Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

So, responding on forums = caring?

Not necessarily… BUT it gives the impression that you care at least. Impression goes a long way.

Seriously, I would prefer if Anet hire 2-3 minimum wage workers whom the only job would be to answer the WvW forum, do theory crafting with the community on how to enhance the WvW experience, play WvW on every servers on various time of the day to get a feel of what is like and be able to talk directly (face to face) with the developers at Anet.

We don’t get response.
We don’t get much changes/update.
And when we do it’s usually not what the community asked for so long.

AndrewSX.3794:

Again: you may take away few tools, but if players wants to blob, they’ll find a way to do so unless you make them unable to stay physically close to each other.

The only things that would work perfectly and destroy blob in a matter of second is friendly fire between different squads…

Well, it would indeed be easy to implements AND would force people to join squad AND to not form a big blob.

Siege should never do damage to your team (for obvious reason)
Friendly fire need to do reduce damage compare to when you attack enemies (10%?)

Do you want to go to that extreme?

Zikory.6871:

How do you join the squad if you don’t know if there is a squad (tag) there? Also what about guilds that run more then 30 people? Are the others not allowed to join in on the squad? So punish guilds that have a large player base?

- UI to see the active commanders even if you don’t see them on the map
- Create 2 squads for your big guild.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Gudradain.3892:

LilMcGinley.3890:

Gudradain.3892:

Jyeoi.6027:

Pros use the free tag. Target.

This tag is unreliable. It wears off all the time from the leader for whatever reason. You waste time to re-put it on him. You can’t know how many supply your group have. You can’t see where you leader is on the map (except for your party members so you can sort of figure it…)

It’s just a cheap solution for a broken mechanic.

It’s very reliable actually. Watch some GvG videos and you’ll see that it works perfectly fine.

GvG is not WvW and the context is different.

Haha… you funny. Following a targeted played is the same whether in LA, a GvG, or roaming in WvW.

You missed the point… Following a targeted player is not the problem. The problem is targeting that players and the ability to see him on the map. While both of these problems can be fixed, the solutions are only work around that are no where as good as a functional squad system.

Colly.4073:

Thread No.1257673 And still not a single word from Anet.

This is a disgrace Anet and you ought to be ashamed.

It’s because Anet know the answer as well as we do but they probably can’t force it to their players.

Stacked server cause lag.
Solution un-stack those server.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Maybe.. I can see how some people when they join a map if they don’t see a commander they just leave, so it could possibly shrink some zergs. However, there are a few commanders on my server who don’t even turn on their tag half the time. They just say “regroup here” or “meet here”

The problem of “not seeing a commander on the map and leaving” could easily be fix if they simply had a UI on the side of your game window stating which commander are active and display useful information such as: commander name, guild tag, number in the squad, etc.

Then when you log in, you can see how many commander are on the map and how many players are active on that map. Then you can simply request to join the squad that you chose and you are done

Yaro.3251:

Let me reflect your question to you: If you agree that getting rid of tag will not solve zerging, why do you advocate its removal?

I agree that it`s impossible to spot zerging IF people absolutely want to zerg.

BUT, changing (not removing) the commander tag would indeed makes zerging in 1 big group harder and would instead favor multi-squads tactics.

It really makes me wonder how they programmed their things. When there is lag on a T1 server it doesn`t mean that there is on other servers. When there is lag on 1 map there might not be any on the other map. So, it seems that the lag is created because there is too many players fighting on 1 specific map and that the lag is only in that map.

If the lags is caused by too many calculations, it`s probably that they are brute forcing or using some other inefficient algorithm to calculate all the things that 1 specific skill will hit. It was said that AoE cap was there because of technical limitation. Which probably means that when an AoE is cast, they just run over all the list of possible target for that AoE and stop as soon as the AoE hit 5 targets. So, they save a few calculation because they stop before the ran over the whole list.

When I say brute force, I mean every possible target on the map. That means that when you cast a spell the game will check for the every players on the 2 opposing servers PLUS every NPC on the map PLUS every environmental things that can be attack (including mosquito, wall, gate, siege and supply depot (for some reason))

Other alternative to brute force is to split the targets in region. For example, you can divide the map in 4 regions: NE, NW, SE and SW. The advantage of that technique is that if you are casting an AOE in SE region then you only have to check for only the targets that are in the SE region. Hence, you can reduce the number of calculations because you don`t have to check for every single targets across the map. This solution unfortunately come with a couple of drawback. If your region are too big and all the population of the map is in the same region then your regions are useless. On the other hand if your region are too small you will need a lot of calculation to keep track of which region every players is in.

There is no perfect solution for the AoE problem but I hope that at least they put the NPCs and the environmental things in regions because these things barely never change region so you can save a lot of calculations.

Reduce population cap.
Overflow map.

Done

If you are already not using the commander tag, why are you against change to it!?

Interesting idea. It would bring some change even if it`s just to bring change.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Mesiphidon.8324:

It’s simple really. Unstack and the lag goes away. It’s your fault for creating super stacked band wagon servers under the illusion ‘Tier 1’ actually meant anything. Here’s a hint: It didn’t in the old system and it doesn’t now.

Anet themselves said tiers no longer exist or are irrelevant, so your continued insistence for them to ‘fix’ a problem you the players on those servers created is downright asinine.

None of the other servers experience ‘hour long queues’ skill lag so bad they can’t even auto attack or ruberbanding because none of the other other servers have 100 man blobs facerolling into each other again and again adnaseum.

Hardware for their servers and peoples computers can only handle so much. It was never intended for super stacked servers like JQ BG and SOR to be at the point they are now. Again this is a problem you all created for yourselves.

You want new match ups? You want lagless fights? You want zero or minimal queues?… Unstack your servers. It’s really that simple.

No one else ever wants to fight JQ SoR or BG because no other server is that stacked. It wouldn’t be fun for either side. How anyone thinks 100 man blobs spamming auto attack is fun is beyond me.

Be happy I’m not an anet developer because my ‘fix’ would be to get heavy handed and force transfer people off your servers for more balanced game play across all the servers.

Can each person just quote this and make all the replies this post.. this is what needs to happen.. this is what will make WvW worth while to EVERYONE again.

^ This

Exedore.6320:

As long as moving in a massive ball is the most effective strategy, people will continue to do that with or without an icon. With your idea, you’ll just have people constantly spamming in map chat “where’s the zerg?”. They get an answer, run to the ball, and it’s the same as previously, but far more annoying because people are clogging up /map and /team.

If you want to stop zerging, you have to make it not the best strategy.

It’s true that people might start to spam the map chat but if you have everyone in a squad you don’t really need to read the map chat because you can use the squad chat!

Also, a simple UI to join active commander squad would fix that problem.

LilMcGinley.3890:

Gudradain.3892:

Jyeoi.6027:

Pros use the free tag. Target.

This tag is unreliable. It wears off all the time from the leader for whatever reason. You waste time to re-put it on him. You can’t know how many supply your group have. You can’t see where you leader is on the map (except for your party members so you can sort of figure it…)

It’s just a cheap solution for a broken mechanic.

It’s very reliable actually. Watch some GvG videos and you’ll see that it works perfectly fine.

GvG is not WvW and the context is different.

Jyeoi.6027:

Pros use the free tag. Target.

This tag is unreliable. It wears off all the time from the leader for whatever reason. You waste time to re-put it on him. You can’t know how many supply your group have. You can’t see where you leader is on the map (except for your party members so you can sort of figure it…)

It’s just a cheap solution for a broken mechanic.

AndrewSX.3794:

Gudradain.3892:

The fact that you can see the commander tag on the map is the problem that creates huge zergs.

Wrong.
Copypating from another thread..

Is already possible to use the “party up and target leader” trick for zerg without commander tag. Especially if on a Voip – and a lot of servers have a public TS or similar platform. And even taking in account a super casual player w/o Voip neither target on leader, blobs are so large that some of them just follows the movement of the mass of players there wouldn’t be a noticeable difference.

True but also wrong.

The commander tag is the rallying point for that huge blob. If you don’t have a visible rallying point it’s harder to form that huge blob and also unorganized blobs will shatter by themselves really quickly.

Have you ever tried to command PUGs and have good size group ready to launch a big attack just to see half of them running away from you to kill 1 dolyak, get a sentry or run after 2-3 wanderings up level?

Then when they come back to reality after their bag/karma/exp rage they look on the map to see : “Oh the commander went that way. I need to go there!” It’s reality all day long for unorganized group…

It will fix zerging/blobbing for unorganized group. If organized group that are all on TS and listening to 1 leader still want to do it then it’s impossible to stop. It would be impossible to stop them even if there was no commander tag at all, no target mark and no party system. So, the important point is :

It will indeed kill zerg/blob for unorganized group.

It would work. People don’t read map chat that much except for a few. They follow the blue doritos.

The fact that you can see the commander tag on the map is the problem that creates huge zergs. Here is the fix :

- Only commanders can create squads
- Only people in the commander squad can see the commander icon
- Squads can contain 30 players
- Commanders can invite and kick people from their squad
- You can see the yellow dots of all your squad’s members on the map
- Improve UI and information display from the squad

No blue doritos = No more zerg

People will stop forming 80 man groups and will start to follow their squad leader (the commander)

I actually love your suggestion Dutchares and it could be push easily with simple changes to the Commander Icon and Squad UI.

For example, just changing the commander icon so you only see it when you are in the commander squad would be fantastic for the game Meta! It would forced all players to join the commander squad so the commander can communicate with them and see their supply. It would also make it a lot harder for people not in the squad to follow the squad group around and form the huge zerg ball of lag we all know.

Dutchares.6084:

If you change the game into where are the best 30 people groups running around most of the time.. instead of who has most players most of the time.
The game would become more about skill and less about numbers.
Players would stop transferring to high tier servers who have most population and spread out more because of queues (since they will probably drop tiers if it is more about skill -> no reason to stick on a server with queues)

Isn’t that exactly the play style and population balancing that we want? Glad to see you are a supporter of reduced population cap

You are obviously from stacked server. It might seems strange to you but most servers usually have empty map (meaning less than 10 players playing) all day long on all map.
And another thing that might seems strange to you, most WvW player don’t care about PPT.

Overflow will work just fine and if you can’t play on the map of your server and want to contribute to PPT then : transfer to a low pop server.

Thank you

Are you from a high WvW population server? Where I come from all the maps are empty all day long except for reset night and NA prime time for 2-3 hours.

By empty I mean :

- Home BL : 5-10 players sitting at spawn, 5-15 running around protecting stuff
- Eternal Battleground : 5-10 players sitting at spawn, 5-15 running around capping camps, mercenaries and sentries
- Enemy Borderland : 0-5 players running solo around the map

Seriously, transfer and it will be an eye opener for you.

They are not too small…

Just remove the waypoints in keep.

Well, they still need to consider it… Last news I read seems like Devon was working on a PvE chain

- Reduce population cap on all map
- Overflow WvW map while you are in queue

Done

What do we want in WvW?

- 100% up time
- no queue at all
- no lag at all
- balanced match-up
- match-up diversity
- skills over numbers
- competitive ranking

Easy fix to get all of that :

- Lower population cap on every map
- Improve UI to display information on the queue on every maps (average time in queue, number in queue and number before you, numbers in the maps/number of available spot on that map, etc)
- Overflow WvW map where you can go casually karma train while you are in queue for your server (if all 4 maps are full…)
- Revert to previous match making system and fix the only bug it had (gap too big between average rating of 2 adjacent tier)

Other suggestions to complement these ideas :

- Pay for reduce queue time (something like an auction would be cool, first player place 5 silver for reduce queue time. At that point he is first, then second player to pay can choose to place 5 silver to be second to enter or 10 silver to be first. And you continue like that…) You can also choose to just wait in queue and play in overflow server
- Time slot where your rating is different and you face different servers based on your population at that time of the day. The population of a server varies over the course of the day. Some are very strong NA server and other very strong SEA server or EU server but are very bad in NA. Matching theses server together don’t give competitive match up because when 1 server is awake the other is sleeping.

The ETA is : Transfer to a low population server and stop ruining the experience of everyone!

Experience of T1/T2 server : Lag fest all the time
Experience of Mid server facing you : Roflstomp all day long by 5 times your numbers
Experience of lower server : Empty map all day long

Stop ruining it for everyone fools!

Completely agree about waypoints. They simply favor the winning server. If Anet would remove waypoint there would be no way at all that a single server could cover all 4 maps at the same time no matter their population. It would make each match up a lot more balanced.

This upgrade should be remove in all keep!

Still not moved to suggestion forum!

Seriously, no need to do everything at the time and push it all together in the same update if you are working on commander tag.

Just a tiny bit of change every update would be appreciated.

For example color! Don’t want to make a UI to change color? Make it random… Every time you put up your tag the game chose a random color for it. This can literally be done in 5 minutes with a few lines of code…

There is no excuse!

Good analysis Scooby. I’m from Ebay and I can say that being against #4 and #5 when you are #9 is boring as hell. Sure we can compete to some degree in our prime time but then we get night cap like there is no tomorrow and we wake up with nothing.

We lost half our WvW population this week because no one liked facing 2 such strong (or stacked…) server. As a result, we performed poorly and everything was boring.

There is definitively something wrong and it’s not only the ranking system.

+1

but good luck getting it…

I want to see Anet comment on this. Why do they build this place then put nothing at the top! I think it’s awesome to climb up there

We are at the TOP! Yay

There is 2 ways past the hard jump. One is like in the video and the other one is using 1-2 and jump in the opposite corner.

How do you get pass the invisible wall?

I fount it! Well I think… Gotta try tomorrow

SacredSeal.7053:

Gudradain.3892:

I need your help!

I’m stuck at that point.

I can’t seems to jump high enough to pass that part

yea thats the really tough one. wish i could be of some help but i was dead on the ground when Assistant Relena made it so idk where she jumped too

Ask him or her… I can’t pass it XD

I need your help!

I’m stuck at that point.

I can’t seems to jump high enough to pass that part

+stats only in your home borderland. Done…

The best spot = Eternal Battleground JP entrance.

You have 3 nice spot to watch the show from above and waypoint to come back quickly

There was only 1 problem with the old rating system :

- The differences between the average rating of two adjacent tiers were too big.

It was as simple as that. The difference was between 100 and 250 ratings in general. While there was a lot of move up and move down in the tiers with only 100 ratings of difference there was practically no change in the tiers with 175 rating and more of difference.

So, the solution was simple again.

- Automatically adjust the rating of each server each week to have a difference of X between each adjacent tier.

Notice how both the problem and the solution could be contain in only 1 sentence each?

Anyway, they choose a different solution. I doubt it will ever stabilize like they predicted because server strength varies and it takes too much time to stabilize the rating. My bet is that the strength of the servers will change faster than the system can randomly adjust the rating. So we will always have crappy match up.

I agree with the OP too. It’s also a simple change.

Berk.8561:

But what I’ve seen watching ET through the day is that it does matter. We do fairly well during our prime time and have done reasonably well on weekends, but we loose a lot overnight, including fully upgraded towers and keeps that were stocked with siege equipment because nobody was there to hold them. Regardless of the reason, we are more competitive during some parts of the day than others.

Thank you! This is exactly the reason why I proposed this change. Key part :

“We are more competitive during some parts of the day than others”

I don’t want to lose a matchup because I was night cap all week long as I don’t want to win a matchup because some other group night cap the other servers all week long. When I can’t be on should not affect me. Of course that’s impossible but time slot can help.

I would really love to be really competitive in WvW but right now I just can’t.

Teevell.1684:

Which is why I said hopefully. Coverage at any time is a problem for low-pop servers, that has nothing to do with time zones. Even if it’s peak hours, the higher pop server will be able to cover better. Hopefully Anet will do something to address this imbalance. But I don’t think the OPs suggestion is it.

Well, maybe my suggestion is not the right answer. But let’s look at a scenario that happen relatively frequently.

There is 2 servers : Server A and Server B.

Server A is very strong from 4pm to 4am and very weak the rest of the time.
Server B is very strong from 4am to 4pm and very weak the rest of the time.

These 2 servers are the complete opposite of each other. Still, they might roughly be of the same strength if we only consider the score at the end of the week. Do you see a problem? Server A and Server B could be one against another while they have completely nothing to do one against another. From 4pm to 4am Server A is steam rolling Server B and from 4am to 4pm Server B is steam rolling Server A. Both servers get no opposition in their prime time and just get boring fight. Then they go to sleep and lose everything.

Now, if you have a solution to that problem that would work better than mine step up please. And no, the current system can’t fix that problem. It’s impossible. You would need to have balance population in all hours on all servers and that is just utopia.

BlazeQ.1095:

Useless upgrading = Money sink. This is actually important to the economy of the game.

This part of your message would be perfect IF and only if you would change “useless” by “meaningful”. Upgrade are still there and things will still flip so we will still be spending our hard earn gold into keep upgrade and golem rushes. But the we would know that tomorrow we can come back and defend what we upgrade all the previous night. And the dev can adjust the price of the upgrade as they feel is right for them and maybe us…

The WvW scene would be A LOT MORE COMPETITIVE with time slot. And that would be a lot more fun for many of us. You will probably still have down time on your server to play casually but you can expect that at least 1 time slot will be filled with organized guilds for crazy WvW during all the time. Every night is like a reset night (with reduced queue time)! How crazy that would be?

If you leave night capping then upgrading is a useless waste of gold and time. Anyway, what stop you from playing in other time slot if you want? You can play in all 3 time slots. It’s just that time slot are match according to their force.

If you really want competitive WvW, you need specific time where you play at your best or try the hardest. 24/24 can’t be competitive, it’s no life, it’s no fun.

WvW is all about coverage and it’s no fun. It’s not a job, it’s a game.

Being a server with a strong NA presence and getting steamroll by SEA when you sleep is no fun. I don’t want SEA to affect my score and neither EU. I’m not on when they play how can I defend or counter attack!?

And I didn’t talk about upgrading your things yet. How am-I suppose to keep my structure upgraded if they get flip when I sleep or I’m at work? Am-I suppose to feel like it’s worth it to spend 5 hours to escort supply, repair, siege up, refresh siege, do intensive scouting and push back any attack on SM just to lose it 1 hour later because we all went to sleep!?

NO MORE!

But there are simple solution to fix that BIG issue while still having 100% up time 24/7 for WvW. Here is one :

Why don’t you split the time WvW is up in block of 8 hours and each block get their own rating and different server to play with to match their strength?

For example, let’s say we have 3 time slots.
- Timeslot 1 : 0am to 8am
- Timeslot 2 : 8am to 4pm
- Timeslot 3 : 4pm to 0am

Now let’s observe the performance of Server A. Server A is very strong in timeslot 3 (4pm to 0am), but weak in the other two. A possible ranking for this server would be the following :
- Timeslot 1 : Server A is ranked 16th
- Timeslot 2 : Server A is ranked 21th
- Timeslot 3 : Server A is ranked 4th

So in timeslot 1 : Server A is kinda weak and will play with opponent around the 16th rank. Probably somewhere between 19th to 13th.
In timeslot 2, it’s even worst so it will play against opponent matching a server ranked 21th. Probably somewhere between 24th to 18th.
BUT, in timeslot 3, Server A is very strong, competitive and is aiming for the first place.
Hence it will face opponent of its caliber. Probably somewhere between 7th to 1st.

At the end of each time slot, WvW would close down for 15 minutes. The current map will be saved and the next time slot will start where it left. So, for example, if you take 8 hours in your time slot to fortified all your tower/keep and put waypoint everywhere. The next day, at the start of your time slot, you will still have all your fortified structure and your waypoint.

No more useless upgrading and no more long stressful overtime for a game!

Arena Net, please consider.

Thank you!

Well it’s normal you won’t succeed every time. If they wipe you and have a good 2 minutes to kill your orb carrier then you deserve to fail. But if you wipe them then….

Dead enemies can’t kill anything and 1-2 thief + a couple of suicider can’t kill a champion before you kill them.

Iavra.8510:

Just make the NPC carrying the orb a very slow moving champion that can’t defend itself

Sorry, but this would be impossible unless you already are winning be a huge margin. Thieves, warriors and other classes can already kill dolyaks guarded by 10+ people alone.

Here the important word was : Champion.

It’s possible to defend the keep lord against pretty big zerg when you do it right.

We want maps! Even crappy one with lot of flaws and exploits, just for the sake of getting new maps. Simple.

I spent the first 2 months in WvW learning tactics and finding all the nice spot to place siege in the 2 maps. Now I’m done. I have seen it all. There is no more innovation and I’m bored.

Thank you for understanding all the new possible strategy this simple change bring up

Also, having the orb reset after say 6 hours would be a good think. So it can happen more than once.