Guild Wars 2

Windsagio.1340:

DaveGan.8065:

Sorry but no.

Profiling black people is wrong because race is not a choice.

As zerker/non-zerker is a choice every player has more or less equal opportunity (this game does not lack equality of opportunity with gear choice) to make, there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with profiling by gear.

The only thing that remains is whether or not profiling by gear will get you better players on average. Those who believe it does will rightfully profile by it.

The core problem isn’t whether it’s a useful tool though, the core problem is what it does to player interactions.

I got somewhat derailed as I was responding to a post about zerker gear, not one about DPS meters.

On your point, I think “what it does to player interactions” would only be a reason for ANet to not support the use of DPS meters, but not a reason for them to outlaw meters completely.

If all policy was set on how something could be abused or trolled, we wouldn’t have stuff like the Copper/Silver/Gold bosses in the Silverwastes who can fail because of one single troll.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

Assuming people are “bad” players just because they don’t run zerk gear is the same as assuming that the black man you pass on the street is absolutely going to mug you. It’s not necessarily true. That is the whole point of this conversation.

Sorry but no.

Profiling black people is wrong because race is not a choice.

As zerker/non-zerker is a choice every player has more or less equal opportunity (this game does not lack equality of opportunity with gear choice) to make, there is nothing morally or ethically wrong with profiling by gear.

The only thing that remains is whether or not profiling by gear will get you better players on average. Those who believe it does will rightfully profile by it.

LanfearShadowflame.3189:

The zerk speed clearers don’t want to play with those people, and that’s fine, but stop ridiculing them for being different. You don’t know a kitten thing about them!

I know that their ceiling is double digit percentage points lower than that of a zerker.

While most of us are aware of the imperfect correlation between “potential” and “reality”, the double digit percentage ceiling gap is indeed a reality and means a non-zerker has to play that much better to even catch up.

Another brutally honest truth: playing zerker/non-zerker is a choice (as opposed to a skill requirement), and choices have consequences. It’s up to you whether you take “sub-optimal” (in the context of ceiling/potential) as objective truth or subjective ridicule.

PS: You’ll only ever hear this word from me if you try to offer suboptimal advice to someone asking for help in map chat. But, if you do talk about how your tanking/healing/roleplaying setup is somehow optimal, you will no longer be entitled to my silence.

On the 1% chance you aren’t trolling…

Nightshade.5924:

I must admit that I am perplexed. First you say not to confuse everyone and use random buzzwords, and THEN you post two links to pages that most normal people will be totally lost on. If you haven’t taken serious statistics courses, most of those pages will be pure gibberish.

The difference is that you threw around buzzwords to the whole crowd while I linked some basic concepts to you, someone trying to maintain some image of statistical expertise.

We already HAVE millions of players to perform a statistical analysis with.

Plenty of analyses have been performed. Just not the one you want. I’ll even grant you that the death numbers you claim is true. But because the correlation is extremely suspect in the larger context of conquest, confirming your numbers will do nothing for you.

gear advantages. Every time I queue up I am playing w/ four strangers, w/o any comms besides typing

Until 12/2, so was everyone else. Also, no PvE gear in PvP

I still am on a winning team 47% of the time.

And a losing team 53% of the time.

Basic stats time! With a sample size 1000, your average is 0.47 wins per match with a standard deviation of 0.4993. A 95% confidence interval of [0.44, 0.5] means we are almost 95% sure you are below average...in hotjoin…

And now I wish I had kept track of ALL the times I’ve been stuck on a four man team or had a copout chappy in the spawn.

Probability time! Let’s assume you don’t have a tendency of AFK/ragequit yourself. There are 9 slots for the other players in the game. 5 of them are on the other team! So you are 25% (5/9 vs 4/9) more likely to have an AFK on the other team than your own!

That is, unless the single common denominator (you) in those 1000 games is the one causing your teammates to AFK…

Nightshade.5924:

Eyia Hellhide.7320:

The most entertaining thread I have read for long time.

And OP, if 20 people here telling you’re wrong and no one supports your point, don’t you think it means you’re wrong, purely statistically?

Seeing as we have NO N U M B E R S to support or deny anything said here, I can safely say NO. A GOOD statistic involves, at a minimum, 10,000 test subjects. Millions is MUCH better. So at a minimum we’re about 9,980 people short of any statistical conclusion.

Rule of thumb: n > 30 is large
Central Limit Theorem

Please don’t misuse statistics and try to confuse everyone by inserting random buzzwords. That’s something to be left to Christians and politicians.

I hope you’re on the opposing team!

Given the skill and experience you’ve displayed with your losing hotjoin record and QQ in this thread, I will happily take my chances against you.

Nightshade.5924:

Which is the point of USING A STATISTICAL ANALYSIS.

~lot of nonsensical blabbering~

Your “STATISTICAL ANALYSIS” assumes some strong correlation between “not dying” and “being overpowered” in the context of Conquest PvP.

The rest of us have been connecting our palms to our foreheads while trying to tell you how false and misguided that assumption is.

In other words, we don’t really doubt that you’ll find mesmers (and thieves and other classes with decent disengage) don’t die that often. Nor do we care, because Conquest PvP is not about 1v1 duels.

PS: You think 10-20 seconds of respawn time is bad? DPS a mesmer til he is forced to disengage your point, and he’ll have wasted almost a full minute despite not dying: 15 running to his far point to fight you, 30 seconds fighting on a point you own, and 15 running back to some other fight.

DaedalusDragon.3754:

Lifestealer.4910:

DaedalusDragon.3754:

So many trolls here. Can we get this thread closed please?

Since when has fun = bad? Get this straight. You who want zerk do not have fun. You play so that you can eat the carrot at the end of the stick, but you aren’t having fun. I would take slowing a group down by 5 minutes every single time if it meant that I spent that entire dungeon having fun. I could make the dungeon shorter, but then I’d be bored the entire time I was playing. In the end stupid reasoning is stupid. I don’t play games to prove that I’m better at spending more time in a game than others but instead want to have fun. Variety is the spice of life. Down with zerker. blah blah blah

rofl, another so called anti meta person thinking there is only one way to have fun.

I find it fun to improve and get things done effeciently, this goes for pretty much every game i play. But according to you, i am not having fun. Its people like you that are worse than the scumbag elitest that i have also encountered in my time.

I can’t edit that post from my iPad at the moment but please read that as it clarifies what I meant. My apologies. I dislike it when someone tells me that I’m bad because I don’t adhere to some meta that I don’t find interesting. Playing efficiently can be fun and I do it all of the time in other games.

Just like you interchanged/mixed up words and expect/request people to understand, you should show the same benefit of the doubt to those filthy “zerkers” you despise.

Generally when they call you “bad” they mean “slower”, “sub-optimal”, or even “inefficient”, and I presume from your last sentence that you wouldn’t disagree with those words.

Very few would claim that you are not having fun (although they might say they are not having fun playing with you). Most people would acknowledge that you have a different standard/definition for fun. Most of us would simply appreciate if you could acknowledge the same for us.

tsawr.7905:

Lose 10 in-a-row? Must be a balance issue and not a lack of skill. Blowout happens, but if it happens consistently then you’d have to figure out that the only consistent thing in each map is you.

I can’t imagine he’s the worst player in the game though, or that he’s so bad that there’s no group of 4 players that could carry him over the worst possible team of 5?

OP’s relative skill can be explained by his losing record. But unless OP is trolling, 0 wins in 10 games says more about the matchmaker than OP’s skill, because I refuse to believe anyone could be that bad.

Nightshade.5924:

And I must disagree about dying. If in a given match I die, hmm, say 10 times, and YOU die 5 times, YOU must be considered the more effective player If For No Other Reason that you are spending LESS TIME RESPAWNING. And thusly can influence the outcome of the game more.

And do you know what dies 0 times in PvP?

AFKers, PU Mesmers, and home point “bunkers” that never move.

Those must be infinitely more useful then right? Post a new thread asking the community how useful those are in conquest.

And then that pesky shatter mesmer who the enemy team treated as such a threat that they sent 2 players to lock him down, killing him 15 times in the process while the rest of his team went on with their 4v3 advantage? That must be a useless mesmer right?

Jelzouki.4128:

Perhaps it should come with conditions to prevent turtle play by a team who is ahead. Some things that come to mind:

- Buff starts at the “2 level” after player respawns, and only downgrades (to 1 and then nothing) as the player makes his way toward the center courtyard
- Buff can only apply when a team is tied or behind
- Buff can only activate when teammate(s) are downed or defeated (buff ends when teammate respawns)
- Buff has a 30 second cooldown before it can reactivate

Feel free to expand on this, or just call me crazy lol

I feel like 40% is excessive….how long would this buff last for?

40% would pretty much only ever apply within 600 or so range of the respawn area. It seems like a lot when compared to the status quo of 0, but I was mainly trying provide a contrast to Deimos’ idea of stacking 20% up to 100%.

The 20% would go all the way to the forced exit areas, and most of the rest of the arena would be unaffected.

On another note, what if the -40% buff changed to -20% incoming damage and +20% outgoing damage? (we would change the -20% to -10% incoming/+10% outgoing as well) It would be have a similar deterrent effect but would require more active play to maintain that deterrent.

Overall, though, I don’t think CY even needs to be this complicated. As many have mentioned, perhaps we should just get rid of respawns altogether and move to round based elimination (with a timer to prevent excessive running/stealthing by the losing side).

In addition to the change to round based elimination, the main other idea I’d like to see implemented is reducing map voting to 1 vote per queuing party, so an organized team has less opportunity to farm the map (or any other that they can specifically spec for) against smaller groups.

I’d only push for a buff proposal if changes to round-based CY or 1-party-1-vote were both completely off the table.

DaLup.2913:

Not true, I was in a pug group that quickly went down 200-0. One of out players rage quit and we came back to win 400-500.

Great, so your PvE-focused rallybot left and you guys beat up on their rallybots and snowballed the match the other way. Your point?

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

would a “Oppressed” Effect for the team that is being steam rolled help the situation?

[Effect] Oppressed
“Decreased incoming damage; stacks intensity.”

- each stack reduces incoming damage received by 20%
- 5 stacks means reduces incoming damage by 100%
- increases by 1 stack when killed.
- removed when a kill is scored.

or … too much hand holding is no good?

It’s a unique idea, although I’m not sure this kind of hand-holding is good (I’d cap the reduction to 40% tops). The damage reduction should also apply to conditions.

Perhaps split the courtyard into 5 “zones”:

R2 (at red spawn): Red -40% damage taken (including conditions)
R1 (near red spawn): Red -20% damage taken
C (main arena area): No change
B1 (near blue spawn): Blue -20% damage taken
B2 (at blue spawn): Blue -40% damage taken

I’d prefer something with a primary intent of rewarding positional awareness rather than hand-holding, although it would (at the same time) make spawn camping and forced respawns less difficult to deal with.

Perhaps it should come with conditions to prevent turtle play by a team who is ahead. Some things that come to mind:

- Buff starts at the “2 level” after player respawns, and only downgrades (to 1 and then nothing) as the player makes his way toward the center courtyard
- Buff can only apply when a team is tied or behind
- Buff can only activate when teammate(s) are downed or defeated (buff ends when teammate respawns)
- Buff has a 30 second cooldown before it can reactivate

Feel free to expand on this, or just call me crazy lol

Odysseus.8095:

Me and my friend duo q in unranked and get vs abjured, what the actual f***…..

Working as intended.

As Justin’s alluded to in other posts, the matchmaker decided the Abjured might possibly be worse than its MMR indicated and found you a perfect match.

Subdue.5479:

No this is not how it happens, sorry. People don’t kick you because you tried to kick someone out that everyone perceived as being a a major hindrance. The kick you out for either being that major hindrance, or for being a an annoying tool. And since we’re saying he’s a great player, that really just leaves one alternative.

No, it’s exactly how it happens. He’s not generally always the one kicking most of the time. It seems to be almost as often people kicking him. And this can easily change if he stops trying to be nice.

If the only thing people see is “Langrim requests a kick” next to a bad player, they will second it immediately knowing someone else (and not them) is the problem. Then Langrim can spare himself and everyone from his poor social skills.

I know it sucks for you to admit, but Langrim has all the leverage here. He just needs to use it and make sure not to create room for rebellion.

It’s a discovered recipe!

Components involve a Fractal Box and Fractal Tonic.

Subdue.5479:

True, it’s possible that Langrim really is just unlucky as you say. It’s far more probably, though, that he makes his own luck. Harping on errors, berating one’s teammates, and generally doing things that will turn his team against him, causing him to get kicked.

…

My bet is that if he started recording his experiences and posting them from us, we’d either a) See him acting like a jerk and getting kicked as a result, or b) See him alter his behavior so as not to seem like a jerk, and find that he’s not getting kicked anymore.

The thing is, he’s getting kicked because he’s “too nice” to kick first, and he doesn’t like to single out people not pulling their weight, so the message goes to all.

The obvious solution is for him to just turn into a true filthy elitist thorn like the rest of us. He tries to give people a second chance, probably screws up the delivery and ends up antagonizing most of the group, and the rest is history.

Although Langrim probably bears a fair amount of responsibility for the messes he’s gotten into, be extremely careful not to hold him too accountable. That is, unless you have no problem with him reconsidering those second chances he tries to give to others.

Unless you’re willing to make the system one vote per party (instead of one vote per person), it should be a big fat “no”.

Under a system of pure majority rules, a premade of 4 or 5 can virtually guarantee the map they play on (with 5 they will at least be guaranteed RNG on the map of their choice).

The magnitude of the bad experience also matters.

Also, using averages is extremely bad practice when talking about edge cases (like the matchmaker not being able to find a good match).

Offense is taken, not given. The “bullies” win only when you let them win.

Your guild mates should probably grow a thicker skin for PvP (relative to what they see in open world PvE) as they will—and should expect to—get called out for messing up. They should not expect to be shielded from being told they screwed up, although they certainly should expect not to be told in an excessively abusive fashion.

PS: Despite all of the above, I would absolutely still be the first in line to support any move that would prevent people on your block list from being put on your team (though not the opposing team) in PvP.

Pretty sure it’s 3-5 man premades that mainly vote for Courtyard.

Want a quick and immediate way to verify? Give each party one vote regardless of party size, and I suspect the proportion of votes for courtyard goes way down.

Another easy way if premades are going to QQ about the above: let players vote to veto a map instead, remove the top map (remove nothing if tie) and RNG the rest.

warning: wall of text—skip to end to avoid pointless conversation regarding AFKing

Zoso.8279:

Lopez.7369:

I’m not “too pro.” I just find the map boring.

Would you be upset if someone thought forest was boring and didn’t play and left you stranded? What if it was foefire/skyhammer/etc…

Its about sportsmanlike conduct kitten not even that its being a decent teammate lol

On a broader level, there’s a social contract between the players and ANet. So long as ANet works to keep the matches balanced and playable, players will participate and try to the best of their abilities.

If players are of the opinion that ANet has broken its end of the social contract (with Courtyard and/or matchmaking parameters), I would not find it shocking (nor overly upsetting) to see them reneging their end of the contract.

In the long run it’s actually beneficial (for W-L/leaderboard stuff) to have AFKers in your game. Assuming you don’t AFK yourself, any AFKer in your game has kitten .6% chance of being on the enemy team and only 44.4% of being on your own.

I pose a question to all who defend Courtyard in its current state. As some are disgusted at facing premades farming CY with 50%+ chance of popping, would you accept a change in map voting to allow one vote per party, rather than per individual?

(Just putting out there that a reply of “no way, then we’d never get to play CY again” would be a crystal clear admission of the current imbalance and/or unpopularity of the map)

uberkingkong.8041:

Dude stop whining, its unranked

Is that a guarantee that the same result would never happen in ranked?

Because I partial queued ranked later last night when friends came on, and I recall every match except maybe 1 or 2 was lopsided one way or the other.

uberkingkong.8041:

Bunch of non sequiturs on a level similar to creationist Americans

No point trying to use logic with people who don’t use logic. Good luck in GW2 PvP and keep having fun getting carried by your friends.

Saiyan.1704:

Oh pls I’m sure it isn’t that bad.

Why play when you get spawncamped and anyone without warbanner will probably not even get the 500 rank points for losing?

Especially when it’s picked from 50%+ odds indicating you’re facing premade farm team

lol

15 characters

Errant Venture.9371:

Justin ODell.9517:

Found a missing ‘+ 1’ (literally) in the matchmaking code. Will get this fixed soon.

In the mean time, it doesn’t factor in 2 of the same profession, only 3+.

Glad you found a fix, and from my own experience coding for grad school I know how easy it is for syntax errors to sneak into code. Just curious (and I hope I’m not being rude) how do those kind of syntax errors make it through multiple layers of QA?

A missing +1 is a logic, not syntax, error.

And it can slip through QA if QA isn’t specifically testing for it. Doesn’t make the results any less egregious, however.

Looks like the matchmaker found a bunch of players with short character names.

Nothing to see here folks, everything’s working as intended.

kdaddy.5431:

This map is great, people are complaining since it doesnt mold to there current build. Im finding the turrent enginners and d/d eles complainging most about it.

People are complaining because just about the only time they see this map is vs a premade on the other side who all voted for the map to make it 50% or more chance to pop.

Maybe it’d be less of an issue if they restricted map voting to one vote per party to reduce some of the disadvantage of queueing with fewer people.

Eurantien.4632:

I disagree…Just got to have good awareness, positioning, and teammates.

…wat

MystikaLsmuRF.7150:

Except top teams don’t care about reward tracks (tbh who does?), they play for a) rank b) practice c) fun (jk no one plays for fun)

I said rank 80 teams, not top teams.

cranos.5913:

Is unranked arena as painful as ranked atm? I haven’t been able to test it yet. (so “play”, not “practice”)

That Courtyard screenshot I just posted was from unranked.

I suspect rank 80 teams may begin to populate unranked arenas as a faster way to farm PvP reward tracks.

Justin ODell.9517:

I’m really curious as to how you guys are figuring out if the other team is a pre-made. We don’t tell you, and looking at the data there are very few party rosters compared to solo.

Is it just match quality being bad? Are you just recognizing player names?

So I just queued unranked arena match after coming back from work.

Queue pops in 15 seconds (good)
Courtyard, Kyhlo, and Temple. I vote Temple.
…6 votes for Courtyard (gg premade)

See attached screenshot for result

Epic team comp, thanks Obama!
Going off of the PvP titles I saw on teammates/opponents I presume at least MMR was okay.
Only one person on blue got any rank points, and that was because I brought warbanner.

What should be done? Maybe we can start with one or more of these:

• Ensure premades never face non-premades, and perhaps also eliminate a party of 4 from queueing
• Remove Courtyard from the map selection, at least when it is premade vs non-premade
• Give each party exactly one vote (so a party of 4-5 has only one vote for a map)

tl;dr—Matchmaking evidently failed, as it took about 15 seconds to match a solo queue with a premade (or near full premade)

Courtyard + premades spawncamping ensured my 4 teammates got zero rank points for playing.

Eliminate premade vs non-premade, remove Courtyard, or give each party exactly one map vote

Justin ODell.9517:

I’m really curious as to how you guys are figuring out if the other team is a pre-made. We don’t tell you, and looking at the data there are very few party rosters compared to solo.

Is it just match quality being bad? Are you just recognizing player names?

Perhaps people are equating 3 and 4 person groups as full premades.

4 should probably be a no-go, and I’m on the fence with 3. Maybe 3 would be okay if the system tried (very hard) to put solos in the other two slots.

Narkodx.1472:

Merging solo q and team q is better for us ALL – PvP population is not large

wait till the fairweathers leave the shiny new toy and things will be fine

Maybe this is why the population isn’t large. Maybe the system should be more welcoming and accommodating?

Amstel Steel.2058:

Sebastian.4610:

Id say adding duo Qing to it may have been okay if only one duo would get in per team, per match.

Better idea imo is to just have an unranked and ranked version of TA while keeping RA separate. The question becomes is the population too small to stretch it over 3 queues plus hotjoin?

Yes. That seems to be why they combined them.

Best solution I’ve seen so far is to try (very hard) to ensure premades faced only other premades, and restrict partial queueing to 1/2/3 people.

Perhaps if the system cannot pair premades with another premade, a loss for the non-premade should count as an unranked arena loss (wins by either and loss by the premade would be unchanged).

Langrim.2489:

(paraphrase) I don’t see how MAD applies

Here is where MAD applies. As the (former) instance owner, you would have the power to remove me from the group with seemingly no repercussions. That is, unless I or someone else exercise the nuclear option and blow up the whole instance, including you.

MAD is in effect because we now both have the power to “destroy” each other (although my nuke will cause some more collateral damage). But I will, of course, drop my nuke only when I feel an unjustified kick has reached the level of “probable”, most likely due to what I would (hypothetically) perceive as your growing levels of irrationality.

In other words, MAD has two aspects: 1.) to have both sides be able to guarantee such destructive capability that neither side will want to use such force on the other, and 2.) to actually be willing to follow through on using such force when necessary, to keep the deterrent effect credible

tl;dr—never give two or more people in the group the impression that you are watching them for a reason to kick them, because that just gives them a valid reason to kick you in the name of self-preservation and eliminating drama

Indulge me, would you have deliberated with other PUGs aside from the one who seconded to see if they agreed with your assessment AND elect to forfeit their progress?

Quite honestly, I could only ever execute this if there was someone to second the kick, so there would have to be someone who at least roughly agreed. On the other hand, hypothetically, I would immediately assume the role of judge/jury/executioner with zero regret in a state of self-preservation.

If kicking me ends the instance for everyone and forfeit all progress, intolerable as my filthy elitism might be, why would you do it? Spite? I am sorry, this is abominable conduct that I personally abhor to even consider as it accomplishes nothing.

Maybe I needed to spell out Mutually Assured Destruction (M.A.D.)? If ever I reasonably inferred from you that the probability of me being irrationally kicked by you had upgraded to “probable” levels, I would not have hesitated to end the instance, the same way you should not hesitate to leave as the instance owner if your group was full of incompetence and trolling beyond help.

Why? It’s to ensure you never reach that “probable” state of irrationality in the first place. Remember well what I said about limited impunity: it’s not your sole instance forever.

Which sounds like the less aggressive and antagonistic option: Directly addressing one person be it their dps/utility/and other contribution OR stating that “we do not have the dps/experience for X strat”. Seems to me like addressing offenders individually is provoking them to perceive a direct attack where there is none.

The problem with casting blame to a group is that those who it is meant for think it is meant for someone else, and those who it is not meant for begin to think it was meant for them.

The group-wide accusation marks you as incompetent (overreaching to solve something you aren’t able to), irrational (seemingly calling out the whole group on the actions of a few), or a hypocrite (seemingly casting blame away from you toward everyone else).

If I was in the group with you and had executed my own rotations well, I would rather you point specifically to the mesmer (or whatever class) who didn’t execute than to the whole group. If it was me who didn’t execute, I would prefer you either whisper me about it (best) or address me personally in party chat (takes the pressure off everyone else).

If you’re not going to escalate to kicking, then either whisper or don’t judge until after the run. If you’re going to judge people for anything other than attitude, do it by the end of the first major encounter. After that, if you’ve said nothing, you’ve effectively passed them and made them equals with equal investment in your instance.

PS: kicking sellers was indeed backwards, but I don’t think any of that applies to your story. The change did indeed force instance owners to be more civil with their groups or face a lower threshold (it was higher before as it would have been a nuclear option only) for getting kicked themselves. I don’t think this is bad except maybe for the hopelessly socially incompetent, although I suspect your own party behavior may be fairly close to that.

I’ll repeat an earlier question and ask another one as well.

• When you addressed issues (especially low dps) did you address the offender(s) individually or did you just address the whole group (in their eyes, everyone except you)?

Failing to do this puts the whole group into “don’t-get-kicked mode”. At that point, they will do whatever it takes to ensure they are not kicked, and it will soon become clear that kicking you becomes the optimal route.

I guarantee you, that after a certain point in the run, if you attacked the whole group rather than a specific individual, I myself would immediately mark you as incompetent (unable to see the true problem) and/or irrational (scapegoating, bearing excessive grudge), and I would be more than happy to second a kick at that point.

• Did everyone (especially players who joined later) know and acknowledge that it was your group?

If this was not the case, it will be ironic but probably at least a few of those who kicked you thought they were doing the instance owner a favor by getting rid of you.

Keep in mind this is NOT a PUG I joined – those I never failed to play by house rules and rarely get kicked at all. This is MY instance, MY run.

Let me remind you that even if it is your run, your impunity only lasts to a certain point (usually first/second boss). After that point, if you haven’t filtered players, you will have effectively validated them, and they will be more or less equals with their own equal investment in the run. After this, they will be fully justified in kicking you for going against the rest of group.

As a side note, you would not be wrong for trying to reclaim your instance back, and they would not be wrong for kicking your friend out to ensure you don’t return. At this point, both groups realize they cannot coexist with each other, and there is only one instance, so initiative, faster clicking, and a bit of luck will be the deciding factor.

I also guarantee you, even if instance owner was still in place, I would not hesitate to execute the Samson option, if I ever felt that the possibility of you acting irrationally had increased from doubtful to probable. M.A.D. is a very effective check-and-balance to ensure the party leader contributes his fair share with minimal drama.

tl;dr—You’re getting kicked because you’re likely triggering people’s self-preservation mechanisms. Also, your impunity as party leader only lasts up until a certain point, as after that you have effectively validated them by not having already kicked them.

It does not take me long to figure out if a player fits the post. If they do not, I usually ask them to leave as cordially as possible : “If you are not experienced, or do not know what AR is, or if you are not familiar with the dps meta, this group is not for you….drop pls”

Better to just kick, and make sure to do it early, if you’re going to do it at all.

Also, if you’re not addressing that line to a specific individual, it’ll feel like you’re addressing everyone in the group. With you being the source of the now-oppressive atmosphere, this is an extremely easy way to get 3-4 people eager to second that kick on you.

Finally, the lack of things like DPS meters and the persistence of the “zerker meta” (with a focus on the “zerker” rather than “meta”) has created a community of PuGs who feel validated by gear rather than execution or more specific elements. In other words, the only time they feel they should be tested is at the LFG filter keywords. Attempting to filter past that can be seen as excessively hostile and unnecessary.

In other words, you’re getting kicked because you’re putting people in “don’t-get-myself-kicked” mode. At some point, 2 or more of the group form the conclusion that the best shot they have of finishing the run is replacing you and carrying the weak link.

When you’re seen as oppressive, you no longer get the benefit of the doubt as a rational decision maker, and people fear that you will begin to scapegoat the cumulative errors of the run on their next small slip-up.

This is also why I try not to PuG, and when I do, I’ll put up a fairly tight LFG filter but will hardly ever try to enforce it on those who join.

Toxicity.5392:

DaveGan.8065:

lolwtf.6259:

The beauty of eotm is that it is not exclusively a pvp map. It’s kind of a weird mix of everything. pvp is not it’s sole purpose.

WELL GEE. why do you think that is?

Because Arenanet is forcing garbage dynamic events on us and won’t give us a farm. EOTM IS the farm.

Now get out or I’m just gonna keep ragedefending every FR wall and tower and throw sentry turrets everywhere to ruin everyone else’s fun since they’re ruining my farm. Oh, and ballistas on gates and rams on ACs.

I have 12 lvl 80 characters, millions of karma, and am more than capable of running dungeons for gold so I need neither experience nor karma nor champ bags. Feel free to ragedefend, because I’m more than happy to collect kills and similar WXP as a bag hunter while ignoring all those walls you mentioned.

Perhaps you would be better served trying to raise support to move some of these farms back to PvE (without the QQ/toxicity that players always complain about there). Your attempt at mutually assured destruction only works when you can actually destroy the other side.

It is good, however, that you’re choosing to fight for your right to farm. I wish more zerglings in EotM could say the same.

EDIT: reposting this bit in case you missed it last time

DaveGan.8065:

On the flip side, EotM is not just about karma or experience either. Bag hunting remains one of the most effective ways (and only practical way outside of higher tier WvW) to obtain kills toward Ultimate Dominator. WXP from bag hunting is also competitive with taking objectives.

insanemaniac.2456:

we already have scrublord pvers lucking into a skin on their first level 10 run.

Isn’t this an indication that the exclusivity argument is already a joke? How often do you find someone with a Fractal skin and actually think “This guy must do a lot of fractals” or “This guy must be good at Fractals”?

Hardly anyone will ever take the exclusivity argument seriously so long as low-rate RNG plays a role and skins are available at lower levels anyways.

Perhaps your bitterness is better directed toward efforts to get them to implement the Fractal box, or even simply ensure that you never get duplicate skins, both of which would reduce grind by over 70% and still not decrease your precious exclusivity.

Maybe it’s not the best idea to be participating angrily in a thread about an idea that has next to zero chance of happening (at least not until the current low-RNG/duplicate issues are addressed). This thread is more meant at opening a dialogue about Fractal weapons outside of the Dungeon forum, and that’s almost never a bad thing as that forum gets no substantial attention from ANet.

Jahroots.6791:

I don’t recall dungeons giving 26 silver only. Back in the CoF P1 farming days we still got approximately 1g at the end of each path, from various sources, subject to DR.

Hard to say whether things were better before, but I am definitely in favour of per character time-gating.

Moving the gold away from boss drops steered the food meta away from omnomberry bars with the 40% gold find. That was definitely a good change.

Making everything, including the regular dungeon chests, account bound may have been one step too far.

lolwtf.6259:

The beauty of eotm is that it is not exclusively a pvp map. It’s kind of a weird mix of everything. pvp is not it’s sole purpose.

Too many players now do insist that EotM should be an exclusive PvE map, raging in mapchat whenever they are involved in any fight, whether as the aggressor or the defender.

Most players (and commanders) in EotM don’t think about the possibility of fights at all, and this should run counter to the original goals of EotM or any map that supports PvP. At this point I feel like the bag farm commanders are doing the community a great service by reminding everyone in EotM that they need to constantly be aware of their surroundings.

On the flip side, EotM is not just about karma or experience either. Bag hunting remains one of the most effective ways (and only practical way outside of higher tier WvW) to obtain kills toward Ultimate Dominator. WXP from bag hunting is also competitive with taking objectives.

EotM does have its issues. The extreme ease of defense (with overabundance of choke points and hard-to-reach defensive siege) and color population imbalance (green/blue/red need to be assigned completely randomly, or assigned in a way to create overall color balance) are both issues that should be addressed long before anything else.

Malediktus.9250:

Terrible idea. On average it takes over 900 fractal runs to get the whole collection of 19 skins. Thats all 20 30 40 50 daily for over 200 days straight.
PvP reward track would trivialize it.
Plus PvP reward tracks can be grinded on Skyhammer maps or by afking way too easily.

So with a 20 daily it would take, say, 3000 runs?

And if they made the Fractal track Tier 8 final box a lvl 20 daily box, you’d have to complete a reward track 3000 times?

Tell me more about how grinding 6000 ranks (120,000,000 rank points—for reference, rank 80 is 1,093,500, or less than 1% of the 120M) is trivial.

Don’t even mention ascended ring drops (most suck anyways) or ascended armor/weapon boxes (which pretty much don’t drop at 20)

PS: please also tell me more about how Fractal weapon skins are the only exclusive item in Fractals

PPS: Your hypocrisy about exclusivity apparently knows no bounds. At this point your stance on the exclusivity of minipets is 99.9% predictable: if you have it yourself then “it should absolutely remain exclusive as a sign of prestige and participation”, and if you don’t have it yourself “we should make it more available or I’ll never buy gems again.”

Prysin.8542:

Lopez.7369:

No. Some items should be exclusive to PvE, just like the Balthazar Backpack and Glorius Armor are exclusive to PvP.

Agreed, even if i dun like fractals, i still think fractal stuff belongs in fractals. If you could get the skins in some other fashion, fractals would soon die out i guess.

Fractal skins should honestly be more accessible than just lolbadRNG to get a skin and lolmoreRNG to get the skin you want.

But even if some Fractal reward track offered skins, chances for skins, or even Fractal relics (normal/pristine), there would still be something fully exclusive to FotM.

Linken.6345:

and why cant you repeat it for the 20 tokens then?

Your argument basically amounts to “let’s not change the status quo because change is inherently bad” and addresses nothing Tom says.

The great irony in this is that we are only at this current status quo because of changes, and people here are arguing for the original status quo.

let me ask you something dave, do you think a homless child thinks its far for a rich snobby brat to gloat over his wealth?

This is a complete non sequitur. But to answer your question, if the child was an adult, and equality of opportunity existed in the real world (it doesn’t), then yes it would be fair.

I’ve already pointed out in my last post about the limitations of using real world analogies about “fairness”.

The real world does not have equality of opportunity. GW2 does to a very high degree.

The real world does not have some magical “balance team” that can address inequality at an (immediately) effective level. Meanwhile this same “balancing” work is exactly why some people have jobs at ANet.

Citizens in the real world do not have the choice to “walk away”. They’re stuck with whatever they’re given and there’s little they can do about it.

The real world does not have an entity powerful enough to address “balancing” issues. GW2 has one such entity called ArenaNet—perhaps you’ve heard of this company yourself.

Players in this game can not only turn away from WvW, but also from the Gem Store and GW2 altogether.

TL;DR version: So to put everything together, here are things GW2 has that the real world does not:

• An entity powerful enough to address inequality
• “Citizens” with the power to “walk away” if they are unsatisfied
• A large degree of equality of opportunity

Your “go back to PvE” statement is also noted and dismissed as trollbait and another non sequitur. ANet does not need to establish total fairness and equality, as players can get that in tPvP and GvG. They simply need to make it not so imbalanced that players stop playing (either WvW or GW2 altogether) because of it.

honestly put, WvW is simply as it says “World vs World” not crybaby vs crybaby. its a war game not a diplomatic argument XD pick up your ball sack pull up the panties and get over it, war isnt meant to be fair XD

This argument only goes so far. There is a social contract between ANet and the player base in WvW, where the players will follow the rules and spirit of WvW so long as ANet keeps the game reasonably balanced and fair. In other words, minor and temporary fluctuations are okay but irreversible negative trends are not. The players will also agree to minimize their complaints about WvW and even participate in it.

So, yes, you are correct that war does not have to be fair. But in real life most people do not have the right to choose to walk out and not participate in a war. Most also do not have the means to inch toward the “gray areas” (parallel of siege trolling and spying in WvW) This game, however, does afford its players such luxuries, and this puts legitimate and substantial leverage on ANet to ensure exciting and interesting matches.

Dayra.7405:

Add a server chat would do even better, unfortunately for spambot a as well

There are various ways around this:

• Simply give players an option to “opt in” for server messages. Those who are restless doing nothing in WvW can go do something else, but be on standby if something big does come up.
• Restrict sending messages to those on a WvW map
• Restrict messages to one per 5 (or 15/30/60) minutes
• Restrict messages to level 80s
• Restrict messages to commanders with people in their squad

It’s the difference between yes and no when you ask yourself the question: “Is this making a difference?”

This is exactly what I’ve been saying is the reason why I don’t support spawn camping. My statements on hurt feelings were hyperboles that you probably took too literally.

If you take anything too personally while a match is still competitive, it’s on you, not me. If, on the other hand, the match gets lopsided way too soon, that’s an issue to take to ANet.

Besides, if you’re so competitive, wouldn’t you want as many people as possible to compete against? Seems self-defeating to claim to be competitive and yet outright state that you intentionally do what you can to make people not want to play so they leave.

I’m going to be intense about WvW when I’m in there. I’m going to try to be unpredictable, chase you down, kill you over and over, making you constantly look over your shoulder. I want you to offer me that same experience in response, rather than quit over it. It just happens that being ruthless (while the match is still competitive) serves a dual purpose of weeding out the people for whom WvW is not the best game mode for.

Truly competitive people would rather have as many people as possible to fight against so they could actually be competing.

As nice as this statement sounds, I don’t want anyone going to WvW who wouldn’t enjoy being there. These are the things that destroy the competitiveness of WvW: people who can’t handle PvP, people who can’t handle trash talk, and people who don’t want to constantly look over their shoulder.. For casual PvE there’s loot pinatas world bosses. For casual WvW there’s EotM.

You’re always welcome in WvW, but please bring some intensity when you come and be prepared to face equal or greater intensity. Expect to adapt to WvW, not for WvW to adapt to you.

(edited: somehow didn’t load my bit about “casual WvW = EotM”)

Filaha.1678:

It makes it even worse when WvW map completion is a requirement for total map completion, so I feel sorry for anyone who comes in for their map completion just to not be able to do anything.

I would be the first to advocate for getting rid of WvW completion for the Gift of Exploration. I would be the first to advocate for some better color randomization between weeks. (I personally lean toward the second option, as I feel players should have to fight for their PoIs and waypoints)

For the defenders of the policy who fall back to “a legendary should show you’ve participated in all aspects of the game”, I’ve challenged every single one of them to accept a PvP rank 20-30 requirement to buy Icy Runestones. I’ve yet to get an affirmative response from anyone when I bring PvP into the equation.

Until then, “if it’s red it’s dead” is perfectly defensible and I see no wrong in applying such a mentality in game. What do I do personally here? If it’s clear you’re not interested in PPT (going for a skill point, etc) I usually leave you alone. At worst I’ll attack you after you’ve gotten your skill point.

EDIT:

That pretty much defines you as a bad person.

No. I think it’s about time I wrote back here. It makes me a competitive person. Just because you’re not competitive doesn’t mean I’m a terrible individual. It means WvW is probably not the right game mode for you. Perhaps it’s time to take your own advice that even WvW is just a game, no matter how intense or intimidating the enemy looks. Don’t expect people to roll over for you just because you aren’t able or willing to adapt.

I don’t think I said it was the only issue either. I’m saying you’re chasing after a single fly while there’s a giant hornet’s nest behind you.

EDIT: On second thought, I think I’m going to call you on the bit about “arguing things I’m not talking about” too.

Your later posts calling me and those like me the problem with the WvW community (once I had reinforced what I was arguing) basically reinforces that you were limiting the scope of an earlier post and clarifying what you originally intended to say.

But again, forgive me for interpreting what looked like a generalization, as a generalization.

Filaha.1678:

Besides, think about this: If you’ve ever thought that WvW was ignored and getting stale because of lack of interest, griefing people to get them to not come back to it is just going to make sure it gets ignored further because less interest = less point in caring about it.

You pulled this card on me earlier and now it’s my turn to pull it back on you.

If people aren’t coming back, it’s because of the hugely lopsided match and not the spawn campers afterwards. Borrowing another analogy, the wound itself is far worse than the salt.

No the spawn campers don’t help the situation, but don’t even start scapegoating them for a much bigger issue that really is ANet’s responsibility to address.