Guild Wars 2

Tongku.5326:

The last time PPK was in place it was working great. No one abused it by having tons of naked toons or anything like that, and the points were enough to sway the outcome of close matches.

Free accounts didnt exist then.

So you could park like 10 characters in different towers and keep, then check WvW and if its owned by an enemy you just log in to that character?

Sweet. Sounds lovely.

Your description really doesnt have anything that could be connected as a practical gameplay mode.

It sounds like you’re trying to describe sPvP GvG, ie 20vs20, 30vs30 set matches between guilds on larger maps. That’s a perfectly OK idea – personally I have no idea why Anet never chose to explore that aspect of sPvP.

Zetsumei.4975:

Its not necessarily a system that takes care of population imbalance etc it simply favours people who successfully fight outnumbered.

Hahaha what? It will favor those that zerg all over smaller groups.

I bet pretty much every server that comes 3rd this week will also have the least amount of kills. Especially those owned in PPT, no matter how many zergs they wipe.

PPK will only give +- 1000 points or so between equal servers.

Phantom.8130:

Norbe.7630:

Phantom.8130:

How about if you’re outnumbered, all of your supplies are twice as effective? So you’d double your ability to build siege and repair, and your yaks would effectively double the speed of the upgrades. Someone suggested something similar to this years ago, and it sounded like a decent idea to me. Though, personally, I would have been happy if they just swapped the outmanned buff for the orb buff, and left the orbs in. Of course, they would have actually had to fix the exploits and ban the hackers for that to work, so it was little more than a pipe dream.

sounds ok, but, that is a “passive” outnumbered buff, meaning when your outnumbered your brain tells you to defend every last remaining territory you have till every towers/keep/camp you own are captured by enemy, that change only slows the capping time for an enemy.
try to change that to an “active” one meaning you have a chance to make a decision whether to defend every stronghold you have or kill every one that takes your land and get good points to it.
your suggestion is good one though

Well, it kind of works both ways. Because you’d be able to build offensive siege at half the supply cost too, so you’d essentially be able to get double the amount built in the same time frame, and that would give an advantage for taking areas as well. If the areas on the new maps were still within treb range of each other, being able to set up a treb for 50 in a tower, and 2 superior catapults for 25 each (or omegas for 55 each) would definitely make things a lot easier to retake your northern keep.

Couple in the defensive factor, and you should at least be able to hold/retake your northern third on your home BL, and your third in EB. Looking a bit deeper, that would give a fair amount of PPT, so matchups would, in theory, end up being a bit closer overall. At least as far as the score is concerned. That would help bring back the competitive factor. It certainly wouldn’t be enough on its own, but it would serve as a piece of the overall puzzle.

Unfortunetly its ripe for abuse. Imagine if a side hold an entire abandoned border, then a small group port in and make them outnumbered… now start churning out siege. And then when you have 10 arrowcarts on every gate in garrison, your border zerg is clear to hop in and destroy them.

Cerby.1069:

Or we just let the outnumbered buff give a stacking +10% movement speed bonus. So if they have swiftness on they get 43% speed buff. Whatever their current speed is it gets upped by 10 basically, so everyone benefits. Bringing their max speed as high as 160%.

Any such boon would be unfair in certain scenarios. Again, GG being a slow class meeting a Thief with 60% speed in 1v1. Outnumbered doesnt automaticly mean every fight is unbalanced.

Something that give an advantage for the outnumbered side could be Siegerazer events vs border towers, camps and the closest keep. And I’m not talking a kittenty champ and his donkey. 20 decent NPCs marching out to help outnumbered players cap a keep. When it comes to PvE, this is the type of player involvement WvW should have, not kittened item collection quests that make all gates go boom or barricades.

Dal.5872:

A better and more balanced method would be to go back to a time based stability, but cc would remove increments of time from that stability.

I think alot of the problem with stability is actually noting exactly how many stacks of it you have whilst in the middle of combat. Time based stability would be easier to visually represent to players in the heat of the moment.

Or even better – time based stability that cc doesnt do anything on, but simply balance the times and the stacking of this time so that it has to be used tactically. That way you could easily tell when you have stability and when you dont, which mean you can counter overpowered cc bombs from a large amount of players.

Hm. Odd. Now when I think about it, theres something familiar about that.

Too make that siggestion actually feasable, the middle ranked server out of the 3 would not get a home border

I thought it was the long end of the stick that was more painfull? Hm, maybe I’m just using it wrong.

Dravyn.4671:

The class needs something to make it less kit reliant. A damage buff when no kit is slotted, perhaps? I am not a fan of kits, although I do like the toolbelt mechanic, but that works just fine with turrets and gadgets slotted.

From my understanding, the alternative to kits is a turret build, but turrets are pretty much useless right now. So with all that being said, how is a nerf to engineer even close to justifiable in it’s current state? So much of it’s mechanics just aren’t viable.

… I thought this was exactly what the gyros did? At least that’s what I’ve been using them as, the little cuties. No kits at all slotted, heal+daze+AoE damage when popping them and an overall skill design that allow you to focus more on your weapon skills being delivered at the right place and the right time (sneak + blowtorch to the face comes to mind).

That would be pretty darn unfair when a roamer from the outnumbering side meet 5 players on the outnumbered side.

Create dozens of free accounts, put them to macro respawn at hills or bay.
Bring your zerg and enjoy killing naked lootbags.

I would assume that there is a cooldown on the points you are worth (just like wxp gets reduced) in order to avoid kill abuse and encourage fighting against heavy odds. But then again, its WvW we’re talking about.

Doom doom doom doom doom,
doom doom do DOOM,
DOOOM doom do-doom,
DOOM do-doom doom doooom,
doom doom dooom, do-do-DOOOM!

Xillllix.3485:

When ESO merged servers they didn’t call it a “Major Overhaul” and it certainly didn’t take them 1 year to do so. They just did it and fixed populations for years to come.

Why would they call it that? ESO from the start didnt have servers in the classical sense (they literally called it “EU Megaserver” and “NA Megaserver” despite the fact that the EU Megaserver pretty much only was a DNS link to the NA Megaserver). The AvA campaigns they made clear from the start could vary in numbers depending on populations and rulesets.

Swagger.1459:

Also, having a monthly access fee or not, has zero to do with anything.

Except that its a near certain recipe for failure. The last decade has pretty much proven that. It tear communities apart. Subscriptions is a massive hurdle for a large amount of people. If 50 people in a guild play GW2, do you think everyone would jump on raiding in CU? Hahaha… No. Just a few will. The rest will argue why they should pay monthly for something they dont know if they even gonna like. Many of us has already been in that swamp – feeling the need to play just because time is ticking on your subscription. That feeling when a game got you hooked and you realize you have to keep paying just to enjoy it every now and then. Eventually being forced to pay just to maintain your characters, even if you dont play all that seriously anymore. And that’s when a large number of people will think… “eeeeh maybe I’ll just keep playing GW2 or one of the other 25130956236 games I dont have to pay monthly for”.

And when there are 40 people playing GW2 and 10 playing CU, GW2 will tell the CU players “hey feeling lonely? Come join us for a raid tonight in GW2!”. What’s the CU players gonna say? Come join them for a raid? Ooooh sorry you stopped paying monthly 2 months ago… You’re not allowed to play.

So yes. CU having subscription actually has everything to do with it. No matter the pedigree of its developers.

Warcry.1596:

Dawdler.8521:

Hit a key, open 250 bags in seconds. Ah the wonders of modern computing.

That is more than one action per keystroke, and not allowed per their macro policy :O

Its not technically against it either. Oh I know I will probably get infracted for this.

When Anet described the 1 key for 1 function thing, they where talking about stuff that give you an advantage vs other players, such as macroing skills. Opening bags give you no advantage.

This is purely a QoL thing, both for the player and the mouse. What they did for MF they could easily do for stacked bags (right-click, “Open all”). You still need to manage the inventory and actively see the results, its impossible to automate.

But I digress. I wish the OP luck in opening all that junk and his mouse a long life.

Hit a key, open 250 bags in seconds. Ah the wonders of modern computing.

sephiroth.4217:

Dawdler.8521:

Why would you ever torment yourself by playing 100+ hours of WvW to get a single elite? Once you get gliding, updraft and shroom hopping, its a ~2h rush to get 200+ hp.

Between work and family I only have a few hours of gaming, why would I waste that time doing something I don’t enjoy?

Would rather get some housework done.

Oh come on, dont try to fool yourself.

You know you’re really into PvE.

Why would you ever torment yourself by playing 100+ hours of WvW to get a single elite? Once you get gliding, updraft and shroom hopping, its a ~2h rush to get 200+ hp.

Obtena.7952:

I’m hoping the Gyros take the hit, if there is one.

You do know that gyros are barely even used in meta hammer specs?

Its the same as saying reaper shouts should be nerfed to the ground because of rise, yet the balance note make no mention on near immortal reapers.

laokoko.7403:

If they make GW3, they’ll have to move most of their employees to GW3 teams. And have a few years of low profits until GW3 is out.

Dont’ make much logical sense, since GW2 is doing fairly well.

Why on earth would they have “few years of low profits” because they start developing GW3? For PvE they can just keep it on life support (SAB would keep us content for like half a year), in WvW they just have to let it die and in sPvP they only need to do constant rebalancing breaking the game every two months and a half a dozen PvP seasons a year and another dozen contest that they put ads about all over the game.

That said, I do doubt they will really consider GW3 until the income reach a critical low. Something pretty dramatical has to happen for GW2 to be abandoned by the community. Even if WvW is mercy killed by Anet, the PvE farmers will no doubt keep the gemstore running.

Salamander.2504:

Dawdler.8521:

They are considering a “reduction in survivability” for the scrapper… Yet make no mention about the absolutely insane tankiness of reapers and druids. Hm. I find that amusing.

It’s not really a fair comparison. Reapers and druids are tanky because they are using tanky amulets (crusader, cavalier, soldiers, carrion, celestial) when compared with scrappers. Scrappers on the other hand are even harder to kill because they have so many more active defenses, but use marauder/zerker amulet.

Amulets?

I dont play sPvP, I play WvW. You know, that gameplay mode Anet doesnt even consider when “balancing” classes. Notice how there isnt even a single word on CoR, lol. I have little faith they will do anything good for the engineer.

They are considering a “reduction in survivability” for the scrapper… Yet make no mention about the absolutely insane tankiness of reapers and druids. Hm. I find that amusing.

Absolutely perfect post and I generally have problems agreeing with anyone.

I fail to see how you can expect more than a 70/30 win chance. Theres always gonna be certain builds and better players that counter you. If you dont state what kind of opposition you have trouble with, its hard to suggest something that could improve a build you apparently already perfected.

Fazz Um.1537:

For the sake of our guild and allies we need to know what this big change entails.

Unfortunetly for you, Anet like keeping secrets (well at least on WvW).

Wouldnt surprise me the slighest if they drop a bomb tomorrow with the patch that contain the changes mentioned here… with absolutely no bugs fixed and even more bugs introduced.

And then again its equally likely that the patch contain gliding in Tyria, 50+ fixes for PvE, major class rebalancing for sPvP instead and a single note for WvW that state a floating tree in oasis has been moved 30cm down.

Medic gyro already have a condi cleanse (damage based condis like bleeding, burning, etc). Unlike the turret, it also have daze and considerable AoE damage when popped. I really dont see how its bad. I run my scrapper with all gyros (except shredder) all the time, lol.

Sinbold.8723:

I WAS using an nVidia GTX 660 which burned out (after only 2 years? C’mon, nVidia!) and was replaced with what I thought was a better GT 730 card, but gives me worse performance at the same settings, so I’ve had to dial down things like post processing and reflections.

Sorry but whoever told you a GT730 was better than a GTX660 was either lying or a fool. Quick check show the GTX660 has 4-5x the performance in 3DMark.

Rule of thumb: in any given graphics card generation, there are only two cards that you buy – the “full size” model (for example gtx980, gtx780, gtx680 etc) or the downclocked/crippled “full size” model (gtx970, gtx770, gtx670 etc). Even these are sometimes not the true full size chips (like Titan/980Ti series) but the refined ones is often released much later. Everything else is generally complete tripe thats been strangled in performance and not even worth being paperweights.

Yuffi.2430:

It provides a way for small and determined groups of people to bring ALL the enemy gates on the map to 25% health or so, thus giving them a chance of taking a whole borderlands more easily while no one is looking

Except that the event is mapwide and seen by scouts, so when your small and determined group has gathered some cores over 10 minutes and got maybe 40% done, a 70 man zoneblob port in and finish it in 2 minutes.

Well, assuming a zoneblob is on any border that is. If there isnt one, I doubt there is any small group either.

I have seen oasis events expire… when there is a 100 man queue to EB.

Xenesis.6389:

Replace EBG with EOTM and replace the 3 borderlands with 3 EBG, everyone will be happy!

Or skip the EoTM part and just stick with 3 EBs.

No seriously, since desert border pretty much abandoned the idea of a home border due to the way the map is layed out, we might as well.

chibbi.3706:

Doon.2364:

You might be asking too much of Berserker Warrior. Gun Flame is basically all it’s good for.

I’m having quite decent success with berserker with no rifle.

Melee warriors are fairly easily kited though, especially if they meet good players.

I have noticed the rising trend of rifle/gs warriors, especially in duo WvW ganksquads paired with a condi transfer reaper.

Guess its time to dust off the warrior rifle, it was a while :p

Anet in a nutshell:

Can add HoT gliding to Tyria no problems.

Cant fix the respawn position of NPCs or bugged walls in WvW since HoT release.

Was going to put all focus on WvW after HoT.

Brilliant.

You probably dont want to know that in 1 year, about as many dollys where slaughtered in WvW as there was military deaths during entire World War 2.

So we dont “smash baby seal” heads in PvE for enjoyment. That would be ridiculous and a waste of resources. Dolyaks are soldiers too. We need those baby dollys.

People would still probably say its too much PvE because an orb is not a player.

zinkz.7045:

PPT is a total failure it is one of the reasons WvW has been in pretty much permanent decline, it is supposed to be a mass scale PvP mode with “massive battles”, yet PPT and “winning” largely involves avoiding battles, PvDoor, running away and playing off-peak when others are not.

And also one of the major reasons WvW is even viable as a mass scale PvP mode.

If you want to know what WvW would be without PPT, look at desert border. That’s your “mass scale PvP mode” future. People dont generally just appear out of thin air and play against you because reasons. The heart of WvW is objectives. Objectives focus players and brings the PvP. Objectives that players want to fight around. They have to have a reason to be there. When we loose the will to fight around these objectives… Well. See previously mentioned desert border.

PPT is flawed sure but calling it a total failure is like taking a dump on 3 years of WvW, PvP and all. I object to that.

Crowfall looking exactly like WoW make me cringe.

Ah the good old days.

I still remember a 3 hour battle in garrison, all 3 servers involved with full zoneblobs. Constant battle, no rest, lord must have been ressed 50+ times. At the end, we where too physically exhausted to continue fighting.

TheBlueLight.1762:

The defenders only have to shoot AC’s to keep other opponents unable to ress.

The notes are for hard ressing. Not ressing downed. You can still res downed people in combat, which is what people can do under AC fire (if they can tank the damage). Good luck trying to hard res someone fully killed under heavy AC fire even with 5 people doing it. That’s like begging to be wiped.

This will be zero difference from how it is today.

The only real con with the change is if the commander is focused and insta-popped/killed. If zergs are equal size, you can usually hard res single defeated players.

But of course the pro of not having a superior force hard ressing everything in sight even if they die 10 times over and should have been wiped outweigh this IMO.

I would say instead that sheild generators should be cheaper but have a limited use, yes. Like, loosing 10% HP every time the sheild gets hit. The problem with the shield generators is that they promote completely static standoff combat. Shoot, block, repeat until we grow grey hair.

With a limited use, it would put pressure on using them correctly and giving attackers a sense of progress when they penetrate the sheilds.

Well, if more people on the stronger servers would sPvP instead the servers would be balanced against lowest population. So its everybodies fault, stop playing WvW and start playing more sPvP. Its clearly the solution.

Rome.7124:

- Blog post on Jan 12 on 2016 Roadmap.

Want to bet that this roadmap contain little to no info on the future of WvW or fixing existing bugs that completely break it? I would honestly be shocked if its even mentioned once or twice (probably in relation to PvE or sPvP).

Dont worry, Anet is on top of it. They just need to do sPvP season 2 first, new PvE content and possibly the next expansion. But they are still 100% focused on WvW, make no mistakes.

Just use whatever you use in sPvP then. Going full celestial is pointless (and expensive), just mix and match regular armor/weapons/runes together with ascended celestial trinkets (they are easy).

Not sure what a hybrid dueler is.

TheBlueLight.1762:

And no revive in combat, kind a gets a exploit on defense with AC right as long as people are in combat no mass ress etc.? While sieging is kind a fun, if you don’t have to completely run back as a group all the time for you run out of numbers, for it will end up in a siege war. I can understand the small more skilled group against bigger group, but sometimes this is still the case

I dont quite understand what you mean? People cant hardres under a barrage of arrowcarts now either, the combat change wouldnt make much of a difference. The siege war is already a fact and was in effect long before HoT (ever fought Rivercart in their prime?).

omegazone.9254:

But now there are no scouts, there is no personal benefit from staying in a keep for several hours, no one wants to defend something that is no longer a value.

There was little personal benefits from staying in a keep for hours before HoT either.

gavyne.6847:

Dawdler.8521:

Ironically, its a test that many hardcore WvWers wanted – no limitation on AoE.

Sensible people knew it would be disastrous but nope, many has been adamant that specific players are supposed to wreck a zerg (be it a meteor storm with no AoE cap or a banner). Bet they are celebrating now. Well, until they are on the recieving end.

Nobody asked to test uncapped AOE with such high damage. When you remove player caps on AOE, you’re supposed to lower the damage, not quadruple it. Having played DAOC and know exactly what players asked for, nobody asked for these overpowered offensive & defensive banners that do not even utilize player/class skills.

GG Anet logic & “balance”.

I cant recall anybody ever suggesting lowered damage in conjunction with unlimited AoE. It was pretty much only the latter discussed, because they wanted 10 peeps to own 50 man zergs.

mas.7401:

Synora.8974:

I love the new expansion, WvW, and the game in general. So allow me to elaborate before there’s a misunderstanding:

While there are certainly some issues in WvW, these banners are simply an i-win button for a single person against (like Bearded said above) 50+ people. No single person should be granted that kind of power in a mass scale combat game. Isn’t the philosophy behind a fair WvW strategy supposed to be if, two opposing armies of equal sized players and power fought a battle, the team with better coordination and tactics would come out victorious? Not, who can dragon banner who first.

If I’m a commander and I rally my guild into a 30-man composition with specific classes and builds for each person (a massive amount of coordination), and I march my squad out there to EBG to take on an equally menacing looking army; only to be trollollolled wiped by a single person insta-casting a 25k ground based AoE that’s not even subject to the limits of traditional player cap. Why would I even bother to go back out there to fight them again? WvW would just turn into dragon banners dueling each other.

I mean, Bearded said it above, he single-handedly destroyed a 60+ man group by pressing 5. I’m sure it was fun for him though. So again I ask, what was the point of banners? Are you trying to kill the WvW population?

The point must have been a kind of test;

How much will it take before we can make the people who play for fights in WvW disgusted with the game, so only the people who share our “game mode vision” in WvW are left! Huzzah to the remaining confused PvE players that use WvW for a crafting haven!

Ironically, its a test that many hardcore WvWers wanted – no limitation on AoE.

Sensible people knew it would be disastrous but nope, many has been adamant that specific players are supposed to wreck a zerg (be it a meteor storm with no AoE cap or a banner). Bet they are celebrating now. Well, until they are on the recieving end.

littlemunster.1059:

Powwownoize.4962:

Just bring back Alpine. Test Desert BL for beta weekends. Or leave it for T1 servers.

It might of been a good concept. But it didn’t work out.

Please remember that we don’t need new WVW maps. Just need lag fixed. We come here for the fights, not the scenery.

Shouldn’t desert bl fit them lower tiers? It’s built for roaming.

Built for roaming, lol…

Desert border is built around the oasis event, which is a glorified PvE gathering quest. Ironically, the only way to counter it is by a huge amount of PvE grinding and gold, in order to make guildhall and use tactics on keeps thats being shelled (fortification).

So no, its not built for roaming. Its built for PvE.

While I like the idea and have suggested something similar before, the problem with this is PPT, server stacking and player fatigue. In short, if one alliance start to steamroll all the maps due to coverage, the other two will pretty much give up.

I definetly believe that we need a variable map system. 15 static maps for the entire population is a no-go. We already know that EB generally dont fill until primetime (forget about borders lol). Having EU as an example, it gives us a maximum of 9 maps open during quiet hours – probably want to reduce that to 6 or so. On top of that, you need a max PPT cap based on current population to keep things from steamrolling even if one side cap all 6 maps. How I imagine the map setup:

EB1 (20/300 players, open) → Instance1 (desert, closed, 3h battlemap) → Instance2 (EoTM, closed, 3h battlemap)
EB2 (260/300 players, open) → Instance1 (desert, open, 210/300 players, 3h battlemap) → Instance2 (EoTM, open, 135/300 players, 3h battlemap)
EB3 (170/300 players, open) → Instance1 (desert, closed, 3h battlemap) → Instance2 (EoTM, open, 200/300 players, 3h battlemap)
…

EB would be open 24/7 in match while instances are EoTM style fights. All open maps can be joined. A battlemap offer score to the alliance that won, again similar to EoTM

In this scenario, EB1 is has little players, thus the extra maps remain closed. EB2 has more players, so Instance1 opened. This also had enough players to open Instance2. On EB3, there arent enough players to open Instance1 but that instance had previously been open and opened Instance2 which is still running its 3h fight (EB3 was full, Instance1 was full but has ended).

In terms of visual design, Instead of buttons saying “Eternal Battleground” imagine a wheel similar to the new mastery system – a ring of EBs with locked or open maps going out from each EB

Each server would have a “home EB” with their keep on it, just like now.

DS IMO is an OP mechanic. The problem is that it doesnt really open any damage window once you get the ele down in HP – they just heal up instantly and are invoulnerable to condis again. All that it really need is something akin to revealed – a cd after DS is broken until it goes up again (even if the ele is at 100% HP).