Guild Wars 2

It would be interesting for Anet to comment on that looking at 2 different points of view.

On one hand, 2vs1 I suppose could ruin the enjoyment of another if they are essentially relegated to being stuck in their spawn point.

On the other hand, stacking your server to the point your opponents have no chance (and cause other servers WvW populations to implode) also ruins the enjoyment of others on a much grander scale than 2vs1.

Remember, you can’t be biased about this, you have to look at it from all angles but you do bring up an interesting point.

Anet already did say that 2vs1 is a viable strategy to bring down the bigger server, so I think we already know the answer to that.

With that, it really is in the server’s hands to enhance their own enjoyment. They have to ask themselves the question “why is their enjoyment being ruined”. Then they have to ask themselves “is there anything we can do to prevent the actions taken against us”

Answering the second question should come to the glaring conclusion: Do not stack your server. Action/reaction as they say.

The truth about Rangers is, whatever they bring, another class will do it better without the handicap of the pet. The one thing Rangers do have going for them is nobody expect to see them in zerker gear. Outfit one in full zerker and you can dps someone down extremely fast in WvW. You can also provide decent AoE dps as well.

Played right, they almost can never be killed, granted don’t expect your group support to be even remotely as good as any other classes.

Reasons why I don’t do dungeons:

A) I find Warriors, Guardians, and Thieves extremely boring and skill-less to play
B) Some people are too serious and anal about group make-up and strategy
C) The kicking issue, I’d prefer people afk/trolling then report them instead
D) They are a requirement for building a legendary ( further enforces (B) )

One of the ways they can fix the above is remove the kick option and take a far more progressive and active roll in banning people who afk in dungeons. Also don’t allow people to enter dungeons with multiple classes (IE, you can’t go in with 2 warriors, only one of each class).

Their dps nerf to zerker gear wasn’t going to fix any of the above; it’s still the go to build in all aspects of PvE, this will not change. Unless they bring back the holy trinity (which I hope they don’t), zerker gear will always remain king of PvE.

Not much. Well aside from the costs of leveling up up the crafting to 500 for 2 professions; I spent maybe 40 gold on all the gear and runes combined.

If we add in the cost of the ascended staff and 1 piece of ascended armor I have, I’m closer to 150 gold spent. This is for a pure WvW dps build.

If your going staff, your better off going into both fire and air for pure damage. One dps traited Ele heavily out dps’s the healing of several traited water Ele’s to the point it’s almost pointless to even go water.

It depends on your goals and what you find fun. D/D is good, but not as good in zergs as staff. Zergs can make due with 2 or so water ele’s, but the rest should be traited for dps (that is if it’s organized).

As a staff ele myself, it’s perfectly fine to play glassy.. you shouldn’t be anywhere near the front line. Applied Fortitude is a must, as well as their lightning flash / Fiery Great Sword to get out of sticky situations.

Speaking of which, did anyone notice their Ele’s hp reduced today? When I logged on to WvW, my hp was about 1000 less than it usually is.

Thanks for the feedback

Much like Kraag, I’m also opposed to a passive accumulation of points. I only suggest slowing them once per hour so that the servers who did build a large WvW community had something to still actively fight for in the off hours. If Anet decides to scrap PPT all together in favor of objectives, I won’t lose any sleep over it. I also don’t mind PPT being tied to upgrades; it makes more sense to award PPT to an upgraded structure, not one you just capped in the last few seconds of the tick. An objective in itself could be to complete an upgrade on whatever tower.

If Anet ever does decide to add an objective based point system to WvW, I’m sure between them and the entire WvW community could come up 50-100 random objectives to be accomplished.

I also agree that the system should be able to determine whom owns what then based the set of objectives on that. For example, as you said, Red owns SM, green’s and blue’s job is to capture it; red’s would be to defend it. That could stand as 1 of the 5 objectives. Now wouldn’t it be interesting if some objectives called for 2vs1’s. For instance, any keep, garrison, or SM now has the potential to call for an objective where 2 colors must attack (and 1 captures), to get war score for both. I think something like that could also solve coverage/numbers issues.

Either way, I’d like to see a system in place that awards score based more on actual game play and less on coverage and numbers. I think an objective based system that dynamically changes with who owns what at the top of the hour could do the trick. Couple that with a PPT system that only awards points if your structures are upgraded (more upgrades = more points), then have that PPT tick once per hour.

The idea here is to create a system that awards war score based on both objectives and PPT. PPT functions the same way it does now except it doesn’t tick every 15 min, it ticks every hour instead effectively reducing it’s effectiveness by 75%. The new (primary) way to get war score now is based on objectives.

The reasoning behind this is that PvE is solely based on objectives; everything from heart quests, random world spawns, and meta events. It all comes down to completing the objective for the reward. WvW is just a mix of PvP and PvE, so it seems logical to have objectives given in WvW. I don’t think many people would have a problem with completing objectives as it gives some sense of accomplishment.

The proposal is having a database of objectives (maybe 50-100) that are randomly drawn every hour for each server and for each map. Every map will have a different set of objectives for each server. 5 objectives are given every hour (200 war score each) for a total of 1000 war score per map if all objectives are completed on every map. At the end of the hour, the objectives reset and new ones are given.

Some possible objectives could be:

- Capture “X” color’s camps/towers/keeps/Garrison
- Capture SM
- Keep SM/Garrison/Keep/Tower for the tick
- Capture “X” amount of towers
- Kill “X” amount of players (50-200)
- Kill “X” amount of yaks (5-10)
- Defend towers/keeps camps “X” amount of times
- Own all mercenary camps

An example, the Red server could see this in Eternal Battle Grounds:

- Capture 1 blue tower
- Defend towers 3 times
- Capture 5 camps (Obviously better done with a couple smaller groups)
- Kill 200 players
- Down 100 players

As you can see from above, if Red is being 2vs1 in this case, it actually could drastically work out to their advantage. Depending on the objectives; it could hurt servers with supreme off hours coverage. You can’t capture/defend/kill players if you own everything and the map is void of enemies. Some objectives would require some good ole fashion blobbing, while others would be better served broken up into smaller groups. It gives small groups a fair chance, especially if they are coordinated and map hop.

It basically comes down to evening out the score while not punishing players too much on both sides of the fence (stacked servers vs small numbers). I think it’s also important to point out that completing an objective on a map gives a map-wide reward (champ chest + silver + karma). Completing all the objectives on the map allows you to see your enemies objectives and what they’ve completed (more incentive to complete yours).

The advantages:

- Stacked servers still keep their guaranteed PPT in the off hours (just not as much)
- Encourages both small and large group play
- Could force zergs to bust up and spread across all maps
- Gives birth to a whole line of new strategy and tactics
- Gives servers with small numbers and dismal coverage a fighting chance
- Gives reason to defend if the objectives call for it
- Receiving end of a 2vs1 could be a massive advantage
- It might not be advantageous to have superior coverage during off hours
- More chances at rewards
- Servers may de-stack as it no longer makes sense to have superior coverage
- More PvE’ers may join WvW as they are familiar with objective based missions

Feel free to poke holes in this, but I feel this would be a much better system than we have now. The TL;DR version of this is, things basically stay the same, PPT’s effectiveness is reduced and war score is now added in through objectives.

Roe.3679:

I feel like Devon’s suggestion from way back when could still address this by dividing match ups into 21 8 hour segments, with essentially 3 point resents per day. That way if someone dominates a certain time zone it gets them the win for that time, but doesn’t cement the entire match up for them.

I’ve been suggesting this over the past few weeks; create 3 separate time zones of PPT, that way if one time slot dominates, it doesn’t guarantee victory over the other 2. I can think of 2 servers in gold league this method would completely crush.

I think i’ve come up with a better solution for points which I’ll create a thread for as it’s a bit convoluted.

sniperman.1738:

DeadlySynz.3471:

I like it the way it is, but I think they could easily make things more interesting by adding a completely different point system based on objectives (not PPT).

Give war score based on say a list of 5-8 objectives given to you each hour. Each server has different objectives and the objectives vary on each map. Draw from a list of say 100 objectives, and you never know what objectives your enemy has unless of course you have a spy on their map.

Of course you could still 2vs1 under this system, but it could be completely futile if your enemies objectives involve either defending or killing other players and they rack up the war score. Then would a server even bother 2vs1 while they ignore their own objectives?

I think it’d make things interesting.

I actually like that idea it would make WvW more interesting and make it feel like a real war with more logic to it, because the only ideal right is cap keeps, hold keeps for ppt, but with objective based missions to up the warscore or overall score is a very well thought out idea and would be a fun way to participate in WvW.

I don’t mind if we keep the current PPT system as long as the PPT ticks drop by at least half to 75%. I’d like to see war score be more heavily weighted towards things that wouldn’t be based on coverage or blobbing for that matter.

I think under an objective based system, in some (if not many) cases it might actually be beneficial to bust a zerg up to complete all the objectives. Then perhaps give a bonus if you complete all the objectives within the hour. Maybe this bonus could be seeing the other servers objectives (so you can try to stop them).

As far as off hours coverage, I think it could throw a giant wrench into stacking off hours coverage. If the objectives contain either capturing, defending, or killing other players, how will they gain score if they own everything and the maps are absent of enemies? They could be forced to jump maps instead of camping one map in hopes of finding possible objectives.

In the end, I think an objective based system would fit more into WvW’s style anyway. It’s a mix of PvE and PvE is heavily objective based with all the quests and events going on. I think it also would give birth to more strategy and smaller objective based roamer groups.

The megaserver itself would solve the coverage problem 10 fold. It’s something they should have done a long time ago. I think at this stage in the game though if they did it, they’d drive a lot of current WvW populace away.

Now if they decided to completely revamp the system under the guidelines of making WvW faction based where players could pick factions to join, I think that would work much better.

I like it the way it is, but I think they could easily make things more interesting by adding a completely different point system based on objectives (not PPT).

Give war score based on say a list of 5-8 objectives given to you each hour. Each server has different objectives and the objectives vary on each map. Draw from a list of say 100 objectives, and you never know what objectives your enemy has unless of course you have a spy on their map.

Of course you could still 2vs1 under this system, but it could be completely futile if your enemies objectives involve either defending or killing other players and they rack up the war score. Then would a server even bother 2vs1 while they ignore their own objectives?

I think it’d make things interesting.

I ran zerker pre patch and I continue to run it post patch despite the nerf. Why? I dislike tanky/healing/condition/hybrid builds. To me, nothing could be more boring.

The only way Anet will get around the zerker meta is to bring back the holy trinity design, and the only real place that will work is in dungeons. From what I understand, most people don’t even like doing dungeons due to a number of factors, the main being some classes are alienated. Unless they introduce raids (which Im not opposed to), the holy trinity would be pointless.

So basically, zerker is here to stay and will always be the optimal gear unless they reduce the damage enough to equal that of your standard hybrid build.

Before they even attempt to balance stats or make other stats desirable, they need to actually balance the classes and make all classes desirable in their own way; not just warrior, the king of all.

What I’m more curious about is how this affects new players who want to play specifically for WvW. They come in at a major disadvantage do they not? Why would you come into WvW with less than half the skills your enemies have.

BAITness.1083:

Far too many of these suggestions punish servers that have players coming into WvW and reward servers that don’t. If you think this is a fix, you are blind. This will only lead to people yelling at others to log out of WvW so they can get whatever incentive it is you are providing.

Players are making suggestions to literally ruin the game just so they think they have a better chance of coming out on top. The introduction of Bloodlust was the absolute best thing ANet could do to promote organized fighting over mindless blobbing. It rewards small organized groups, but not disproportionately to large organized groups. A large group of players that are not organized are not going to be successfully spiking opponents they run into, even if they manage to kill them.

As I see it, WvW functions mostly as it is supposed to. Off-hours coverage is a community problem in a community competition. Blobbing is easily beaten by more organized groups. Players that want smaller scale fights that are imbalanced play on low tier servers. People that want huge fights play on the top few servers. People that want balanced small fights avoid WvW completely. It makes sense to me.

I think the only “solution” wvw needs is a seperate GvG gametype like GW1, with organized small-medium sized groups. After that is introduced, the smaller servers should be lumped into larger servers. This would make it possible for everyone to have balanced small, medium, and large scale fights – just in different game modes.

My suggestion doesnt, it’s aimed eliminating coverage issues while promoting smaller groups when needed. Far more strategy, an a small 10 man group could make a world of difference as opposed to a map blob.

I had something else typed out but I had since changed my mind because I thought of another idea which I like more lol. It takes your idea of upgraded structures into consideration. This also should eliminate the 2vs1, or at least make it almost useless to do it unless you have a vendetta against a server.

The idea, eliminate PPT ticks all together and only award PPT based on objectives. WvW is part PvE, and nearly all of PvE is based on some sort of objectives to progress so lets have war score awarded based on objectives. Have say a database of say 100 objectives where 5-8 are randomly pulled every hour for servers to complete. Completing an objective awards war score; the harder the objective, the more war score awarded. Every hour the objectives reset and change.

A possible list of objectives could be:

- Capture 5 towers = 500 war score
- Kill anywhere from 100 – 500 enemy players = 100 – 500 war score
- Complete 3 upgrades on any structure / camp = 300 war score
- Have anywhere from 1 – 5 fully upgraded structures = 2000 – 1000 war score
- Successfully defend anywhere from 5 – 10 times = 100 – 500 war score
- Have control of all mercenary camps = 500 war score
- Capture (not be in possession of) a keep or garrison = 2000 war score
- Capture Stonemist = 1000 War score
- Successfully defend Stonemist 5 times = 1000 war score
- Capture a tower from each opposing server; For example, if your red, the objective may read “Capture a blue and green tower” = 1000 war score
- Capture 3 opposing color towers (IE: Capture 3 green towers) = 1500 war score

These are just some ideas to name a few. Each map will have a different set of objectives, meaning if you map hop, your not likely to see the same objectives on another map. Once an objective is complete, it’s done, you can’t lose SM then re-capture it for another 1000 points. Sometimes a server will draw easy objectives, whereas sometimes they will draw more difficult ones. These objectives change every hour.

The advantages (I think) this system has:

- You don’t know what the other server’s objectives are unless you have a spy, so denying them score may not be easy, especially if they create diversions
- Attempting to deny a server points may be a more viable strategy depending on what objectives you have
- 2vs1 would no longer make sense as you have to look out for your own server; especially if the objectives require capturing things from a server your “allied with”
- Off hour coverage may be useless, especially if the objectives require capturing objectives (you already own), or kill players (that don’t exist on the map).
- I think most people generally like working towards something like an objective
- Ultimately, depending on the objectives, it may force zergs to split up to complete them all because blobbing around would not give enough time to complete. It forces strategy, prioritizing and defending.

Or, keep the PPT system but cut the ticks by 75% and institute the system above.

TL;DR, make war score objective based or at least mainly objective based. It could eliminate a lot of current problems we see in WvW

As Mattargul said above, the best way to address the coverage issue is to chop it up into smaller scoring blocks. I also really like the idea, they’ve suggested. I’ve suggested another, split the 24hr PPT into 3 separate PPT scores based on the time of day. Winning the week would involve a server having to win at least 2 out of the 3 PPT scores.

The advantage of this, it makes it absolutely impossible for guilds to transfer to stack a server because their coverage might not mean anything if the server’s other 2 PPT scores lose. This is especially true where servers lack the skill to compete with equal or greater numbers and strictly rely on coverage. It’s not likely they’d transfer to a time slot where coverage is overwhelming based on the que times being astronomical.

I can already see where this method would turn 2 servers upside down in gold league and force them to disperse unless they’d like continually losing. I’m sure we can find other servers in other match-ups where it would force them to disperse as well.

Not everyone may agree, but I think most would that the ideal situation would be to have all servers semi equal in numbers to the point that it really is anybody’s guess who’d win the match up.

The only other option I can think of would be to eliminate PPT ticks all together and only award points for defending, capturing, and killing other players. This also would completely wreck the off hours coverage some servers have. Make it so servers that are outnumbered get double the points for doing any of the above.

I share the OP’s sentiment and I’m on one of the heavily populated servers.

Here is the problem; low populated server is a subjective term based on the servers your facing. On TC, we are not a low population server, neither is JQ and neither is BG. SoS, Mag, and DB are not low pop servers either, but in the eyes of the top 3 they are certainly a lower population than the above 3.

I think anyone would agree than when they log onto WvW, they’d like to be able to go in there with something to do; not see the entire map their color and not see the entire map the enemies color. Anet I believe did say at one time they had no intention of making WvW fair, though I’d hope that meant more towards 2vs1 rather than population.

They have a number of things at their disposal to at least weather the storm both on coverage and PPT.

Coverage:

Reduce the population cap of each map to at least 70 (if not 60). Outside of reset night, you will rarely see a que across all maps. Even on both TC and BG (I played on both), you wouldn’t see it. One map was always outnumbered or borderline, and another could never muster enough players to even make an attempt on either keeps or Garrison.

My proposal: Keep the population cap at 100 on Friday’s. Sat & Sun, reduce to 80. Mon to thurs, reduce it to 60. Most would ever notice the difference. Guilds rarely seem to run more than 20-25 members at a time so they would not be affected by this in any way.

PPT:

Split the match into 3 matches based on time. 24 hours in the day would give birth to 3 separate PPT scores. Midnight to 8, 8 to 4, and 4 to Midnight. When the server clock hits the new time, the other PPT score is displayed on the screen while the other 2 are frozen.

The only way your server “wins” the match is to either win 2 or 3 of the PPT scores. Meaning that those with massive coverage in one area but lack in the others have a decent shot of either making a tie or loss. Those with great coverage then will probably win that PPT score, but if they fail on the other 2, too bad so sad.

If Anet takes this route (which I hope they do), it would certainly throw a wrench into how guilds would transfer. How exactly do you know which server to try and stack on? Are they going to go to a server that will more than likely lose 2 out of the 3 PPT scores? Probably not. Are they going to stack on a server with overwhelming coverage in one area? Probably not, not unless they like massive que times. One day a server might have dominant coverage in one area, but abysmal on the next.

It literally makes it impossible for a guild to transfer to a stacked server to guarantee a win. This is why I prefer this method.

Pyroathiest.4168:

DeadlySynz.3471:

The nerf is not 10%. Coming from a player who runs a complete glass/zerker build, the overall dps loss is about 25%. The auto attacks (non-crit) are about 15-20% lower and the actual crits are 30-40% lower. This was no where near a 10% dps loss for full zerker builds, not even close.

This is definitely not accurate. The nerf was absolutely limited to critical damage. Your non-critting attacks are doing precisely the same amount of damage they did before the patch.

While I also don’t agree with the nerf to critical damage, I do like to have accurate arguments. Yours doesn’t even flirt with accuracy.

Im sorry, but it is 100% accurate.

I was well aware of how much damage I was doing with non crit attacks before the patch and it’s clear their is a damage reduction on those of 15-20%. I’ve spent hours in WvW after the patch and it’s distinctly noticeable.

That is unless they nerfed Ele’s damage across the board on top of the crit nerf. If they didn’t, then raw damage has taken a hit as well. It could very well be a case of your damage being low to begin with and the 15-20% isn’t noticeable to you. To me, a pre-patch auto attack non-crit consistently doing 2000-2300 now consistently does 1500-1700, I’d say is a crystal clear nerf.

Shockwave.1230:

get two stacking sigils.

Put one on your water weapon. Get an extra w/e weapon. Swap your w/e weapon and the water weapon will prevent your sigil stacks from dropping.

Hmm really? I never even thought of this.. that certainly makes things much easier lol. Though I particularly don’t want to go swimming every time I enter a new map just to get these stacks.

The nerf is not 10%. Coming from a player who runs a complete glass/zerker build, the overall dps loss is about 25%. The auto attacks (non-crit) are about 15-20% lower and the actual crits are 30-40% lower. This was no where near a 10% dps loss for full zerker builds, not even close.

With that said, i’m not so sure it hit full zerker builds the hardest; I think it may have hit the min/max builds the most. Pre-patch, my glass Ele would drop in 2-4 hits, now they are dropping in nothing less than 6-8 hits. While I may have suffered a 25% dps loss, in real time it seems the meta WvW builds got hit harder.

It doesn’t matter.

BG will be pushed down to face presumably DB and Mag. It’s probably a foregone conclusion they will take 1st in those match-ups. Given they are all but guaranteed a 1st in those encounters; if they take one more 1st place in the match against TC and JQ, they’ve locked a season win.

Obviously, given that conclusion, it’s in both TC’s and JQ’s best interest to keep BG constantly in 3rd. At that point, it becomes more of a chess match, who can overtake the other while keeping BG down. Both JQ and TC are equally capable of taking each other out as seen in the past.

You know what the most interesting thing about this match up is? BG basically has all the power. They won’t take 1st place, that is a guarantee, but they can decide who takes 1st by focusing their efforts on one server over the other.

So I guess it depends.. who would they rather see win..

Thaddeus.4891:

There is a lot of stuff wrong here. First of all they always said that the 10% damage nerf was for a full zerker toon. And for that specific statement, they are right.

For most toons. If you go full zerker, you gonna get around a 10% nerf to your damage (or about 25-35% nerf to your crit damage). But its not a 10% nerf for everything.

1) Celestial Gear is another problem. Since most of their damage come from crit-damage, then the nerf affected them the most. They made some adjustment to limit that by boosting the stats, but now the nature of the gear is completely broken.
2) The 10% nerf don’t take into account only the gear, not the skills (like banners), not the traits (like arcane lightning), not the food (like buttersquash), not the nourishment, not the sigils, etc. Overall, if you min-max your character and your party and and add the nerf to the sigil that stacks (which I think is a good thing, even if I’m a bit sad about it), then you look more into a 15-20% nerf of your damage.

This is not true though. From what I mentioned above, I run full zerker, and the overall dps nerf is about 25%. My non crit auto attacks are down about 15-20% while the actual crits are down 30-40%

Now I don’t want to complain about the nerf per say because what I also noticed is that those whom I know aren’t running full zerk builds, seem to have taken either an equal or greater hit to their dps than myself who runs full zerk.

Whatever is going on with the dps numbers isn’t happening as Anet has explained it.

My overall damage has taken about a 25% hit. My auto attack (non crit) attacks are lower by about 15-20% and my actual crits are anywhere from 30-40% lower.

This clearly isn’t a 10% overall damage loss for a full zerk build, it’s well over double that. I played in WvW for 3hrs yesterday and noticed it. Granted though, those who aren’t in full zerk gear seemed to have suffered an equal if not greater damage loss than myself. I used to get downed in 2-4 hits.. now it takes about 6-8.

After doing some testing, it turns out to be a 25% or so overall dps nerf, not 10%. Tested this for about 3hrs yesterday in WvW.

In saying that though, I also noticed other builds may have taken a harder hit than full zerk. As a glass cannon myself, before this patch, I’d be downed in 2-4 hits from tanky enemies. Now it looks like I can take a minimum of 6-8 hits before being downed.

I suppose overall I don’t mind the change though I would like my damage back.

Zergs can and will wipe against a handful of people, especially when defending.

Case and point, as an Ele, when in a tower, a group of 25 or so approached and dropped rams. For whatever reason they didn’t see me or completely ignored me. Anyways, as a staff Ele running full zerk, I dropped most burst attack on them I could and downed about 10 while killing 2. The rest of the group just stepped in and revived, continued to ram and called it a day.

If downed state was removed and there were now 12 dead enemies instead of 2 the battle becomes that much easier. Once my cooldowns were up and they attempted to continue to ram, there is a decent chance there would have been another 12 dead enemies.

Now add another 3 or 4 to the mix dropping their payload and it should be evidently clear that a small group is easily capable of wiping out a zerg, as long as, downed state didn’t exist.

Sure the zerg could be better coordinated, but lets face facts here 9 times out of 10 they aren’t. Any delay what so ever in an attacking force makes it that much easier for your main force to get to you to defend.

The one that sits by your side and buffs you while throwing in the occasional CC when enemies get close.

It’s about a 25% overall damage nerf in full zerk builds, not 10%. I just spent the past 3hrs in WvW and that’s what it averages out to. I’ve also noticed PVT players or tanky players are also doing significantly less damage. That’s a trade-off I can live with.

I didn’t have to log into mine. The first character I sent into WvW added all my ranks in 1 shot.

I don’t understand how people who play WvW don’t have an abundance of empyreal fragments… They seem to come out of almost every single champ bag dropped.

I suspect most people’s experience will see it’s much greater than a 10% loss, well those who run straight dps builds. Remember we do however have that 2nd slot for a sigil to make up for some of the dps lost.

For however, I am prepared to see a 20-30% overall dps loss, not a 10%, at least that’s what I’m preparing for anyway.

It may force me into more of a tanky build because before the patch, tanky players hit zerker players harder anyway, which begs the question, why exactly was a crit damage nerf allowed to go through WvW in the 1st place.

Currently, the middle of the season, T1 servers rarely que all maps at once during prime time. In fact, in some cases you will see the outnumbered buff for a period of time. I’ve heard that T2 can’t even que any maps. I play in NA so I can’t comment on EU’s situation, but it’s my understanding that NA has much larger coverage.

With that said, why can’t Anet reduce the population cap to at least 70 or even 60? People don’t need to have 100 on one map while the rest have like 10 to 20.. it’s completely unnecessary. Even some of the largest guilds out there, never seem to run more than 20-25 at once except on reset night.

Anet could probably knock the cap down to 70 tomorrow and nobody would ever notice the difference.

This shouldn’t be a case of allowing us to run 100 on a map simply because we can, it should be a case of reducing the numbers because it’s better for the overall health of the game. Health meaning both skill lag and coverage.

There you go Anet, that might be your answer to skill lag, reduce the population cap on each map to about 70. It isn’t necessary to have it at 100 (outside of reset night), not even T1 servers que all the maps at once during prime time.

Your probably best to stay on BG. I’m sure there are people who worked out the math on who will likely place 1st-3rd. I can assure you BG will not be making 1st and more than likely will make 3rd at the moment if this 2v1 continues all season (which I assume will).

The server you decide to play on should be soley based on where your having the most fun (and will have the most fun) after the season is over. Don’t think of the rewards, they are a lost cause at the moment.

For me its more like 10s. It’s the only real way I end up dying in WvW so I’ve all but given up using supply out in the field. Yes I’m an Elementalist so I don’t have the option of switching weapons.

Simple solution, make people play on the servers in which is closest to their local time.

You live in spain, you plain on EU servers, you do not play on NA servers. You live in Texas, you play in NA, you do not play on EU.

You live in Brazil, you play in NA (4hr difference to server time vs EU’s 5hr difference)

You live in China, you play in EU (6hr difference vs NA’s 9hr difference)

Do that and most of the coverage problems are solved (not all but most).

1st week – BG double teams TC with JQ most of the week (not all but most)
2nd week – BG double teams TC with SoS the entire week
3rd week – BG seems mad they are getting double teamed continuously.

There is absolutely no benefit in not double teaming BG considering their coverage. If any server wants to place higher, they need to keep them down due to their coverage. The funny thing is, considering all the double teaming that was going on in TC during the 1st 2 weeks, they were never in the same predicament BG is in now. At least they could still control chunks of the map (congrats TC).

The way Anet has it layed out in the swiss style format, if this continues (which it probably will), BG will come in 4th or 5th (most likely 5th). It would be to the other servers benefit to keep them that way if they want to place higher.

My advice to BG if you don’t want it to continue:

A) De-stack your servers (aka) whatever guilds transferred there, leave
B) Don’t blob the map, (aka) don’t run in any numbers greater than 50.

Not doing both of those gives other servers perfect reason to double team and keep you pushed down in 3rd.

If they removed the lockout timer, I imagine the griefing and spying would become exponentially worse… how so?

Server A wan’ts to take Server B’s garrison at some point in time today. I (in all my infinite wisdom anda buddy of mine) now transfer over to Server B. We siege troll, burn up all their supply, drown all their golems, then for good measure, we now park our behinds in the garrison and let our server know when the enemies are across the map so its the perfect opportunity to attack.

To make matters worse, we now park ourselves on the AC’s or trebs as to prevent the defending force from actually using their own siege to defend. Our server takes garrison, we leave and go back to our own server.

Free transfers, no harm no foul. Guilds with giant war chests, buying gems to transfer for the noble cause is trivial, especially if you plan to stay on the enemy server for a week to make their life hell.

Anet needs to take precautions on this type of behavior because people already do it, at least on the upper tiers.

Tiers 3-8 don’t need to merge into Tiers 1-2, nor the other way around. From what i’ve read (unless these people are lying), no server really has trouble que’ing or getting numbers for fights during prime time. The issues seem to be with off hours (Oceanic and SEA)

If this is the case, it seems more logical to force people to play closer to their own server time instead of an overseas server. Why if your in EU are you playing on an NA server or vice versa?

The very first step I think Anet should take is to restrict people as to what time zones they play in, then take additional steps there as necessary.

loquacious.2915:

It’s funny that you don’t see any of these type of ideas coming from T1 players…

Incorrect, I am a T1 player

I personally think the way the OP listed the idea would not work, but my variation of it would and it would drastically help T1 keep the numbers even. You won’t have situations of 60vs20 unless a server has very little people logging onto WvW to begin with, then the outnumbered situations will climb.

Assuming those running the same guild tag are accounted for in the system so they are kept together as much as they could, it should work. Even in T1, I rarely see a zerg with more than 20 guildies running together at once.

Then if Anet creates an actual GvG arena where it’s possible for 100 guild members to run together at once, I don’t see why WvW can’t be made to keep the numbers as even as possible.

Straegen.2938:

This would get a giant down vote by most players I would think. Massive amounts of players wouldn’t be able to enter a map simply because a server cannot field a force during that time.

A server ahead on points could stop logging into WvW for an easy victory.

This too would be an issue. But using my idea, redistributing players throughout the maps to even the numbers out as close as possible would be the first priority, after that, map numbers would rack up.

Basically if Red built up 100,000 point lead then only had 10 people per map while the other 2 colors had say 70 on the other maps, 10 players would be removed from the other colors to at least even out the 10 per map.. after that, the numbers climb, and could get to 100vs100vs10. If however, more people log into Red, then the numbers redistribute to even out maps again.

There actually might be something to this, as long as, people don’t get booted from the map, which in itself, can put an anchor on the idea as it seems to be the only way to keep the numbers even.

If it start out at 50, then the next tick reduces it to 40, but 50 people still remain in the battle, it still really isn’t fair, especially if suddenly green drops to 10 people and the new cap becomes what 33 I guess? I don’t see how 50 on 10 changes anything, but then again, how can we justify booting 17 people out of the battle, especially if they waited in a ridiculous que..

This brings me to another idea

Now suppose if people got redistributed throughout the maps (using the OP’s idea). This may get confusing, but suppose EB started out at 100vs100vs100. 30 Red’s move to Red BL and another 20 decide to call it a night bringing red’s total down to 50. Green takes 30 of their people and moves them over to say Red’s BL as well, bringing them to 70.

Now if we take the average of the 3 we’d have 60. So using the OP’s idea as the PPT tick to average out the cap, 40 of the Blue’s would then be booted out of EB and re-distributed on other BL’s to even out the numbers as close as possible. Green also loses 10 from EB as well and gets redistributed..

Hmm.. might just work. The only resistance you’d have is guilds wanting to field large groups; however, that can be solved by moving to a lower tier, which by the way is free at the moment so there really isn’t any excuse.

It might just work.

Edit: Aside from reset night, playing in T1, you rarely ever see all 4 maps full at once, so there is room to redistribute players.

I think WvW is fine as is in open field battle (minus the skill lag), but definitely defending needs ton of work to make it both viable and rewarding. I can understand the numbers advantage in open field battle, but the number should be negligible when it comes to defending structures. There needs to be some sort of distinct advantage for being inside the structure and defending it.

I think they could easily do this by just adding a few more upgrades to the structures themselves. Things like:

- New location for cannons out of reach of player attacks and arrow carts from outside the structure. These cannons should have a clear shot at rams.
- Upgrade allowing players standing in the keep and on walls do deal 50% more damage while receiving 50% less damage.
- A not so popular idea i’m sure; an upgrade doubling all siege damage in the structure
- Upgrade making the current champion legendary, then a further upgrade placing a second legendary NPC in the structure
- Upgrade to place NPC’s on siege until players boot them off.

These are just to name a few; things that will have to make the attacking force think long and hard before attacking a specific structure, instead of the Ram spam knock down the door.

A zerg already has an advantage over the small group, in damage and healing, they also don’t need the advantage of resurrecting.

Think of it this way, maybe skill lag would diminish if there were not so many bodies littered on the ground casting skills. Perhaps it’s best to send the player right back to the main wp up on death; no rallying, no resurrecting.

Sure but make them only deployable to a server with the outnumbered buff.

So in essence they do have to be OP compared to other siege and do mass damage. Basically capable of wiping out a large zerg in seconds that isn’t careful.

If enough players join so the outnumbered buff vanishes, so do the cannons.

I think they should either nerf or take out condition damage completely until they take care of skill lag.

Try cleansing a hoard of conditions on you when none of your skills work.. that’s far worse than any zerk build out there, lol.

Like Pho said, I now main an ele and I’ll reserve judgement on this until it’s actually in action.

It’s not hard to forsee the consequences though, those other 4 classes can now run around with an extra 250 power, precision, or toughness while having access to other decent survival/damage ruins. Newsflash as well, we only have 70 points to spend on traits, not 150. Attunements not traited for are next to useless as is.

Personally, I’m not sure what I’m going to do at this point, on paper, it seems either 2 force sigils (if they stack), or possibly sigil of fire and force might do the trick. Realistically though, I’m not sure how this is supposed to compare to say a warrior running the same sigil combo as me with an extra 250 of a stat. Is my earth attunement with 0 points in it really going to be that effective? Not really..

Honestly I think in order to get it through the Pve’ers heads as to how bad of a change this is, take the Ranger, Guardian, Warrior, and Thief, and just reduce their damage and defense by 25% across the board in PvE but leave the Ele and engineer alone. Don’t worry though, you have access to extra sigils to help balance things out.

Actually, this got me thinking, wouldn’t it be cool if we could have weapon and armor skin sets unlocked and tied to our accounts much like dyes are? This being an option instead of keeping hoards of armor/weapons in our stash.

I know this likely isn’t going to happen, but essentially the way it’d work is we’d equip whatever armor/weapon we wanted (for the stat combo) then have a separate tab in the hero panel (like dyes), where we can swap the skins on the fly once we’ve unlocked them.

I suppose the way this could work is once you have whatever item you have, an option to maybe right click and “attach skin” to account or something. Doing so would destroy the item. I think this would be a cool idea, but wishful thinking at the same time due to the transmutation stones.

Then again, I’ve never bought any transmutation stones, i’ve only acquired them through general playing and have enough to transform all my characters 10x over. No need to buy them.

Nobody should be against this; it would go leaps and bounds to eliminating skill lag. Nobody needs to be running around in 50-60 man blobs, it’s completely unnecessary.

The only argument that logically could come forward is it could create astronomical que times. Unfortunately that doesn’t work, transfer to a lower server, many of them are free now to transfer too, problem solved. Guilds don’t need to be running more than 50 people at once in any given map at any given time.

What I would like in addition to something like this though which I think would greatly help is to add 2-3 more maps. Instead of 4 maps, have 6-7 with a cap of 50-60 people on it.

There are so many quick, easy, and simple things to even things out that requires very little effort on their part, so I don’t exactly know why they just don’t go ahead and do it.

Despite what people say or claim, players are greedy in a nutshell, some or many will flood to whatever server they can for the win. Easiest way to stop this, lock down the servers, then announce the season. Now that transfer costs are hopefully where they’ll remain, next season lock the servers down, then announce the tournament.

If they don’t want to do that, do it this way. Create 3 separate matches each week based on time slots: 12am-8am, 8am-4pm, 4pm-12am. Each of those time slots have separate individual scores. Winning that time slot awards you one point; win all 3, you get 3 points. This way coverage no longer matters. Those groups that transfer overseas just to run a muck no longer affect the other time slots. Sure they’ll win whatever one they are in, but as far as the other 2, its open season. The server with the most points at the end of the season wins, simple.

If Anet decides to take that route, as a guild or player, good luck trying to figure out what server will win each time slot given the numbers are probably going to be even. Gone are the days are the attempts to stack on the winning server. I much prefer this route.

Until people get the idea of server pride out of their head, this will be the inevitable demise of WvW. Variations of the OP’s idea has been brought up in the past with good support. The way they are suggesting wouldn’t work though due a concern being brought up on severing the community and splitting players up.

Something to keep in mind to, the reason we might not see many improvements in WvW or even any new maps is because we have no real justification or reason to receive it.

What good would a new map do when the bottom 4 Tiers can’t field enough players to currently fill the maps we have now? Hell, T1 doesn’t even have the populace to field all 4 maps at once. I play in prime time and outside the initial que of maybe 20-30 min, I literally can map hop at will after that.. So why would we need a new map?

The way I see it (unfortunately), is there is not a lot of interest in WvW on the grand scale. The only way people will concretely (IMO) gain more interest in WvW is to break the stale match ups.. aka.. level out the playing field..aka…even out the population. The only way that will happen is if servers merge together, or a variation of the OP’s idea is implemented. Then once Anet see’s WvW has enough interest that it’s filled mostly throughout the day, then we may actually see the goodies we want.