Guild Wars 2

Diage.6451:

Why is it that a company who focused so heavily on creating a completely unique pve game experience and went through so many risks to try to setup something unique in that environment, and then go to pvp (the thing GW1 was most known for) and start copying other game modes? This conundrum will always deeply confuse and depress me.

You have not played GW1. Proof: You don’t know about the popular game mode Stronghold is based on (Fort Aspenwood), which was already in GW1.

GW2 newbs are funny.

+1
I know swallowing your pride is hard but … the people want Stronghold. The people don’t want Conquest.
There’s a saying in German, “man kann einen nicht zu seinem Glück zwingen” – you can’t force someone to his happiness. Likewise, you can’t force players to start enjoying Conquest.
If the only choice for Strongholders is to spend half or more of their game time in a game mode they think is unfun, they will just not play at all.

I am not a fan of new playable races. All they essentially add is one or maybe two noobie zones and a few horrible personal story quests.
Is this really what you want? Particularly from the “hard core” of you, I don’t think you realize what exactly you are asking for.
Dungeons are good though. Just like, after years of their players telling ANet that an expansion is what they want and they finally realizing the error of their ways, they need to finally get it through their thick skulls that it’s dungeons and high-level PvP that the players want.
It’s all about hype ANet, you know? You have seen what “our” strategy (expansion) has generated in hype, and your strategy (living story) is just kinda flaccid and there. No excitement from the press or core players. So trust your players a wee bit more, will ya?

AnniMira.2506:

-When unequipped, nearby enemies are notified
-After unequip the player should be unable to fight for 2 min

Don’t think that’s enough to prevent your solution from being abused in an offensive manner. I.e. rather than for defense, the scout would just equip it to scout out the entire keep you are about to zerg down.
The scouting towers are also important because they would be a constantly roamer-battled over area of the map.

I like the core of your proposal though. Some siege/ability to make a player a high-value target, that the enemy knows about and tries to hunt down.

Yes I am suggesting to add Xel’Naga to the game and their unique profession should be the Scout. Pls gibe Anet

Not really. So everyone hates scouting like it’s currently. My proposal: Just include something like Xel Naga towers from Starcraft 2. If someone is in the range of such a scouting tower, your world gets vision in a radius around it. Not too big, but not just the regular vision bubble sized either.
Your “scouting” would essentially consist of roamers battling over it. This is infinitely more interesting than standing around doing … nothing, and maybe tap the siege every one in a while.
The scouts still have to watch out for the actual physical zerg (more SC2) and report its compo, but the bread and butter would be transferred to the scouting tower. Your world sees only the unit dots on the minimap or maybe gets some notification by an NPC (maybe add some more info if that’s not enough).

This is an actual goal worth fighting over. It’d be much more contested than the lake ruins.

Entirely correct OP!
BUT there never was a case in GW2 PvP history where such doomsaying didn’t end up true. So you can’t blame the players.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

manveruppd.7601:

These are all good changes, but I think a lot of us have been most looking forward to a new game mode. It was a lot of people’s #1 priority in the CDI that was run last year, and we’ve been waiting a lot time for it.

As Colin said, a new game mode is something the team is working towards. However, it’s not ready at this time. These other changes are ready, and we’d like to get them out to you on December 2. A new game mode is a serious undertaking that requires a lot of time and work.

You have been working a new sPvP game mode for atleast 14 months. 14 months. What the heck are you doing?

My top priority would be that guild halls return as, or heavily worked into, GvG battle spaces.
Even if the GvG we’re talking about is some ultra-casualized format, for example just skirmishing option (without ladders etc.), that would be a good start.
But I find the martial aspect of guild halls centrally important.
Another idea: You could upgrade the defense structures of your guild hall, like adding draw bridges, traps, etc.

We’ll probably get it ~next year (give or take another year).

Why again weren’t the useless ballistas repurposed to be anti-siege weapons?
Such that actually require a minimum of skill to use effectively against high-priority targets and fit with established gameplay mechanics (like LOS)?
Oh right, because this developer, ANet, is a hack.

Didn’t you get the memo? WvW isn’t supposed to be balanced, as per the devs. Hacking and siege griefing is just another deep strategy that players can use!

Nothing ever changes
If you stay with this developer, you wait forever

Once again, this just shows how far removed from actual WvW the devs are. You can get 5 events in 10 minutes. It happens that fast.
If I still played this game, I wouldn’t advocate grind achievements. But there is an extremely wide gulf between grind, and literally standing around in an attacked tower for 10 minutes to collect your achievements.

John Corpening.9847:

I would really like to direct the thanks to Zach and Tyler both of them came in over the weekend to make sure the change got in on time in order to stay on schedule with our QA test plan. I greatly appreciate the work the team put in to make this happen on this short of a time frame.

I appreciate that you could work this out. I imagine it must have been a jungle of bureaucreacy/office diplomacy with your economics and monetization department.
The only thing, now, I can object to with this update is that you advertise it as “big”. It’s not. Yeah, it’s a good update (now), but let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, it’s far from enough to save WvW from decline, especially if this and the trap is all WvW gets for the next 6 months (I wish I was being sarcastic with this assessment, but feature packs do only come twice a year). Not to mention people expected far more than just color tags with the commander system. Take a look at your old CDI.

Haha, I can’t wait to see WvW crash and burn. Seriously. What this game needs is a shock therapy to wake ANet up from their drunk coma. Even the PvEers are up in arms right now about SAB, precursors, etc.

Very good compilation Vee. It’s so depressing that none of this very basic, short to make QoL features are even there two years after a supposedly “e-sports” MMO launch, from a dev who once took e-sports very seriously. I’m still mentally held hostage by that.
Just scrap one Living Story content patch and use the dev time to give sPvP (and WvW) all those features. It’s really not that much. Maps and new modes can come (even) later.

Had the same basic idea, OP. My take on it:

But split them and give WvW a cheap, blue, first commander tag (in the 50g range) so that aspiring commanders don’t have as much of a hard time, since WvW is horrible for earning gold, and then make every further color unlock cost exponentially more. For all I care, make unlocking everything cost equal to PvE, i.e. 1500g. But atleast the first three colors are vital. During primetime it’s often the case that three public commanders temporarily or sometimes permanently lead on one map (this is just assuming you are also introducing guild commander tags … if not, this would make cheap colored tags for WvW even more imperative).

mexay.3902:

I think the problem isn’t that ANet missed the point. The Guild Mag video quite clearly shows they understand the purpose of having different colours.

No no no. The devs understand the point, but ANet as a whole does not. Like always, the pricetag came likely directly from their economy/monetization department, but due to kitten poor in-company communication and them blatantly ignoring the wishes of the (WvW) playerbase the particularly anti-player nature of this pricetag is particularly magnified. They are forgetting this isn’t some purely cosmetic legendary weapon or armor skin, this is a oft requested QoL feature.

ykyk.2740:

PvE rolls in the big bucks. WvW doesn’t, so dev effort is allocated accordingly.

Get used to it and realize that complaining gets you nowhere or play another game.

And how is WvW supposed to bring in bucks if there’s essentially zero full-time development done on it for two years?

If anyone needed proof that this is a company that regards their game essentially as the Saint’s Row of fantasy MMOs, and that they are more about PvE style additions vs whole-game substance additions, this is it.
They are seriously regarding tags as status symbols for posing in LA instead of no-nonsense UI aids so people can actually have fun playing the game.
Fine.
Make them cost that much in PvE. Make them rich men’s status symbols there. Do go ahead, if you can’t come up with a different prestige goldsink, just lazily repurpose commander tags.
But split them and give WvW a cheap, blue, first commander tag (in the 50g range) so that aspiring commanders don’t have as much of a hard time, since WvW is horrible for earning gold, and then make every further color unlock cost exponentially more. For all I care, make unlocking everything cost equal to PvE, i.e. 1500g. But atleast the first three colors are vital. During primetime it’s often the case that three public commanders temporarily or sometimes permanently lead on one map (this is just assuming you are also introducing guild commander tags … if not, this would make cheap colored tags for WvW even more imperative).

Every color 300g.
Really?
REALLY?
How can one screw up something so simple as colored commander tags?
I feel so confirmed that I quit this developer’s product a couple months ago.

pdavis.8031:

The exact same mechanics are there. Each “world” is in control of a certain territory and its main objective is to capture the other “worlds” territory.

You know exactly that this is not happening. Unlike real WvW, territorial control does not matter a single bit. Matches are over in 4 hours and players are very likely to always enter a completely different overflow when they join/rejoin. Commanders cap what is nearest instead of what makes territorial sense. That players aren’t even defending the objectives, which is next to offense supposed to be the other half of WvW just adds insult to injury but isn’t even the deciding factor.
You also haven’t addressed that it still isn’t a RvR format in the DAOC or WvW tradition. It has more in common with WoW battlegrounds. It IS battlegrounds. Your argument boils down to: It’s in the same UI menu, meaning it is the same thing. If it had it’s own menu I doubt you’d dispute it’s separate from WvW.

Ultimaistanza.4793:

Ikaros.7812:

atheria.2837:

eithinan.9841:

Here is a serious question. What will be the general feelings from players towards the guilds that have sent in footage?

I am on the side of those who want to send in videos of glitches, incorrect tooltips we count on, cheats, missing items and wrongful WvW associations.

Perhaps someone from the community should compile another WvW promo video, including the jewels that have been removed from this thread along with other little incidents that happen on a daily basis. Release it at the same time Anet release theirs and see how much they differ.

Yeah, it can be a compilation of people fly hacking, people under the map using omegas to break open gates gates, thieves stealthing off walls, people draining structures of supply to build troll siege, people siege capping an area/map with said troll siege, people being rezed through gates, people in EotM telling WvWers to go back to WvW if they want to fight, and end it with the ANet Dev that trolled the GvG.

I’d watch it! Actually we should make our own WvW compilation vid with the things you listed and release it for Gamescom/PAX. Being a “People’s History of WvW” so to say.

pdavis.8031:

Jamais vu.5284:

pdavis.8031:

(yes, EotM IS part of WvW)

It is not WvW because it is not World versus World. It’s CvC, Color versus Color, completely lacking the core of WvW which is organized, long-term server vs server fights.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/releases/february-04-2014/
wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Edge_of_the_Mists
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/the-edge-of-the-mists-a-new-map-is-coming-to-wvw/

Officially it IS part of WvW. While the wiki can be edited by anyone, both of the links on the guildwars 2 offical site refer to it as being a part of the mist war and WvW.

You are telling me it’s WvW because it’s (called) WvW. You are begging the question. And also confusing nomenclature with substance. I give you a D for citing sources, atleast.

pdavis.8031:

(yes, EotM IS part of WvW)

It is not WvW because it is not World versus World. It’s CvC, Color versus Color, completely lacking the core of WvW which is organized, long-term server vs server fights.

Dusty Moon.4382:

WvW is but Guild Wars has to do with lore not with Guild vs Guild fighting. One should understand the lore of the game before posting. In GW1, Guild vs guild fighting was coincident with the game. You should read Guild Wars 1 Lore http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Lore .

Or maybe it was named like this because GvG was originally planned to be the core feature of GW1 and PvE only the tutorial for it.

JonathanSharp.7094:

You guys know how we do it!

“When it’s ready”, indeed.

@ balance and splitting skills: Splitting the entire game into 2 (or 3, if you want to be technical: PvE, WvW, PvP) sets of #‘s creates a LOT of overhead in maintaining 3 sets of numbers. As most skills are fine across game types, it’s more efficient to split off problem skills and leave the majority of skills consistent across game types. It also means that people have a general sense of relative balance across all game types, and don’t have 2-3 sets of numbers to learn.

That you refuse to split them is the reason for the glacial balancing process, which is killing PvP, and you know it.

Hugh Norfolk.2798:

• Is that player going to stop playing PvP or GW2 all together?

Have you ever pondered if PvPers aren’t rather quitting because there is zero balance change for months at a time?

Prysin.8542:

May i ask the developers for what purpose this video is being used?

Marketing? Gamescon? A teaser to be put onto the front page?

This is an important point. If these videos are gonna be used for commercial purposes (i.e. trailers, a viral campaign), ANet absolutely has to make that clear in the disclaimer, and after they do so, have to acquire the consent of the submitters to use the video in that capacity.
We lack a little bit information here. Personally I would refrain from partaking in this campaign until this is made clear.

Zirith.6429:

MarkPhilips.5169:

This game is 90% PVE living story.

It’s a fact and it’s a very waste of pvp potential.

and 9.999% wvw

Don’t joke around, WvW is much worse off than sPvP (although both are desolate). The last real WvW update we got was ruins/bloodlust last fall, and that was universally loathed. EotM isn’t WvW because it is not World versus World.

At this point, this will never happen, let’s just be realistic here. It’s not like ANet is an underachiever kid who just needs to pull together and finish their final homework,. Ignoring WvW is a finance/business decision.
Better turn your attention towards Camelot Unchained.

Lordkrall visits the WvW forums exclusively to troll us, don’t even bother.

timmyf.1490:

I love it when people who clearly have no background in coding, digital art, game design, QA, etc try to estimate how long features take.

It’s so hilariously wrong.

I’m still waiting for a suggestion in this thread that would take more than 40 man hours (assuming five guys working on it). Badges for tomes or accbound commander certainly doesn’t.

MasterMc.7543:

Now before it’s brought up, that asking the forums only speaks for the minority, that’s not how I am suggesting you ask the players. You’re an mmo after all so you have thousands of players on each day why not just send out an in-game survey, asking the people? Emails get lost and would be hard and time consuming to compile all the answers, the forums are normally just the vocal people. With the in-game survey everyone can answers. For the simplest answers just to multiply choice. And if they would like to give a suggestion about how they think some given feature should work they could then fill out a field at the bottom or post on the forums.

But why should faceless, anonymous, most likely impulse-driven survey clicks be more informative on this game’s current weaknesses than well-thought out, well-crafted, humane analysis by thread starters, like we get (or rather got,, in the past) every single day?
Such surveys help to determine WHERE a problem could be, sure, but not really HOW it is such a problem. For that, you need an intelligent dialogue.
You write about suggestions, but you know most people ingame wouldn’t bother with that, a “long response” would constitute three sentences already, and most people who vote don’t even really care, they don’t give the matter much thought. Whereas every single one of the persons who write such analyses do in fact care.
You can’t advance your product just with contextless ratings. That’s like trying to read tea leaves or psychoanalyze a sphinx.
Add to that, that the majority opinion is not always the best way to reach an informed decision. It really is often the case that people don’t even know WHAT they want (but they often very astutely know WHEN they want something, and that usually leads to a better product, but not hoping on the former).

@Pavel
Exactly, that exactly happens when you ignore informed opinions, be they the “minority” or “vocal” or what ever.

As expected of ANet, throw a quick threat at us then kitten off as fast as possible. ZERO FOLLOWUP! ZERO CONCERNS ADDRESSED! ZERO COMMUNICATION!
INCOMPETENCE!

Also stop feeding lordkrall his cavetroll food, everyone.

When I still played WvW/GW2 it was stale.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Again I can assure you, the developers are reading the forums regularly, even though they don’t have time to post a reply to everything they read. Additionally, as I read these forums probably more than anybody here, I regularly compile reports for the competitive team to make sure they are up to speed on your concerns and desires. Does this mean your every wish will be granted? No, it does not. What it does mean is that the team is regularly being made aware of how the community feels about the game and what features, content, etc. that you like, dislike or want to see in the future. What it also means is that we take note of when you all ask for or suggest a feature that is currently under development, so that down the line, when it’s actually released and a bunch of people clamor to the forums to complain that “nobody asked for this” (you know who you are), we can refer back and be secure in the knowledge that somebody did, in fact, ask for it.

Now, this post has ended up way longer than I intended it to be. I don’t expect what I’ve said here to cause a sudden change in the tone or content of the posts on this forum. What I do expect is your understanding that we’re not just sitting here twiddling our thumbs and I haven’t enacted this rule against necroposting as some sinister method to justify shutting down the WvW forum. WvW is one of the core game types of Guild Wars 2, and as long as we have forums and I have something to say about it, we will have a place for WvW discussion.

Hey Mark, I’d be insanely grateful if you could reply to this post. My question is simply, if that is the case why don’t you show us some action? Complaints like there is no WvW team anymore don’t happen in a vacuum. I see you, ANet, once again fixed minor details in the PvE world no one even thought about, like fixing some Points of Interests, etc. So why not do the same for WvW? Constant but minor additions like colored commander tags, small tweaks, QoL improvements. Just to show us you are (apparently) still there.
There was not a single update to WvW since half a year. None. And EotM wasn’t regular WvW either since it isn’t RvR, an organized, server-based format. Which sets the date of the last real WvW addition (excepting tournament rewards) back to last September.
Why not just do those little tweaks I mentioned in the meantime between your “EotMs”? Do you really not have the resources for that?

The reason people bumped those old threads was because in them exactly those tiny fixes were promised — a year or more ago, and because they, in many cases, were the most recent example of a red post on the topic.
If you threaten us with bans and infractions if we do that, why not make a concession to us as well? And atleast promise some form of communication if people raise those same concerns in new threads, if not outright addressing them? Without a concession on your part (or alternatively an apology, but this topic isn’t about apologies/formalities) I frankly think your move was very discourteous.

DevonCarver.5370:

Ahmrill.7512:

I agree Zeitlogik that the commander and squad system could use more functionality.

As do I. We will address this system when we are able to completely revamp it and bringing it to the level it should be at.

Which wont be till in a few years, guys.

How about, instead, they finally rework WvW achievements like they promised two years ago, and regularly add to those, like they do with LS?

zealot.3275:

If you have any other ideas that may help WvW become more fun please add some. Just remember to keep the trolling and complaining to a minimum as we want constructive ideas. Lets let the GW2 crew know we want WvW to become better.

Insinuating that our usual complaints are trollish is trollish as well, just for your information.

Trajan.4953:

I love how every one of your “answers” is designed to have negative repercussions.

As a Havoc driver I simply do what needs to be done to win the engagement, if it means joining a “zerg” then I will do it, most of the time I will support the “zerg” by opening supply lines and causing distractions.

The problem with people who think like you is that they don’t see WvW in a big picture, “Zergs” represent armies, that is how war works, armies fight armies, calling them “zergs” and trying to denigrate people for partaking is both selfish and ridiculous based on the way the game is set up.

If you prefer a more solo-friendly play style that is PvP then I suggest SPvP.

Zergs =/= organized larger groups, and that a dev upvoted this comment is unfortunately telling.

Zaxares.5419:

That’s an inelegant solution, in my opinion. The best solution, I feel, would be this:

Split Map Completion into “Tyria” and “The Mists”. Completing one or the other gets you one Gift of Exploration (you currently get 2 for completing everything). So, a player who doesn’t want to touch PvE at all, or WvW at all, can get one Gift just by sticking to their preferred area.

That will never happen with this company, though, since they think that “everyone” enjoys and does PvE. Except the hardest of hardcore eSports guys of course, but everyone else is a PvEer.
It’s unthinkable for them that many people don’t want to PvE at all.

Konig Des Todes.2086:

Old, established lore are the pillars of a continuing story. A poor writer does retroactive continuities. A good writer works in a way to explain why old ‘facts’ became ‘lies’ and uses that to boost the story. A great writer puts in what they want while not destroying the established pillars of the story. GW1 throughout its lifespan did the last; GW2 at release did the middle; and the Living Story is the first.

Konig, as the king of GW lore, your honest assessment: do you, personally, even perceive GW2 as having a real connection to GW1 anymore lorewise? (Question also goes to all the other loremasters in this thread)
I think it doesn’t. They changed practically everything between the last “independent” GW1 installation, Nightfall, and GW2. Even between EotN and GW2.
E.g. the role and cultural diversity of humans, the downgraded gods, the extremely innovative races and enemies like Forgotten, Titans, Margonites, etc pp. which were all removed for more High Fantasy typical ones, the questionable new lore behind magic due to gameplay, the sheer geography of the world (Kryta not tropical anymore for example).
I was willing to humor them at release, but 2 years on it’s clear they don’t want to retread any facets of GW1 lore.

I think it would be great if we had an alternating system between AvAvA and “GvGvG” or rather free-for-all.
The free-for-all matchups or hours would serve as the ranked or “hardcore” (like current tournaments, except those were a failure in this regard. People would compete for their guild as well as individual ranking) version of the more casual AvAvA, which would essentially be WvWvW with only a couple selectable alliances instead of 50+ empty servers.

What exactly is OP’s question or critique here? It should be common human sense that 30+ people won’t wait for one random dude who just wants to go off tangent and farm something for himself.

Luc.8471:

Hi people! I just started playing gw2 and i hit lvl 40 in one day,so i just wanted to ask you GW2 developers if you are reading this,are you going to add more PVE content soon? i mean i saw only 8 dungeons i guess and thats it,i mean events are really boring after some time. Raids would be awesome since there is alot of players,and more dungeons would give us tons of fun. PS sry for my English *have a nice day

They have only added one real dungeon in the two years since release (Fractals), and one new medium-longish dungeon path to an existing dungeon (TA Aetherblade).
Take that for the future development of this game as you will.

We have pointed this out since Beta Weekend 1. ANet doesn’t care about this.

I’d expect a intricate system to like this to be put in way after they introduced things like colored/guild tags. Lol.

In all honesty, due to the nature of scouting that makes it virtually indistinguishable from afking I think the best solution is to let it be regulated among the players themselves. When I was still playing this game some commander collected a scout silver from each PUGer, for the scout. Or the commander/the players donate directly to the scout. If we had better organization tools there would ideally be a server high command that could take donations or even “taxes” and distribute them to their trusted scouts directly.
I think things like this are best left to the self-regulation of the players rather than contrived systems that are ripe for abusement.
Of course you will only get this going if you create actual WvW server community, i.e. community spirit, something that ANet has been desperately attempting to destroy the past two years.

Eggyokeo.9705:

I have to agree, the map is fantastic it just a pity about the people that use it.

So you think if you swapped the current users out for a new megaserved bunch like a set of batteries the map would suddenly not incentivize karmatrainining anymore?

Arenadrones will go to any length to justify major flaws with the game I swear.

BobbyStein.2315:

For you, the game should be about the PC at the expense of the open world content and ambience. For me, and for Guild Wars 2, it’s about the world as a whole since it’s a cooperative, shared environment. Neither approach is wrong, but we decided to put more of our resources into bringing the world to life. I don’t regret that at all.

Anet pre-release hype: This is your story.
Anet post-release: No it’s not.

For the ritual, first you must smear your face in warm goat blood and mark an upside down pentagram on the floor while chanting a prayer to Lilith in reverse …