Guild Wars 2

For rankings, I suggest global team and individual leaderboards, driven by one of the usual suspects in ranking algorithms (ELO, glicko, etc.). All leaderboards and queues should be, as now, global across the entire game.

This system could completely replace the existing PvP “rank” system. The leaderboards should be archived on the website for each past season, as well as showing the live boards for the current season.

The top 1, 2 and 3 spots on each leaderboard should give (1) a UNIQUE and very cool title, awarded for that spot in that season only; and (2) a UNIQUE and very cool finisher that also is awarded for that spot in that season only.

Beyond that, rankings should be divided by percentiles into gold, silver, and bronze. Each band should award everyone who ranked in that band a common title and finisher that is associated with that band in that season.

Finally, anyone who completes whatever 10-part season meta achievement you feel like tossing together also should get a common “I was there” title and finisher that are unique to the season, but given to everyone who did the meta regardless of rank.

GLOBAL FACTION ALIGNMENT (3/3)

ASSOCIATED RISKS

It sounds like a kitten-ton of work and would require a lot more than just a bit of grafting neat stuff from EOTM onto the old maps (though in the end it would benefit from and greatly leverage new bits like the map balance and overflow parts already created for EOTM to make some huge improvements in traditional WvW).

There also would be some issues when it is first rolled out dealing with players who are in existing guilds that choose to align, and in multiple guilds. There probably would need to be a staging period when people could make alignment choices ahead of time and get everything sorted, before any of it takes effect.

And it could be severely disruptive for existing server communities. However, unlike the current stacking / coverage meta, it would be disruptive in a way that would lead to something better and more stable, rather than in a way that inevitably causes communities to grow up and then crash and burn with toxic frequency.

GLOBAL FACTION ALIGNMENT (2/3)

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY

GUILD REWARDS

Objective-based “PPT” would only count toward the guild score for the leaderboards and the total faction score for the match or tournament win ranking. While the player score would come at capture from flipping an objective, the guild score would come over time from claiming and holding that objective.

With the low number of objectives on the maps, the system would need to allow multiple guilds to “contribute” to claiming and holding a given objective. There also would be an ongoing “cost” (e.g., gold+influence) taken out of the guild bank on a periodic basis as long as a guild holds a claim on a facility.

This might require a new form of influence that only could be farmed in WvW (by capping and killing) and only could be spent to pay for holding objectives. Holding an objective also should give some modest but meaningful buffs to all guild members active in WvW all the time, as well as to all allies inside each objective, in order to make the benefit of holding worth the effort to pay the bills.

MAP BALANCE

The trick to making this all work better than server match ups do now would be having the map queues enforce a tight balance of faction numbers on active WvW maps.

The war would proceed on a base set of maps and N overflows. Overflows would be spawned and would collapse and be destroyed as needed to provide just enough instances to allow the greatest number of active players possible into as many fully balanced maps as could be filled.

If a faction gets too many people on a map, then nobody from that faction could enter and players on that side only could leave until either the map is empty and the overflow is destroyed, or the numbers for the other two sides come back into balance.

If all active maps are equally full, no new overflows could be created until enough players were queued up on all three sides to both be balanced and hit a certain minimum total number needed to form a viable, active map.

The result would be that “stacking” one faction would just lead to people on that side sitting in endless queues, never getting to fight. That would give a reason for those who want to fight instead of wait to de-stack to an outnumbered side.

And since changing factions would be cheap and easy (keeping in mind the active match and 7-day lockouts), the faction balance would tend to even out over time, as players seek out the side with the lowest queue times in their preferred time slots, instead of the side with the biggest blobs and broadest coverage.

Any attempt to stack numbers would be self-defeating because it would never let one side put significantly more people on any map than the other sides. Intead they would just wind up with more people on the bench (who would spend all that queue time thinking about swapping sides).

MERCENARIES

A player could “enlist” as a Mercenary instead of pledging a main faction. Mercenaries would be special in that, for the first time only during each match or tournament, they could choose to queue on the side of any of the three main factions.

This would help to micro-manage the population balance from week to week, by letting Mercenaries pick the “underdog” side on the fly to get better queue times (for them) and better coverage (for the “low pop” side).

Players who don’t care about being on a side and want to just hop around and get the best queue times can play as Mercenaries full-time if they want. However, once you queue up for a side during a match, you would be locked to that main faction’s side until the match (or tournament) ends.

Mercenary aligned guilds should be allowed, for those that want to hop between sides each week without having to maintain a separate guild on each faction. There should be a switch that would stop any member of a Mercenary guild from queueing until a member assigned a (new) “Warmaster” privilege logs in to choose the guild’s side for the week (then all members would be locked to that side for the duration).

There also would be one big downside for Mercenaries: No leaderboard credit.

Each player still would get all the same normal rewards in WvW as other players, and you or your guild still could claim objectives and receive faction or objective bonuses (Bloodlust, +5 supply, etc.).

But as long as you and your guild remain enlisted as Mercenaries and not aligned with any main faction you would not accrue any credit toward guild or personal leaderboard standings.

This would make Mercenary an attractive choice for players who don’t care about the leaderboards, but would prevent everyone from just defaulting to Mercenary for the flexibility, since many would still want to make the commitment in exchange for having the chance to gain standings.

GLOBAL FACTION ALIGNMENT (1/3)

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW

Replace server alignment of players in WvW with a global faction alignment of the player’s choice. There would be 3+1 factions a player could choose.

For lack of any good ideas at all, I will call the three main factions Frostlands Alliance, Overreach Empire, and The Badgrowth. The real ones could be loosely based on any overarching groups that appear in the present or past lore, or some new ones made up just for this. The +1 faction would be known as Mercenaries.

GOALS OF PROPOSAL

The goals are to (1) allow old school WvW to exploit the best feature of EOTM — dynamic map balance and overflows; (2) up-end the server stacking and coverage meta and allow everyone, on every server, to get into the good fights every week; and (3) do these things without killing the sense of pride that comes with having the stable identity of a “home” community that players belong to.

This proposal goes a bit beyond “What from EOTM should we add to old-school WvW.” But just stick with me till the end and it will all come together.

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY

PLAYER ALIGNMENT

Each player character would start life with no faction alignment. He or she could pledge loyalty to a faction at an time, by vising a representative of that faction located in some neutral social hub.

Players also could “betray” their faction and join another at any time, for a nominal fee (say, 30 silver), but with a seven-day cooldown, like server transfers have today. Also, queueing for WvW at any time would lock your faction choice and prevent any betrayal until after the end of the current match or tournament.

Players who never want to do WvW would not have to choose a faction, or even know that factions exist. Faction alignment would have no effect on anything outside WvW, and would not be tied to other choices like race or order.

GUILD ALIGNMENT

Guild leaders could declare a faction for their guild, and then only players of that faction could join the guild. Guilds that are aligned could only have players of the same alignment as members. Unlike with players, who can change faction at will, faction choice would be permanent and irrevocable for a guild.

Players who have chosen a faction would only be able to join an aligned guild of the same faction or an unaligned guild. If a player joins an aligned guild and then wants to switch sides, they would have to quit their aligned guild first.

No cross-faction guilds would be allowed; but real life Guilds could maintain more than one in-game guild — one of each faction, for instance — if they want to allow members to faction hop at will.

Guilds that do not select any alignment could welcome all players regardless of faction alignment. BUT, an unaligned guild would not be able to claim objectives in WvW, could not build or activate any guild-based WvW bonuses, and would have no presence on the faction leaderboards.

Members of unaligned guilds also would not have access to their guild chat, guild bank, or other guild resources and bonuses while in WvW (basically an unaligned guild is no guild at all while in WvW, except for the tag). This would stop unaligned guilds from being a convenient channel for spies. Of course, people still could use out-of-game channels like voice comms to spy; but they can do that today as well.

MATCHUPS

In WvW, matches and queues would be global, and maps would spawn overflows filled by players from all servers, just like EOTM.

However, unlike in EOTM, players would be grouped by their persistent faction alignment, not randomly grouped into colors. Faction identity and loyalty — for those who like that sort of thing — would take the place of server identity.

Players of each faction would be pitted against players of the other two factions from across the entire game world. The factions would rotate from week to week through the three colored home borderlands.

LEADERBOARDS

Faction alignment would take the place of home server for keeping score and deciding which faction places 1st, 2nd, and 3rd each week.

Also, there would be factional leaderboards, which would rank all guilds and players within each faction by their total contribution to the war effort at the end of each match (or, with spring coming, each tournament).

This, of course, would mean some new math under the hood to keep track of individual and guild contributions to capping and holding objectives.

PERSONAL REWARDS

Players would get the same types of instant rewards (karma, WXP) as they do now, regardless of their leaderboard rank. Players also would get personal leaderboard credit for their active contribution to the war effort (e.g., capping objectives).

WVW MAPS AND SCORING + EOTM MATCHUPS AND OVERFLOWS = WIN

Proposal Overview

Remove “tiers” and per-server matching from traditional WvW matches, and add some sort of waves hands EOTM-like magical overflow + server grouping functionality that will give us EOTM-like population balancing, but with the existing WvW maps, match length, and PPT scoring.

Goal of Proposal

Stacking servers is bad. Coverage >>> all else is bad. It’s good that EOTM adds some new game mechanics, short matches, and spontaneity. But there is still room for the more traditional, strategic, slow paced game on the old maps. And people want to play it. They just hate having the entire meta determined by server stacking and nothing else.

Another way to view this is, think about sPvP/tPvP matching and auto-balance, but on a server level, and for WvW. The PvP queues have some issues of their own right now (4v5 being the most obvious and hated one), but the idea is to make population balancing and rank-based matching more dynamic, and remove the ability of players to game the system by transfers or other means.

Proposal Functionality

I honestly have no idea. I imagine something that leverages the color grouping and overflow system of EOTM in a clever way, but also taking into account existing server ratings, to create a dynamic week-to-week matchup and map instancing scheme that defeats “server stacking” and equalizes the population as much as possible regardless of the time of day. I have no idea if this can work, or if it can how it would. But it seems like EOTM shows that if it could work, it would work very well indeed.

I would not bring over the maps, objectives, short-duration, score on capture, destructible tactical assets, or other features of EOTM. Some of these only further encourage trolling (e.g., bridges). The rest may be neat, but if you want them, that’s what EOTM is for. The old WvW maps may be due for some sprucing up, but the One Big Thing from EOTM that WvW can actually use and benefit from is the population management.

Associated Risks

I’m sure it will be a huge pain in the kitten to do this. Also, people no longer will identify with their “server” quite so much (although, arguably, you still could even though fighting beside different “allies” each week).

It also will cause some complications for people who maintain server-specific resources (teamspeak being the big obvious one), when their allegiances shift from week to week.

BUT, if you were to take this as a chance to bring in some neat new ways to make WvW more guild centric — especially as to rewards and rankings — that second part actually could be a good thing. Moving meta-resource management, command, and player focus from servers back to guilds, and making guilds the constant, centerpiece element of the war effort would be a very welcome change in the eyes of many dedicated WvW players and commanders.

And come on, we are playing GUILD WARS after all, not Server Wars.

The rest of the game goes a bit out of its way to avoid locking players into one “server” for our identities and activities. And it is, after all, a lot more appealing to identify ourselves with the groups we form ourselves and not a rather arbitrarily scoped load-management bin that our accounts happen to be locked to.

Letting loose of the server-centric identity in WvW might turn out to be, looking back on it, one of those “how did we ever do this the old way” moments.

With any luck, never.

It is the single biggest thing you can do to improve your chances of (1) surviving a fight; (2) killing something; and (3) making some sort of actual contribution. It’s also the one thing that seems to be hardest for people to actually do (and I’m saying this as someone who does not do it especially well or anywhere close to all the time).

You could stow your weapon, not attack anything, and make more of a contribution to a push than probably 50% of people who aren’t doing this, if you manage to do it right. If you can do it and manage to hit some things at the same time, so much the better.

The king boss of all time on this score was EvE Online, until the recent patch that nerfed it into the dirt.

It was a technique that only worked with one weapon system in that game (drones), because until the latest change any number of drones could be “assigned” to one person. So in big fights the fleet commander could have an instant, perfectly coordinated alpha with the firepower of 2,000+ ships. And after clicking the FC and “assign,” the other 1,999 players could all go AFK for half an hour until the fight was over. It was great fun while it lasted, and large guilds abused the hell out of it.

Anything that tends to work the same way and is of any use at all would no doubt likewise go away in this game before too long. And people aren’t exactly up on the rooftops screaming for ANet to put even more reasons to run massive zergs into the WvW game right now.

As hinted at in posts above about other games, it would just change the zerg meta a bit from melee train to ranged train, since target swapping would be more efficient with pure ranged damage assisting on the pin. That doesn’t exactly sound like an “improvement” to the current WvW ground game.

As someone noted above, there was a retrainer added to the Royal Terrace area at the same time the Airship area was introduced. My earlier post about this was simply wrong, and I apologize for going off on a rant.

And to make up for it, I am now the owner of a shiny new Airship Pass.

Also, thanks for adding one of the most requested vendors that was missing from the RT area. Good job.

In theory the colors do rotate, but the problem is that your server rating still factors in, so if you’re never green it probably means your server is always last in the match up (not surprising, since it sounds like almost nobody does WvW where you are).

The only real fix for it is either going to be getting a guild group or something up to go into WvW just to cap those couple points, or . . . transferring to a server that is sometimes green.

I can’t say for Guardian since I haven’t played one yet, but Warriors are not strictly confined to melee combat. They can carry a longbow or rifle as well as your choice of melee weapons, and that’s a popular combination in certain metas (e.g., arena PvP).

They also can go fully ranged with just rifle and bow if you want. That’s not a real popular setup that you will see around, but anything works in the open world game, and it does allow for decent single target and AOE both at range.

It’s not what most would consider a “real” ranged classes though, since it doesn’t have any fully ranged AOE nuke spec.

Not sure what you mean by RNG. If your server’s color wins the current match, then you get the supply drop. Match outcomes may not be “predictable,” but they’re also not “random.”

In the noob zones, Oakhearts are the first really annoying enemies you run into, with their non-stop stun, root, knockdown spam. The packs of immob spamming Risen in Orr that have always on super run speed are probably the most annoying I’ve run into in open world higher level zones.

Having developers play the game always seems like a good idea, but of course their time to do that is limited, since they have actual work to do as well.

I wonder why more companies don’t employ a small pool of full-time test players who are assigned to each play certain classes for a certain number of hours per day, doing different sorts of activities in the game, and file detailed reports and feedback on the issues they run into, and what they see other players doing.

It seems like they could get people to do this for disgustingly low hourly rates, because, “I get paid to play games all day LOL!”

I note that the OP says “questions go here.” Does that mean we also can expect answers to go here?

SoR will continue its plummet, because the handful of good and dedicated WvW guilds left can no longer carry the server when 80% of the potential WvW population is training EOTM 24×7.

It’s bad enough that unaffiliated randoms just default to EOTM because our color is usually running the map and the rewards per hour are better. Lately though I am hearing stuff like commanders in server comms saying “Well this sux, you guys want to just head over to EOTM and see what we can do instead?”

The more this goes on, the more good WvW players will migrate to servers that act like they give a crap about the map instead of just zerg farming bags and karma or hiding in EOTM to not get blob rolled all day.

So no worries. Those T3 and lower tier servers can look forward to picking up their fair share of those “excess” points as well.

bhagwad.4281:

I’m pretty sure they said they’re going to remove rank progression. Those who have reached a certain rank at that time will keep it along with the rank finishers they’ve earned. But you won’t be able to go further anymore.

I wouldn’t feel too bad about it if you don’t get to whatever level you want before any change that does happen eventually comes around. For one thing, it likely will take them ages to actually do it, since they haven’t yet talked about any specifics at all.

Also, if it is true that the old ranks are going away, they’re not going to be replaced with nothing, or with something worse. What it most likely means is they want to remove the rank grind and tie whatever new “rank” system replaces it directly to the competitive ladder instead.

As it is now, getting a certain rank just means you’ve played X number of matches, assuming the typical win rate of 50/50.

The alternative (and the way most competitive players prefer) is running “seasons” and granting “ranks” based on your competitive ladder position at the end of each. The top three spots will give unique titles and finishers, and everyone else who completed some sort of 10-part meta achievement during the season will get a common “I was there” title and finisher that are unique to that season. There also probably will be tiered titles and rewards, so like gold, silver, and bronze tier rewards for everyone who falls into the respective ranking bands.

Then, when the next season starts, a new set of unique rewards come in, and you start over again churning to the top and competing to get the better and globally unique rewards.

The ranks and finishers we have now, at that point, will just mean that you played back in the day, like the old living story achievements that you can only have if you were there when those episodes were running.

It doesn’t mean the stuff in the future will be worse. In fact, if they do wind up making a new rank system that actually is tied to your true rank on the ladder, the new titles and rewards will be a whole lot more meaningful, because they will be a reflection of your individual and team skill, and something that only competitors of equal skill will ever have, not just the inevitable outcome of a boring grind that everyone can wind up getting sooner or later.

It just means that the old stuff will become unique and acquire collector or “veteran” value, and it will be your token to show that you were there, which people who come along later will not be able to get.

There is a distinction in that you can never face premades in the solo Q. So any premades that want to play have to enter the team Q, and everyone who wants to avoid premades has to stick to the solo Q.

And there is no reason to group randomly just to get into team Q, because then you just face a very good chance of taking a motley PUG group with no coordination, comms, or strategy up against a well oiled premade with voice comms and an optimal team comp, all playing at the top of their game.

So, basically team Q is designed for premades only, which, since you will always be facing other premades, expect to have to play at a much higher skill level as individuals, and as a whole, in order to win, compared to what they would have to do to get a win in the typical solo Q match.

You might find the same players in both Qs from day to day, and their personal skill level obviously doesn’t change from one mode to the other. But the extent to which they need to exercise that skill in order to win certainly does.

bhagwad.4281:

The better you are, the better rewards you should get. Come on – this isn’t such an alien or out of the way concept surely!

I get that this is how you, as a player, feel about it. And it’s not an unjustified feeling.

But from the game designer’s point of view, the more time you spend playing = the more reward you get, because the entire goal is to keep you playing for as long as possible. There is no way you can reasonably expect that they are ever going to design a game that runs counter to that fundamental, economic motive that they have for building the game in the first place.

The bottom line is that you’re not asking for “better” rewards at all; you’re asking to get the same rewards faster. That’s not going to happen.

ANet has carefully and deliberately scaled the number of hours and days they expect you to spend to get every single reward they put into the game (allowing for some variance, and always keeping in sight a minimum time investment required from all players, no matter how good they are at speeding up).

Making it so you get those rewards quicker than they intended means you will run out of rewards to get quicker, and that means you stop playing and no longer are their customer sooner than they planned. Losing customers faster is not exactly what most game developers consider a “good” design objective for a game.

bhagwad.4281:

But this is clearly not true. If I’m good, I can on an average finish a dungeon much faster than someone who isn’t. The better you are, the faster you get stuff in PvE. I can guarantee you that a well played warrior in a dungeon is far superior and preferable to a bad one. It can make the difference between 20 minutes and 1.5 hours.

And you still only get one run per day at the higher reward level for each path. You also don’t get double the tokens for finishing in 20 minutes vs. 1.5 hours.

There are some extremes where terribad players might take a lot longer just to get through the content at all (same in PvP, where awful players may just lose and lose and lose and never get close to 50/50 wins). But for everyone else who is between merely ok and really good at it, the same rewards take substantially the same number of hours to get.

All of the core reward design features like daily gates are in fact put into the game to slow higher skilled players down, so they can’t progress faster than those who are not quite as efficient. And all games do this. To the extent you can get around it a bit in PvP, at the extreme high end of the skill tiers, you at least have that advantage.

bhagwad.4281:

Same with PvP. I want to reach my rank finisher so I can boost my ego. My problem is that low skilled players get rank points with the same speed as high ranked players. Skill counts for nothing. Unlike other modes of the game. I see no reason for this curious split to exist. PvP needn’t be placed on some hallowed pedestal.

You’re saying you want PvP to be like PvE. But it takes everyone on the PvE side the same number of hours, give or take, regardless of their “skill” to do any of the serious grinds. Why should it not take the same number of hours for any two PvP players to complete their grinds? That is, in fact, the entire design goal of all game systems in all games; to reward you more for spending more time playing, and to reward equal amounts of time invested equally.

The only real difference in any part of the game is not between “high skill” and “low skill” players, but between “high time” and “low time.” The former will spend more hours per week in game, and therefore will get their rewards in a shorter number of calendar days than other players. Other than that, all rewards are scaled to the expected number of hours needed to receive them, regardless of what you are doing.

You can be a little more efficient or fail a little less often in the PvE game if you’re more “skilled,” but on the whole it’s going to take just as many hours to get world completion, or run a raid instance, or kill a world boss, or do whatever else you want to do as everyone else who does it. The game is designed to ensure that is the case, in order to keep as many people as possible playing it for as long as possible. In PvE the time-gating is even more explicit; e.g., with raid lockouts, daily gating of laurels and dungeon path rewards, daily gates on top tier crafting, etc.

The only distinction is that in PvE everyone plays at the same relatively low skill level, because they all have to cross the same relatively low bar to win, and if you cross that bar — beating a fight, or finishing an achievement — then you get the same rewards as everyone else who passes that same bar.

In PvP, because you’re fighting other players, the bar for success is not fixed and isn’t low enough for everyone to pass in every possible match up. So they “fix” the problem of varying opponent difficulty by sorting players into tiers based on relative ability. The rating tiers, by design, are just there to ensure that everyone has to put forth the same amount of effort and spend the same amount of time playing in order to get the same rewards (same number of matches played = same average number of wins = same overall rewards, for everyone).

There is a small difference in that, in PvP, you can achieve a higher than typical win rate if you are one of the handful of players at the very top of the rating ladder; and for those few people progress will be a little bit faster because they can win more often than anyone else can consistently.

In that sense PvP actually does reward (extremely) high skill in a way that the PvE game in GW2 does not, and likely never will (at least, not as long as it lacks things like torture-mode feats of strength and “world firsts,” that other games use to reward higher “skill” and unique or “first” achievements in PvE).

bhagwad.4281:

I’m afraid I don’t agree with the statement “The ‘bonus’ or ‘reward’ for having higher skill is . . . beating higher skilled opponents, and therefore being better at the game.”

Thirty+ million MOBA players would like a word with you.

And the PvE side of all MMOs works exactly this way. The marginal increase in power for each tier of advancement becomes smaller and smaller the higher you go, and the time needed to complete each tier becomes longer and longer, to the point where cresting the last 10% of the power curve takes more time than doing all the other 90% up to that point. This game is even more extreme in this respect than most games, when it comes to the extreme speed of early progress and the glacial pace of later tiers.

You seem to be comparing match rewards in PvP to raid or farm chests in PvE and just thinking that it’s unfair that you get “more” or “better” drops and currency from doing higher level raids or farming higher level mobs in PvE, but you get the same number of rank points per match regardless of your rating in PvP. But what you’re leaving out is the exponentially increasing cost of actual progression (getting something of any value to you with those rewards).

You can get to level 80 in a couple weeks, and then head straight to the TP and buy a full set of exotic gear for a pittance. So you can get in just days or weeks 90% of the total power (or 90% of the “best” gear) you are ever going to have in the game, no matter how long you play it. But grinding out a legendary (or two) and getting ascended gear will take you more time by an order of magnitude than everything else you do up to that point, and the increase in stats is negligible at best. The only substantial reward of doing those grinds is the rep you get from having done them, and the shiny things you get to wear that shows everyone that you did.

WvW also has a a wildly exponential grind to get to higher ranks and abilities, which takes absolute ages to “max out” on either titles or power level. In fact a huge segment of the upper level titles and achievements in WvW are so absurdly grindtastic that it is mathematically impossible for anyone in the game to have obtained them at this point (some on them, e.g., the “Yakslapper” title, are not even obtainable within the reasonably foreseeable entire future lifetime of the game).

The diminishing returns in PvE are at least as severe as anything in PvP, and on both sides the ultimate reward of doing these grinds is really nothing more than than access to more shiny things or fancy finishers, which are just more little goodies that let you show off your rep and prove to others that you did the grinds.

So by your standards the PvE side of the games is at least as punishing or “pointless” at increasing skill levels compared with PvP (and this is assuming that grinding higher level PvE content represents a higher level of “skill,” which is a debatable premise at best).

The instant re-trait already is implemented in PvP mode. It’s just not available in PvE. A cynical person might assume that was because they (used to) offer a retrait token for sale in the cash shop. Now that’s gone, it’s a little unclear what plans they may have to continue to extract value (sales) from the absence of the feature outside of PvP.

You’re basically complaining that the system is working exactly the way it is supposed to work. The “bonus” or “reward” for having higher skill is . . . beating higher skilled opponents, and therefore being better at the game.

Rising to your level of competence is the entire point of any ranking or rating system. In any perfectly even match up, the expected win/loss rate should be 50/50 for all sides, and the rewards will be balanced around that expected or typical rate. Winning more often than 50/50 means you’re underrated, and the outsize rewards only persist for the short period that it takes to get you up to the proper level.

The idea of the system is that everyone should arrive fairly quickly at a level where they achieve the expected win 50/50 win rate when they are matched against opponents of roughly equal skill (give or take a bit since match ups are never absolutely even, mistakes are made, and sometimes RNG or lousy teamplay tilts things for or against you).

And as pointed out above, laying down so you can lose in order to drop in rating will just mean that you give up as much in foregone rewards as you will gain on the way back up the ladder.

In any working ladder system, there is no steady state where you can consistently maintain a win rate > 50/50, nor should there be one (except maybe for the one guy in the world at the very top of the ladder who can beat everyone hands down, if he exists).

zone.1073:

This is the build: http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-so-FF;0NK-O0Y4JL-60;9;6OTE;418-16B3;0T-V6a;1ZF18ZF189cB

If you want to use WoW as an analogy, this build is the love child between a support druid and death knight, on steroids. I may get into the details later, but this is an extremely powerful build in pvp due to its mixture of strong team healing support plus strong condition pressure.

I believe I spectated someone running this build yesterday or today. I think they were doing pretty well with it, because I remember watching them for quite a while.

Aren’t they making some big change to how rank works soon anyway?

I’ve been spectating matches for a bit, mostly watching warriors. I see a ton of people using these runes.

I also see a lot who have them equipped while also using Healing Signet + Signet of Rage. This seems a bit odd since my understanding is that it’s basically never a good idea to use the Healing Signet active, because it turns off the regen for the entire cooldown time, and the burst heal is much less HP/s. I also rarely see people use the active on Signet of Rage. So it seems like both of the proc set bonuses on the Lyssa runes are wasted if you’re using them with these two signets.

I get the appeal of these runes with the cleanse effects and granting a random boon on heal, I guess. But if you’re never proc’ing those bonuses, what’s the point? Am I missing something?

Also, when it says “gain all boons,” does that mean literally one stack of every boon there is? Or does it just convert all conditions you have into boons?

Fenrir.3609:

Look at the wvw roam or zerg builds for the class, roll one up in spvp (as close an approximation as you can), jump into hotjoin and then learn to “hit and not be hit” to your hearts content. At least that way when you have improved your abilities you will already comfortable with the kind of build, skills, timings you need to know when you step back into wvw.

That’s my plan. I mean to try some that are supposed to work well 1v1 and in solo arenas in PvP, a roaming build (or as close as I can get) meant for WvW, and something like what I will actually run in WvW, and play with all of them until I am a lot less worse than I am now with each.

I like how they omitted the “butt scratcher” third set of wings from the female version. Nothing like being groped all day by your own backwear.

Raf.1078:

Thanks to WvW, my highest map completion I have on 10 characters is 63% on my 80 Ranger. My lowest is 13% on my 80 Guard who literally grew up in WvW…all the rest are scattered between 20-30%. And thos only because I fool around for a half hour in the morning before work.

Ahh well…all the Legendaries are stupidly ugly anyway. Even if I had one, I’d just skin it with something to make it look more functional and realistic.

Account-wide cumulative map completion . . . FTW?

Liewec.2896:

most warrior builds can work with little to no effort.
i made a post afew weeks ago about my zerker axe warrior that hits like a truck,
and the key thing about the build is that you don’t weapon swap or activate any of your utilities, its literally just your 5 skills and dodge roll (and swapping weapons if you need to leave the fight to recover), its a very causal build that anyone can play
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/AXEZERKER-very-fun-impractical-build-D/

but if you want really really casual play, become a hambow clone, but beware,
you’ll get all of the hate that users of that build deserve XD

I like it. It’s so lame that it somehow manages to go all the way around and become awesome again.

It also leaves you with nothing to do except try to hit stuff and not get hit back. Seems like it could be very useful as a basic training build.

JuliusIT.9504:

MisterElliott.2481:

So if I got the pass, would I be able to access it on every character or just the one who used it? Never got the pass for the terrace, so would be interested in knowing.

Fozzik.1742:

So, as I understand, this pass allows you to travel from anywhere in the PvE world directly to the airship.

My question is… Is there some way to return directly to where you were in the world when you used the pass? Or can you only leave to one of the major cities? I’d like to be able to do my selling/services and then get right back to where I was and what I was doing without the cost of waypoints. If I can’t do that, I don’t see it being worth $10.

I’m also interested in the two above questions, does anyone know the answer?

The answer to the first question is no, there is no way to make an immediate return to where you were when you used the pass. So you have to travel back by the usual means (there is an Asura gate in the RT that gives access to all cities).

Note that this is an advantage that the WvW and PvP social areas have as service hubs, because when you exit those areas you will be returned to the exact spot where you were when you entered.

The RT also has a somewhat annoying quirk in that if you log out there, you will be violently expelled (kicked onto the ground complete with “aaaaugh!” sound effects) just outside the knockback veil that prevents people entering without a pass. It doesn’t matter that you have the pass in your inventory; you still get kicked out and have to use the pass again to re-enter.

In the case of RT, you are expelled to the area of Divinity’s Reach just outside the RT itself. I am not sure if the Airship has the same behavior (and if so, I don’t know whether it just kicks you off into the air, to plummet to your death, or whether you are kicked to the ground in the Vigil Keep below).

As to the second question, I am not in-game at the moment to verify this, but the wiki says that the Royal Terrace Pass is Account Bound, so you can put it in the bank and then get it on another character to use. I don’t think you can claim duplicates though, so you can only have it on one alt at a time.

Sirendor.1394:

- Disable autotargetting, disable promoting targets, enable fast-targetting in options
- Use your tab key or ctrl+click to target enemies

Thanks for all the above.

I’m curious about the targeting behavior because I didn’t realize the game had a couple of these features; fast targeting in particular. I found this page about targeting, and I wonder if anyone actually uses “manual targeting” (aiming by view with nothing selected). I didn’t know the game would do that. It sounds like from your suggestions that tab target or click to target is what most people use, rather than manual aiming.

I also see how disabling auto-target and promote-target will allow movement skills to be used for actual movement without accidentally onto a rabbit every time.

Seera.5916:

Or say: I must go up 1% in map completion every day before I go into WvW. Then in 30 days or less, you’ll have your map completion. It’s just 1%.

I like this one. I was thinking of trying to go back to just doing a map or half of one a day. But getting 1% is an even better increment. It’s small enough that there’s almost no excuse not to do it, and at this point I think I’m at 75% with a couple WvW points left to go, so it will be done in just a few weeks if I get 1% every day.

Spicyhash.7605:

has a pet/is perpetually downed- ranger

I’m not one to laugh . . . but I did laugh at this one.

Zygil.1276:

Also The Royal Terrance did have a Trait Retrainer added. Look slightly to the east upon entering.

Oh? I looked all around there last night trying to see if there was anyone new. I must have missed him.

I will look for him again tonight, and if this is true, then I will take back my uninformed rant and happily buy a shiny new Airship Pass to make up for it.

I am going to start putting some time into sPvP to improve my basic combat skills for WvW. And by basic I mean really, really basic; like knowing when to dodge and figuring out what all of those abilities bound to keys other than ‘1’ are used for.

My only character is a Warrior, and I am looking for the most basic, easiest to run build that I can possibly find for beginner 1v1s, fight clubs, and solo arenas, assuming that I am starting from having basically zero skill. So I am not looking for the top performing meta build or anything with a lot of situational abilities; just something that will have all the basic tools that I need to know how to use in any PvP situation.

My first, completely uneducated guess is Axe/Shield or Sword/Shield. I have no idea what second weapon, traits, or runes and sigils would be good.

I run Axe/Horn and Hammer in WvW, but that’s in a build that is set up for dedicated zerging rather than roaming or 1v1, so I don’t expect to be using the same build in both WvW and sPvP.

I decided to start down this road by first wiping out all the keybindings and working out a new set based loosely on Taugrim’s guide.

The only thing I copied straight from his suggestions were the based W-E-R keys + mouse for movement and D for dodge.

The rest are laid out to put all the stuff I am constantly fumbling for onto a set of keys I can easily reach without ever leaving the movement keys or stopping moving. So auto-attack is on 3 and dodge is on D, where I can reach them directly whatever way I am moving. The other weapon abilities are laid out on 1-2 and 4-5, with the burst skill on T. Q is weapon swap, A is heal, S stun break, F stability, etc.

I think I read somewhere that getting a set of keybinds that work will literally “change your life” in terms of the way you play. And I have to say, that feels pretty true. Compared with the default layout, where I have to stop to hunt and peck all the time, this layout makes moving while doing everything else feel really natural, to the point where it’s actually easier for me to do things while moving than while stopped.

I haven’t got it all down quite yet, so I spent a while farming oakhearts in Queensdale to retrain my fingers for the new setup. As target dummies go, they’re at least good for some dodge and anti-CC practice with their annoying stun / knockdown / knockback / immobilize spam.

After I get used to the new key layout enough that I’m not hunting for things anymore, I think I may give some sPvP a try to see if I can develop some actual skills. Even though I don’t expect all of the tactics and setups to translate from sPvP to WvW, I think the fundamentals and better situational awareness will help.

I also like the idea of making some alts of other classes to try out in sPvP and get a handle on how they work from the other side, so I can start to get a better idea exactly what other classes have to work with, and how I would use it if I were them.

Snowreap.5174:

if the other two are so evenly matched, why don’t you pick one of them and offer to help them come in first place every single week? then the two of you can gang up on the other one.

You (meaning your server, assuming you’re in third place) may stand to gain from this. But there is nothing in it for the party that is going to decide whether it happens or not, which is the stronger opponent.

The only real threat to the number 1 opponent is . . . the number 2 opponent, so they’re not going to gain anything in terms of security of position by teaming up with you. And they already can beat you easily whenever they want, so they’re not saving a whole lot of effort by avoiding a fight with you.

The only real incentive is for the two strongest ones to team up, assuming that they want the most win with the least work, which is, unfortunately, what the motives of the top ranked competitors (as a group) often reduce to.

Cantur Soulfyre.5409:

As heard in VoiP so many times, “Look, that guy has a Lgendary! KILL THEM!!!” Commence the zerg turning to go after a solo person who is leaving little spots behind them when they run

Eh . . . literally 8 in 10 people I see in WvW seem to have legendaries, and I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything like this in comms. I’ve heard plenty of yelling about killing some kitten or another, but never because of what they were carrying.

The watchwork one has a small chance to give a couple of sprockets as a bonus item on gathering. It also has a different sound and animation (more watch-work-ey). Other than that, they work the same.

EDIT: This post was bad, and I am a bad person for posting it. See below for my updated comments on the new Airship Pass and Royal Terrace Pass.

Snowreap.5174:

double teaming means that WvW is working as intended.

Eh . . . not so much.

The underlying premise of three-faction PvP is that any time one side gets too strong, the two weaker sides working together (should) always be stronger. So in order to keep from being dominated, the weaker ones always have an incentive to work together and keep the strongest in check.

What’s happening here is the opposite of that; the two strongest contenders are teaming up to farm the weakest one. Which, ok, whatever. I mean, it happens IRL all the time, so it’s not like it’s unexpected.

But it’s a bit of a perversion because the meta is supposed to be that everyone wants to win; or at least everyone wants to not lose. Two weaker allies teaming up to stop the strongest one from facerolling each of them one at a time is a natural result of that meta, since it allows them both to win at least some of the time, where in the absence of cooperation they would each lose in turn, all of the time.

Instead what’s happening here is that both of the stronger opponents want to win as much as they can, and they want to do so with the least effort possible. So instead of fighting each other — which is, after all, an awful lot of work, and will leave them both vulnerable to harassment by the third — they team up to farm the weakest of three for PPT, dividing the entire map equally between them, and then just fighting at the margins to get a little edge over each other once in a while.

Taken to its logical conclusion, what ultimately happens is that the two strongest opponents reach an agreement to divide PPT evenly between them and just take turns on who gets the slight edge needed to get number 1 each week, so that they trade places from match to match, while completely shutting down the number three and preventing any third opponent, no matter how individually strong they may be, from ever making a serious play for the shared 1/2 position.

The problem is that in the meta it is really, really hard to guarantee that you hold the number 1 spot all of the time, without being overpowered by another equally strong challenger. But once the top two enter into this cartel arrangement, it is really, really easy to hold a permanent, shared lock on the number 1 and 2 spots, and through this combination to maintain that lock with almost no real effort.

And since 1 and 2 are both equally good for building massive league pounding and recruiting power (especially when your effective rank is consistently 1.5), this becomes the path of least resistance to maximizing the win for each of the top two opponents, neither of which could do consistently as well on their own.

Alacrity.4312:

Also, traited/geared for shouts but you only have one on your bar (suggestion – replace Berserker Stance with a shout).

Good point. I should probably swap back to using Shake it Off + For Great Justice, which was the original utility setup I had for this build. I switched to using the two stances to try and make me more likely to survive a push through an AOE wall without dying to mass condition spam. But maybe I just need to be smarter about using my cleanses, between the warhorn skills and two shouts with Soldier runes, I guess that should be enough to clean off almost anything.

I run on “Best Performance” settings in WvW to minimize the lag and FPS drops in large fights. That means all the other characters I see are in the default low res (faceless) armor skins.

I’m wondering if there are any consistent, outstanding visual differences between classes other than the armor weight that might help to sort them out on sight, since it seems all “heavy” classes, for instance, share the same default heavy armor skin.

I know if I see someone in heavy armor with a staff, for instance, then it’s a Guardian, because there are only two heavy armor classes, and one of them can’t equip a staff. But if they’re carrying a greatsword or hammer, then it could be either guard or warrior.

Is the only reliable way to tell them apart just tab targeting and looking at the class icon; or are there other cues that can help to reliably spot what class you’re looking at?

Is this post about not enough people in the battleground maps or in EOTM?

If not enough people are in EOTM, then that just means that green servers are winning in regular WvW and people aren’t hiding in karma train wonderland. EOTM is supposed to be something you do as entertainment while waiting for WvW, not the main event. And even when it’s “bad” EOTM still should allow plenty of room for trainers and roamers to sneak around and get their bags from randoms and isolated groups.

Hveps.4673:

The trebs are on the ground and not the stairs at all even though the picture looks like it. Any shot should cover stairs in poison and if they manage to break the outer door both treb will be hitting anything between the 2 doors including siege.

I’m pretty sure I put them with the green circle all on the floor; at least when setup the legs and base looked like they were in the same place as yours. Maybe I’ll try a little further out from the last step next time.

Hveps.4673:

Maybe i should have linked picture of the watergate treb in valley keep for giggles that is a tough cookie to place.

Someone stuck one up at the vista in the green keep in EB yesterday, to counter-treb enemy siege that was set up on the plateau at Jerris. It was fun watching everyone scampering up and falling off 10 times to get to the top, until they got a mesmer up there to portal supply to the top.

SkylightMoon.1980:

If you plan on doing hardcore wvw skill groups than yes it would. Especially when skill groups run in sizes 10-15 where you’re facing groups 2-3 times your size.

I watched the video that was posted about that guy Sacrx hitting 250k kills. I just . . . wow . . . yeah. I do not have any ambition to ever run with a group at that level. Even watching the video and not being in the fight at all, I can’t understand more than about 1 word in 10 of what the guy is even saying, let alone what he’s trying to do.

Listening to some people on TS yesterday, one of the commanders said Sacrx actually calls almost nothing except basically “here” or “on me,” because the players he runs with are all so good already they don’t need to be told what to do, and half the time they don’t even need to be told where to do it; so most of it is just him yelling when they screw up.

My goal is just to get to the point where I’m no less useless than the average warrior in a team fight on even numbers.

There are a couple of guilds that I see running groups almost every time I am on, so I think I’m going to try to find one that takes new players, tries to run some organized groups, and does stuff like fight clubs to help people skill up.

The couple that I have run into so far (on SoR) that people say welcome new players, or that I’ve heard making open invites on TS are Hel and HIRE. Both seem to have some good commanders, among those I have run with. If anyone knows of other guilds on SoR that might be a good fit I’d welcome any other suggestions.

Ragnar.4257:

Often you lose a fight and think “wtf just happened, I don’t even know what . . . .”, but then you watch it back and it’s quite obvious what happened and what you did wrong.

To be fair, most of the time when I’m on the winning side of a fight I say the same thing. Especially in large team fights, I hear what the commander is saying and try to follow their lead, and I try to stick close to the blue triangle, but it’s always such a huge furball that for 90% of the time I have no idea what is actually happening.