Guild Wars 2

kitten , sooo many views and posts…I didn’t even get a chance to pop in do some dev bashing! Ya’ll beat me to it! lol….well good job Anet…you keep on fighting the good fight and driving your PvP game modes into dirt…instead of monetizing them properly and making a butt load of money!! CHOO CHOOO!!!!!

DevonCarver.5370:

Yaro.3251:

The idea of outmanned buff is to give enough incentive for more people to join the war on the losing side. Not to make those who are already on the map stronger – that would be unfair.

Whether these incentives work as well as they thought to be by developers – I don’t know. Only thing I know is buffing any side of the fence combat-wise, be it losing or winning one, is unfair. Orbs kinda blow in this regard.

Even more specifically, the original intent was to make it so that players had some little boost to playing even though you might be getting beaten. The main reason to not make it overly beneficial is that it creates a disincentive to have a full map of players at that point, which is where the balance comes in.

Let me understand this…you’re trying to boost the players on the most outnumbered side….why? Because you want to incentivize the side outnumbered to keep fighting…

Sure your’re right, I don’t want you to make it overly beneficial to the point where people would have the buff than more people on the map….but on the flipside, I don’t want the buff to be so friggin useless that I really could care less if I have it or not….since it absolutely provides little to no reason to stay on an outmanned map and more often than not if you not looking to roam…your going to leave an outmanned map for a more populated map….the incentive sucks and it needs to be beefed up to be more inline to invite people to come play on that map….

DevonCarver.5370:

I’d just like to make a note of one thing that I think people aren’t considering when they transfer to stacked worlds. You will not, repeat will not, be able to receive the reward based on overall world place in the league, unless you achieve the meta achievement for the season. If you aren’t able to get into WvW much, you won’t get the rewards. So it is absolutely taking a risk to transfer to a world that has a large WvW population.

I"m sure most people will be able to get in when there isn’t a queue and get the achievement….it’s certainly not going to be a barrier for people….what will be a barrier is that all the other servers not 1, 2 or 3 in the rankings will pretty much never get a shot at winning the gold league….far more of a barrier then not accomplishing some silly meta achievement…

Shiren.9532:

Also… ON TOP OF THAT….the BIGGER the difference between the two…the MORE likely it is that the larger server will have had it even longer.

This is the design reality of WvW. It’s not a bloodlust issue, this is going to be the reality for everything. Should tower upgrades be removed because the strongest server will have them most of the time? What about towers and keeps? What about supply camps? You are talking about a format created on the foundation that numbers and coverage are not going to be equal. Most of what they add to the format (and everything already in the format) is going to favour more people.

If your big picture is that the strongest server in the match will, on average, hold the buff the longest, that same argument could be used to remove Stonemist or the ability to upgrade anything. I wouldn’t mind betting that same argument could be used to remove WvW ranks. The winning server probably has more WvW ranks across their player base than the losing ones.

It has the potential to make a bad situation worse, but it also has the potential to add new meaningful gameplay (meaningful to their server) for those who want to take advantage of it.

I don’t believe it’s right to attribute issues caused by population imbalances to the bloodlust buff. The buff certainly has the potential to enhance that issue, but as far as I’ve seen that’s not always the case. Just like an organised guild has the ability to defeat a zerg with more than twice their numbers, a smaller population of players can utilise the buff effectively to aid their entire server. Unlike the old orb mechanic or even tower and keep upgrades, the buff is a very active mechanic and I think that’s why a lot of people don’t like it. It often requires active maintenance and roaming to capture and maintain.

No they are not the same…and you are absolutely right about stonemist, but the difference is…Stonemist doesn’t give you a stat buff when you own it.

right, i’m agreeing with you on that the bloodlust buff is NOT the cause of the population imbalance. Stonemist is a great example, same thing, the larger server will more than likely hold it more than the others…the difference is…now you are tying a server wide stat boosting buff….is it a HUGE buff and causing a GREAT imbalance that wasn’t already there…no…but is it making the issue WORSE for the already imbalanced matchups…I think so. I like the ruins and I like getting some sort of buff (I really like the stomp points) because its different and interesting, but giving them the stat buff is my issue.

Instead of addressing the issue of imbalances in population or maybe taking a step to not make it as bad or try to balance it…they went the opposite way and IMO exacerbated the problem…

Visirale.6097:

I was driving one of the teams and can verify it did happen. The dev was on SBI and I couldn’t read what he was saying. The guild we were going against said they got screens and a video of the conversation, so they’ll surface soon I hope.

Devon Carver i’m pretty sure is on SBI…..

Honestly most of the dev’s that I’ve seen weren’t the best players, although I have never seen an anet tag command…but judging from how they know their own game..i’m guessing probably not too good…

Maybe once leagues start and SBI get’s their dream matchup against SoR or a T1 server… we’ll get some changes

/troll on

Guys there is no problem! WvW activity is at it’s highest level ever! People are flooding into WvW to enjoy the massive fights and awesome end game content! Blowouts are just happening because of the massive influx of people!! I mean if you saw the report on WvW activity…you would understand there has been no drop in activity over the past year! So just hang on tight and wait for the leagues to kick in and while you’re waiting pop on over to tequatl…we got some really good living content over here…

/troll off

I don’t think anyone is complaining about the ruins themselves…adding objectives to the map for roaming groups and giving smaller groups objectives that can be taken that help the server as a whole is awesome (stomp points is a great mechanic) and the ruins are set up well.

The problem is the stat buff’s….give it something else that will contribute to helping your server, I like the stomp points…keep that, Increased siege damage, decrease dmg taken from siege…double or triple WxP for everyone on your server…I dunno something… anything other than stat buff’s, I get it needs to be something worthwhile to make people want them, but there has to be something other than server wide stat buffs that will still make people want to go there and fight for it!

Neuroticgrim.8769:

Hello Anet,
I agree with Spurnshadow. The new bloodlust buff has given all WVW players a lot more to do on the borderland maps. This change especially benefits smaller roaming havoc guilds that cannot field a zerg, but can field enough to hold and keep the buff. This meaning that every kill they get makes them feel like they are actually supporting the server as a whole, instead of just flipping camps and assisting on the occasional keep take. This change has completely renewed my faith in WVW and pulled me away from the stale state the Borderlands had been in before.
This change has also had make great changes to zerging. Since the change has been put into place I have witnessed several zergs having to break up into squads to take and hold the points in order to prevent being back capped by a havoc squad of another server. This is doing wonders for reducing total level of zerging occurring in these maps. I have also seen some zergs have to make the hard choice of losing a tower or keep vs keeping or taking the buff, because they now understand how much power the buff actually gives a servers players in the ability to earn points for their realm.

Thank You for this update! And I can’t wait until the new seasons are released !!

This is your first and only post on the forums?!?!

I wouldn’t mind it if it was similar to grinding to 80….you can hit 80 in one day of crafting…you can get to 80 pretty easily in a week or so hell lets say a MONTH….how long does it take you to get 14,000 WvW levels to max out ONE character…you could log into WvW everyday for a month and still not get to it…..in fact as of the release I have not heard of ANYONE maxing out the cap on WvW levels….GW2 had people hitting level 80 in 1 day through crafting.

I don’t mind them making it a character progression, but they made maxing it out WAY too high for character progression (just like they did for some WvW achievements that would take years to kill enough yaks to achieve…lol) and the dribs and drabs of WxP and the boosters are STILL not enough to make up for that…

If they want the grind to get to max wvw level to be this long it needs to be account bound…..if they want it to be character progression they need to make it much more achievable, and much more than they have been..

Hyung.6140:

rhodoc.2381:

Accountbound WXP pool and character bound WvW Abilities.

nuf said

This would solve all the problems and make me play more than one character in WvW. I’d LOVE to run around on my ele or necro more often but it just feels like such a waste getting the WXP on them when I need so many more ranks on my main

This really has to be changed eventually as it’s such a glaring bad decision.

Only 13,900 more levels to go before diamond league on ONE of my characters :-P

Straegen.2938:

Gamadorn.2659:

No….he’s saying other games have been doing calculations like this…also on a large scale and they don’t even cause a hiccup in the server…

Usually calculations are a nominal part of processing for a server with good power behind it….it’s just in this game, it seems to tax the server to high hell when these calculations are done…he’s just saying…we know its hard and not easy…but could you please find a way to make it work

I completely disagree. There is no game (that I am aware of) that has complex combat (fields, boon/condi stacks, dodge mechanics, positional damage, etc) that can handle this many players. DAoC is probably the closest and it is more akin to a text based MUD compared to the combat in GW2. Basically no game (that I know of) has rich deep combat and 100+ players running around.

Also calculations are only part of the issue. Virtually all multi-threaded systems have wait states while they sync data. These wait states (somewhat akin to internal lag) cannot be easily coded around. So the servers are trying to resolve dozens if not hundreds of inputs in sequence per player per second, compressing the output and distributing to all other players. The more sequences the more computation, wait states and lag. It is all a balancing act and none of it is simple.

Disclaimer: I am also a developer along with some others listed above. I do not have inner workings of MMO development so my opinion is at best an educated guess based on my own n-tier, over the internet, high capacity multi-user, multi-threaded environment which includes thousands of active users and databases topping several terabytes.

Yes, I agree you in fact stated part of what I said. I was basically stating that it’s not the calculations themselves that are causing the server lag. I was over simplifying the problem by using the player model example (one of the reasons for culling if I remember correctly). The point of the post was that they clearly did not build the application from the ground up with scalability in mind for WvW applications..and with that there are some parts of the foundation of GW2 that are not easy to fix…we were just asking and handing out brownies if they could try to get creative and come up with one of those crazy workarounds that would lift the cap a bit

Flikshot.9372:

Skill lag starts at around 50v50 Good players fighting.

Current game process just taking into account damage:

100×5= 500 calculations just for damage per second

Your proposition is for the game to be doing:

100×50 = 5000 calculations just for dmg per second.

This would mean on average you would only need 12v12 to start experiencing your skill lag. Excluding all other calculations. 24×12 = 576 calculations per second

Great idea! -.-

No….he’s saying other games have been doing calculations like this…also on a large scale and they don’t even cause a hiccup in the server…

Usually calculations are a nominal part of processing for a server with good power behind it….it’s just in this game, it seems to tax the server to high hell when these calculations are done…he’s just saying…we know its hard and not easy…but could you please find a way to make it work

Now in MY opinion….I think the original developers got all creative and were like “lets just load all dis stuff into the player model object”, so we have all dis wonderful data at our fingertips and we can easily add new content with all dis data available and configurable right on the player model!!! Oh wait…..what happens though when server has to calculate lots of equations in WvW using data in the player model?? Now we got all this extra crap that we don’t even use in WvW in the player model that’s used in PvE and stuff…and we can’t remove it??!?! Zomgz is crashing our server now…bah…no one plays WvW anyway….most of our money comes from PvE anyway…soooo kitten it!

Banjax.6573:

As a programmer, I can respect that this may be a difficult undertaking. But as a user, I’d like to ask that you reevaluate these algorithms and perhaps come up with a clever method/approach to applying aoe dmg. There’s got to be a better way. Other games have been doing this for many years. I know you guys can do it. /sends Cookies

Oh noes!! You told them you are a programmer! You are doomed and on Anet’s watch list! Prepare for infraction!!

I’m a programmer too…and I agree and I /send brownies!!

SteepledHat.1345:

Apparently, yes.

http://i.imgur.com/BA20tY6.jpg

I think this is going to pass the guinness record for most quoted post….hahaha

Shiren.9532:

This is why we can’t take the buff hatred seriously. It’s a fact that you can cap and hold two ruins at the same time with a single person and run back and forth from them before they neutralise. A single person can easily maintain two ruins as long as another player doesn’t come along and neutralise one (and even then you have a window of opportunity to respond to that person). It may even be possible to cap and hold three ruins with a portal mesmer (I doubt it) but honestly, if your server can’t spare two people to cap the buff they clearly don’t care about trying to obtain it and have no right to complain about it.

There’s a lot of blind hatred for the buff and a lot of it is based around false arguments. There is a world of difference between the existing buff and the old buff and it’s clear a large number of the people complaining about the buff aren’t even trying to be smart about obtaining it.

It’s not the strongest server that gets the buff, it’s the server with the organised group that tries to cap the ruins that gets the buff. The simple fact that the meta needs time to establish around the best tactics to accomplish that is enough to put off a lot of this criticism. I often seen the buff held by the server with the lowest or second lowest PPT and my current match is a blowout.

I feel like I’ve been having this same conversation with people over and over…

No one is arguing that the smaller servers can cap it….or “the more organzied group” or whatever label makes you sleep at night….

maybe in NA prime time you server can manage to hold it for a few hours…maybe all three…I dunno…who cares…that’s not the point….

Again…the point is straight forward and simple….any point of interest on any given map, i don’t care if it was a camp that all three servers really wanted to hold throughout the day…the server that has more people and more coverage…will hold that point longer in a 24 hour period then the other servers….that’s it…

If you put a point on a map and give it something that makes it worth holding….again…the server that has more people and better coverage…on average throughout the day will tend to hold it more than the other 2 servers…

When matchups are even its a great mechanic!

Again, not saying its impossible to cap (they made it this way on purpose), just saying, if you could aggregate the amount of time that server’s have held 1,2 or 3 bloodlust buff’s…I suspect you will find that the larger server/better coverage server’s hold it longer than the others…

Wraistlin.6072:

Love how everyone is a game developer on these boards.

Granted there is always things that can be better and improved, but really guys how can you possibly know anything that truly goes on behind the scenes.

When your steak comes back well done and you ordered it rare….you have a pretty good idea what went wrong and you never once saw the chef make your steak…..

We don’t know all the details, but we can infer from the results we see and compare to similar processes other similar games go through with their processes. Your right we can never know 100%, but we can infer quite a bit with good observation

Feed Me Change.6528:

Gamadorn.2659:

Feed Me Change.6528:

Griefing is the problem with this.

As ANet as said around 100 times, they will not add stat buffs for being outnumbered, outmanned or in any direct correlation to the number of people who have on a map, because it will lead to griefing. People harassing others to leave so they can get 50 more stats will happen and that’s the reason the famed “Orb to Outnumbered buff” argument never goes anywhere.

I know this is a troll post lol, but….

As we all know this argument is completely invalid and lacking all logic and/or reasoning.

Also, they are willing to implement a mechanic that does the complete opposite and gives stat buff’s the larger server in a lopsided situation, but when benefiting the weakest of the lopsided situation….heaven forbid we should do THAT…

The reality of the situation is, it’s not usually “1” person that joins and puts you over the top of that outnumbered buff, it’s usually a guild group or a large influx of people that finally put you over that buff and to be honest…you glad to see it gone, because it means you can finally start getting somewhere on the map….

I wasn’t offering a valid reason of why this wouldn’t work, I was reiterating what ANet themselves have said as to why a system like this hasn’t been and will not be implemented.

As we’ve seen, smaller servers CAN and DO hold the Orb buff – so the argument of “larger server always hold the buff” has been shown to be incorrect.

And yes, I could see instances where a guild joins a map and everyone whines and complains “OMG [GG] get off our map you ruined out outnumbered!!” And people think that the WvW community is divided now…

Oh..so it wasn’t a troll post…lol

No one has said the larger server ALWAYS holds the buff. Yes they are fairly easy to flip and the smaller servers CAN flip it and hold it for a bit. The point being though…on average over a 24 hour period, the larger server will trend to holding it longer then the smaller servers. If there is a few points of consequence on a map that 3 groups of people want to hold, it stands to reason the group that has more people has a greater chance of holding it over the others.

However, GRIEFING is definitely not a reason to not provide a mechanic that could at least potential fix major issues in their game….if they were so intent on griefing, what about people trolling other servers, running golems of cliffs, building supply ram’s in keep’s to waste supply, spawn camping…..griefing is anet’s excuse to not want to give a buff to the outmanned server, because in their minds they think that magically that server can rally more people or do more on their own to even out the disadvantage, which is quite simply WRONG. Not only that, they give you a way out to transfer to other servers that are already doing well…

DevonCarver.5370:

Lord Kuru.3685:

If they did listen to us, it’s only because of drastically declining WvW numbers (as stated in Devon’s infamous alpha forum post).

To head it off at the pass, there have not been drastically declining WvW numbers, or even marginally declining numbers. WvW continues to be as strong as it has been over the past several months. We made some decisions internally and were able to accommodate changes that it didn’t seem feasibly originally and that’s why the changes that are going to be announced later this week happened.

Whatever metrics you using are probably artificially inflated and someone needs to look at them, i’m guessing your including people that just blip in from pve and use the lion’s arch portal as a shortcut, i’m also guessing your including people that show up poke around for 10-20 min and leave and never come back, there is something inflating what you are looking at…because anyone who has played for any length of time on multiple servers can tell you for a FACT that the number of people from 6 months ago in WvW actively playing IS NOT the same as it is now….

Once again…without trying to absolutely bash the whole team, I would tear into that data and REALLY look at it, there is something wrong with it….the reality doesn’t match what is going on in whatever report you’re looking at. T2 server’s can’t even queue maps on reset night now, when 3 months ago there was couple hour queue on every map. I’d assume the same goes for servers under T2…there is NO WAY you can sit here tell me the numbers or going up…it doesn’t jive my man…

Orikx.9671:

@ Gamadorn.2659

I’m not for or against the Bloodlust yet. It has it’s pro’s and cons. Biggest problem is WvW is all about population. In a perfect world where all things are equal Bloodlust would add a fun element to WvW.

The argument that it pulls people away from the group to fight the larger group I don’t believe to be true though. WvW has always had small group/solo roamers even before bloodlust. This just gives them a place to focus their efforts and maybe help out more towards the big picture. I don’t know that I buy that the people fighting over bloodlust would be roaming with a zerg if bloodlust capture points were not there. The vast majority would just be roaming around camps looking for other roamers like they did before the buff.

Valid point and I can see that side of the argument, I agree with the population, that was what my post was about. All things equal the bloodlust would be fine. However, because of the population imbalances (That they even admit are there on purpose) the bloodlust implementation is flawed.

As for roamers, yeah roamers will continue to do their thing and it gives them another objective to go after, although I almost feel roamers flipping a bunch of camps, sentries and yaks will give a better benefit to the score than getting the bloodlust buff and stomping a few people…but that’s opinion. I just think the high level concept of adding more objectives to the map to spread people out more, causes more pain in the outnumbered matches, again that’s just my opinion. The high level concept is that added more objectives onto a map causes people to have more things to go for, therefore spreading people out more…which is fine and dandy…as long as they are on even terms and have the people to do so. When you already running thin on numbers in a lopsided match, I just personally don’t think it helps. I believe and this my opinion is definitely debatable , that there isn’t AS MUCH of a disconnect between roamers and zergs as you think. I know when im roaming and flipping camps with 3-4 buddies and trying to take bloodlust, once in while we’ll pile into a zerg fight and help out.

But yes, server balance is what’s causing the overall issue, but Anet has admitted that the imbalance is there and will always be, even with that understanding…they went and added a game mechanic that requires balance to be effective….seems counter-intuitive to me…

Feed Me Change.6528:

Griefing is the problem with this.

As ANet as said around 100 times, they will not add stat buffs for being outnumbered, outmanned or in any direct correlation to the number of people who have on a map, because it will lead to griefing. People harassing others to leave so they can get 50 more stats will happen and that’s the reason the famed “Orb to Outnumbered buff” argument never goes anywhere.

I know this is a troll post lol, but….

As we all know this argument is completely invalid and lacking all logic and/or reasoning.

Also, they are willing to implement a mechanic that does the complete opposite and gives stat buff’s the larger server in a lopsided situation, but when benefiting the weakest of the lopsided situation….heaven forbid we should do THAT…

The reality of the situation is, it’s not usually “1” person that joins and puts you over the top of that outnumbered buff, it’s usually a guild group or a large influx of people that finally put you over that buff and to be honest…you glad to see it gone, because it means you can finally start getting somewhere on the map….

I think people are missing part of the point (I am on a T2 server).

Again with what was stated, the bloodlust buff itself doesn’t determine the match, but unless the match is EVEN….more often than not the bloodlust buff will benefit the larger server.

It’s simple really…it happens on DB right now… I capped them the other night with a handful of people while SoR zergs were fighting one of our guilds…..

The problem is….when your outmanned….truthfully we probably can’t and shouldn’t spare the extra 5-6 or so people that are trying to spread out and cap bloodlust, we need those extra people to help with OUR group that is trying to FIGHT their LARGE group….we can’t really spare those people….but the LARGER server…can…

So my point being is that if you’re already in a lopsided match and trying to rally as many people as you can to the pin..and people are spread out trying to take the bloodlust away from the larger server…it hurts you…numbers wise..

likewise…if you let them keep it and you get everyone together, they get to keep the bloodlust buff….so it’s a lose-lose situation overall for the smaller server. This is not the same when the matchups are relatively balanced. If all sides have even numbers then everything is all good….but when they aren’t…more often then not it will benefit the larger server, which unfortunately the way the populations are now…and pretty much almost every tier has some sort of blowout….it makes it worse.

The idea is great if there was a way to make sure all sides had equal numbers or an equal playing field….when they don’t…this mechanic is broken…it’s that simple…

I do like the landscape changes however, plus… at least while we’re getting blown out by SoR it gives me something to do in the middle lol

I believe there was a post back in april or maybe as far back as january stating that WvW numbers had grown significantly since the beginning of the game (which to some extent I could believe at the time, although it seemed somewhat questionable then), I think the data they were looking at was for a time span where some of the hardcore guilds broke off to some other games and stopped playing, but there were still people influxing into WvW at the time. So the numbers were sort of artificially inflated compared to what was really happening.

I would HIGHLY doubt the numbers have increased since then, I would probably say that more than likely there has been a SIGNIFICANT drop off over the past 3 months of WvW activity. Even T2 servers don’t have the population they used to. I know even MORE guilds have stopped playing or moved to different games. Roamers and some spvper’s I know are going to different games, Commanders are burned out and there hasn’t been an influx of new one’s coming in. IMO The game mode is dying outside of T1 and unless the course is corrected, eventually it will die out across the board.

I’m usually all for bashing developers when they deserve it for bad decisions and are responsible for stupid bugs.

In this case I respect Devon’s comment’s, at this point in the game he has no control over the engine and has to work with what he has. I can sympathize with that. The engine can’t handle it (opinions can be made on whether the engine sucks or not), but it just can’t and probably without months to a year or more of work it’s not going to get fixed.

IMO judging from everything else I have seen in this game, whoever the brain trust behind the scenes that architected the system, seems to have over-designed and over-engineered parts of the system (Example how to process queue’s) with more complex calculations that while probably cool from a developer/design perspective….don’t scale well at all….that’s just my opinion though.

We’re stuck with the AOE Cap….I think we baste Devon and the other dev’s enough that people really shouldn’t jump on them for things that they don’t have control of.

Zenguy.6421:

That post by Devon is 100% consistent with the changes Anet have made to GW2 this year. I think Devon did us a great favour posting as candidly as he did, because his post is making it very hard for ANet to pretend that isn’t how they’ve been operating.

It’s not that Anet haven’t pay attention to these forums – they clearly have, as evidenced by the fact that they make changes that we’ve requested: e.g. gameplay that rewards multiple groups over monolithic zergs; more opportunities for roamers and small groups; new content in the WvW maps – all things we’ve been asking for.

However, it appears that Anet’s attention to these forums stops once they’ve collected a list of ideas about areas where we want changes. It’s as though, once they’ve got that list, they then ignore anything further we might have to say about the priority or nature of the changes we want. Instead they pick some items off that list that involve new content and go off to develop those according to their own ideas, independent of anything we might have to say on the subject. (This game is over 1yo now, so they shouldn’t still be putting time into getting areas of the game to work – just look at how much new GW2 content Anet have rolled out!) This is why they can deliver a poorly thought out WXP system, some map changes and a game breaking (and now performance killing) buff we’ve been protesting about for months, while ignoring some of our top complaints (e.g. the broken party system, the stone age commander tags).

ANet don’t seem to have recognized that WvW needs work on its foundations and simply piling on new content is only making things worse. The original WvW didn’t need WXP progression, PvP maps or power buffs to make it a success, it already had most of what it needed. What’s been missing are tweaks to the combat, rewards and server systems to make match-ups more interesting and encourage more diverse styles of WvW gameplay; that, and a few QoL changes (most notably to the commander system).

Instead, Anet’s blinkered drive to deliver new content combined with their practice of cherry-picking the forums for ideas for new content and side-lining anything else, has meant that WvW still isn’t working properly at its core. The starkest illustration of this is that Anet are charging blindly into the new WvW leagues their ears firmly stopped up against the now overwhelming cries that those leagues are doom to failure.

The disaster of this latest patch gives Anet an unprecedented opportunity to get off the content treadmill they’re on with WvW and go to work on the underlying problems that are holding back WvW. I hope they take this chance.

Well said…

Lots of us were playing long before the wxp and increased chest drops from champions etc…. (I do like these changes)

WvW in concept is a fantastic idea….the man issue is that there is really no driver behind it. The driver for WvW was supposed to be the point score…however the way the implemented WvW and the 24/7 coverage model and then went about the scoring and matchup methods was flawed from the beginning. So once people realized the score ended up being more about coverage and numbers…they changed how they played…because we realized the score really doesn’t matter at all…thus the GvG creation.

People want to see progression, people want to fight for their server, work with other people etc, but why should they if the other server constantly has more people and blows out the score every week… so regardless of the fact that they say WvW is imbalanced….it NEEDS to have some mechanism to help balance the fights out so they are not dependent solely on coverage and numbers.

Dreary Yew.5187:

IMO, The points gained from Bloodlust are way too much. I’m on TC currently matched against BG and JQ, and no matter what the PPT is, the server that has the most bloodlust gains more points. I really don’t think this replacement for orbs was a good idea. I like the idea of a server-wide buff, but bloodlust is too powerful. Orbs were removed for being too powerful as well as certain hacks allowing people to move them at will, but the bloodlust is just so much more powerful than orbs it’s sickening.

The points don’t bother me THAT much, it’s mostly the insane buffs servers get when they have all 3 bloodlust stacks. Bloodlust was also meant to encourage small team play, but since it’s so powerful, you have server zergs rolling through claiming bloodlust. At least that’s what BG and JQ are doing at the moment.

I literally said that this was going to happen well before they even implemented it, as soon as I heard about it…but yet…these developers seem to have their own vision of WvW that I have yet to understand…I can tell you whoever is in charge of the direction of WvW wouldn’t be fit to scrape the bottom of my boot at my consulting company lol

Or maybe it’s because we are the minority on the forums…and don’t accurately represent the wvw player population…..

Clearly the developers could not have foreseen this!! I mean really….who could have seen this coming and said something about it?!?!

slowly raises hand

Join a proper GvG and you will see just how UNskilled you probably are in a group fight lol. Then once you learn 2 play you will see the other side of the fence and have more perspective.

I find it adorable that random pve puggers or people who join WvW once in a while come in here and say “don’t let the door hit you on the way out” to the guilds that post on here….

You have to be pve pugger, since most people that come in to WvW and are new and want to be more competitive in WvW, join a guild or make a guild (even if its a small roaming guild with a few buddies), if that’s not you….you are a random person that no one really cares about lol

The fact is, guilds make up 90% of WvW. If they leave. WvW dies on all servers

Yay at least they consolidated them all!! Lets trend #TransferToHigherServer!!

Outmanned buff……some non buffed stats…

Overmanned buff… lets boost all their stats!!!!

Brilliant!

Rackhir Tanelorn.9123:

Map Changes – Yes
Points for Stomps Buff – Yes
+50 Stats Buff – No

Pretty much this….we can’t say we didn’t tell them so tho….

Draygo.9473:

AndrewSX.3794:

DevonCarver.5370:

We will be adding more liquid WXP that will be purchasable, likely with badges and some other currency, soon. As in, less than a month. I’ve made it a personal goal to improve the experience for playing alts in WvW. And to cut it off now, we are not making WvW rank account bound.

-Liquid WXP
-Faster gain rate
-WXP booster

When acc bound WXP would make all this work unnecessary…

/idon’teven

What there’s SO wrong it making it acc bound and cut it off? You’re doing everything to work around it while simply changing the WXP to acc bound would resolve all of that…

Just give a reasonable response.

Even “We want you to buy booster to make money” is ok, but give us one.

The answer is this:

If anet allowed account bound WXP, but allowed you to also pick different masteries on each character you can change character based on the situation in order to use specific masteries. For example one of your characters you max out treb master, another cata mastery, another flame ram mastery etc. So for 75 points you have all the masteries for each of the siege weapons on a different character.

I think, that is the core reasoning.

I would prefer account bound wxp, and wxp bonuses are also account locked so you cant switch characters to get lets say treb mastery.

Right…that’s not what we are saying. We are saying once they are chosen they are locked on all characters…the number of points…the wxp…and the skills selected are ACCOUNT BOUND not character bound. So if you have treb mastery on one character…it’s the same for all. The reason this makes sense is because they instituted 10,000 friggin levels to WxP skills…..if the grind was far less to get the stats people wouldn’t care as much to level their alts and it would FEEL more like character progression….but the truth is….their reduction in WxP leveling and the crappy drips of wxp you get from chests doesn’t come ANYWHERE CLOSE to reducing the ridiculous grind to get these levels…..i mean it takes hundreds of camps and towers, hours upon hours of wvw playing (not that I wouldn’t be doing it anyway) to get these skills…but then…I switch to my mesmer or thief and I got nothing and I have to spend hours grinding them AGAIN to get all the stuff I already had…..idiotic…

Excalibur.9748:

WvW is not supposed to be balanced. If you want balance, go play sPvP/tPvP. ANET never balances around WvW because that would be idiotic.

It doesn’t have to be balanced equally….

I don’t mind the WvW ship rocking or being tilted to one side….but don’t flip the darn thing over and expect no one to complain….THAT would be idiotic…

I definitely do not….

NO

Dark Lord Killer.9473:

This is not true, in tier 4 EU, we, AG hold 3 orbs against AM who have 70k more points than we have. Even though this patch is not the best, it makes it very clear that the server with the highest points often have the lowest individual skill.

Come back in a few hours

Oh I thought they were saying go play another game? I’m pretty sure that’s what they meant…..

Guys I got an idea!! We got a fire over here…we need liquid to put it out….lets get some gasoline and put it out with the gas!!! Awesome idea! Yeah! This plan can not possibly fail!

Wait….wtf happened?! Why is the fire BIGGER? I don’t know..let collect data and figure out what happened…

hmmmm…you must be new to this game maybe?!

Boy it’s a good thing NO ONE saw this coming…prepare for the incoming forum posts!!

Hey ANET why don’t you sticky this thread. While you “COLLECT YOUR DATA.” We’ll continue to sit here and say we told you so…..

Mean while why don’t you go collect data on whether the sun rises and sets everyday..just to confirm that it actually happens….common sense…must not be so common

Solstice.1097:

…use this to try new servers?

—> Your Home/PvE server is no longer connected to your WvW server
—> A WvW-only transfer is now available for 50% gem cost of a full transfer
—> WvW-only transfers are not available to tier 1 servers and are free to tier 8 servers.
—> WvW-only transfers will take effect upon the first time you log into WvW after weekly reset (any transfers made after 5pm PST Friday will not take effect until the following Friday reset).
—> Full server transfers at full gem cost are still immediate – this has not changed.
—> Your world bonuses (crafting, magic find, etc) are still tied to your Home/PvE server and not your WvW server.
—> Those with separate WvW and home servers can only guest on 1 other server per week instead of 2. In other words, you can still only enter 3 total servers per week.
—> WvW season rewards are still determined by the first WvW server you log into after the season begins.

Now you can try out other servers for 50% the cost AND you don’t have to leave your PvE friends / Guildies!!

Expected result:

—> Anet wins as their transfer revenue goes up
—> We win as our matches become far more interesting
—> I’m a hero for suggesting it (lol)

If you believe the reason that guilds and WvW players are stacking T1 instead of lower servers is because of cost….you are definitely mistaken…it has nothing to do with cost.

Fact of the matter is there is ZERO incentive to go to a less populated server. The only reason I could see would be to try and avoid queue times during NA prime or whatever time slot you play in for roaming purposes…as far as roaming goes..it can be done on any server anyway so more than likely they will stay where their friends are…

As for WvW guilds and large groups….they want to fight other large groups…they also don’t want to bear the burden of carrying the server themselves….so where is the best place to go, where coverage is balanced and guild fights and large groups are abundant….T1…a lot of people have left so there have been coverage openings in T1 (which i suspect will be filled by the time the leagues come around)…the main point is…WvW population is declining due to stagnation, boredom and burnout…as this continues to happen and servers become more ghost towns…any organized groups remaining will look elsewhere to find competitive play…

I feel like everytime ANet attempts to move in the right direction and get us all excited that they are actually making changes to WvW….they implement it so ridiculously wrong that anybody with half a brain would understand why it’s wrong…then it takes about 2-3 months to “collect data” to find out that they were wrong…then they implement something that is better and sort of works….it’s a repeatable pattern…one that would be EASILY solved with what 99% of other games have….a BETA server….but naw….let’s just test it right in production!! Then collect data and fix bugs after the end users report them! Saves money!

I don’t always test my code….but when I do…..I do it in production!!!

DevonCarver.5370:

Season 1 is going forward as we described, however nothing about future seasons is set in stone. We’ll take a look at the data we get from the first season and will absolutely make adjustments so that future seasons are even better than the first one.

My concern with four leagues is simply that there isn’t enough variety at that point. I could very well be wrong, but we are going to try season 1 this way and then we’ll take a look at how it played out.

Enough variety in what? Can you elaborate?

You mean variety on matchups between servers I assume (with the rng). If that’s the case, I understand part of what you are saying as it will stagnate some of the matches locking you into playing the same other 5 servers for a month or so, which may not be as bad as it sounds at first…

I think the point of the post is that they want to use the leagues to get populations to spread out from the top of tier 1….having two leagues….doesn’t really incentivize this much as say 4 leagues. right now…everyone knows the t1 servers will be in competition for the top spot..so its pretty much guaranteed that one of those servers will be running for the top spot….everything else between t1 and whatever server ends up at the top of the silver league will be abandoned, and once people see where the top silver league servers land….you may see some transfers to those servers…

If you create more leagues, it puts more servers in the running for a chance at winning that league, less chance of blowouts by higher pop servers and gives people more options on servers to transfer to, to try and win that league for the month.

LOL Blocking T1 transfers….

The bottom line as I said in other posts….is that as WvW pop continues to decline, competitive people that want to lead or be in large scale fights, work with organized groups and guilds working together are starting to look around on their server and realize that there aren’t as many people around as their used to be…so they start looking for servers that have more opportunity for fights etc. Without blowing out a server or getting blown out….T1 is becoming that place especially as people stop playing. Are their queues? Yep. Is there skill lag? Yep. but…are there people to fight? Yep! It’s going to continue this way. Like was said before..if you just wanna run around and roam, looking for small fights and camp flips, yaks etc. It doesn’t really matter what server you go to.

DrWhom.3105:

Siphaed.9235:

Orbs were in since the game’s Beta and were only removed for exploiting reasons around Nov 1st because of the excessive exploiting (that was griefing massive amounts of players due to the score imbalance because of it).

Actually, this is wrong:

Habib Loew.6239:

After a careful reevaluation of orbs of power we have decided to remove them from WvW in an upcoming build. As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back. In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game. Under the circumstances we believe that removing orbs completely is a better choice than attempting an in-place redesign/re-implementation as it will immediately put a stop to all orb hacking. It is likely that orbs, or some orb-like mechanic, will return at some point in the future, but only after we are confident that they will not exhibit the sorts of issues that we see with orbs today.

The snowball effect is actually mentioned first, and the hacking is an additional reason. Presumably with the move from something that could be placed in a t3 keep, to five points in the middle of the BL, this issue is considered solved. I’m not convinced it is, considering the wide differences in population between servers. Not to mention you need to take the buff for yourself, rather than just neutralizing it for your enemy.

THIS EXACTLY. I don’t know what the brain children at Anet are thinking. The original INTENTION of the orb to be placed in the keep wasn’t JUST for the buff (which was silly). The INTENT was that the orb WOULD be taken by the STRONGEST server…and the idea was that the buff… while it would provide a stat buff….both servers would gang up on the stronger server and 2v1 them to get the orb (Since it would be in the stronger servers keep)….now while the INTENT was a noble one the implementation was flawed and could have been done better….now they are trying to implement it better, but instead completely F up the INTENT of the orbs to begin with and instead….leave the just the buff to strengthen the bigger server with out a mechanic trying to cause a 2v1….so in otherwords and clusterkitten….that will BLOW UP completely when it is implemented…

Blix.8021:

style.6173:

People are really spending gems in order to get a new finisher for winning the league?

I think it’s more people are looking around and seeing less and less guilds/people to play with and so they are moving to tier 1 where there is no shortage of people. Even tier 2 and 3 are losing guilds to tier 1. The rewards for winning are just a nice bonus.

Pretty much this, i’m on a T2 server and there have been a lot of guilds moving to T1…as the WvW population shrinks due to boredom and burnout, the people that are left start migrating to the servers that are more active…and if your going to transfer…you might as well transfer to a tier that’s somewhat balanced…the only tier like that is T1. Here in T2, there are fights, but because of the T1 servers and then TC…every week in T2 there is one of those servers that blows out the other two…the only balanced matchup that contains enough people to still be fun to people that actually want to play WvW and not pvdoor or hide in towers is on T1….

I don’t believe there is any suppression in squad chat….

However, regularly spies have reported commanders on the map to get them suppressed far before they should have been….

Dual.8953:

FrouFrou.4958:

DevonCarver.5370:

insanemaniac.2456:

why we wont see a useful outnumbered buff:

scenario — player enters map where his server has outnumbered. server loses outnumbered. other players harass him to leave so server can be stronger.

Correct. The idea behind the buff is to incentivize you to show up even if you are outnumbered by pulling out some of the disincentive for losing a lot, but if we put anything too good on it, it will cause serious problems between players. We don’t want it to be something that people fight over, harass each other over, or generally cause a worse play experience because someone takes away the buff because it is our goal for the maps to be full and for no one to have the buff.

With that logic, why would you buff the already strong team with stat boosts then (bloodlust)? Why would the outnumbered people even log on when they get magic find, while the opposite server gets buffs that helps them to spawn camp and make sure no one leaves the base other than by logging off and forgetting about wubwub alltogether?

Bloodlust is neutral and easy to neutralize. If you’re getting outnumbered, why would you want to go against an even more populated server next round?

I’ll wait until they implement it before we go saying it will be easy to neutralize…in theory it doesn’t take a lot to cap it….

The point he is making is that they don’t want to give a stat buff to the outnumbered server to help balance things out….

but instead, they’ll give a stat buff to the strongest/most populated server, since they are the one’s that will more than likely hold the objective more than everybody else…..

Oh but, the real reason is they don’t want players harassing players for losing the outnumbered buff…..makes sense…

Sarrs.4831:

Gamadorn.2659:

This is no different then me running into the camp when the circle’s up and getting full credit for flipping it even though I did nothing…

Well, you can completely afk and get yak credits if what Devon says is true. Just find a nice spot behind the gate and go study or whatever, maybe put yourself on auto-run into the corner. Free WXP!

Not if your dead… and that’s IF you don’t get booted for inactivity. I agree there is a chance for abuse there, but I don’t think the abuse will be so bad as to outweigh the positives of rewarding the smaller groups for doing these things.

As I recall, I believe the real reason that they had to stop was that botters and scripts were automating the paths walked by the yaks and so they could basically just let the scripts go and they would auto-follow yaks for exp around the maps….but I don’t know if since then they have improved their detection methods.

DevonCarver.5370:

Super Riceman.8702:

Maybe make the Dolyaks move faster per nearby ally, increased by up to ten allies. There would be incentive to guard them since it is helping your team overall even if you are not participating in big fights/being in other areas.

Conversely there would be more incentive for the other team to split up into small teams to stop these faster dolyaks

The issue is not about an in-game reason to defend them, it is about the way we actually determine who has defended them. Currently, you can get credit by standing near them when they finish. That is clearly not a good platform for delivering rewards.

This is no different then me running into the camp when the circle’s up and getting full credit for flipping it even though I did nothing…

If the upside is people get rewarded for doing things they should be doing and the downside is some people may try to find a way to abuse the system, I would think the upside would outweigh the downside….personally I don’t see a problem with people being in the area getting credit at this point…I know one of the previous issues was with botters abusing the system…but hopefully at this point…you’ve managed to advance your botter detecting capabilities? Maybe not tho I dunno.