idea of what we want – this is not as much for him, than for us, that he proposed to work that way…

and in the ideas thread, he’s just keeping things lively – showing us that he’s on and reading.

Gonna take some time before he takes his marks and really get things going.

I do expect him to eventually make a summary of the CDIs and devs answers to our concerns – but if you took time to read through it all – as I did – you know it’s quite lenghty and is not gonna be done in one day… Plus, he does not only have WvW forum to keep track of…

Why do you feel the need of complaining about what he’s not going to do when he just arrived? Look at his post history… (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Josh-Davis-6015/showposts) he’s pretty much following through / giving news as he is allowed to do so…

These complaining of “he’s not going to do anything and we are just loosing our time” feel like that guy in overflow that betted 10g we wouldn’t beat scarlet… Well, if you start with that idea, sure, we are not likely to win…

try to be positive, and constructive, and if you can’t, then what’s the point of “losing time by being non-constructive”?

Give him a chance to show what he’s here for, how he can help us, what kind of job he’ll do here… he’s only been here for 9 days (make it 7, for week-ends), which is quite a short amount of time, given all he has to catch-up with WvW-wise and the fact that he still has to cover the duties he had before being named here…

I’m never going to throw a rock at someone because someone else has been bad… might be that previous communications were bad / limited / one-sided, but please, do judge Josh on what he does, not what others did…

I’m not complaining that Josh is here … I’m relieved that he is … but it doesn’t make sense for him to start from scratch trying to get his finger on the pulse of WvW when most of us already laid our hearts bare in the prior CDI’s. There were a lot of good ideas there and they were pretty much all in one place. Those two CDI’s already represented the top priority concerns as voted by the WvW community as a whole, and it’s hard not to feel like this is just another ANet attempt to defer and deflect.

Brutal Arts.6307:

I remember Habib left to “pursue other interests” but when did Devon get the axe?

Devon is still there … check the very end of this thread and note the date.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/This-Subforum-has-no-Dev-Team-Communication/page/2#post3547000

lordkrall.7241:

Lord Kuru.3685:

.
I say it’s time they give us a list. We get to choose one thing from that list and it will be implemented by Valentine’s day. Nothing major has to be on the list — it can be all small QoL improvements. But I’d like to see some action this time before we put our trust in yet another Anet dev promising to listen.

You are aware that coding, testing and implementing something in less than 2 weeks (considering the thread would need to be open for some time) is more or less impossible, right? Unless it is something so minor so that people would whine about them focusing on pointless stuff.

And what if they do put up a list, something gets decided and then an issue turns up that requires them to pull people away from said thing, and thus can’t release it on Valentines day? We all know what will happen on these forums if that is the case.

We know that they are working on Edge of the Mists, we know that it is the main focus of the WvW dev-team now.

We know that it is somewhat close to release and we know that there will be nothing major in WvW before that is released.

What else can they tell us?

You really don’t get it. They could have simply listed the things they gathered from the WvW CDI discussions, identified which of those ideas they thought might fit the vision they have for WvW (assuming there is one), and (ideally) indicated which, if any, they thought might be worth investigating. Chris even specifically promised us (me, actually) that we would get some sort of summary from the population imbalance CDI and instead we got nothing … zilch.

Nobody is asking for results in two weeks … or even two months. What we’re asking for is SOME sort of response to the ideas the player community put forth in the CDI’s. How the hell can anything be called “collaborative” if players simply toss ideas over the wall with zero evidence that there is anyone at home on the other side?

Josh is here now, he seems at least minimally communicative, and he isn’t doing any of those coding activities you’re using as excuses for bad communication. I’d still like to know what happened to the three months of positive effort the players already put into this. Why the hell do we have to start from scratch?? Josh didn’t really need to start a new “three likes/three hates” thread, and he didn’t have to peruse the entire WvW forum to get a feel for what the players think is needed. All he had to do was read the two CDI threads and revive what ended up being stillborn. Why can’t we get that?

Chaba.5410:

Geesh lighten up. It’s normal for people to come and go in a company.

Except that Josh just shut down a thread yesterday for “bashing a coworker” because it contained comments critical of Devon. So Devon is still there, although of course none of us had any way of knowing that.

I do find it odd that Josh comes in here and wants to start from scratch, when just a few months ago Chris rolled out the Collaborative Development Initiatives and even defined a formal process for how they would work. Not that ANet has followed that process, of course, at least not for WvW, but the process was already there. The initial discussions identified population imbalance as being the runaway #1 concern by the WvW community, and after over 1,150 comments on 23 forum pages we got nothing … not even a summary of ideas that Anet thought might be worth investigating. It was just a huge black hole in spite of the fact that a lot of pretty good ideas got flushed down it.

Then we got the Commander CDI and a whole bunch more player inputs (the great majority of them positive and respectful as best I could tell) and all we got out that was a comment that maybe different colored tags might one day be considered.

So yeah, why create a new process and ignore the last 3+ months of “collaboration”?? Is even ANet admitting that they were a waste of time for everyone involved? It’s pretty hard not to be cynical and conclude that all of this is just a ruse to try to partially defuse the rancor on these forums without actually doing anything.

I’m so very tired of this crap …

Colly.4073:

Josh Davis.6015:

/shines a bright light on himself interrogation style

We’ll be talking about upcoming WvW stuff starting next week. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you what we’ll be talking about quite yet, but I figured at the very least I’d give you folks a timeline to go off of.

As an aside, we’re also expanding our bi-weeky livestream (Ready Up) to cover WvW in addition to PvP and balance. WvW will be the main topic on our next episode (1/31). I’ll officially announce the stream with a post next week sometime.

Anyways, I hope this helps!

-Josh

Where is Devon Carver? Your probably going to say that he’s behind closed doors working on more important things, but i get the feeling he’s no longer at the helm.

I’m satisfied that he’s gone from these forums. I’ve never seen any dev so philosophically opposed to the direction desired by the majority of the player base, so emotionally opposed to any sort of accommodation, and so void of any willingness to communicate.

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

So in other words… other MMOs do not do this advanced method of side by side updating via cloud computing and virtual spaces and that we must still suffer through 5-10 hours of down times every week (looking at you SEGA (PSO2), WOW and <insert game name here>).

Is it similar to the hot swapping and stuff of hardware and software in database admin and such where you don’t need to shut down? I still can’t put my finger on those terms. Trying to find what would be closest to regular cloud computing and running databases if I am to start my own game from the ground up as I would ahev to start with that anyways.

At times like these, I wish I kept my books, and still were in touch with my professors of old. I took stuff like sql and database security admin/oracle database courses.

As I understand it, ANet leases server capacity in bulk from Akamai, at least in the U.S. (not sure who they use in Europe). ANet has a “port” of sorts into that lump of capacity and (as Healix points out) can run as many virtual machines from that lump of capacity as they need in order to handle the game. For the most part it is all transparent as far as ANet is concerned, and you (or anyone else) could do it the same way. I’m not sure about Akamai, but I know that places like Amazon will lease capacity to individuals as well as very large corporations (I thought I read that Netflix leases capacity from Amazon) and you can use it like a virtual machine from your own desktop.

aspirine.6852:

After stealth, get a stealth sickness. So you cannot enter it for some time. Does not have to be that long but it should stop perma invis. Because it’s not stealth, it’s invisibility.

Again, they’d have to change a whole bunch of abilities and traits (many of them defensive) that are currently enabled by stealth … or invisibility if you prefer.

morrolan.9608:

Cactus.2710:

Various ANet devs have already pointed ou several times that the GW2 game engine is simply not capable of handling larger maps than are already in the game. That’s just an unfortunate fact of life that will never change. It would indeed be nice to have more maps, though, but they’ve also stated that making a new map is probably the most resource-intensive activity for the devs … and we already know that there is less than a handful of them assigned to WvW.

And yet EOTM is significantly larger even than EB.

Says who? The devs have clearly stated that there is a maximum map size the game engine can handle and that the existing WvW maps are at that limit. If EOTM is larger than EB they would have to be porting over to a different engine, and I sincerely doubt that is the case.

Check out this:

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/180776/Video_Guild_Wars_2s_programming_tricks_revealed.php#.UTPsClded4M

Some interesting information there.

River Willow.6721:

I’m not holding my breath or anything, but since we have a new contact for WvW
-Hi Josh- waves
I figure it can’t hurt our cause to present him with a simple list of our “generally agreed upon” priorities-

… stop laughing ….

Community Forum Poll- Community Site Poll
SurveyMonkey Poll-SurveyMonkey

The more total votes we get, the better our chance of being heard so-
Please, if you love WvW, go vote!

*These results cannot be combined so it doesn’t matter if you vote in only one or both.

Why would we vote on your ideas instead of expressing our own?

Waffler.1257:

Josh Davis.6015:

Polls are great, but they can get muddled with order bias. How about this – create a thread that asks for players to list their three favorite things about WvW, along with their three least favorite things. “Hey ArenaNet, do more of this, less of that.”

Just my 2c!

Hi Josh,

We had a CDI thread quite some time ago discussing server population imbalance as the number one issue people had with WvW. A lot of ideas were given by players on how to help and fix this problem, but so far I haven’t seen Anet discuss anything about how they are going about fixing this problem, or if they are even still working on it. Can you provide an update on what’s going on?

Bumped.

Population imbalance was already clearly identified as the number 1 issue for WvW .. yet it got shuffled off into oblivion by one single dev who either didn’t agree with it or couldn’t be bothered to work on it.

Joe.6184:

Get rid of the tower/keeps upgrade. So they are all paper.
No more ppt, you get points when you cap keeps, and the rest of scores come from stomp points.

Stacked server will gain no points after they full capped the BLs.

Or get rid of the servers vs servers and based the teams on their color with the mix of all servers from eu and na. Make wvw overflow like eotm

That’s the opposite of what needs to be done. there is zero strategy to your suggestion, and all that would result is for more of what already occurs … large groups randomly roaming the map to attack undefended keeps and towers while trying their best to avoid each other.

Your last idea makes more sense … but it still needs some way to retain the strategic element if WvW isn’t going to be simply large scale sPvP.

Overcast.5612:

The community over at Borlis’ Pass has notice that thieves’ stealth is not considered a boon. This is a huge balancing factor that has been ignored, no one can strip a thief of his stealth. We believe just as entangle has become a condition and can be removed, stealth should be considered a boon and be able to be removed as well.

-Side note Borlis is welcoming oceanic players for WvW with opening arms with cookies-

This is a very poorly considered … even ignorant … post. First off, if you turn stealth into a boon you’re going to see tons of thieves using boon enhancements/extenders to kitten you off even more.

Secondly, a very large portion of Thief abilities/traits of all kinds are influenced in one way or another by stealth. It would be a huge task to rebalance all of those things to account for the ability to buff/debuff stealth.

It was cute the way you pretended that everyone over at Borlis Pass supported your idea, though. Pretty sure they don’t. You didn’t even spell the server name correctly.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

Josh Davis.6015:

I’ve been spending a considerable amount of time reading through threads in this forum – the good, the bad, and the ultra ugly.

You’d be better creating a new thread asking people views, instead of reading through mountains of negative comments. If you create such a thread it would not only save you time, but people will post more constructive replies, which is what most mods like :P

I think I agree with this, Josh. Post a new thread, explain that you’re new to the WvW forums and looking for a fresh start to a discussion on the key issues facing WvW, ask for bullet-format only summaries (we can always elaborate later) in two categories —-- (1) problems in the existing game and (2) opportunities to enhance the game , stress the need for positive and respectful posts, and then promise to summarize and comment on them sometime before hell freezes over. There is a LOT of carryover frustration and anger generated by the lack of attention from your predecessors so you’ll probably still get some snippy posts, but the majority of us here … even the angry ones … truly want WvW to realize its potential and I’d be very surprised if you weren’t able to turn things around. It’s basically up to you …

Bombsaway.7198:

WvW is often one of the most addicting modes of play.

One suggestion I hope you are kicking around is the idea of making the size of the maps bigger with more objectives to break up some of these really big zergs that pose even simple problems like lag.

Or you could have more maps. If more maps, it would be great to see an underground dungeon type fight.

Various ANet devs have already pointed ou several times that the GW2 game engine is simply not capable of handling larger maps than are already in the game. That’s just an unfortunate fact of life that will never change. It would indeed be nice to have more maps, though, but they’ve also stated that making a new map is probably the most resource-intensive activity for the devs … and we already know that there is less than a handful of them assigned to WvW.

Maladon.5760:

Who in their right mind would want to discuss anything with the people who frequent this forum? The WvW community in this game is the whiniest collection of children ever assembled in any game to date. Anet won’t just come out and say that but that’s absolutely the reason.

Garbage. We weren’t whiny until we realized about a year ago that we weren’t being heard at all. Every time some dev showed up here to actually chat with us (brief as those periods were) the tone of this forum improved dramatically. That happened with Habbib and it happened initially with Devon … at least until we realized he wasn’t in the least sympathetic with anything we had we say and was determined to put in place all sorts of things we neither asked for nor wanted. There have been countless valid and valuable suggestions posted to this forum that were never even acknowledged, much less acted upon or explained away.

Players are again hopeful (but understandably very cautious) now that Josh has poked his head in the door, and if he lives up to his word you’ll again see a dramatic improvement in the attitudes expressed in this forum.

All of this is firmly in the hands (and lap) of ANet … just exactly as it is for any other company dealing with the public. There are tried and true ways of establishing customer good will, and many companies have done an excellent job of that in spite of having outspoken and demanding customers. It’s not difficult at all to find some amazing stories out there of companies who do it right. The problem is that ANet isn’t one of those companies, and as a whole they have done an absolutely abysmal job of convincing their customer base that they listen and care. Maybe Josh can make a difference … maybe not. But if he and the rest of the WvW team truly consider us (their customers) to be nothing but a bunch of whiny children then they are as misguided as you are.

The rather lame and minimal new content that periodically gets released in this game universally focuses all the players into one or at least a very few locations. Outside of that, nothing new ever occurs in the lower zones and most players by now have little reason to go to the lower zones unless they’re farming for mats. This game probably has the most poorly conceived approach to end game content I’ve ever played. Get used to it because ANet has already gone on record as saying they plan to stick with the plan.

It is totally beyond me why ANet keeps putting out content that requires LOTS of players when their game handles lots of players so poorly.

What’s in store? More disappointment … count on it.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Peetee.9406:

Take a step back and look at what they’ve added in the last year:

1) They buffed arrow carts
2) They added ranks
3) They added mastery lines
4) They added orb buffs
5) They added PPT for stomping
6) They added Living Story
7) They added achievements
8) They added WvW infusions
9) They made siege tradable
10) They added random matchups
11) They deleted the WvW matchup forum

Now let me ask you, which of these 11 ‘features’ promotes a fair and competitive battlefield?

None of them.

With the exception of PPT for stomps, every change they have made to WvW in the past year has either been a PvE cosmetic change or a power creep change. PPT for stomps would have been a great addition to WvW if it wasn’t tied to stat increasing orb buffs.

They’ve done absolutely nothing to promote a fair and balanced competition which is what the vast majority of us want. The less they touch WvW, the better.

I’d just assume go back to beta WvW because it’s better than WvW we have now.

You want a fair and balanced competition, but you don’t want to go to sPvP, which is specifically designed around the philosophy of being fair and balanced? I get that conquest mode isn’t for everyone, but if that is specifically your motivation for playing, I don’t know what you’re doing in WvW.

How exactly would you promote fairness/balance in the mode that is so highly dependent on populations and contribution from the entire server?

Nobody said anything about “fair”, and if they did they just used the term carelessly. What players want is population balance … ideally the majority of the time but at least on average over the course of the match. Better coordinated teams should always have an advantage, better skilled teams should always have an advantage, better strategic leadership should always have an advantage … but no team should always win simply because they can put more players on the field through no fault of their own.

Your last question is exactly the core of the problem. WvW doesn’t HAVE to be dependent upon server populations. It could be instanced. It could draw from multiple servers in the form of battlegroups. There are a variety of ways that have been suggested over and over again in this forum to address the problem, but every one of them has been ignored. There ARE alternatives … ANet just refuses to consider them or even discuss them.

People wanted to play WvW because it was large scale and it involved lots of team strategy with many different ways to contribute to the final result. That isn’t sPvP at all and for you to pretend it is an alternative just shows how completely little you understand the issue.

Cogbyrn.7283:

Chris.3290:

Communication is important, even if it’s idle banter or just telling us for certain what they are NOT working on and what they WON’T be working on.

I think the most telling communication concerning where WvW priorities lie; was the CDI on commander changes.

Devon asked if people would want the color changes now or a lot of changes later.

The fact that they do not have either the permission or the resources to make easier to implement changes while working on greater changes tells me one of two things:
1. They do not care
2. Or they are working on something huge, and it will be for not; because by the time they can roll it out no one will care anymore.

Communication would fix #2 problems and probably get us hyped; if it’s #1 then they are following script perfectly.

I’m not sure you appreciate how sensitive the community is to any/all information that is released. Every word every dev said is analyzed through a micro-scope and stored in some troll bank to be used as ammo at some later date. It’s staggering how fast a community will use their words against them, or straight-up harass the developer posts that DO happen.

If you want more communication, start by trying to teach the community how to communicate professionally and understand that sometimes plans change. Maybe then you’ll see more red posts here.

You have it totally backwards. You don’t make the troll posts go away by not participating in the discussion. That’s like expecting citizens to complain less so their congressman will be more likely to meet with them. The devs could defuse almost all the acrimony here simply by acting like they care and staying in touch. It’s the primary mantra of any customer service … don’t let your customers feel like they are being ignored. History has shown that customers will forgive almost ANYTHING if the company acts like they understand and empathize.

ANet has brought ALL of this on themselves. There was a lot of rancor here early last winter, but then Habbib showed up and when he at least acted like he cared the waters calmed significantly. Then he disappeared altogether (anyone know what happened to him?) and players got impatient again. When Devon eventually appeared and actually said a few encouraging things here, the forums turned mostly optimistic … only to turn to crap again when it became obvious that he wasn’t listening anyway. He couldn’t even bring himself to take the “Collaborative” Development Initiative on population balance seriously and he’s said nothing about where the commander initiative is headed. Now Josh pops into the room, and in spite of several players warning him that he was only going to make it worse if he didn’t follow through we haven’t heard from him since. You couldn’t script a more effective way to alienate the community if you tried.

Based upon the last 8 months history of flawed additions and the significantly less strategic playstyle of WvW compared to what it was a year ago, I’m sadly leaning toward nothing new for WvW as being a good thing.

Cogbyrn.7283:

A game itself isn’t enough to keep you interested in it? You need the developer to constantly pander to you in order for you to maintain interest in a game?

Unfortunately, I don’t think you’re ever going to find a game you can enjoy for longer than a short period of time. Try taking control of your own destiny/enjoyment and treating any communication from your developer as an added bonus. You might just enjoy life more.

My WvW doesn’t need change, really. The players keep things interesting, not the textures.

Uhh … it’s not “pandering” to have someone actually maintain a dialogue about issues and problems, almost all of which go way beyond “textures.” If that’s all you think any of this is about, and if you think WvW doesn’t need any improvement, then you either haven’t played very long or you don’t understand what it once was and what it could be.

Spawne.3128:

Aeolus.3615:

Spawne.3128:

(…)

This patch killed the buzz for me, I dont even have the will power to login again after playing some of the patch, no scratch that, sitting in overflow. Then to get into the actual map, and then sitting another 2 hours waiting for the event.

Total disappointment with game model.

It’s just another LS update that highlights the disconnect between the dev’s and what is actually happening in game. Chris whitelines focus on WvW and PvP is so deep that things like living story and PvE play are left in the complete dust. I find it hard to believe that they have any more then a single team out of the supposed 350 employees over there at anet working on PvE material. They just cannot be THAT BAD at this.

I mean people on this forum have literally spent months giving credible and tangible fixes and ideas for this game that would blow other competing MMO’s out of the water with very little work given the available resources, and yet….here we are.

I literally snorted my diet cola reading that post. Are you seriously saying that you think WvW gets more attention than PvE??

But yes, to answer your question, they are that bad at this stuff.

Stealth nerfs are probably the most intriguing part of GW2 patches anymore … certainly beats another chapter of Scarlet.

Reverence.6915:

Well, you could work on the monthlies if you haven’t done them yet.

They are called “dailies” for a reason though :/

Would be nice if we could earn laurels another way other than dailies. The time gating on laurels is… horrible.

Time gating is a cheap and irritating way for ANet to inflate the player population figures, which means it isn’t ever going to go away.

Reverence.6915:

It’s a PvE update… Don’t think anyone expected anything for WvW. If you did, you’re daft.

I don’t expect anything positive for WvW … ever. History is a great teacher.

It’s true, of course, that ANet pretty much told us not to expect anything for WvW and at least they were true to their word. I guess that’s something ….

I think it’s hilarious that Thief always ends up near the bottom of the list in every one of these “best-to-worst-for-WvW” threads (except of course for roaming and scouting in a game mode that is dominated by large group battles), yet there is probably no class that spawns so many complaint threads about being overpowered.

Friday.9078:

Between your PC and the Anet servers lies a multitude of hardware that the data has to travel through. Most times it will be a problem (for whatever reason) somewhere along that route.
Packet loss won’t impact your normal day to day net experience very much unless your vital data transfer rate is high… it won’t even affect your normal playing in most games – where it will have a huge effect is in the kind of huge data transfer situation in a blob vs blob fight where thousands of instructions and bits of info are needed and every little bit of data is needed for your game to function right.
Mine turned out to be a hardware issue at the first ADSL exchange that my DSL line routed through. The tests showed between 70% and 88% packet loss at that specific point on the route. It took some convincing to get my telkoms provider to even look at the problem, because THEIR kneejerk reaction is automatically “it’s not us” – but they could not refute the results of the multiple tests – which I had to send them a few times for them to even take me seriously. Eventually, after days of insisting that they sort it out, it was fixed.
If the problem lies further down the line (i.e. after you connect to your ISP – then you need to contact your ISP support and get them to sort it out – also a thankless task, but with perseverance you can get them to fix stuff like this.
Also note that raging and throwing hissy fits will get you absolutely nowhere with these service providers – you have to politely but doggedly keep at them until you get the response you need BUT if you truly love to play WvW then it is worth the effort!!

I’m pretty sure the problem is more than just what you’re describing. I’ve monitored several of these lag threads lately, and almost all of the complaints are coming out of Europe. I know that ANet leases server capacity from Akamai in the U.S. but I’m not certain if they also use Akamai in Europe … it may be a different provider. In any case, I’d bet all my accumulated GW2 gold that the problem is associated somehow with that central leased capacity in Europe than it is with a zillion different ISPs that just happen to be located in Europe.

robert.3475:

well saved up 30 dollars to go to graphic card fund but my dad took it for beer money

It sounds like your problems have deeper roots than simply the death of your graphics card.

Please no. I can’t see how adding more randomness to this game in the form of crit heals makes any sense at all. There is already too much detraction from skill and cause/effect.

That “message” so very much reminds me of the caliber of the other writing in this game … most of which would at best get a “D” in any high school creative writing class. It’s truly laughable.

I’d bet that majority of folks who look upon GW2 favorably fall into one or both of these categories:

1.- played six months or less and play casually

2.- don’t play much PvP

GW2 may have a central director, but Vayne is correct. GW2 does not have good coordination across the various functional entities, and there are many examples to prove it. Want a couple?

How about the radical differences in the style and substance of the difference racial personal stories? Or the differences in the sophistication of the animations and emotes of the different classes? The different classes had different development teams and the results show significant differences in cleverness.

Or how about the way minor patches/updates sometimes drop an hour or two after WvW reset? Clearly groups within ANet are not talking … or coordinating … with each other, at least not very well.

Besides, independent action by development groups was actually one of the things touted in a one hour PowerPoint presentation ANet made to various media and software gurus prior to launch. The video of it is still available on the internet if you want to dig it up (it’s not worth it for me to do it just for you), and in it the presenter describes how any developer can independently and on the fly make a change to the game in real time just by writing a script. Not much point in designing the game around such a capability if you don’t plan to use it.

Hule.8794:

Josh Davis.6015:

Drakh.3128:

aaaand he’s gone.

Not quite!

I’m still getting acclimated to the WvW team, and most recently I’ve been working with the balance team on the livestream we’ll be running tomorrow. (Which you’ll of course be watching, right?)

what livestream?

What balance team?

MarzAttakz.9608:

Frankly, all the sweet talking when issues reach critical mass is becoming too much, how about you guys start doing for a change??

The CDI’s have been a great initiative on your part but how soon can you, as the developers, start delivering on the ideas discussed. The communication vacuum has gone on for too long, I understand you’re all busy doing your jobs but where has the ArenaNet that shared their thoughts and ideas pre-beta gone?

This.

I find it incredibly ironic that while ANet wants these forums to be polite, respectful, patient, and positive … they acknowledge nothing, respond to nothing, and do nothing for months and months UNTIL players fill these forums with acrimony out of pure frustration. If you stand back and look at it, ANet is actually encouraging the bad behavior they say they want to avoid … nobody answers the phone until the mob is at the door with lanterns and pitchforks. Now when it’s virtually too late to salvage anything, they suddenly decide to institute damage control when there would have been no need for it in the first place if they had even been pretending to be listening.

It’s just crazy …

Josh Davis.6015:

Very apt timing for this thread to appear as I’ve recently been enlisted by the WvW team.

What does this mean for you guys? I’ll be working closely with Devon and crew to act as the liaison between our development team and you – raising community concerns with the team, finding answers, being the good/bad guy, and whatever else!

For those wondering, I play engineer, I prefer to roam, I’m currently on JQ, and yes, I take bribes in the form of cookies.

Glad you’re here, but I have to say that you have a lot of catching up to do … most of it involving trying to convince the player base that ANet actually cares about WvW and that somebody associated with WvW actually is willing to listen to player concerns and suggestions. There hasn’t been anyone from ANet who has even pretended to consider us anything other than an annoyance since Habbib left. Here’s hoping you’re actually sincere, because I don’t think there’s a whole lot of time left for you guys to pull this one out of the fire like most of us would like to see you do.

juno.1840:

urieldhynne.2743:

Is not a change of rules or mechanics to force an “adaptive gameplay” see your list. Is only for fun, double the range, players cannot damage, more movement speed, stealth leaving combat. Is like playing a game with cheatcodes… And some options bring a serious balance issues. Like ranges and boons function.

Ruins is an adaptive additions, for good or for bad, but is it. Like was orbs (bad idea, but is an adaptive mechanic) Something like that maybe can be implement in certain hour or day, but need to be a mechanic inside the game mechanic, not a “NEGATE a current mechanic” If you negate or avoid a current mechanic is like a “free pass to troll day, do what you want without rules”

I think you are blowing the concept out of proportion. Nowhere is it a “do what you want without rules”… and definitely not “free pass to troll day”.

Keep in mind the list was simple off-the-cuff effects that I generated in all of 30 seconds (as I mentioned in the original post). They are just brain food.

You can see how clever effects would require different strategies to succeed correct? This isn’t too much of a stretch imagination-wise.

It’s a neat idea on how to change the meta for very brief periods of time in WvW.

You really don’t get it. WvW strategic content has already been facerolled into oblivion by horrible decisions by ANet, and you want to add more randomness so strategy becomes even more irrelevant??

It’s not a neat idea, and it certainly isn’t “brain food.”

Cynz.9437:

oh btw necro aoe from lich form can hit sieg through the wall as well….

honestly, why does anet ignore this issue? this been brought up many many times

So tell me … what problem HASN’T ANet ignored when it comes to WvW?

Maybe they’re just trying to be consistent ….