Orbs will never come back in the form they had as they simply were too easy to hack around. With that said, we are definitely working on finding a suitable replacement for the best parts of the orbs, while avoiding as many of the downsides as we can. It’s not simple task though, so it isn’t as simple as deciding to do it one day and finishing it the next. Our goal is to get a new and improved version out when we can, but we can’t say yet when that will be.
Upgrading the commander system and UI is on our goal list. It’s a complicated task, requiring lots of resources however, which means it isn’t going to happen overnight. Believe me though, I find our commander system almost entirely lacking in useful functionality.
Lots of potential opportunities for griefing with fireworks unfortunately. Makes sense to not have them in there.
This is the ultimate reason for it. If we could do it in a way that wouldn’t adversely impact the gameplay of others, we would, but it’s not possible at the current time. Hopefully we can find a way to do it in the future, but for now you can’t use them in WvW for that very reason.
I don’t quite get it… They are the exact same fireworks as the original ones. Why allow one and not the other? The only reason I can imagine is that the dragon bash ones are “easier” to obtain.
And to be honest, anything can be used to grief. Might as well ban siege weapons, or transformation tonics. Or what about the most obvious, the emotes? I’m pretty sure people would grief with emotes a lot more than with fireworks.
We did some internal testing with these and you can definitely detect lowered framerates the more of these you see in an area. If you follow the pretty obvious logical train there, people will use them to adversely affect the experience of other players, intentionally. I’d love to allow all this stuff to work in WvW, but sometimes we have to take a heavy hand to stop people from being jerks to each other.
Lots of potential opportunities for griefing with fireworks unfortunately. Makes sense to not have them in there.
This is the ultimate reason for it. If we could do it in a way that wouldn’t adversely impact the gameplay of others, we would, but it’s not possible at the current time. Hopefully we can find a way to do it in the future, but for now you can’t use them in WvW for that very reason.
We would like to have a system that rewards servers at the end of a matchup based on their performance and are working out all we’ll need to do to make that happen. Ideally it will give extra rewards for winning while still rewarding everyone for participating. All that being said, it’s hard to know what form the final version will take. Hopefully we’ll have something to get everyone excited to fight for victory.
It is intentional. I believe it resets at midnight UTC, but I’m not sure about that. It is the case that you can loot the chests 1 time per day per account, not per 24 hours. So if you log on right before the reset, it should work fine.
Unfortunately, it appears the respec didn’t go into effect yet. We are working on sorting out why, but as soon as possible, you will have your points reset. Apologies for the confusion.
As part of the most recent build, we’ve made a change to the range of arrow cart skills granted by Arrow Cart Mastery. As we made a change to something that people spent their world ability points on, we felt it was only fair to also include a reset of world ability points so everyone could decide for themselves if they wanted to keep them where they had been. Every character with any amount of points spent has had them all refunded. This is a one-time reset.
One up and one down solves some problems but creates a bunch more. Including that it invalidates ratings entirely. It no longer takes into account quality of victory but simply uses the fact of victory to move a server out of the matchup they were previously in. The system we are using now creates varied matchups, which will allow us to get more accurate ratings. As those become more accurate we can dial down on the amount of variance we are introducing to have matchups that are varied, but less prone to large rating gaps between the servers. But, again, this is entirely based on server rating, which is the thing we have actually been calculating this entire time. Until that number is a more accurate reflection of server quality, we are going to keep mixing the matchups up.
The concept of tiers has little meaning at this point and you should try to stop thinking of matchups in those terms. Servers are matched up by proximity of rating, not proximity of “tier”. If the tiers have ratings that are within the range of the random adjustment, they can end up fighting each other. This is going to result in blowouts, no doubt about it. However, we are not going to make changes to this after just 2 weeks of the system. There are things we can do. We will almost certainly end up adjusting the total added to each server rating to group the matchups a little more closely. First however, we need to let the ratings adjust by having more varied matchups like these. If you look at EU, which is using the exact same system, you can see matchups with numerous surprising results. The same will likely be true by the end of the NA matchup.
TL;DR: We are going to wait at least a couple more weeks before changing any of the math behind the new system, but it is very likely we’ll decrease the size of the variation at some point.
The concept of tiers doesn’t relate to how the matchups are generated. They are generated based on server ranking. While 1 tier may be next to another, they may have a significant gap in rating or they may have an insignificant gap. That is how the matchups are rolled. If the servers are rated close enough to each other, they can end up matched up against one another.
The matchups are not actually calculated until the reset, so we are currently unable to provide info about them until they start. We’ll definitely look into a way to try and get the information out ahead of time, but it’s complicated.
To Devon Carter – on behalf of my guild The Unlikely Plan [TUP] on Aurora Glade EU, we cordially invite you to join us for a raid. On the 14th June we are combining our two favourite pastimes, drinking while gaming. We will be having a drinking warband for the reset of the 14th June – our own drinking rules apply! You are most welcome to attend, heck even try your hand at the helm, you can lead the raid for the evening. With 20-30 loyal die hard misfits at your command, combined with copious drinking, you can’t go wrong.
Gotta say, you had me at drinking, but you lost me at Devon Carter. It’s Carver, man! I can’t make any commitments, unfortunately, but I will say this much. Aurora Glade should keep their eyes peeled for some Anet assistance in the coming weeks. Likely on a Thursday.
This scenario has been happening in T9 in EU for months now. This new matchup system should cause more rotation in and out of T9 than previously occurred. The real issue here is that Fissure of Woe and Vabbi are usually facing this sort of problem.
EU
Matchup Green Blue Red
1 Vizunah Square Jade Sea Elona Reach
2 Desolation Kodash Seafarer’s Rest
3 Augury Rock Abaddon’s Mouth Baruch Bay
4 Riverside Piken Square Gunnar’s Hold
5 Underworld Ruins of Surmia Fort Ranik
6 Drakkar Lake Miller’s Sound Aurora Glade
7 Arborstone Far Shiverpeaks Gandara
8 Whiteside Ridge Dzagonur Blacktide
9 Ring of Fire Fissure of Woe Vabbi
NA
Matchup Green Blue Red
1 Jade Quarry Blackgate Sanctum of Rall
2 Fort Aspenwood Tarnished Coast Sea of Sorrows
3 Dragonbrand Maguuma Stormbluff Isle
4 Kaineng Yak’s Bend Crystal Desert
5 Borlis Pass Ehmry Bay Anvil Rock
6 Darkhaven Gate of Madness Northern Shiverpeaks
7 Devona’s Rest Isle of Janthir Ferguson’s Crossing
8 Sorrow’s Furnace Eredon Terrace Henge of Denravi
The new matchup code didn’t make it all the way to where it needed. We have addressed that and restarted WvW. The new matchup will be there on restart. Sorry again for the inconvenience.
After much back and forth we’ve managed to get the matchup changes in starting today 5/31. What we were unable to get ready for today were changes to the leaderboards which would have made it easy to sort by matchup, thus the leaderboards will continue to display your server ranking, but will not have sufficient information for you to be able to determine your matchups on that page. We will get them updated as soon as we can, but in the meantime you will be put into new, more varied matchups starting today and going forward. I will, hopefully, be able to post the new matchups here when they go live so at the least everyone can have some idea of what they are.
Okay, so after much hard work and no small amount of wizardry we are going to get this in for today. We were unable to get the leaderboards fully set up to indicate the matchups, so there will be a disconnect there, but you will see your matchups once you log in.
Okay, so after much hard work and no small amount of wizardry we are going to get this in for today. We were unable to get the leaderboards fully set up to indicate the matchups, so there will be a disconnect there, but you will see your matchups once you log in.
Just wanted to drop by to say we had fun running around with you guys yesterday, even when we stumbled into a GvG match and started fighting. It was good fun!
We are still going to implement the changes as detailed in the post from Jordan, we just have to sit on them a bit to make sure there are no errors anywhere before we put them live. Sorry for the delay, but they’ll be here as quickly as we can manage.
Even with the best intentions, everything does not always go as planned. We had hoped to get the changes in for today’s reset, but it simply was not feasible to do so with the confidence that nothing was amiss. I completely agree with the criticism about having announced the plan and then having to change it, that’s my fault and something I shouldn’t have done. This system is still inbound and I’m fighting as hard as I can to make sure it gets in as soon as humanly possible. There are, however, a lot of moving parts to any change like this and we have to make as sure as possible that none of those parts are going to fail. I share your disappointment as I am very excited to get this change out to all of you and wish we could have done it today.
We were hoping to roll out the new matchup system for the next matchups but unfortunately we ran into a few snags. We are working hard to get everything working 100% correctly and tested and should be able to start the new matchups once we’ve checked everything. I’ll make sure to be back to let you all know as far ahead of time as I can. My apologies for the inconvenience.
We’ve identified the problem with retaliation and are getting a fix in so that it will function as intended on all the maps. When it is fixed it will be mentioned in the release notes for that build.
We included the laurel cost to prevent the economy from suddenly being blown out and to not invalidate the ways PvE players can get ascended items already. This system means that it is faster to get them in WvW, especially for players who already have badges, without being so much faster that everyone only gets them in this manner. As for the difficulty of acquiring laurels in WvW, we have taken steps to address that, including the fact that there will always be 3 daily achievements that are WvW specific. Speaking personally, I’ve been able to achieve my dailies in WvW even without that change, but this should make it even easier.
Well WvW is PvP (I hope), and pvp is in fact killing other players.
So indeed I think killing players should be rewarded more than any other thing.
I hope you are meaning the way in which you kill those players.
We should absolutely try to penalize somehow the zergy gameplay while incentive the medium and small scale pvp.
Am I wrong with this assumption?
WvW is about more than just PvP. Winning in WvW requires people building things, repairing walls, scouting, escorting dolyaks, etc. We want to continue to improve the rewards for doing those things as they facilitate the rest of your server capturing locations and killing foes. If you are helping to win the match, we want you to see rewards for that.
We have identified the source of a crash many players have been experiencing in WvW and are in the process of fixing it. As soon as it can be released, we will do so.
The build next week will be adjusting these times. To preempt our own release notes, all siege will now be 1 hour, with the exception of flame rams which will be 15 minutes. This should help and we will continue to evaluate these numbers as necessary.
Hey everyone, I just wanted to give an update on this. We’ve identified the issue that has been causing the disconnects and we are in the process of getting a fix in. As soon as it can be safely released, we will do so.
We agree that the rate is simply too slow right now and the build next week will make some major adjustments to that. And we will continue to analyze the data after that and make more changes as necessary. In addition we will be continuing to find ways to reward players who are doing more than just running around and killing other players.
Question: Will these reward chests for ranks be given for people who already have Ranks? For example will a Rank 60 player receive 60 chests?
There will be a system for rewarding players who have already gained ranks. The way it will work is you will have a backlog of 60 chests, if you were at rank 61, and for each rank you achieve after that you will get 2 chests, instead of 1, until you’ve received all 60 of your backlog. These bonus chests should be available for every player who has gained rank prior to the build.
We’ll have a blog post going out before the release that walks you through every detail of how it works with examples. The goal is to get you more variety in match ups, while avoiding match ups against worlds way outside of your current tier so it’s not too crazy.
What Colin said. This is a complicated enough change that we can’t explain it in a little blurb like that. So hopefully the blog post will make it all clear.
you’ll never be able to buy ascended items for badges.
1) badges are kitten easy to get on high tiers, this is so you can buy lots of siege.
2) waaaay too many people are stuffed senseless with badges and are too selfish too buy lots of siege and want rewards for themselves, aka ascended items.
It’s not ever going to happen, and you can quote me on it
Just fulfilling my obligations here. Costs and more info will be out with the patch notes. Enjoy!
