Guild Wars 2

AcFiBu.9624:

So when the ranks become account bound. Say my total rank is 400. does that mean I have 400 points to put into each character, or does it mean I have 400 points to split between all my characters.

It means that you have 400 points for each character and can spend them however you want on each.

sminkiottone.6972:

SIXMO.7042:

sminkiottone.6972:

SIXMO.7042:

the players who have alts is going to get 5 easy ranks for each alt. as a player who doesnt have any alts i want a 10 rank boost scrool. thank you

“All earned World XP on an account will be put into a single pool.

The sum of those points will determine the world rank and World Ability Points available to each character on the account."

;)

i am talking about the first 5 ranks which are easier

Rank WXP required for next rank
1 1000
2 1000
3 1000
4 2000
5+ 5000

Yes I know, they are referring to Wxp, not Wranks, so basically they will take all wxp your characters have made and apply it to your account.

example :

I have 2 char rank 10 = my account will be rank 16 ( not 20 )

Correct, that is exactly how it will work.

Jackie.1829:

While I appreciate the change, it still leaves a bitter taste. This was asked months ago and it was said “we cannot do it”. Why do you lie? Was it because it wasnt possible technologically or because you believed it was the wrong thing to do?

We never said we couldn’t do it. We said we weren’t going to do it. There is a large difference between things that we decide to do for design reasons and thing that are technical constraints. This was the former and was never stated to be the latter.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-xp-and-you/

WXP will be account bound soon.

We agree, hence we are doing it.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-xp-and-you/

Agreed.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/world-xp-and-you/

It is true that the purpose of this thread is to discuss the process moving forward, not to discuss topics or solutions to issues with WvW currently. In looking through this thread and thinking back to the previous thread, it’s pretty clear that the main sticking point with this initiative is interaction or perceived lack thereof from the development team. I think part of that comes down to some of the things you have all mentioned, specifically:

Being more clear about what can and can’t be discussed.
Providing a more focused topic that can be discussed more fully.
More clearly listing out the constraints of the discussion.

Those are things we can do a lot about in the next iteration of the CDI. I’m also curious what your thoughts are on some of the things raised in the PvE thread. Like, do you think it would be more fruitful to discuss a topic that we decide on, or to discuss one that you are all interested in? To be clear, this initiative is about discussion and not necessarily about action. When we find ideas that fit within our scope and the core philosophies of the game we do take them further, but that isn’t the goal of the whole thing, nor should it be the expectation that we will take action on any and all ideas.

As for posting frequency, it is always the case that our first responsibility is to the game and the continued production of the features and content. It can pose a barrier to frequent posting and it is especially true at a time like now, which combines holidays with pretty extensive work to make sure our current work on the Edge of the Mists is proceeding as planned. I can’t promise to be in here every day, but I can promise to remain engaged in the thread as much as can reasonably be expected on top of my other duties running the WvW team.

I hope that you will all continue to engage in this initiative in the spirit it is intended and continue to foster a good discussion about the fundamentals of WvW design.

Devon

Solstice.1097:

Can I ask what you perceive as a bigger problem; giving rewards to those who may not deserve them, or giving no rewards to those who do?

It’s like asking which is worse; letting a criminal go free or convicting an innocent, and I personally agree with the latter.

I say decide what rewards are appropriate, put them in place, and as you start to see the ways in which it can be abused you will much more effectively be able to tweak it to prevent said abuses.

Unfortunately that runs the risk of closing the barn door after the horse gets out. The economy is not something we like to take those sorts of risks on and we wouldn’t be adding rewards until we are more certain of their effects on all of the game.

Jayne is correct, we do want to address this. It’s mostly a matter of having a more reliable system that lets us track when people are doing this things in order to reward them. Currently we are not able to track that well, if at all. Which means we can’t assign rewards to them. We absolutely believe that defending and scouting are critical to success in WvW and want to be doing more to reward them accordingly.

As do we. We will be testing this out in the new map to see how it works, but if that goes well, we will transition the current maps to this model.

I’m going to lock this post for 2 reasons. 1) This topic has been discussed ad infinitum and we have given our reasons for the system as it currently exists. 2) There will be more information about changes to the Wxp system in the next few weeks.

We appreciate the passion you all have for WvW and GW2 and we are doing what we can to align the systems in the game with our core philosophy. We completely agree that there is an inherent lack of alt-friendliness with the system as it is currently set up, which is why we are working on making changes to it. As we have more information to announce about those changes, we will share it with you all.

Tl;dr: We are working on making the Wxp system more alt-friendly and we will have more to share in the coming weeks.

It won’t be until next year. We should begin testing in the map soon and we’ll better be able to provide a timeline as a result of that testing.

Hey all, I’m locking this, a bit late.Thanks for all your input and your feedback. We really appreciate it!

Thank you all for the friendly open discussion and all of the ideas we’ve tossed back and forth. This feedback will be of great value to us as we continue to take WvW forward and grow the game.

There was a lot of discussion about the need for balanced levels of populations on the WvW worlds. We also discussed the need to separate PvE and WvW population in terms of determining transfer costs. That is something that we are very cognizant of and we agree on the basic concept. I think we hit on some good ideas in terms of world transfers as a way to potentially balance out the populations and we have been discussing ways to improve that system.

A number of you touched on the idea of decreasing the map caps in WvW. This is indicative of the complexity of solving this problem because it would certainly help the lower population worlds, but it could have negative effects on the higher population worlds. We’ve been discussing how to deal with this problem and some of the ideas in here are definitely going to help us get to the right answer.

We also got into a discussion about how population affects scoring in the game. I think this is actually a far larger topic of discussion, but we did discuss some things about how we could try to address it. A number of people suggested changes to scoring that are really intriguing and could help us to mitigate some of the impact that pure numbers have at the moment.

We have always felt that WvW is incredibly important to Guild Wars 2 and that improving the game mode is a vital piece in continuing to make Guild Wars 2 the best MMO. The discussion we’ve seen in the Collaborative Development Initiative is a big step towards increasing the communication between us and you all while also getting us all discussing the realities of changes to WvW in the context of the constraints of the game. The public testing of the new Edge of the Mists map will increase the opportunities for the community to be involved in development of WvW at an earlier stage and to see some of your feedback implemented . Thanks so much for participating in this initiative and we look forward to hearing more from you in the future!

Devon

The mini dolyak is inside the chest from the meta achievement.

We don’t discuss population numbers as company policy. The first question is something we are going to be deciding based on the testing we will be doing. It is our initial design that the map is restricted to worlds from the same matchups, but we will evaluate that as we progress through the testing process to determine if that is the best version.

Ebisun.9682:

Zero impact in my opinion. The ppl would transfer on the last day and no problem. But what is the point to punish someone after a transfer? in theory, transfer to a lower server is not anything bad. I think is better to try to encourage ppl to make transfer to less populated servers.

The point is not necessarily to punish people, but more to add an increased cost to transferring. If you are switching worlds to be a spy or because you are bandwagoning, it makes a difference if you can’t play WvW after doing so for some period of time. It may not be worth doing, I was just curious what people thought.

We have made no changes to the drop rates of the Wxp items.

18:00 UTC. You’ll need to convert that to your local time.

titanlectro.5029:

I promise you that Devon is looking at all of these metrics and measurements you are theorizing RIGHT NOW, he just doesn’t share them with you.

This is literally true. We don’t share those numbers as a company policy, but we have them and I am looking at them right now.

If there is a tie, each server will be awarded the rewards for that place. e.g. if NSP and IoJ tie for 8th each will receive 8th place rewards.

Please take this discussion to the following thread, where Bill continues to discuss what we are doing about this problem.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-state-of-skill-lag-and-server-optimizations

Sticking to the lines of transfers, what are reasonable restrictions to place on players after they transfer? No WvW for the rest of the match? No WvW for 24 hours? Would that help any or would it actually exacerbate the problem?

There has been no change to the reset time. It occurs at the same time UTC as it has for the past several months. If your country/county/state/municipality/province/etc. has adjusted due to the end of daylight saving time, that is the reason for a different reset time.

So, if prices for server transfers were based on WvW population, what would a fair distribution of costs look like from the lowest population servers to the highest? Keep in mind that making it completely impossible to transfer to a server puts a burden on other players. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have an incredibly high price, just that completely blocked isn’t an option.

This is a known issue and a fix is in bound before the end of the season. In addition, the achievement was used solely for tracking purposes and it will not affect any of the rewards from the season if you don’t have it unlocked.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to chime in again and say that the discussion around population imbalance and WvW has been really wide-open and interesting. There are some definite things we’ve learned from reading your responses and some really interesting ideas in here as well. The goal of this initiative is to foster discussion about the game and for that discussion to help us make better design decisions in the future. I think there have been some good points raised in this thread and I’ve definitely seen some new ways of looking at the problem. This particular issue is very thorny, which makes it a bit more difficult to wade into the conversation. Population affects so many other areas that it makes it complicated to untangle it and get actionable ideas. We believe that between the studio and the community we can find new ways of looking at the problems that can lead us to great solutions, and we appreciate your taking the time and energy to share your thoughts. Hopefully we can all take WvW and Guild Wars 2 further by being able to work some of these problems out together.

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

Again, this is a good discussion, it’s really important to consider the costs to any action and to remember that our goal is to do the best thing for as many of our players as possible.

I’m going to lock this thread as it is absolutely not the case that this is happening. We’ve investigated it and there is no truth to these claims. It can certainly appear that way, especially if players are not responding to in-game chat, but that is no substitution for our very accurate numbers which indicate this is not happening anywhere.

I’m looking into this right now, but I can’t see any indication that this is actually true. All 3 worlds are capable of having the same number of people on the green borderlands. Baruch Bay in particular, currently has exactly the same number of people in the Green Borderlands as do their 2 opponents. I’m not sure why people are under the impression this is happening, but I can assure you it is not.

ViRiD.2784:

The most obvious solution to me is a timezone-bridging capstone event somewhere on the order occurring every 12 hours that acts as a primary accumulator of points in WvW, and uses the number of controlled nodes as a multiplier for the number of points rewarded such that winning it and denying other servers it is the single most important thing to victory.

As it stands, ticking every 12 minutes for points leaves the mode subject to the most subtle of population fluctuations. Constant 24/7 activity is far too necessary, and the point system would be my first consideration for relieving that.

That’s certainly a different direction. My concern here would be that we put too much emphasis on a very specific time of day. It might be the case that we should try and put more emphasis on specific portions of the day, but the more focused it is, the more you encourage everyone to show up at exactly the same time, which makes the queue worse and just lessens the experience for everyone. I think there is something to the idea of PPT being higher during certain times of day, but it has sort of the opposite problem. That’s the balance we haven’t yet struck, in my opinion.

Madam Pomfrey.4162:

You want to know why? Really? I mean you really expect an answer to that? And suggestions on how to address that have been already provided, but will probably be ignored cause things are already in development anyway.

The way that we try and find answers to the types of problems raised in this thread are by trying to get to the heart of the issue. Saying things like “populations aren’t balanced” doesn’t lead to any productive solutions because they all involve things like drastically redistributing the populations of the game. Finding the core reasons for that like “score momentum is overpowering” allow us to attack the actual problem. What I hope to get out of this is a sense of why people think that the population causes the scoring issues, because that is something we can find a solution to. As part of that it’s important for us to more clearly explain why we’ve made some of the decisions we have made so that we talk about the reasoning behind those and how they’ve been in practice.

These threads are intended to be a discussion about the design of various aspects of the game and how the team and the players view them. Our decision making in terms of what actions we take and what we are already doing have to take a wide range of things into account including available resources. So it was never my intent to imply that we would jump to do the things mentioned in this thread because some aren’t feasible, some require resources we don’t have, and some might already be in progress.

akanibbles.6237:

Allisa Wonderland.8192:

IDEA: auto teamups of the two trailing teams

When leading team score > (2nd + 3rd) / modifier then 2nd and 3rd become automatically allied and/or gain bonuses for attacking the leading team.

I like this idea. Too often the 3rd place team drops off and has no effect on the game other than to stop the 2nd place team be competitive to the 1st place team.

This is an intriguing concept. The original idea behind WvW was that this would happen of its own accord, but I haven’t seen that in practice. I think it could be much more of a part of the game if there were a way to do this. Would it make more sense to provide increased score from this or to increase the individual rewards? I would lean slightly towards the latter. I also wonder if it would work to be really heavy handed about it and actually put the two losing servers on the same team. Of course, that presents numerous problems including score tracking at that juncture. But I would think we can find some sort of system that encourages servers to work together to defeat a bigger server.

Waypoints are being evaluated currently. There will be changes to that aspect of WvW that we look at in the upcoming tests. Based on how that works out, we would then move any of those changes into the live game once they had been tested. We aren’t discussing the specifics just yet, until the test is live.

ferra.9867:

I still think that 24h coverage is the main issue and the solution is to merge american and european servers, so we should have more 24h coverage servers and more fun matchups, at least the golden league servers must have all a 24h coverage.

While an interesting idea, merging EU and NA servers is a technical impossibility. They have to remain separated.

Hey everyone,

I just wanted to provide a little direction here to the discussion. Firstly I want to reiterate Chris’ point in the original post: “2: We will not be disclosing information pertaining to what is currently in development.” I think there are a lot of really intriguing ideas to be found in this thread, but it’s not the purpose of this space for us to discuss what we are or aren’t doing to address the issue. More broadly speaking I wanted to clarify the types of things we take into consideration when we make large changes to WvW. One of the most important aspects of Guild Wars 2 is the spirit of collaboration that we want to foster between players. It’s a core principle behind the event system, the skills in the game, the way we created gathering nodes, etc. Simply put, if a change will cause players to be less inclined to playing with other players, we won’t make it. Changes to WvW that incentivize players to avoid others on the map or that create incentives to have a smaller general population on the map create just that problem. When we look to make changes to WvW we look towards encouraging players to play together, finding ways to empower groups of skilled players to be able to make their mark even against superior numbers, etc. Solutions to the population imbalance would absolutely have to take that into account.

In addition, we don’t release specific numbers in terms of populations, queues, etc. and I can’t comment directly on those statistics. I’d be more curious to know what people think is the reason behind the fact that score is so directly related to the number of people on a server 24/7 and how WvW could be designed differently to address that moving forward. My personal observation is that the momentum you gain from even a small period of having more people online is so large that it can’t be overcome. Which makes me think we need to be doing more to slow that momentum.

Again, this is intended to be a discussion about the design principles, and not a forum for requests for information about current projects or to request specific changes.

Thanks again for the discussion, I hope it continues to progress positively.

Hi all,

I just wanted to let you know that we’ve launched an updated leaderboards page for season one of WvW. You can now track how your world and any other world has performed over the course of the season. The updated page can be found here:
https://leaderboards.guildwars2.com/en/na/wvw

Enjoy!

Devon Carver
WvW Coordinator

We have some thing that will be in the tests for the new map that will help WvW be more alt-friendly. We will talk more about it as we get closer to the test actually beginning.

Zikory.6871:

DevonCarver.5370:

Not yet, but we have a plan and, barring a setback, it will be in before the end of the year. Keep in mind, the solution we are rolling out is just a general solution to make it feasible to make them without running fractals, not necessarily a WvW focused solution.

Can you offer any information on your ideas behind that? Will it be a item that will just replace the fractal item in the mystic forge? Also is it going to be a item that can be obtained through regular game play and not force people to run particular content?

It will be and it will fall in line with the other Ascended crafted gear. I don’t want to talk specifics until we are locked in, but the idea would be that you can relatively easily acquire the item that is replacing the fractal item. You will still be able to use the fractal items as well.

Not yet, but we have a plan and, barring a setback, it will be in before the end of the year. Keep in mind, the solution we are rolling out is just a general solution to make it feasible to make them without running fractals, not necessarily a WvW focused solution.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Official-state-of-skill-lag-and-server-optimizations

Performance is something that is being worked on for the entirety of the game. We are aware of the issues and are in the process of addressing them as rapidly as we can. Please go to the above link to get more detailed information as Bill is really the point person for all of this work right now. While the impacts of performance are quite clear in WvW, it is not isolated to just WvW and we are in the process of making these changes to the entirety of the game. Direct questions and concerns to that post.

There will not be another season this calendar year. The matchmaking post-season will be back to the system before, with some possible tweaks, but it will be essentially the same system.

This is a known issue we are investigating. Thanks for the reports.

Orion is correct, you will need to have done enough damage to the gate to get credit for the achievement.

Queues will be fixed as part of the new map. They will continue to operate as they have since launch until then. The queue does not function as a typical queue and we are fixing it. It will just take some time. It has been a lower priority than the other things we have done and we’ve only now been able to devote the appropriate resources to it.

docMed.7692:

DevonCarver.5370:

docMed.7692:

This new map sounds very cool and I’m excited to learn more about and hopefully be part of the development process!

• edit ** Thought about it more; less-server allegiance doesn’t make sense no matter how much I think it may present an issue for the larger population server. With the seasons enabled though, there certainly will be a population issue an Server A having a much larger pop than Server B/C.

Q: What objectives and/or incentives would be available for Server A on a potentially empty opposition map?

We aren’t quite ready to talk about how we are addressing that, but it is a top-level consideration for the success of the map. It has to be fun when you are the only world and be fun when full of all three worlds. Once the testing begins we’ll talk more about the mechanics we intend to solve that problem.

Sounds good. Seems like a tough thing to balance!

Another Q: Are there time limits regarding the duration of an edge map such as PvP or will each overflow essentially be a persisten server as long as there is some minimum population?

The duration of the map will be less than a full WvW map. We are currently looking at 4 hours per match, but that number is subject to change as the test goes on. The idea is that it has some heft to it, while still being an amount of time that feels reasonable to complete in one sitting. Feedback on this will be crucial to determining the final values.

Thanks for pointing this out. We are working on getting this fixed as quickly as possible.

We wanted to give everyone an understanding of the schedule of the matchups during season one, so we’ll post the EU and NA matchups as they are available. I’ve attached the schedule as images and I’ll post the raw data here for anyone interested in it:

Round 1 10/18 thru 10/25
League Red Blue Green
Gold Piken Square Vizunah Square [FR] Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Jade Sea [FR] Elona Reach [DE] Riverside [DE]
Gold Kodash [DE] Augury Rock [FR] Baruch Bay [SP]
Silver Gandara Desolation Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Miller’s Sound [DE] Gunnar’s Hold Aurora Glad
Silver Underworld Far Shiverpeaks Fort Ranik [FR]
Bronze Ring of Fire Drakkar Lake [DE] Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Arborstone [FR] Ruins of Surmia Blacktide
Bronze Vabbi Whiteside Ridge Fissure of Woe

Round 2 10/25 thru 11/1
League Red Blue Green
Gold Kodash [DE] Elona Reach [DE] Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Piken Square Augury Rock [FR] Riverside [DE]
Gold Jade Sea [FR] Vizunah Square [FR] Baruch Bay [SP]
Silver Underworld Gunnar’s Hold Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Gandara Far Shiverpeaks Aurora Glad
Silver Miller’s Sound [DE] Desolation Fort Ranik [FR]
Bronze Vabbi Ruins of Surmia Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Ring of Fire Whiteside Ridge Blacktide
Bronze Arborstone [FR] Drakkar Lake [DE] Fissure of Woe

Round 3 11/1 thru 11/8
League Red Blue Green
Gold Jade Sea [FR] Augury Rock [FR] Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Kodash [DE] Vizunah Square [FR] Riverside [DE]
Gold Piken Square Elona Reach [DE] Baruch Bay [SP]
Silver Miller’s Sound [DE] Far Shiverpeaks Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Underworld Desolation Aurora Glad
Silver Gandara Gunnar’s Hold Fort Ranik [FR]
Bronze Arborstone [FR] Whiteside Ridge Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Vabbi Drakkar Lake [DE] Blacktide
Bronze Ring of Fire Ruins of Surmia Fissure of Woe

Round 4 11/8 thru 11/15
League Red Blue Green
Gold Kodash [DE] Jade Sea [FR] Piken Square
Gold Augury Rock [FR] Elona Reach [DE] Vizunah Square [FR]
Gold Baruch Bay [SP] Riverside [DE] Seafarer’s Rest
Silver Underworld Miller’s Sound [DE] Gandara
Silver Far Shiverpeaks Gunnar’s Hold Desolation
Silver Fort Ranik [FR] Aurora Glad Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Bronze Vabbi Arborstone [FR] Ring of Fire
Bronze Whiteside Ridge Ruins of Surmia Drakkar Lake [DE]
Bronze Fissure of Woe Blacktide Dzagonur [DE]

Round 5 11/15 thru 11/22
League Red Blue Green
Gold Augury Rock [FR] Jade Sea [FR] Kodash [DE]
Gold Riverside [DE] Piken Square Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Elona Reach [DE] Baruch Bay [SP] Vizunah Square [FR]
Silver Far Shiverpeaks Miller’s Sound [DE] Underworld
Silver Aurora Glad Gandara Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Gunnar’s Hold Fort Ranik [FR] Desolation
Bronze Whiteside Ridge Arborstone [FR] Vabbi
Bronze Blacktide Ring of Fire Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Ruins of Surmia Fissure of Woe Drakkar Lake [DE]

Round 6 11/22 thru 11/29
League Red Blue Green
Gold Jade Sea [FR] Elona Reach [DE] Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Augury Rock [FR] Piken Square Vizunah Square [FR]
Gold Kodash [DE] Baruch Bay [SP] Riverside [DE]
Silver Miller’s Sound [DE] Gunnar’s Hold Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Far Shiverpeaks Gandara Desolation
Silver Underworld Fort Ranik [FR] Aurora Glad
Bronze Arborstone [FR] Ruins of Surmia Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Whiteside Ridge Ring of Fire Drakkar Lake [DE]
Bronze Vabbi Fissure of Woe Blacktide

Round 7 11/29 thru 12/5
League Red Blue Green
Gold Piken Square Vizunah Square [FR] Seafarer’s Rest
Gold Jade Sea [FR] Elona Reach [DE] Riverside [DE]
Gold Kodash [DE] Augury Rock [FR] Baruch Bay [SP]
Silver Gandara Desolation Abaddon’s Mouth [DE]
Silver Miller’s Sound [DE] Gunnar’s Hold Aurora Glad
Silver Underworld Far Shiverpeaks Fort Ranik [FR]
Bronze Ring of Fire Drakkar Lake [DE] Dzagonur [DE]
Bronze Arborstone [FR] Ruins of Surmia Blacktide
Bronze Vabbi Whiteside Ridge Fissure of Woe

Boulderbolg.3460:

Anet has always had the general philosophy that WvW has been designed and geared towards large amounts of players fighting against other large amounts of players. Has this philosophy deviated at all to include small roaming groups, and if so will one of the gameplay objectives of the new map include incentives such as the Bloodlust to promote small roaming group play?

Thank you!

Yes and no. It will be a part of the iteration of the map that we try and make it fun for a small group and a larger one. The nature of some of the objectives should make it more viable for small groups to have things to do that aren’t just capturing towers and keeps.