Guild Wars 2

Honor line has multiple support traits that heavily assist allies but have less individual benefit for the guardian.

Great… now I have an extra 3K HP for all those times when I’m playing this “Massively Multiplayer Online” Game alone…. in a support spec.

Like seriously are we all playing the same game here? Bizarre. If you think Guards need more HP just adjust the base HP and be done with it, or do something with the healing stat to make it most interesting.

Once a long time ago, before all the “improvements” we all thought Guardians were one of the best balanced classes. Fast forward to now and we’re getting the least inventive, least interesting, passive play, Grandmaster trait to grace the game.

I can only assume because they don’t want to “unbalance” guardians. Make your own joke for that one. Not keeping pace isn’t the same thing as staying balanced.

ACTIVE PLAY should be your goal Anet, static stat boosts appeals to the lowest common denominator. Bad game design.

It’s just business.

New MMOs are hitting the market soon and Anet will hold the biggest changes back till they are ready to deploy a motherload of player demands in the hope of combating attrition to the newer titles releases.

Yeah it stinks for the players, but in the long run better player retention with equal a better game as well. The Devs don’t hate you, you fuel their paychecks, The game’s longevity is in their best interest. Just be patient.

hellsmachine.4085:

I play in a T1 server, we manage to defend keeps just fine. Sounds like your server needs to L2P.

Edit: and we don’t need arrow carts to defend.

Exactly, and trust me the lower tier servers are “farm teaming” entire guilds to transfer up and extend your queue times.

There’s a very different experience in lower tier servers where a whole borderland is being defended by 15 people, in the middle of primetime against 40-50 man karma trains. Not really a “learn to play” issue it’s just not scalable with the wide variation in player populations among tiers.

It’s one of those things that never seems to get addressed and it impacts the overall player experience in the lower tiered matchups and largely contributes to why the server populations are so imbalanced.

Nabrok.9023:

Gundail.7594:

I sort of get the impression that the Devs feel the old WvW maps are a lost cause and this new overflow/cross server map should just replace the ageing borderland maps or replace WvW as we know it all together.

No, it’s a testing ground for new ideas and mechanics. The hope is that new things get introduced here first and then migrate over to the other maps if they’re successful, or presumably removed if they are not.

I know this to be the official stance given to us, but how would you expect the players to consume what is in effect a new 4th play mode? It’s in direct competition with the original maps for player interest.

Either way it’s a new map competing for the already active players, for those players on less populated servers it’s just a distraction… and I hope a good one, I’d like for it to be a success.

Although I’m not convinced that it’s likely to hold the larger group of PvE players interest for any longer as the original WvW maps did because of it’s inherent PvP aspects. So some map somewhere is going to see a drop off in interest, I’d expect the design team with so much invested into EotM are hoping for it to be the more popular choice.

EotM must have had a LOT of man hours put into it, I would guess it’s eaten up a lot of the development time available for WvW seems it appears they are both developed by the same group. Here’s hoping months without even fixing reported exploits much less any improvement or balance or even polish in WvW will pan out here.

I sort of get the impression that the Devs feel the old WvW maps are a lost cause and this new overflow/cross server map should just replace the ageing borderland maps or replace WvW as we know it all together.

Maybe now with your Overflow WvW map we can have decent rewards in the rank up chests at least on par with Zone boss encounters that take 5 minutes of your time?

How in the world would at least one guaranteed yellow per rank up not be on par with the loot pinatas in the rest of the game? Over population doesn’t sound like it should be an issue anymore, so maybe throw us a bone?

I don’t know if I would say WvW is broken because of this, but it’s a major fun vacuum.

Even T3 Keeps are nearly impossible to defend when the enemy is able and willing to throw 9+ Omegas at it… I remember a time when this would have been a special situation, but it’s become the norm and happens several times with in NA prime now in the mid to low tier server groups.

T1 walls and gates are a lost cause, with all of the improvements to siege and the plentiful WXP abilities the basic walls and gates haven’t kept pace in the slightest.

We can sit here and argue about if 4 arrow carts should be able to shut down 2 rams or whatever, but I think we can all agree that the zerg from tower to tower with little to no defense ever being played out is what we’re seeing in mid to low tier match ups.

It reminds me of the champ trains in high level zones. Low skill, boring, min/max rewards and everyone is doing it. WvW is devolving into a game of wack-a-mole in the same way most of the rest of the game already has.

I’d love to believe anyone on the WvW team has a vision for improvement but, given we’re getting an overflow map for WvW that more than half of the servers don’t even need, instead of incentivising balancing out world populations… yeah well, seeing the forest for the trees I guess?

I agree completely with Blaeys.

Blaeys.3102:

If you look at the actual mechanics of Tequatl, they shouldn’t really require large numbers. Six people on turrets, a few defending and the rest hitting the boss. The number requirement is based around two things – the boss’s health pool and the number of adds attacking turrets, both of which should be easy to scale down.

This is actually part of the weirdness in the fight and why a lot of servers fail. The turret events do scale and become unmanageable quickly. Successful raids will limit the number of players near the turrets to keep the scaling low enough to ensure the gunners don’t get spammed with insta-death AoE from scaled up grubs.

I can’t fathom all of the limits of the game engine, but when I see mechanics like that, where players need to “game the system” to have success, I think there’s some very concerning issues with any events of this type.

Scaling mechanics in general still seen off in many areas of the game. I’m not sure how much work adjusting the values would take on a core game mechanic like event scaling, but it seems like it deserves a bit of review again.

I think a more conventional return to Guild Wars lore would appeal or at least be more digestible to a larger demographic.

Magic, Monsters, Gods and Politics might seem contrite, but I’m convinced that real human stories can be told under the pretense of the Fantasy world. Scarlet fails as a protagonist for simple reasons, she’s out of place, unneeded and force fed to us.

There is already a huge, epic, cataclysmic story of the dragons, warring nations and established heros and villans in the shipped game. Scarlet feels like Deus ex Machina of sorts, some sort of hashed up supervillain meant to tie together a bunch of separate ideas. She comes off as some sort of bad storytelling mechanic and everyone knows the character has no real place in the story, but can’t really put their fingers on why.

We spent months on Kiel’s storyline, and even Evon felt like a believable foil to Kiel by extension. If there had been a good moment for a plot twist these forgotten characters would have been ideal to expand on. Instead they feel like cheap forgotten throw aways, while we slog through more “Mechagodzilla” Living story updates.

What I’m trying to say here is, use the established lore and characters. Tell mature, real, human stories the players can relate to. I’d equate the current living story more with a bad “B” Movie than Tolkien. I feel the difference here is creating interesting, cool characters people can feel engaged with instead of writing in comic book supervillains.

Remember each, and every player in your game is trying to tell THEIR story in YOUR world. Often I feel like a nameless faceless character in someone else’s story when playing through story content. Just another militia in some vast army of other players. Having key characters recognize you and your involvement seems to help me connect with the characters.

I feel the need to support this topic.

Playing on a “lower population” server basically means the content is not obtainable. There’s still to this day, servers who have never defeated Teq under their own strength.

Not being able to queue a map to full capacity shouldn’t be the defining limit on defeating a world boss. The vast majority of these players on the servers will just guest to one of the “big guy” servers furthering the over crowding on those servers. I know this to be fact, cause it is what I, and my friends do. Sometimes enduring mind numbing hour long “zone camping” to ensure a shot at a boss before the zone overflows.

I’m optimistic some lessons have been learned since Teq was introduced, but the fact Teq still hasn’t been rebalanced to be achievable by a reasonable force even after all this time… meh.

Well, I’m sure I can accomplish my goals by guesting again, so sorry to anyone on Blackgate that can’t even get into the zone on your home server.

Reusing the Human Tier 3 cultural is really bad form. Very disappointed.

Your game requires some sort of top end exclusive items to make time investment have some sort of tangible reward if you expect to retain players.

You have to understand when players invest 80 levels into a race and a large sum of gold to have exclusive armor set as part of your own self-defined “cosmetic only” endgame, you have severely undermined their investment into your game.

I’m surprised anyone signed off on this. It’s bad business and someone had to realize it.

phokus.8934:

I really have to question your ability to lead WvW game design because everything you’ve been doing to WvW has been abysmal. Based on a forum post you made a while back (saying … “I won’t make changes with just a few weeks worth of data…”) about how servers are matched, your fix comes in the form of a huge oversight of just a 2 league system for NA.

I really doubt Devon has the sort of leverage to be calling the shots here.

I mean really let’s cut it down to the bones… Running WvW costs money, it uses lot’s of bandwidth and server resources, proven by Anet’s inability to even get a Tier 6 match-up to run without massive, crippling lag.

No matter how much anyone talks about “design” or “vision” we’re talking about a business here. When the bills/payroll get paid someone in accounting has to justify where the income came from.

So, in effect:
– No 4th map for GvG because they already SELL custom arenas for SPvP. ( free service competing with paid, big no-no )
– Leagues are happening, like it or not, because they SELL server transfers. ( I have already witnessed, and been affected by, the massive spike in guilds moving around )
– 3005 new WXP levels added because, surprise, they SELL wxp boosters now. ( Flirting closer to Pay2Win aren’t we now? )

The only metrics anyone is watching in regards to WvW is revenue created. Win/Loss ratios or god forbid WvW population tracking and creating remotely even match-ups haven’t been addressed yet and there’s no signs of it being on the radar.

I’d love to see someone with Colin Johanson’s rank and pull come in here and tell us how wonderfully balanced WvW is and what a bright shining future is has and lecture us on how altruistic the design team is again.

Well, the design team really could do better by those of us that primarily play WvW. I’m pretty sure they are fully aware of unbalanced match-ups and I think every server outside T1 has been on the receiving end of a crushing defeat or watched your 2000+ point leads lost over night because you lack coverage.

So ask yourselves why can’t any of this be addressed or even humble efforts put in place to even out the bumps?

Let’s not pretend Devon has free license to do whatever he wants when he clocks in everyday. All of this league stuff looks very profit driven. Removing culling, adding new achievements, new mechanics and even the massive borderlands map change ( love it or hate it ) are all added to increase gameplay value, and I hope in good faith. Now they need to justify it with some cold, hard cash.

Hell maybe this “disaster in the making” can pay to finally make defending a rewarding gameplay option finally! Bright future guys! Rah, Rah, Rah. Maybe we should ALL just move to Blackgate to help finance it… hell we could all get our dragon achievements as a bonus. It’s like buying First class seating on an Airplane, if you want full service, you gotta pay for it.

Back on the topic of exciting WvW action…

Last night, NA Prime (7/30 sometime around 5-6PM Server), While HoD was most definitely “Zerging hard” on EBG ( I could metaphorically feel the current pull me into DR’s Overlook with all the salmon rushing into the Lord’s room) some brave group from Devona’s Rest ( and I’m sorry in the chaos of it all I didn’t see which guilds were involved ) performed a retaliatory strike on HoD BL.

Kudos, to the commander(s) who lead that offensive. When the call for assistance went out, you already had Hills and both southern towers. Bay’s South Outer Gate had just fallen when we, [Rawr], entered the map.

With the defenders already on map we managed to defeat the attack ( clever feint ) in what looked like a pretty even fight by WvW standards. Meanwhile a much larger group attacked water gate Garrison. Thankfully our scout posted at Garrison alerted us in time for a handful of defenders to keep the point contested long enough for [Mend] and others to join the map as we saved Garrison by the skin of our teeth.

The last desperation strike on North Bay with your remaining Golems was a daring move but, by then we had enough defenders to drive the remaining DR off the map.

Truly exciting and WvW tactics at it’s finest, a memorable night. DR is a worthy opponent and not to be taken lightly. Meanwhile HoD continues to show some really good coordination and teamwork. Bravo.

Kyskythyn.6471:

Hills got hit first, so the defenders on the map were concentrated there. We had 15-20 people in hills, and fewer than that in garrison. As mentioned before, DDLG, Rega and a few other guilds were off doing guild missions at the time (heh, PvE scrubs…). Not really a matter of morale or response, more like 20v50 gg. Nevertheless, was a good siege and a good take by HoD.

Yeah, I guess what I mean to say is, that I think it was well within DR’s ability to defend Garrison. Sounds like our timing came out perfect for the snatch.

There was some solid defense at NE Tower, and it looked like you guys held out at Hills for a good time ( I was not at the Hills offense ). Had you gotten timely reinforcements I think it could have been anyone’s fight.

I recognize you guys were getting hit from all directions on multiple maps. I don’t mean to criticize your defense, we were just expecting more resistance on a fully upgraded Garrison during NA Prime. Nothing but respect for those of you who defended as best you could with what you had.

monstertooky.3485:

Maybe time to ask this question again…

“So ummm is this normal numbers for HoD?”

I think turn out looks about normal from the past few weeks. I would say we have a lot more free forces to direct at DR due to Anvil Rock’s situation.

What I can say is, there’s been some big strides in Guild cooperation on HoD. So seeing more organized forces striking in unison, probably makes us look a lot stronger on the field.

The Golem rush on DRBL might have been overkill in the end but, we spent a fair amount of time prepping the invasion with a goal of knocking out as many waypoints as possible and we really wanted to capitalize in a limited timeframe.

I’ve definitely been on the receiving side of a waypoint clear before, losing Bay and maybe Hills might have been beyond your control but a rally at Garrison should have been possible. Unmanned cannons, basically a skeleton crew of defenders and eight or so unmanned siege in Lord’s room during NA Prime time? Not really about being out numbered, just a lack of response or possibly morale.

Scores are still decently close between DR and HoD and most of the fighting has been pretty intense. “HoD is a zerg server and we can’t win” is a cop out mentality and pretty far from reality. Don’t fall into that trap.