Guild Wars 2

PressureTested.9341:

How is that a simple fix when it effects everyone that isn’t in YOUR timezone?

You dont get it do you? WvW isn’t about a single person, its meant to be challenging for the server, its not meant to be about the single person, that why you can’t go around solo and capture towers and keeps…
I dont see why your posting about a factor of the game you clearly can’t grasp the concept of being frontier RvR

Godkittendo I have to spell everything out? Is there no common sense to be found in this community?

It’s not about my time-zone. It’s a bloody EU server. The server location dictates what time is considered “standard”. Why even bother with different regional severs if you’re going to argue like that.

Hell, WoW even had East and West Coast servers to cater to the different time-zones.

But hell, we can turn that argument around too you know. Instead of making this about denying the Canadians their shot a WvW why not talk about how 90% of the WvW that happens between the 3 servers turns out to be completely ineffectual for the final results.

Essentially what happens during the rest of the day is completely overshadowed by the nightly dominance. How do you think that affect peoples enjoyment?

If you’d actually bothered to read and follow my argument…which nobody here has really done, then you’d get that this situation has NO WINNERs. It benefits nobody. Read the OP if you need to be told why it benefits no one in the end.

PressureTested.9341:

How is that a simple fix when it effects everyone that isn’t in YOUR timezone?

You dont get it do you? WvW isn’t about a single person, its meant to be challenging for the server, its not meant to be about the single person, that why you can’t go around solo and capture towers and keeps…
I dont see why your posting about a factor of the game you clearly can’t grasp the concept of being frontier RvR

Godkittendo I have to spell everything out? Is there no common sense to be found in this community?

It’s not about my time-zone. It’s a bloody EU server. The server location dictates what time is considered “standard”. Why even bother with different regional severs if you’re going to argue like that.

Hell, WoW even had East and West Coast servers to cater to the different time-zones.

But hell, we can turn that argument around too you know. Instead of making this about denying the Canadians their shot a WvW why not talk about how 90% of the WvW that happens between the 3 servers turns out to be completely ineffectual for the final results.

Essentially what happens during the rest of the day is completely overshadowed by the nightly dominance. How do you think that affect peoples enjoyment?

If you’d actually bothered to read and follow my argument…which nobody here has really done, then you’d get that this situation has NO WINNERs. It benefits nobody. Read the OP if you need to be told why it benefits no one in the end.

PressureTested.9341:

Dee Jay.2460:

PressureTested.9341:

I know its generalized, but its funny how american’s think they are the center on the universe.

Dee Jay, deal with it.

It happens on EVERY mmo with capture points (eve online, daoc, warhammer online)

Take Eve online for an example, alliances recruit from all timezones so they have the player presence to hold systems throughout all time zones.

Start recruiting more people from another time zone to your server…

Just because I dont live in the US (i’m Australian) shouldn’t mean in our peak time, WvW should mean less, I dont think you know how much of a whining idiot your making yourself out to sound. If you cant handle 3 faction 24/7 WvW, get back to your PvE

kittenstop telling me to recruit from other time-zones.

1. I’m on a German server. CET is the only time zone in which German is spoken.

2. I couldn’t care less about winning/losing/WvW performance. But I want my contribution to matter and I care about a fixing a broken system.

3. I don’t run a guild, I don’t play in one that is hugely invested in anything. I don’t recruit people, I don’t form Alliances or whatever. I just play the game.

Well I dont understand what the hell you want to be fixed? your server only get what they put in, do something constructive rather than whine on the forums, and I dont even understand why your doing this if you dont even seem to care about “winning” WvW?

WvWvW isn’t meant to be easy or forgiving, its meant to be end game challenging and against the odds. If you want easy, WvW isn’t for you.

This has nothing to do with being challenging or not. It’s not “hard” or “challenging”. Easy…hard….those words don’t even make any sense in this context.

WvW doesn’t become harder because of night capping. It just screws up the score boards. I don’t die more often, it’s not more challenging….it’s just waking up each morning to realize that the Canadians guys have yet again conquered the entire map while everyone else was asleep. That’s it.

As for a fix, well I’ve said it before (in other threads) and I’ll say it again.

Scale the score system according to peak play time.

Peak hours (5PM to 1AM) – 150% the standard score
Late Night (1AM to 9 AM) – 50% the standard score
Day time (9AM to 5PM) – 100% the standard score

-Minimal impact on game-play. Everyone still gets to do whatever they like, when they like.
-No artificial limits, buffs or NPCs.
-Not really unfair since late night players typically face less resistance.

There a simple, intuitive fix that seamlessly addresses many WvW issues.

What type of content are we talking about? WvW, sPvP, PvE, Dungeons?

That said, Condition Damage really doesn’t have much going for it currently, especially not on Thieves. It just pales next to the damage increase offered by the Crit-based builds.

I agree with your sentiment.

The Thief’s current prowess evolves around a very few selected builds/skill combinations. Nothing else comes close.

Just consider for a moment how popular Sword/Pistol would be without Pistolwhip. How popular would Dagger/Dagger be without backstab?

If the loss of a single ability has such a detrimental effect on a specs popularity then that’s a solid sign that something is broken.

PressureTested.9341:

I know its generalized, but its funny how american’s think they are the center on the universe.

Dee Jay, deal with it.

It happens on EVERY mmo with capture points (eve online, daoc, warhammer online)

Take Eve online for an example, alliances recruit from all timezones so they have the player presence to hold systems throughout all time zones.

Start recruiting more people from another time zone to your server…

Just because I dont live in the US (i’m Australian) shouldn’t mean in our peak time, WvW should mean less, I dont think you know how much of a whining idiot your making yourself out to sound. If you cant handle 3 faction 24/7 WvW, get back to your PvE

1. I’m on a German server. CET is the only time zone in which German is spoken.

2. I couldn’t care less about winning/losing/WvW performance. But I want my contribution to matter and I care about a fixing a broken system.

3. I don’t run a guild, I don’t play in one that is hugely invested in anything. I don’t recruit people, I don’t form Alliances or whatever. I just play the game.

Thalantyr.2856:

There’s really no other word to describe your post but ‘selfish’. I could go and make the exact same post and call it by the same name, but from an Oceanic point of view.

GW2 is a global game, not just a US game. Just because the servers are hosted in NA it doesn’t mean that you suddenly receive all rights to push the rest of the world out of having a bit of fun as well.

We currently have issues of Isle of Janthir, which have been improving quite rapidly, where the Oceanic timezone on our server does quite well each day, with far less players than the other servers have online in WvW, and then we come back the next evening only to find we’ve lost everything we fed all our cash into upgrading, etc.

It’s extremely frustrating, but it hasn’t made us have a cry about it or ask for the game to be changed, it’s made us go out and try to recruit US timezone players as well as EU timezone players to keep our points at a decent level during our low periods. Arenanet has clearly said that there is a certain level of responsibility from the players to organise the servers themselves as they cannot force people to play on specific servers.

You should really think about things from the other side before you decide to whine away.

And so should you. You’re just as selfish as you claim me to be.

1. The thing is, I HAVE thought about the others as I have explained in my post. I can’t read it out to you in person. You will actually have to read it yourself.

2. Nowhere in the OP did I make any suggestion on how to solve the issue. I merely pointed out that it was an issue and one that nobody benefits from (in the long end).

3. The Australian → USA issue isn’t nearly as pronounced as the Quebec → France issue. It’s a big difference between having a population of 20 Mio. spread out over what…two dozen servers or having a population of 8 Mio. congregate to three.

4. They play on those servers because of the language, which is fair enough. But aside from English people summoning Americans no other European country can draw upon a significant player base from a different time-zone.

5. I’m not hugely invested into WvW. But I recognize when something is broken and needs to be fixed. Sure I can sit out the week and hope to be matched vs. English/German/Spanish servers next time round but then the problem won’t go away. It just means the problem moves on to someone else.

So let them fight. Just have it count for less during late hours (or have it count for more during peak hours).

If you’d have bothered to read my post then you’d understand that the current situation (on French servers) isn’t benefiting anyone.

As the server moves up the ladder (which it will based on their scores) the regular day-time players will end up meeting impossible resistance while the Canadians will still be sweeping the map every night, killing 10 times more NPCs than players in the process.

Meanwhile opponents of those servers feel any attempt at victory is futile.

This is a lose/lose/lose situation.

I wouldn’t have a problem with this if they were actually TRYING to do this, if this was a planned strategy. But it’s not. It’s just a happen stance that will end up ruining the fun for everyone involved.

My advice for aspiring PvE Thieves would be:

1. Always have a ranged weapon ready. This applies to all classes really. Melees get gibbed constantly by so much crap it’s unbelievable. 90% of the time you’re better off at ranged. That said, Sword + Pistol does significantly more damage in PvE than any ranged weapon.

2. Know your utility. You should know how to use your utility skills to maximum effect. Know your combo fields and possibly even those of other classes. Know little tricks like where you can pull will Scorpion Wire.

3. Adapt your traits. No need to constantly respec but you can exchange your Major Traits out of combat as much as you like. Use that flexibility to your advantage. If you don’t change a few skills and traits on a regular basis you’re not doing it right.

4. Don’t go all out glass-cannon. Yes, some people will defend using full Berserker gear and damage does have its place. But it’s not all that important. Survivability on the other hand is important. Your gear choices and spec should reflect that.

You’re not the first to suggest this but it’s still a good idea.

This is reflected in the score as you can see.

PS: This is the 2nd French server I’ve fought and it was the same issue there.

That’s a screenshot from late night hours (around 4AM iirc). You can see how drastic the change in power is.

Ok, I would like to discuss an issue that has been a hot topic on these forums. Night capping, ergo enhanced WvW activity during late night hours is ruining the fun for all three parties involved.

Attached below you’ll see a screenshot of our current WvW match taken some during peak hours last night (around 6PM). As you can see, things are fairly even or at least hotly contested. That’s pretty much what you’d expect from WvW.

But once night hours come along, this happens:

The {FR} Servers go from being a competitive force towards becoming an all out dominating force controlling roughly 80% of all bases in WvW.

Why is that seems the obvious question. Do they have sudden influx of skill, is there a guild dedicated to night-capping?

No, well not quite. There’s in fact an entire state (Quebec) that comes to life on french servers at these hours. Where Central European activity starts declining significantly around midnight, the French activity just starts kicking in.

The results are quite staggering. Despite their average PvP performance during the day, the {FR} servers are leading the score board by miles setting themselves way ahead of everyone else. This isn’t because of superior play, but simply because of language preference.

Now the real problem is that such a rating system benefits no body.

1. The French-Canadians don’t get to PvP seriously because there’s hardly anybody left to fight them. They’re left twiddling their thumbs and picking off easy kills. WvW is only fun if you have someone to fight.

2. The French will, based on their overwhelming score, be matched against much stronger servers than actually match their play-style. If they continue to dominate the night hours in such a fashion they’ll find themselves matched against servers that completely dominate them during the day while they hold the night hours when nobody is playing.

3. It makes everything achieved during the day hours feel futile and pointless. Because it is. There is no reasonable way to counter such a huge influx of players during night hours and there’s no way to hold on to your points.
___________________________

While this issue is somewhat mirrored with other nations (Australians playing on US servers) I believe the Quebec -> France connection is an extreme. Their hours correlate very closely with night hours in Europe and there’s a very limited number of French servers so their population is very focused.

I’m not trying to whine about “unfair” WvW situations etc. I’m trying to point out that the current situation benefits no one. It’s not fun for anyone. That’s what this is about.

Edit: Because people can’t think beyond “herpkittenyou’re doing it wrong” and “recruit people from China narf!” I’ll actually have to propose a fix myself:

As for a fix, well I’ve said it before (in other threads) and I’ll say it again.

Scale the score system according to peak play time.
Peak hours (5PM to 1AM) – 150% the standard score
Late Night (1AM to 9 AM) – 50% the standard score
Day time (9AM to 5PM) – 100% the standard score
-Minimal impact on game-play. Everyone still gets to do whatever they like, when they like.
-No artificial limits, buffs or NPCs.
-Not really unfair since late night players typically face less resistance.
There a simple, intuitive fix that seamlessly addresses many WvW issues.

42.000 Karma sounds like a lot when you’ve just hit 80.

But once you start exploring the world, dipping into WvW etc. Karma just keeps coming. Almost everything is rewarded with Karma in GW2. (Except sPvP and Heart Quests)

A single…30 minute event chain in Orr can leave you with a good 1000 Karma.

My advice is DON’T TRY TO ACTIVELY FARM KARMA. Just play the game naturally and you’ll be surprised by how fast it comes in.

Also bear in mind…this game isn’t even a month old an you’re already after the best gear in game.

poe lyfe.5879:

rangers are godkittenannoying enough when i have to climb up to their positions while they shoot me. now you want to give them more range. realism bekittenthis is a balance issue. and if you want to go for realism see how many times you live through someone hitting you with a sword or a fireball.

So because you have issues with Rangers you think it’s ok for elevated positions to be a disadvantage in ranged combat? It doesn’t make sense that anyone would have less range while defending from a wall than they’d have when standing on equal level.

No, not all Canadians, only those that decided to play on European servers (people from Quebec, mainly).

If I, for some reason, chose to play on a US server I would have absolutely NO PROBLEM if my contribution counted for less in the overall score. After all there’s zero challenge in taking keeps when 95% of your opponents population is asleep.

Honestly, I bet most players wouldn’t even notice any change if it wasn’t announced.

I’m not sure what Thief archetypes you guys have been hanging around but the ones I know never even considered wielding an Axe, let alone a Shield.

I do agree that the Thief needs a few more weapon options.

A Sword off-hand is the most common suggestion since we already have it as a main-hand weapon.

Rifle is another popular suggestion assorting it with some sort of “sniper” archetype.

Most other ideas don’t sound very typical of thieves but there’s always room for more.

dkabib.5143:

You gotta understand that it is not a problem. If your server is losing during low pop times and you are really looking forward on being on the top list, you should start searching for guilds that play on low pop times.

You obviously don’t have a clue what you’re talking about and are not playing against servers with a large number of Foreign players.

When the entire GW2 population of Quebec is spread out across the 3 french servers, then these French servers are going to be dominating the entire map all night. I’ve already fought 2 of these servers and there’s no way you can muster up a reasonable counter at 2AM…which is when the large influx of Canadians begins.

That’s why my suggestion makes sense. It wouldn’t impact the play of French Canadians. They could still all do their thing. It should just count for less in the overall score, that’s all. It’s only fair since Canadians aren’t really fighting enemy players most of the time.

It was a pretty stupid idea to put such a complex jumping puzzle into the Eternal Battlegrounds.

This will be a major source of complaints for a long, long, long time to come.

PvP during jumping puzzles is just infuriating. The fact that this also steals queue spots makes it even worse.

Bad idea ANet, bad idea.

Night capping is a popular issue on these boards. It’s especially problematic when French-Canadians (playing on EU servers) and Australians (playing on US servers) enter the fray.

In order to address this issue I propose a simple “fix” that won’t really affect the game-play significantly but will ensure the scores are fairer.

The suggestion is simple, introduce a “score tax” during off hours.

For example:
Between 5PM and 1AM – WvW scores are counted at the standard rate.
Between 1AM and 9AM – WvW scores are counted at 1/3rd the standard rate.
Between 9AM and 5PM – WvW scores are counted at 2/3rd the standard rate.

That way everyone gets to enjoy the game the way it was intended without having to deal with artificial limits. It just makes sure night performance is less influential towards the final score.

It strikes me as an elegant solution to an otherwise complex issue.

Slamz.5376:

• Doors need more health.
• Rams should cost more supplies (dropping 4 rams should be a rare sight).
• Lords and supervisors should have their hit points increased by roughly 20×. No exaggeration. 20x for starters and see how that feels.
• NPC guards should be like Lords are now.
• Guard upgrades, in particular, should be exceedingly nasty. Currently, since regular NPC guards are worthless against more than a small group, the upgrades are not worthwhile.
• Lord room control point: current timer is….15 seconds again? What about if it was 2 minutes? (In Planetside it was either 10 or 15 minutes, I forget.)

By slowing down “zerg caps” and “off-hour caps” I think we’d stabilize the game a lot. Give defenders a chance to respond to attacks.

Currently it’s just way too easy to assemble a zerg and sweep through an area.

I agree with your general sentiment and the problem you’re trying to address. I share the same concerns and have voiced by opinion about it (to little avail) in the past. Keep capping definitely needs to slow down or made harder.

Doors could use more health, but not a huge amount. The problem seems to be more related to stacking of Siege weapons and swarming with regular attacks.

I’d suggest:

1. Further reduce the power of regular attacks vs. a gate. Not by much, but ranged weapons especially should be made less effective. Melees tend to be at a high risk (hot oil) so that risk should be rewarded. In fact, maybe ranged attacks should be completely ineffective against gates. Just a thought…

2. Every Siege weapon places a brief, 2 second boon on the gate that reduces the damage taken by siege weapons by 10%. This would discourage the excessive stacking of siege weapons and reduce their effectiveness without hampering “normal scale” sieges.

As for the rest, I agree with those points wholeheartedly.

The problem is many people seem to enjoy this rug-tug style of WvW. ANets stance is unclear so we’ll have to see if they consider this an issue or not.

Considering you play play WvW with level 1 I think gear disparities are the least of any WvW problem. Anyway, he difference between a rare set (which can be acquired for just a gold or two) and an exotic set isn’t that great.

Badges of Honor are your primary reward currency for killing other players.

How come then that their acquisition seems so completely random? Overall I’d estimate that only about 30% of players killed by me (or enough that I get XP for them) actually drop these badges.

Then again, some players even drop two at once.

Is there some sort of logic regarding the Badges of Honor loot? Is a player only worth them if he/she has lived long enough? Is there any kind of system to it or is it just completely random?

I play a Thief primarily and as such, my preferred weapons for ranged combat is the Short-Bow. It’s a fine weapon for everything except single-target damage.

However, like all of the Thieves ranged weapons, the Short-Bow suffers from an inherent lack of range. This is not too big an issue in most PvE situations but it’s a very frustrating limit in WvW and when shooting from elevated positions.

Because opposite to reality, elevated positions actually reduce the effective range of ranged weapons.

This isn’t only counter-intuitive but also unrealistic and frustrating when defending keeps etc.

Hence I suggest that developers find a way to grant people a significant range bonus when firing from higher ground.

When shooting from a wall, I should be able to hit targets that are further than 6 yards from our wall. Although this is from a Thief POV, I believe many other classes share this issue.

You realize ANet has every intention of selling you Gems/Gold eventually?

Maybe not this month but soon enough they’ll have to make significant amounts of money from the cash shop and Gems/Gold is going to be a big part of that.

Ergo, they have an invested interest in keeping inflation to a bear minimum. That’s why so many things….PvP, Travel etc. seem so expensive.

In an already bursty PvP environment littered with glass cannon build across all specs, Haste does indeed strike me as the pinnacle.

Burst has a place in PvP….but there’s already plenty of that around without such a hefty ability. I’d gladly surrender my Haste ability as a Thief for something more interesting than…“moar burst”.

I have my own issue with WvW ( as seen here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/wuvwuv/Less-Battlefield-more-RvR/first#post222271 ) but I don’t share your concerns.

The lack of reward is debatable. WvW is just another alternate form of achieving exotic gear. It’s highly inefficient (why does only every 3rd or 4th enemy award Badges of Honor?) but still possible.

Character progression is always going to be an issue with GW2 since beyond unlocking skills, there really isn’t any. This will probably be an ongoing debate and isn’t specifically a WvW issue.

As for community building, it’s far too early to say. In fact, I’ve already observed the opposite…at least in its early stages. My realm…so far dissapointed with their WvW performance has already called for guild summits to coordinate WvW events. Once the match-making system has stabilized we will also see cross-server rivalries evolve. Once the big guilds with the big egos start facing off in WvW I’m sure there’ll be plenty of drama.

The downed-state truly is a bane in PvP. It’s far more annoying in sPvP though and only a minor issue on WvW. I’m sure eventually ANet will reconsider a lot of the “downed-state” abilities and make finishing someone more reliable.

Yes, GW2 has potential and it seems to me like you’ve judged it too early.

I just avoid the water, even as a Thief who is OP under water.

I can live with a single underwater point in all the current maps. But the sharks are obnoxious and take ages to kill.

There really should only be 2 sharks. Currently we have…what?….4 or 5? That’s just insane.

I remember something similar about the Windows Media Player improving WoW’s performance while running in the background.

Software is weird.

Outside the occasional disconnect due to some weird error code, GW2 performs as expected.

That is, until roughly 6PM. Then the lag-spikes start hitting every T-Online user I’ve spoken to in game (T-Online is Germany’s largest ISP). These lags seem to be independent of bandwidth (it affect people in my guild from 3Mbit to 50Mbit).

There seems to be some sort of software conflict between T-Online and Guild Wars 2 in the way it handles traffic. I’m not sure what, but this really needs to be looked into. After all this is the biggest ISP in Europe’s biggest Guild Wars 2 fanbase we’re talking about here.

The comments were very telling.

Be it fair or not, PvP players will never respect somebody who clicks unless he does it because of some disability.

I know it’s stupid to judge somebody because of such a superficiality but that’s just the way it is. I simply wouldn’t recommend making a video unless you keybind.

Also, the quality of the recording was pretty low. No widescreen and poor resolution.

It’s good to see that the developers themselves (or at least one of them) is a decent player and plays on live servers. I always felt the WoW crew at Blizzard became increasingly disconnected from the game over time.

Theorizing is fine and all but still totally different from actually playing.

Sleaze.3748:

I’m shocked a thief needs to ask this. Just mark the Mesmer before he gets clones up. His clones also dont have off hand weapons or buff and debuff icons. Dodge or stealth if you see a phantasm animation. Then haste steal and spam pistol whip like every other thief.

This is actually useful info (the part about the buff/condition bar).

The OP on the other hand just wasted everyone’s time by promising to tell us how to beat Mesmers…which he didn’t.

The video is still from Beta. Beta Weekend 2 I believe and thus isn’t up to date. It’s also terrible advice because it really doesn’t help or explain anything.

Alarox.4590:

1.) If you have every single person on one map, it’s going to be a massive mess. Splitting the maps automatically does what you normally would have to do in a giant map: split your forces and assign different leaders. Splitting the maps does both automatically. It also means the chat system is actually usable and isn’t a colossal spam fest.

I agree it would be nice to have one huge battlefield, but from a practical standpoint this is superior. However, there is normally 2 fronts in each battle, and you have smaller groups going out, so it does still maintain that feeling you’re talking about.

2.) This depends on the map and situation. In some cases you do have plenty of warning, in others you don’t. However, defenders normally have the advantage in almost every way. This gives the attackers one advantage: initiative. If you want to know the enemy’s movement, you have to make informed assumptions or have people scout.

3.) I agree this could be improved.

4.) If you don’t defend a keep, it should fall relatively quickly. That being said, most matches thus far have been VERY short. In the last week-long match, things changed. Most structures had the time taken to be built up and fortified, essentially doubling the time it takes to sieze them.

The fundamental aspect of defense in Guild Wars 2 is building it up, and actually having players there to defend. It seems your complaint is that the basic defenses are too low, but Guild Wars 2 is designed that way on purpose. The basic defenses are relatively low, but when you have fortification and player defense they can last for hours, and hours.

1. I don’t see why having everyone of 1 map would be so much more messy than otherwise. And adding a message limit to the chat line would easily fix any spamming issue. Currently anything you achieve on one map can be rendered obsolete by what is going on on the other other maps. You mustered a huge force to take keep and it worked? Well in that time you lost three keeps elsewhere. So nothing has been gained. And since you can’t transition between maps freely…it makes everything feel disjointed (because it is disjointed).

2. You’re not really arguing about the objective density (too many objectives too close together) but about defense. Those are two different things. But even so, you chose to ignore the supply depots which will fall to any 3 man group, regardless of how many upgrades you invest. Defense isn’t just about keeps, but every objective in game.

4. Well we obviously disagree on that. In order to give defenders enough time to react, a tower shouldn’t fall in less than 5 minutes. And currently that’s the case.
My concern isn’t directly about the base-defenses. My general issue is that objectives, be it supply depots, towers or keeps exchange hands too quickly and frequently. Natural defenses factor into that equation, but are only a part of it. Useless keep lords and NPCs, easily destroyable defense weapons, rapid movement across maps etc. all contribute to this.

It’s probably still a little too soon to fairlykitten the situation but given the prevalence of glass cannon builds, the high demand for Berserker and Rage gear and the respective damage output, I believe the OP is right.

Some classes at least seem to benefit significantly more from stacking offensive stats than they do from going defensive. The only class I’ve seen where defensive stacking really pays off in PvP is a Guardian. Defensive Warriors seem to live longer, but without being able to kill their attacker.

Dodge already adds a certain base-line survivability to every class and some classes like Thieves have complementary utility.

As a Thief, stacking defensive stats isn’t nearly as effective as going full glass cannon.

Going glass cannon roughly triples your damage output compared to a defensive build while all the defensive build is really good for is capping flags and harassing.

The bleed limit is just part of the problem.

The fact that such a limited number of attacks add condition damage is far more detrimental. That and you are almost “forced” to use venoms to get the most out of condition damage builds.

Regular attacks go through the gate as well. I’ve spammed quite a few Pistol Whips that way resulting in some impressive numbers.

So what to do?

About 1. – Well this is the least fixable issue and I doubt it will ever be changed (for whatever reasons). Maybe an expansion pack will able to feature a reworked WvW zone all within a single zone. That alone would be a huge improvement to WvW, not only in terms of game-play but also in strengthening the server community.

About 2. – This is an issue every map designer faces and arguments can go in both directions. While it‘s tempting to litter a map with objectives and claim it adds „choice“, it also comes at the cost of „focus“. Give players too many objectives to chose from and the game becomes a lot more about running from A to B and on to C than it does about actual fighting your enemy. But if you don‘t add enough choices, it just becomes a huge turtle-fest/stalemate. However thankfully there is a sweet spot to be found from a game-design POV and that is 3. In a two-faction battle there should (ideally) always be three possible points of contest. It provides the ideal balance of choice vs. focus. Since WvW is a 3 faction contest though, it should be expanded to 5. What that means is that at any given moment in WvW there shouldn‘t be more than 5 simultaneously contested objectives. Some games have achieved this by „locking“ objectives that weren‘t currently contested. This may be an option for WvW or ANet could simply reduce the number of objectives.

About 3. – Currently WvW knows 2 different types of NPCs. „Easily killable by one player“ and „requires a handful of players“. Essentially no NPC, or even groups thereof, are ever a threat to a group of 5 players. This may be OK for minor objectives like supply camps, but it really „cheapens“ larger objectives like keeps and towers. Ideally a tower lord should require a minimum of 5 players to take down and a keep lord should require at least 10. This would require them to have real encounter mechanics however, which a lot of elite and champion mobs seem to be lacking. That said, WvW would benefit from having slightly less mobs and NPC littered through the place. More class, less mass.

About 4. – This somewhat ties into the previous point. If keep-lord encounters took significantly more effort that alone would increase the cap time for keeps by a meaningful margin. But even the actual cap-time needs to be increased drastically, relative to the strategical value of the objective. For example, a supply camp should require about 1 minute to cap, a tower roughly 2 minutes and a keep 5 minutes of holding the circle. Stone Mist may even require 10 minutes just to underline the importance of it. Not only does this slow down the rate at which objectives exchange hands, it also gives defenders more time to rally.

Anyway, I know most of you are going to say “WvW is fine” etc. etc. and I’m inclined to agree. It is “fine”, but it could be better (at least in my opinion).

Currently WvW in Guild Wars 2 resembles games like Battlefield 3 more in terms of pacing and play-style and sense of accomplishment than it resembles RvR in DAoC.

This different, faster, more tactical, less strategic game-play might appeal to some (and that‘s fine) but it doesn‘t to me and those who had hoped for a more epic and meaningful experience. I can‘t say for sure what type of play-style ANet was aiming for, but I‘ll go ahead and list the top issues which are holding WvW back from my point of view.

1. The 4 „different“ maps – I understand the splitting into 4 maps was probably done due to technical constraints. And that‘s unlikely to ever change. And yet this issue alone is the single biggest reason why WvW feels so disjointed and meaningless and thus more akin to Battlefield than RvR. There‘s no sense of a „united front“ when every map is fighting their own battles and it’s hard to foster a community when combat is so disjointed.

2. Objective density – The WvW maps are littered with objectives. Close to 50 in total across all four maps. Given the relative size of the maps, it means that the next objective is usually less than a minute travel-time away. This makes it extremely difficult to react to enemy movement. Defending is difficult/unpopular because it takes longer to react to an „inc“ than it does for a zerg to make up its mind and tear down some walls.

3. Over-reliance on NPCs as a mechanism – Many upgrades and mechanics in WvW involve NPCs, commonly as patrols or guards. However, while they might prohibit a single player from capping points all too easily they are absolutely useless once 3 or more players are involved. This may be by design, but considering the amount of upgrades focused around them, I don‘t think this is intentional. NPCs tend to be either total pushovers, or over-powered bosses that require zergs. Finding a middle ground is difficult in every MMO but GW2 really falls short in this regard.

4. Capping speed- Seizing a keep that is being defended does truly require some effort and coordination. But without significant defenses, any keep can fall in a matter of minutes. No wonder nobodies likes investing into upgrades, especially into supply bases, because they are capped too easily. This also encourages the „zerg from A to B to C“ type game-play that is prevalent in WvW.

TSLlol.4879:

I agree that the range should be upped to 1200, I’ve thinking about this for days and I can’t come up with a logical conclusion why we’re locked to only 900! It’s insane.

Yeah, the more WvW I play the more annoying it gets. I mean somebody has to be standing almost right underneath the wall in order to hit them.

WTB more range on the short-bow.

NPC are a terrible mechanism to balance players. They are very ineffective at anything that isn’t scripted. Attempting to balance WvW also goes against a lot of the original concept.

My suggestion would simply be that the score counter counts a lot slower at night.

So while you might get 100% of your score during the day, you only get 50% (or less) at night. You could also say capping takes twice as long, although I doubt it would change much.

Maybe even expand it as follows:

100% score between 9AM and 5PM
150% score between 5PM and 1AM
50% score between 1 AM and 9 AM

That way everyone gets to enjoy WvW, it just counts for more during the peak hours.

I don’t necessarily agree with the need for a reward. You get badges (although fairly inconsistently) that allows you to purchase gear. That’s roughly as rewarding as every other activity in game.

But I agree with the overall sense of “meaninglessness” in WvW.

Capturing an objective, even Stormmist, doesn’t feel hugely meaningful because you know that the whole map will change as soon as you log out.

Hell, I’ve gone afk for 10 minutes and by the time I go back 3 bases had changed hands again.

The general “speed” of WvW brings other problems with it.

Who would invest money into upgrading supply camps, if 2-3 people will easily dispatch a camp in a matter of minutes. Capping stuff is just way too easy/quick, meaning any investment you make is effectively wasted 99% of the time.

Then there’s no structure. Camps and keeps get capped “behind you lines” every minute, because roaming is very free (which in general, is a good thing). But WvW needs structure.

You need to limit the amount of options a fraction has at any given moment to roughly 3. Otherwise defending will rarely occur. It’s just way too easy for multiple zergs to run circles around the maps capping various keeps and camps…only to lose them again minutes later.

I guess some people will argue against it as they might enjoy the fast yet pointless pace of WvW. But I hope and believe ANet hat a more strategic play-style in mind when conceptualizing the game.

This might seem like an odd observation, but it’s certainly noticeable and has quite an impact on play.

For some reason, many of the Thief Shirt-Bow abilities, mainly Disabling shot and Infiltrator arrow seem to suffer from major lag…and actually cause brief…stuttering. I don’t get this when using other weapons and haven’t seen it occur with other classes either.

I do suffer from occasional lag-spikes, especially during the peak hours between 6PM and 10PM, which I assume are due to heavy server loads. This may be connected but doesn’t explain why it would affect the short-bow abilities so much more than any others.

I also tend to run the game @60 FPS most of the time and haven’t experienced many client-side issues outside of the occasional disconnect.

I will mention though that I’ve been forcing the game to run using port 80, instead of the standard port due to a disconnect issue that plagued me in the past.

Client hardware: Win 7 – 64 bit
8GB DDR-1600 RAM
256 GB Samsung 830 SSD
Radeon HD 7850
i5 – 3540

I’m not sure if “weak” is the right word. After all Pistols are ranged, which in itself is a huge advantage, and the single-target damage is decent.

They do lack a bit of utility and debuffs though and unlike the short-bow, don’t really have anything setting them apart.

No, it’s right to complain about such burst damage. Those posters above clearly don’t know about the CnD + Steal combo which instantly shadowsteps you to the target and cloaks you. There’s no avoiding that burst damage, especially not when combined with Basilisk Venom and the + damage Singet.

I can’t justify such damage. All I can say is that there seems to be a clear discrepancy between the power of offensive stats vs. the power of defensive ones.

Ergo, Toughness especially doesn’t seem to do enough to mitigate the insane damage boosts provided by the other stats.

So, I’ve been playing various Thief builds since the game launched.

A Condition Damage build (which in retrospect was pretty subpar).
A glass cannon – backstab build (mainly in sPvP)
A balanced Pistol Whip build (which I’ve mainly used to PvE).

and some others for a shorter duration of time.

As a side weapon I’m always using the short-bow btw.

Now overall, while Pistol Whip is certainly effective in PvE…and to an extent in PvP…I’m finding the lame play-style and the self-root to be getting rather tedious. I’m also not convinced it’s really all that great in WvW since there’s so much moving around.

On the other hand going full D/D assassin style requires something very close to a glass cannon build…which may…or may not be all that awesome.

And then there’s the issue of respeccing….which I’d hate to do for every dungeon crawl.

So what do you for in a solid WvW build?

Orr isn’t the only zone that suffers from this, they all do, although with some it’s more noticeable than others.

Dynamic combat + insane mob density + insane mob respawn rate = a huge amount of unnecessary frustration.

This really has to be addressed asap. Under no circumstances are sub 30-seconds respawn timers acceptable.

Rieselle.5079:

OP: It sounds like you want the WvW to be a bit more “realistic” or “plausible” seeming, and less “game-like.”

You make comments like wanting asymmetrical maps, for the different maps to link together into an overall objective, for sieges to feel like they last a long time, etc.

That’s good in its own way, but GW2 doesn’t look like it’s trying for that. Instead, it’s aiming for exactly what you describe – An RPG Battlefield 3 minus vehicles.

It’s a shame that’s not to your tastes, but you have to admit it’s a perfectly valid and popular design choice. They wanted something a bit more game/esport-like rather than something simulation-like.
(Personally, I tend to prefer simulation-like myself as well, but I can see most competitive players prefer symmetrical maps, fast objectives, etc.)

Even after adding another 10 hours to my playtime, I still feel very much the same way about RvR.

You might be right that the Battlefield feeling is popular, but I’m not sold that this is what the designers were setting out for. I do believe they were very much inspired by RvR in DAoC and aimed to recapture that feeling. I also recall them coming out and saying just that.

And yes, I’ve played “coordinated” on TS/Vent and all that, nothing of which fundamentally changes the experience.

The reason why I believe ANet was not really aiming for this “fast-pace RvR” is because of what players have to invest in order to achieve anything.

-Very limited respawn points meaning dead players are out of combat for a while.
-Player Gold invested into upgrades and weapons. (If you’re investing significant portions of your earning into something, you want it to be a meaningful and lasting investment.)
-Coordination required to build siege equipment.
-Team-play for long distance bombardment.
-Supply system and supply lines.
-etc.

All this implies that they were aiming for a “slower pace” type of WvW.

But then we have:
-medium sized maps
-littered with objectives, often less than 1 minute apart.
-point capture in a matter of seconds (something like 10-15 seconds).
-easily zergable NPCs etc.

and all that results in a faster pace.

I believe things would be a lot more strategic if the 4 maps were combined into one, and meaningful objectives were fewer and father between. I mean currently there’s over 50 objectives to fight over across the 4 different maps. No wonder there’s so much give and take.

Shintai.5618:

Its like Anet got extremely lazy when making the WvW zones.

I wouldn’t call it lazy, but rather technical limitations.

For some reason, the GW2 engine can only display a limited number of things at once. Hence we have disconnected zones, each with its own loading screen, unlike WoW, which could load an entire continent at once.

The same applies to WvW. Considering the amount of detail, the size of the map was always going to be limited. They must have realized that this map-size wasn’t going to suffice for entertaining more than 100 or so players per fraction, so they added the Borderlands maps.

Also, more than other MMOs, GW2 requires a solid FPS and lag-free environment in order to be played correctly. Another reason to reduce the taxation of client systems to a bare minimum.

I pointed out the very same design flaw itt: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/thief/Thief-fundamental-design-flaws/first#post150525

I think the concept behind initiative is that we’re supposed to chose between damage and utility.

But most of our utility skills don’t actually require initiative. Initiative is only required for our 5 (10) damage attacks….and there we’ll always go with the most efficient.

A more logical solution would be to reduce the cost of the 1-5 abilities slightly, but add a cost to the 6-10 abilities.

That way you actually have to chose between damage and utility.