Guild Wars 2

I hope we see something more interesting – a gamemode where several different group builds are able to fight each other. Each meta should have proper counterbuild.

People are logging in again to check out the upcoming world linking. It would be really bad sign to delay it now that there is enough interest.

Swagger.1459:

-Like eotm, have a supply depot at spawn when your keep has been taken.

I agree on this point only.

As for others, the way I see it, supply should be less available to make players care about it, to make camps and dollies worth more. Since these are something solo players and small groups can handle, it gives everyone things to do. If there is enough supply everywhere, it all becomes worthless.

It does not take long to earn points for new ability either.

She is only suppose to “fix” personal story chapter 7 after the “Forging the Pact” story step.

But she is bugged and keeps sending messages to every character. Every time you enter LA. Over and over.

From Reddit AMA

https://www.reddit.com/r/Guildwars2/comments/4fkhku/reddit_ama_summary/

• For now we plan to rotate the borderlands once each quarter.

Other parts are interesting too:

• Language/National worlds will only be paired with other worlds of the same language.
• We can link many worlds together, though in this Beta worlds will only have a single partner (if they are linked at all). Many high ranking worlds in EU will not be linked with another world.
• Worlds that are paired will have lower population caps.
• At most we’d re-link worlds every 3 months.
• World Linking decisions were primarily based on a combination of both Glicko rating and time-sliced activity levels.
• We plan to continue balancing for WvW, splitting skill damage between modes if necessary. This will likely be gradual though, tackling a few outlier skills at a time.
• EotM earns reward track points at a somewhat slower rate
• Superior Siege on Portable Provisioner- we will add this.
• There will be a partial reset of Glicko (Deviation & Volatility) on Friday. We’ll put a forum post explaining our reasoning, and listing world pairings on Friday as well.
• WvW Participation points begin decaying after 10minutes of no participation gain.
• Development of build templates will occur in WvW first and if it goes well sPvP will get it too.

I got disconnected from LA so it may not even be about WvW.

The difference being that servers remain still same. None are being deleted, removed or players forced to transfer off. Yes, it works out same as merging, only in case huge population surges in the future each server can be separated again into their own.

You should NOT get any reward tracks in EotM. Really dumb to allow it.

There are no plans to merge servers.

The food you get from Provisioner is good enough. It does not need to be “best” to be useful. If you must always have best food, buy it old fashion way or craft it yourself.

The fact that siege damage DID scale from player stats was a bug. It was fixed. Finally.

Don’t complain, these changes were all good.

Most people do not even care about any Desert BL map changes since they never been in those maps other then falling to death in first day and then never coming back.

HoT story does not start automatically. Open hero panel, go to Story and pick HoT, make sure it is active. Next, go to Silverwastes map, there should be marker next to Red Bastion to enter the story instance.

The way it works atm is already much better. You can not res while in combat. You only rally single enemy. No need to completely remove it.

Here is my scenario: guild groups fight. One is wiped, other loses half the players. Currently, after the fight ends, winners can res the dead and continue as single group. What the OP suggests is that after ANY fight you lost some player you HAVE to wp back to gather up whole group again (or wait for dead to travel to you through entire map). It would not make the game better. Just waste time.

Ricky.4706:

I’m just curious of how different gamers / specifically Tiers think about spawn camping.

I personally think spawn camping separates casual play from competitive play. . So imo, it neither hurts nor helps the game, it’s just a different game mode.

Spawncamping is equal to kicking blind man while he is already bleeding in the ground.

Guilds that are suppose to fight each other in same matchup is one of weirdest ideas of WvW. I can somewhat see why Anet do not want to fix this (people start to complain) but it remains silly.

Mezmere.3241:

First fix CoR before you nerf something as simple as wells. They have a 40s cool-down, and TBH aren’t THAT strong, ele lava font does more on a five second cd, and Rev CoR does FAR MORE on a less cd. as for boon corrupt, that has always been broken.

Some have 28 second cd.

Also, since you claim wells are not that strong, I guess half the WvW population playing wellmancer Necro is clearly picking randomly some weak build so they don’t kill enemy too fast.

It is usually not about single damage number that makes some skill better compared to other. You should consider all the benefits skill provides. For example when you cast well on your frontline pushing forward, it provides Protection to them. Also, they siphon health. And you really only cast the well after target(s) are immobilised.

If you wish to complain about CoR, start new thread and I am happy to argue about why it does not need nerf anymore.

I still don’t understand the meaning of this thread. Some people complain about class balance and some skills being OP, which is true but has nothing to do with old trait system vs current trait system. Or amount of builds.

Then there are some posts about the usual whining about how HoT ruined everything and GW2 was perfect and shiny and wonderful before HoT and how everything should be reverted because you do not like some minor detail anymore.

Again, where is that build diversity the thread attempts to ask back? Can you even bring up actual example where real-life working build made possible from picking weakest traits from 5 different trait lines is not available anymore?

You can not find suitable build with current system? Each class has 5 different core traits to pick from, each with 27 different trait combinations. That is 9 × 27=243 different core builds from just choosing the traits. Before even considering weapons. Or utility skills. Or runes and sigils. Or the Elite specs. No diversity? Seriously?

Considering how strong Wells are something should be changed. 1 second delay before actual damage kicks in is not bad idea.

It is part of larger problem in GW2 where ranged AoE skills are horribly OP.

You can not change the race. Only way to “change” is to delete current character and start completely new one. You will lose all soulbind items when doing that.

Looks fine to me.

Just about the point 4 – dismantling. So, only the person who dropped the siege plans can have it dismantled? Perhaps it would be easier to have some sort of time limit on friendly siege, 15 minutes?. After that, everyone with this Trait can dismantle it for some supply. Then again, it could be too easy for trolls…

Just because we had more possible options to tick did not make more builds viable. If you are given option to choose between really bad trait, another trait that gives very little under certain conditions and really great trait, everyone will always choose same thing. A lot of these old traits got included in baseline skills or combined into one single trait instead of picking 4 different traits to get same result.

Only thing that you can argue about is how strong elite specs are so they are mostly required. If the elites would get nerfed down to same strength as other traits, you would end up with much more options while also reducing powercreep. But of course it also means there is less point to buy HoT and so Anet has to reduce new content produced.

Norbe.7630:

random matches will destroy ppt and tiers
and again lets be honest, glicko in wvw measures coverage not skill nor strength

It is not Glicko that makes matches won or lost mostly by having small groups take empty maps when enemy is not around. This is problem with scoring and how points are awarded. Glicko just looks at the several servers, and attempts to put servers with nearly same population/coverage/strength into same match. While also pushing in small bit of randomness for a chance to go one match up or down so you do not always end up fighting same servers forever.

If you consider winning a match actual goal then coverage IS your server strength. There are very few servers which manage to bring someone online for 24 hours, on every 4 maps (sorry I do not play in tier 1 so I do not know if any server does that anymore). For most servers there are timezones when they get overrun by other servers and then there are usually times when they manage to gather more players. For example some servers are doing great at weekends and have basically no WvW players during the week.

Liston.9708:

only way to really stop stacking is to remove the incentive to stack. no glicko, no tiers, just 4 random matchups each week with a small bonus for winning the week is one way…

Glicko is the system designed to match opponents with similar strenght. Randomly throwing every server into any match means most matches end up with one server totally dominating or being completely overrun. Not only would it mean there are not interesting matches but also there would not be any reason to win them.

But yes, I do agree with this – “only way to really stop stacking is to remove the incentive to stack”. I just do not think more randomness is good way to go forward.

I am not sure how increasing tick time and rewarding more points for upgraded objectives is going to help outnumbered servers. If enemy has many more players, they will upgrade everything faster. Also, if you only have few players per map, you wont be going after Tier 3 keep even if it rewards more points to server who owns it.

The fact that you can only get those items from specific PvE maps is kinda selling point for HoT. If you could simply get them from WvW, then you do not need to buy HoT and that is bad for business.

It’s not much more players in tiers 8 and 9 of EU while I have been in those. And even then, while 40 players may sound like a lot, most of them only join WvW for 1 hour or so in prime time, so it is really-really empty for 23 hours.

My advice is to find nice and friendly WvW Guild and run around with them, even if its only small guild like 10 people. So many things are better with nice group of friends, but specially WvW.

um, you know, I doubt Tier 1 servers will notice anything after merge. The last tiers are so completely empty, even adding whole server from last tiers won’t make any difference for top servers. It WILL be big deal for those players who have stayed on those empty servers, pretty much whole WvW as they know it will be gone.

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

So is this going to be a flexible weekly “server alliance” or straight up merger (deleting half of the servers)?

Again, we can not be sure completely until it actually happens or Anet has official list of changes. However, from the list of changes that cannot be mentioned in this forum without being deleted, it is possible it will be straight merger where half the servers get deleted.

dubstax.9102:

Okay… and are you ready for massive complaints from people who put a lot of money and time into legendary weapons when they realize that now all you have to do is grind World vs. World ranks and you too can have something “legendary.”

People always complain. Always. They complain when something is added to the game and when something is removed. They complain when something gets buffed, when something gets nerfed and when nothing changes they complain about it constantly.

The basic point is – WvW players should be able to gear up without going through usual PvE-grind. The armors, trinkets, food, basic stuff you use while in WvW should be available without leaving WvW. It’s fairly silly to enter WvW only to find you really should grind other gamemodes for few years first. Because, honestly, if you enjoy PvE enough to grind all that wonderful gear, you won’t like WvW that much.

Next problem we have is that WvW is extremely difficuly for new players. They die a lot. They have wrong gear. They use wrong skills. They never use correct food. They dodge at wrong time. While fun for veterans to gank new players, it also means gamemode will slowly die. At some point all the veterans get bored and leave, without enough new players replacing them, we end up with half-empty servers and really boring matches.

Making WvW-specific armor available to everyone, so they all have same stats and have access to similar items without years of PvE-grind, is one way to help new players feel like they could enjoy it. Years of experience will still mean any veteran can always gank them, but it will not happen so fast. It is not much fun when enemy dies with 1 shot, it’s boring for both sides.

There is more to make WvW really better, like looking over the condis, classes and their skills. Maybe add some WvW-specific skills and remove some of the nasty game-breaking ones from WvW. Some fight mechanics that are ok in PvE do no have place in WvW. But sure, WvW-armor would be nice thing to have too.

I get the feeling original poster is asking about upgrade from pre-HoT payed game, not the current free-to-play version.

If you already payed for GW2 once before HoT then you only get access to the new HoT stuff (new maps, elite specs etc).

The Ventari Ele.5812:

Trying to merge EU servers which have dedicated language servers, is a much harder task! Or are Anet just gonna get rid of separate language servers?

Why it’s harder?

We currently have 1 SP, 7 DE, 5 FR and 14 EU = 27 servers
These can be easily merged to 1 SP, 4 DE, 3 FR and 7 EU = 15 servers
Or even down to 12 if needed (1+3+2+6)

You just merge highest population FR server with lowest population FR server, highest population DE server with lowest population DE server, high population international server with low population international server etc etc. Eventually they all end up with fairly same population or at least with populations capable fighting each other.

Getting rid of non-english servers would be fairly stupid move. If anything, they should create more of them, for example Russian or Polish players would easily fill their own separate server.

STIHL.2489:

But, I am not really worried about that happening, I mean, think about it, you never see people setting up 5 min timers to flip Keeps back and forth in WVW, even on T8 where there is what, 10 people per team total? (That’s a joke)

Yeah, there is only 5 people in Tier 8

Yes but if YOU do not have to go to WvW to increase the bonus, it would be easier to wait someone else do it. People in general are lazy and do not do stuff they do not like unless they have to.

Sviel.7493:

Why can’t we consider things with some semblance of objectivity? Why all the drama?

We will see soon enough how good the Alpine maps really were. And yes, I expect lots of moaning and whining when people understand they are not that good. And then they start another campaign about some feature removed 3 years that could magically fix EVERYTHING.

I don’t think anyone should be rewarded for not doing anything. Even the current WvW score bonuses should be reworked so only top contributors (lets say 50-100) from each server gain any bonuses. It would help players in smaller servers to gather gold/xp faster and mean less people want to transfer into large winning server to reap the benefits.

ArchonWing.9480:

I would suggest week long achievements metas… which obviously correspond to the matchup. They wouldn’t give any actual AP but would function like fractal dailies.

Would they be changed based on current population of each server? I mean it is completely different situation for tier 1 vs tier 8, in last tiers you hardly even find enemies.

I am also not sure if that improves anything between servers who dominate matchup anyway. My idea was to make server with more players to work harder for same rewards, compared to low population server who has to already fight many more enemies.

What I mean is if you are in the match where you end up with twice the score without even trying, you also finish all those achievements quite easily. But if you are in the server outnumbered in every map and being nightcapped whenever you sleep, getting those done is really difficult.

No, nothing about that.

I guess Anet removed it for technical reasons (code added too much lag somehow) and if it was easy to put back they would of done it long ago. Also, looks like they got hands full of other WvW changes anyway.

I would personally love WvW season. If they can fix most of the problems first.

Scoring – server with more players wins.
Nightcapping – unless smaller server gets dedicated crew roaming in empty maps taking empty objectives for hours.
Blobbing – easiest way to win a fight is to bring more players.
Class balance – all the classes should have role and be able to fight.

Jana.6831:

And I don’t have an issue – I don’t even know what we’re discussing right now.

I guess we are trying to discuss failures of WvW.

Adding EotM – was that bad idea that drew players away from WvW? – Yes it was, to me.
Were DBL maps so terrible they killed WvW? – I feel they were introduced in very unfortunate HoT package and many players simply got excuse to drop out.

And the length of these discussions show many players feel completely opposite

Jana.6831:

I play the game, I have friends on a lot of servers, I play against other servers and since I’m EU it’s always different servers. To pretend that wvw isn’t dying is naive.
Of course you won’t see all of this when you’re playing EotM with its megaserver.
Wvw has got more problems than the DBLs – it has been neglected for too long and HoT was the breaking point.
If we all love EotM or the DBLs that much we’d play them – we don’t: only halfway populated map I’ve seen in the past 6 months from T6 to T1 was EB.

Nobody is arguing if WvW is dying or not. But none of us knows the actual cause, we can all guess but we could be all wrong.

I have argued against this already several times. The empty DBL is not the cause for less players, there would be less players no matter what kind of map is used. Empty BL maps just show us the reducing WvW population.

If match has enough WvW players for only 1 map, they all go to EB no matter if BL maps are good or bad. So the BL maps itself does not affect how many players play WvW. Players can say they don’t like the map design or how objectives are placed or what color the sand is. But none of this would matter if there would be enemies to fight, you simply would have no time to notice any of that, you would be busy fighting. You never go to WvW because you “like” the map.

The cause WvW is not interesting or fun, and players leave the game, is not map design and it can not be fixed by changing BL maps. The time and effort Anet is spending to replace the maps back, is all completely wasted.

Well, that NEVER happened in good old Alpine BL maps. They can not be restored fast enough before all the camp guards leave their posts.

Johje Holan.4607:

I thought they abandoned trying to fix population balance because it was a huge project. And rather than waiting months and months for a big fix they’re going to implement smaller changes earlier.

So I don’t think we’re getting any population balance fix in April.

Not true. Anet said it is the population beta too.

“The live beta test for rewards and population is coming this month as part of the big April update.”

Source: https://www.reddit.com/user/Anet-TylerB

Do you have to participate in WvW to gain that loot bonus? Or it affects anyone in your server everywhere no matter if they ever contribute anything to the WvW score?

How would players notice the higher chance for rare loot when the rare loot is, well, rare? You could get some rare loot simply because you got lucky, and another player could apply all the possible bonuses every day for 3 years and still get nothing.

Sviel.7493:

At any rate, I don’t think it’s very visible at all to the average player…no incentive system is effective if it goes unnoticed.

I agree.

I thought this was already in the game. Better WvW score = better PvE rewards:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Power_of_the_Mists

Puck.9612:

FogLeg.9354:

DeceiverX.8361:

Merged servers is frankly be the worst possible way to handle the WvW population issue as it only solves symptoms and not the actual underlying problems.

It does not have to be “merge”, could be some other way, but number of servers HAS to be reduced dramatically. And I am in one of the dead servers, which I always love and will never transfer away, but it’s still dead. Sure there are other stuff that needs to be fixed too, but the last servers were dying even before HoT.

I find this to be a very odd statement. You love your server and would never leave but you want to see it destroyed?

Like I said, it does not have to be “merge”. I would accept many other solutions too (guild vs guild system, splitting high tier servers, reducing number of maps in matchups, all 27 servers fighting in single match etc). What I was trying to say, was that number of servers available should be tied to the overall number players playing GW2. Only part of them will play WvW, but if GW2 has lost 50% of players it can not stick to the same number of WvW servers.

I would prefer more players playing GW2 and so more people playing WvW so more servers are filled with people all the time. But it does not look realistic.

I do not think exact number of WvW servers is good idea to start with. At the GW2 launch too many players wanted to join WvW at peak hours, so we got queues and people complaining and EotM. Now there is not enough players, people complain again. The whole system is clearly not working and should be changed, not just patched by merging/removing some servers.

And I think you have already misunderstood my comment, which was my main point – people tend to misunderstand, mix up, confuse and misread. Population balance is complicated topic with many things affecting the final result. People tend to pick one single word from larger concept and then demand next 4 years to fulfill EXACTLY that.

For example you have already picked the words “beta test” and have decided what it is, hwo much it will change and what the end result will be before it started, before you even tried it.