Guild Wars 2

At least until they are nerfed…

And just think, with a little more practice, you can take advantage of the stealth bug (exploit?) like many other thieves. That way, no one sees you doing damage as you come unstealth, do damage and time it just right so that you re-enter stealth a few brief moments after you render on high-end machines (would hate to think what it is like on low-end machines).

So perhaps ANet needs to pull Win7 32 bit off of their supported list… or perhaps maybe institute better memory management? I don’t need all of Lion’s Arch’s crap while I am in WvW…. jez sayin.

I wanted to chime in about this bug. It may have been bugged in that the duration between becoming available to port in and not was longer than normal. But it should be public knowledge that a keep can be ported to once the defense quest ends. When it ends there is a small (usually) window where you can port to the keep. Then it becomes contested again. AFAIK, this is as intended.

Mmm…. yes, that is a very huge over simplification. On the same token… I could say that a D/D thief does the same stuff a P/P thief does. I mean, they do damage and other stuff. That’s just the simplification.

But at the meat of the matter, you do different kinds of “stuff” better in some builds than others. S/D is better for stay ranged from your target vs. D/D while staff beats S/D. /D is for certain purposes while /F is for other types of purposes. The kinds of conditions you can apply and how often you can apply them, all change.

That’s where I’m calling you incorrect. Of course, this all revolves around your definition of “style”. But, eh. Whatever.

Whirlpool is our version of Dagger Storm or whatever else these other classes have that does massive AOE damage, stuns, stability, and all the rest…

To combat it, you do pure damage (that doesn’t reflect in some cases)… this forces the person using the ability to break out of that ability and use a heal or something.

As much as I enjoy GW2, spending tons of cash for a new CPU and OS… not what I had in mind.

Perhaps a change in code for limiting data?

Would reducing my page file make a difference?

@Carrioncrow – Then you need to play your ele more as you are drastically incorrect.

In PvE, Power. Cond Dmg is limited in group fights so your usefulness in vet and champ fights will be diminished.

pandemos.3497:

Levels help to ease people into their skillsets and gate content. Even the most open sandbox games use different mechanisms to help direct players… levels or not.

QFT – this is the real reason. You could get rid of levels but then certain player types (ref http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bartle_Test) will find the game completely unappealing because of a lack of direction.

Oh, and on a similar note, the auto-detected settings put my Textures to High even though when I go into it now, High is not an option. I originally thought this may have been the issue (different reports of memory available or an issue with shared surfaces). So I set it to Medium. But I did that on release day.

Certainly.

My in-game settings are:
Res: 1920×1200 (fs)
Refresh: Default
Frame Limiter: Unlimited
Interface Size: Normal
Gamma: 1.00
Animation: Medium
Anti-Aliasing: FXAA
Environment: High
LOD Distance: High
Reflections: Terrain & Sky
Textures: Medium
Render Sampling: Native
Shadows: Medium
Shaders: High
Post-Processing: High

Best Texture Filtering
Depth Blur

FPS in Lion’s Arch: 50-60 in center

Also, for reference, from my dxdiag:

Processor: Intel® Core™2 Quad CPU Q9450 @ 2.66GHz (4 CPUs), ~2.7GHz
Memory: 4096MB RAM
Available OS Memory: 3578MB RAM
Page File: 931MB used, 6223MB available
Card name: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
Manufacturer: NVIDIA
Chip type: GeForce GTX 560
DAC type: Integrated RAMDAC
Device Key: Enum\PCI\VEN_10DE&DEV_1201&SUBSYS_14603842&REV_A1
Display Memory: 2511 MB
Dedicated Memory: 978 MB
Shared Memory: 1533 MB

Not to mention bandwidth concerns. Especially if you consider that WvW could have many different guilds all on the same screen and each member could have the guild emblem on their chest. Lots to render and lots of texture memory.

Doubt it’ll ever happen.

wth is wrong with tab targeting? Don’t like that it cycles? change it to target closest. Not sure where u r goin with that.

OMG Bsquared, made my head hurt. 0_o

As to OP…

I have been in several matches where the underpopped team wins. So your 90% number has no basis and is likely hyperbole. Only ANet knows this number and they aren’t going to be forthcoming with it.

As for the rest of your comments, yes… there are some classes with a serious leg up (in some cases)… but even I won’t go so far as to say the world’s coming to an end because of balance issues (or that PvP is ruined or an ‘utter disaster’). And I’m pretty certain most would agree that I am fairly anti-thief.

Gameplay here is meant to be faster than other MMO’s. This has been a selling point for GW2. While lag and stealth issues are a problem, CC abils and such that you quote are not.

Heheh, want to borrow my flame resistant umbrella?

I wouldn’t mind more Achievement-related stuff for WvW. They have total kills. They don’t have deaths (would be neat to see how many times I’ve died in WvW vs. PvE or PvP).

I also wouldn’t mind if they included a title of such (like Closer to the Stars) that you can work towards. The ones for WvW now seem like an after thought. People like titles (just look @ EQ2, there were like a gajillion titles in that game).

But I wholeheartedly agree that no mechanic should be in place that rewards a player with an advantage (mechanical) over any other player based on time or experience of gameplay. If I play 5 months and have the same gear, class, level and build as another player who has been playing 1 month, only skill should dictate who wins (well and the RNG at times).

I am also going to disagree with you Eiken. Ruining it for others is one reason. But there are SO many others.

Powerleveling (which has plagued MMO’s since EQ1).
Ruining the fun for people of that level (already stated).
Trivializes the 100% Map Completion (just get to 80 and steamroll everything).
Exploitable (get a 2nd account, have that account normal level and have your lvl 80 kill everything while the 2nd account get’s the rewards for DE’s and such).

It will never fly. If it does then ANet would be shooting themselves in the foot.

You can help your friends and such by simply going to these zones and playing along with them. While every class can solo the content in the game, things do go much better when you are duo’d or more.

I agree. When I rerolled another class (my first and main is an ele) I was amazed at how every trait (both major and minor) seemed to make me go… “ooo”. Never got that with the ele traits. Most of the time with ele traits I say… “eh”.

Think that’s the problem.

@Chrisp – they said that I (an elementalist) give up physical toughness for the ability to inflict massive damage in a single attack. Don’t believe what ya read m8. Believe the thief took this from us. Jez sayin.

@Elthurien.8356 – that is cool to hear. That is class act right there.

HellsMachine.4083:

The average human reaction time is less than half a second, so if you’re taking longer than a second to react than your just slow man. Shouldn’t change the game just to cater to slow people.

Is that a half second with or without lag or some other delay?

Did not know that, actually. I’ve seen that red bar but was NEVER told what it was. But still, it does not make sense to use an ability when it is out of range… ever… I mean, these are basic control abilities that have been around since EQ2.

Seriously? I don’t think hacking or not would matter at this point. The fact is that GoM dropped 4 positions… that’s 2 divisions. EB dropped 2 positions as well (at least 1 division). I mean seriously, I have not logged on once this week and not seen us ridiculously outnumbered on every front.

Add to that GoM and EB are definitely picking on SF. Don’t deny it because it is not an accusation. TBH, if I was commanding forces in a situation like yours, I would also be doing the same thing. SF is demoralized, we are weakened. We have a severe lack of numbers (hurray! no queues). Frankly, we’re easy points. Strategically it is the smart move. A move I wish SF commanders would take advantage of more often.

Often, I see our commanders change fronts for the simple fact that they want to change fronts. Not thinking about the fact that the new front splits our forces in half or worse, pulls enemy forces off of a front against us. Why do all the extra work? We never really play the hand where our enemies are bruising each other allowing us to gain some footing in non-contested areas. No, we generally like to go get involved… an idea I never understood.

Good news is… after some number crunching, looks like SF will be in the 2nd to last division next week… might be good for our morale. Meanwhile, GoM will move up a division to play SoR and Yak. EB will stay in the current division against DH and NSP.

Anyway, there’s your real reason for your dominance. Nothing more than being in the wrong division. Again, a flaw with ANet’s scoring and ranking system.

For those interested, my calculation results for next week’s matchups…
Jade Quarry 2156.515
Henge of Denravi 2091.877
Stormbluff Isle 2009.172

Eredon Terrace 2002.37
Isle of Janthir 1783.674
Crystal Desert 1754.586

Blackgate 1747.866
Tarnished Coast 1652.275
Fort Aspenwood 1645.676

Dragonbrand 1638.927
Sea of Sorrows 1616.791
Maguuma 1506.829

Gate of Madness 1455.385
Yak’s Bend 1455.175
Sanctum of Rall 1446.684

Northen Shiverpeaks 1445.964
Darkhaven 1429.021
Ehmry Bay 1379.437

Sorrow’s Furnace 1306.347
Anvil Rock 1103.25
Borlis Pass 1074.526

Ferguson’s Crossing 1016.434
Kaineng 655.49
Devona’s Rest 621.267

Source of data: http://mos.millenium.org/matchups

EDIT: formatting and such

I have looked around and maybe I’m just blind… but surely ANet had more ideas than just capture the point…

Where’s Capture the Flag?
Where’s Elimination (like a last man standing)?
What about missions? (a la Assault in UT2004 where one side players attacker and does a series of objectives while the other side defends and then teams switch roles to see who does it faster)
What about Deathmatch (highest kill count) and Team Deathmatch?
To steal a lil more from UT2004, what about Double Domination? (first team to hold two points for 10 seconds)

I mean, seriously, there are a TON of game modes out there. ANet have any plans to implement more?

Cave trolls smell a lil like mildew. Forest trolls smell like a strange moss or oak smell. Forum trolls smell like shame and dung…

No one wants to transfer to another server because 1) it feels like you are betraying and 2) you don’t keep guild influence or upgrades.

While ANet has mentioned they are working on #2… it doesn’t help the server being transferred from.

Churning Earth, if you begin casting it but get interrupted, it goes to max cooldown. This is VERY unfair as it does NO damage in this case.

Signet of Earth, if you use it and it does not effect anyone, it should immediately go on the fast cooldown (5s or whatever). Here’s an example, see a thief… have them targeted. Hit ur signet of earth while the thief simultaneously goes invis. Boom, wasted signet of earth. Have fun waiting 30s or whatever.

Lightning Strike – if u are out of range, you get the out of range but then have to wait the full reuse. How about an alert ahead of time that you are out of range?

Dragon Tooth – if you are out of range, you get to watch the dragon tooth spawn and hit nothing. Not only that but everyone around you is now fully aware of your presence. Again, how about an alert ahead of time that you are out of range?

Essentially, include any direct target ability that can still be cast even if the target is out of range. It is generally silly. The check should be easy enough of the client. Check it, and let us know. Even if someone hacks the check, the server will still report it as out of range when it goes through, so all is well.

Lightning Flash – if I can’t get there, then don’t let me flash. Make the client’s pathing and stuff the same as the server’s.

That’s all I can think of for now. Sure there’s more.

Lol, ur a thief? Play an ele. See what its like to bend over repeatedly.

Nah, seriously, I love the ele. It takes skill to play. You’re often fighting uphill battles. Every fight gets your pulse moving. And while there is some controversy, they are rather versatile.

If you want another easy mode class, play a mesmer. I’ve never been able to solo a champion. But I watched a mesmer do it quite easily.

Thieves.

Come out of stealth and still can’t see kitten. By the time they finally do begin to render, they’re stealth again. And besides, in any group scenario where there’s a zerg or something (which is more often than not lately), you can’t finish one off without popping some super long CD ability to do it. And even then, ur screwed if they port away.

Ok, so I’m a bit vague with my subject. But here’s a long-term issue that I think WvW will suffer from.

So, let’s say you are on a server (obviously). You fight in WvW and your server begins to lose. In fact, it is only Monday and you see a MASSIVE point difference in the scores… Now, being the good little WvW guy for ur server, you join into a borderlands fight. Wow, holy crap, ur severely outnumbered!!!! Well, that sux. Let’s check another BL. Same thing. Ok, surely we must be doing good in EB. Alright, go there… Go east (this assumes ur north). Whoa! Big zerg. Alright, let’s go west… Yikes! Big Zerg.

Where the heck are all our guys? Ah well, guess I’ll go do something else. But what? Not really in the mood for sPvP capture the point matches… and PvE is a lil unappealling since I’m lvl 80 and I am not interested in grinding a bunch of stuff… guess I’ll log off.

Do you see urself in that example? The problem is that people log on, see a losing fight (because no matter what you do you will always lose when that severely outnumbered). And so they log off.

I realize this is a psychological issue but it is a very huge issue. The reason? The next time that person logs on, they see a losing fight, they just log off again. And the next time, they don’t even go to BL or EB. Just check the scores and assume the worst. Log off. After a while, that player begins playing other games (after all, we are ALL addicts of video games). Then that player does not log in anymore. Period.

Now, even if ur someone that doesn’t mind doing PvE and such for a while… there is no way for the WvW world to communicate that a surge is going on…. or that the sides seem balanced again. Or anything like that. To let people that have already been demoralized know that they are not fighting an ubsurdly uphill fight…

Since WvW is a MASSIVE part of this game for a lot of people and some even consider it an End-Game goal… this is very problematic.

I mean, it is actually good strategy on the two “winning” servers to target the losing server because they know the losing server is demoralized and let’s face it… its free points. So that only adds to exacerbate the issue even further.

Population limiters has been one idea, but I’m not sure it will work like people think it will. Reason being that you kind of have to consider it in the 4th dimension (time). What happens over time when the population limits fluctuate and such? Who has the lead, etc… What about home borderlands? If the home borderlands is completely fought off, then the home borderland team simply leaves the borderland essentially perma-capping it. Even if they leave a small contingent there or something…

The outmanned buff is another problem. Seriously? I don’t care about 20% more magic find and 33% experience all that crap. I’m level 80 with all the gear I really want. Why should I care? When I see the outmanned buff, I just log off. No point in fighting the uphill battle, dying a bunch and paying the huge repair bills. A useful outmanned buff would be better here.

TLDR —-
1) A losing server will cost players in the long-run because they just get tired of playing a uphill battle and log off. Changing Servers feels like betrayal and you can’t take your guild influence with you.
2) The loss in WvW population will also result in people playing the game less and likely outright quitting the game (as they will find something else to occupy their time).
3) Population Limits might not be the answer
4) Outmanned buff sucks and needs rethought to actually provide purpose.

Thoughts and discussion…

We know ANet has statistical analysis on everything in the game. So, to stop the constant back and forth of Thieves/Warriors are OP vs. the L2P crowd….

How bout ANet share some data? For example, how often are thieves involved in a win in sPvP or tPvP? Warriors? How many thieves/warriors play sPvP or tPvP or WvW? Ooo, here’s an interesting one, of the winning WvW servers, how much of their WvW force is comprised of warrior or thief vs. the “losing” wvw servers? Do the “losing” servers field more elementalists or engineers?

Heck, for the sake of thieves, include Mesmers in the data.

If you make the data public, it will at least stop the constant chatter on the forums of “X is OP” and “No its not, L2P”.

I’ll say this much, as soon as a thief pops on an sPvP match and uses a backstab build, I leave. Just not fun playing against them. A 100b warrior, sure. A Mesmer with a gajillion illusions or whatever, no problem. A thief that can kill me before I know what happened… not fun. This is why thieves are an issue.

@Weapon X – vid or ur full of kitten.

Tired of all of these l2p people coming in and saying this. I have to believe all of them are thieves scared kittenless that their class is gonna get nerfed. As stated many times before: the game mechanics of stealth in combination with the initiative model and the high damage value for abilities make the thief overpowered.

And it is the non-vocal majority that has plagued game developers for a long time. This is why tools and metrics developers are so important to a development studio’s asset list. It is important because through statistics, the dev team can see various issues with gameplay.

For example, they may see that the average X player type has so many kills versus deaths versus Y player type. And so on and so forth.

I can assure you that if ANet is worth their salt, they have TONS of statistical data ranging from average queue times in WvW, to number of kills in pvp situations, to average duration of a fight in pve. And probably tons and tons more. And what’s more, they verify and check what the vocal minority on the forums are saying versus this statistical data. If they see an issue, they take it to their QA team and try to reproduce it.

Agree 100% with OP. The mechanics of the thief with the state of the game engine (with regards to invis to uninvis transitions and such) make the thief ridiculously overpowerd. If you do not believe me (and you play a thief), play another class for a while until you find a thief that you can’t kill because you die instantly upon starting to fight them. May take you awhile because even with all the uberness of the build, not all thieves are smart enough to use it.

There are WAY too many issues with the thief especially with regards to their burst damage. You could always theorycraft that the damage is avoidable, but in practice, it really isn’t unless you are insanely lucky.

I think the funny thing (and funny is sarcastic) is that one of the people who defended the thief in this thread said that sometimes they can’t get their opener off and find themselves in a world of hurt and have to run away…. not die…. run away…. which leads me back to the biggest problem I have with this whole thing; they get insane dps and burst damage… AND they can get away from a losing fight with ease. It’d be one thing that a thief who doesn’t pull off things perfectly dies faster than their would-be victim. But that’s just not the case.

Oddly, found me and my guildmates playing another game for the first time in 40 something days. Was fun while it lasted GW2.

I prefer it to stay the way it is. Plus, when you think of it in terms of bandwidth, the client only needs to know which side a player belongs to (a byte max) as opposed to a string of characters for a name (which depending on compression can be rather large)… per player.

Overpowered and overpopulated. Actually had a meaningful conversation last night about stopping WvW or even GW2 altogether (since WvW was a huge selling point for us) with some of the guild leaders.

The stealth issue is a MAJOR issue. They are also still overly bursty despite the Pistol Whip nerf. Pistol Whip was one of the least used abilities I’ve seen and was not really an issue.

Ele got nerfed (whirlpool, our 1 dps abil in water was reduced in damage)… oh did i mention it was an elite spell too?

Airala.8629:

Csaj.2750:

This was not scheduled as can be seen by the lack of patch notes and no in game warnings 1 hour, 30 min, 15 min, and 5 min from patch time. And by the lack of information about it on the dev forums.

You mean the patch notes that have been in the News section for the last 40 minutes or so?

Wow, weakest comeback award. Seriously though the patch notes were posted AFTER the patch. Like 10 minutes or so afterwards. Thus, at the time, there WERE no patch notes.

Don’t defend for the sake of defending. Defend cuz you truly believe it is worth defending…

At the VERY least, they need to make a release schedule and stick to it. This is a competitive game, people are involved in hour or even multi-hour long sieges of places in WvW and those sieges get RUINED in favor of the defender (in most cases) when the servers are bounced.

Knowing when a patch is coming would at least help.

Please stop downing the servers and releasing patches during prime time. Figure out a good time to release patches, let the community know when that time is, and stick to it.

I don’t think it takes 2 weeks, it only takes the past week.

This is why when SF got first place in week match, it still fell 5 points (because it was so close of a matchup and we were the point leader going into the matchup).

The algorithm while sound in theory is horrible in practice. Consider the following scenario:

3 sides, mutually matched well together and they lose by a very small margin. The algorithm works.

3 sides, mutually matched, but 1 side takes the lead and just absolutely dominates the entire match. Now the other side or sides generally quit or are so oppressed that they cannot get a foothold again. This is where it fails.

The reason? The sides are evenly matched but any number of situations or circumstances could cause the aforementioned problem. But what happens is that the losing server now drops… 4 rank places. This may put them into a division 2 divisions below them in which they are absolutely overdominant in.

Let’s continue with the scenario, they now dominate and move up the point system until something unexpected happens again. Now, that server is stuck in a feast or famine situation.

So ya, discuss… tell me I’m wrong… tell me how to fix… but generally, I’m pretty sure I’m right.

Ok, I crash about every 2 hours or so. Most commonly when in large WvW events.

Each crash is a out of memory crash. I am running Win7 32-bit. Memory usage of the app is not near my max mem (about half really). Any ideas on a quick fix/easy fix?

Nice, wonder if ele’s can do it too… gonna go try. /me has a big evil grin.

Last I heard (which is several hours ago)….

SoR: 279k
DH: 165k
SF: 160k

Something like that.

Ya, your calculations are WAY off. Here’s the reason I say this: Last week SF came in first place in the matchup, however we lost 5.07 points. Reason? We only won by a small margin (1k or so). This week, we are going to lose by a much larger margin against the same opponents… however, you only have us losing 5 points again. Simple logic dictates your calculations are in error. Jez sayn.

Kinda funny that you spend so much time on a blog post and people can STILL find fault with it.

When in doubt, use large amounts of vagueness and uncomplicated language…. “We are reviewing all classes across the board. There are several things that concern us regarding all classes and we are in constant discussions on what to do about them and when to do it.” Something like that.

Thanks for clarifying your previous posts.

Hmm… I think you may have DH and SF backwards. At present, I think DH will take 2nd which should give them a large point boost… since SF will likely be taking 3rd and we already lost points for a close matchup last week when we were in first… I’m assuming we’ll drop a fairly large amount.

Yes, but can you honestly say that a handle-bar moustache female asuran isn’t handsome?!?

Arius.7031:

Ald, you are wrong about there not being any close match ups.

The last match between Sanctum of Rall, Darkhaven, and SF was extremely close. This most recent match was different, Sanctum of Rall dominated quite clearly, however they will likely be moving out of our bracket. The last match Sorrow’s Furnace beat Darkhaven by like 1,000 points for the win, so if we get matched up again, it could be a very good fight.

If you want a good fight, with not bad queues, go Darkhaven! The next match should be really close.

And to counter this, Sorrow’s Furnace is always looking for good players. Our queue times this past week have been negligible during peak times. However, with the caveat that most guilds were taking a break since this week was a rematch of last week. But even during our close match the previous week, queue times were not bad at all (5 minutes?) during peak times.

Don’t go to Darkhaven, they embrace death too much.