The problem is that many, if not most, players enjoy W3 that is heavy action and larger fights. Regardless of what a vocal number of players say about wanting small-man fights and roaming you see players moving up tiers constantly, but rarely moving down tiers. If the server you play on has lost a lot of its luster then you have to do what you have to do.
T1 and T2 are stacked, as stacked as they were when the game was new. I know that players moan and gripe about staying on lower populated servers, and bemoan the loss of their WvW experience, but in all honesty had all the players stayed where they were in the beginning almost all the server’s W3 experiences would be lacking that large fight feel. Games lose players all the time, and eventually a tipping point is reached for each server. Some gain guilds, some lose guilds. The servers that gain guilds gain new life, and the servers that lose guilds, well…….
Considering the megaserver situation with PvE why does world population really matter anymore?
Seems that if you go ahead and allow transfers to any server that map caps would eventually solve all the problems. All the Gold servers can queue every BL when needed during NA Prime anyway(counting PvX and fairweathers). People who WvW don’t ,generally, want to wait in queues for very long. They will move to servers that allow them to play.
TLDR: Is population status even a good metric anymore? I don’t think so.
Anet has added a “How to Address Lag” guide: https://help.guildwars2.com/entries/91354558-How-to-Address-Lag
As you can see from the guide, you probably just need to update your drivers. I wish this was sarcasm, but the guide actually mentions updating drivers several times…
Yeah if it were only my machine and not server-side sigh. GG Anet take a long look at the last patch, and see where the coding went ploin-shaped. More than 60-ish players in an area = 5 second skill lag. Even ram skills won’t fire. Head to EotM, and there is zero problem even with 2 mapblobs clashing.
BLs = terrible lag with 60+
EotM = no lag with 100+
PvE = no lag with however many fit on those maps
Something wrong with that last patch that messed up the Alpine BLs(don’t play much EB so no personal knowledge of lag there except general complaining from some players I talk to).
X players, Y players, ABC players. It doesn’t matter. What matters is no skill lag, then patch, and all of a sudden horrific skill lag for most players.
It’s not like they changed the numbers of players allowed on the BLs. So what in that patch caused it to go from no skill lag to 5 second skill lag? That’s what they need to fix.
Although I agree they should look into the issue. I see less individual posters complaining about it here then I see in the EB map on JQ.
I know someone was asking about lag there last night. I heard everyone reply that they were not having an issue, nor was I. I wouldn’t say “most” players by any means. I would say enough to know it is a problem though, certainly.
when no one adds specifics, such as server, there location, or time of occurance, they are doing nothing more then obscure complaining if you ask me. If folks want the issue resolved, why are they going out of their way to be demanding, yet avoiding listing any information to actually aid in a solution?
Well by most I mean the entire guild group of 20 I run with. Almost all of them complain of skill lag nearly every night since the patch. Granted of the 20 there are 5 or 6 that aren’t feeling it, or like me feel it about every other fight, but 14-15 of the 20 players I run with are gutted during an engagement. On YB there is constant complaining in /m and /t about skill lag on the BLs during NA prime.
I don’t have clue one about Anet’s architecture so I don’t know if perhaps T1 got it fixed or something before T2 did, and I didn’t run Saturday or Sunday(kiddo’s baseball tournament), but Friday night it was terrible.
X players, Y players, ABC players. It doesn’t matter. What matters is no skill lag, then patch, and all of a sudden horrific skill lag for most players.
It’s not like they changed the numbers of players allowed on the BLs. So what in that patch caused it to go from no skill lag to 5 second skill lag? That’s what they need to fix.
Here’s the issue I am having with this whole thing. Why is EotM normal, but all WvW maps horrible if more than 35 players start fighting?
Seriously there have been times when flame ram skills take 10 seconds to fire with no blob in sight, you quit in disgust, port into EotM, and no lag at all there even with 2 full mapblobs colliding?
Nobody uses stability in eotm i guess.
I hate to mix logic with useless sarcasm, but wouldn’t that simply indicate the problem is more likely in some coding bug specific to the WvW maps, and not stability?
No problem in EoTM.
No problem in map filling blobs on PvE at Teq, or other world bosses, with stability ticking there.
What about those, indicates it has anything to do with stability change? I mean other then regurgitating what some other random, uninformed poster claimed somewhere else, that is?
I’m not saying it has a thing to do with stability. Rather something in the stability patch, seeing as the lag issue has been cropping up regularly since that went live.
Here’s the issue I am having with this whole thing. Why is EotM normal, but all WvW maps horrible if more than 35 players start fighting?
Seriously there have been times when flame ram skills take 10 seconds to fire with no blob in sight, you quit in disgust, port into EotM, and no lag at all there even with 2 full mapblobs colliding?
Ranged are inconvenienced by the stab changes; melee are neutered by the stab changes. Welcome to Range Wars 2. People who main melee are infuriated, and justifiably so.
Pirate Ship meta is boring, and rewards those who can stack the most CC, hence blobbing is even more rewarded. Hammer Train meta could easily be avoided by double dodging and some hard CC. That’s not a L2P issue that’s fact.
Anything that rewards blobs and punishes skill groups is a bad thing for WvW overall imo. Sure 20v20 will be even, but make that a zergbusting guild going against a blob, and the playing field has been EVEN MORE stacked against the smaller group. Therefore why run skill groups anymore? GvG guilds generally got their start from open field zergbusting guilds. If open field zergbusting has been crippled(it has) then there will be fewer and fewer GvG guilds starting. Maybe this was ANets plan all along who knows, but it’s a bad plan.
Welcome to Range Wars. Melee has been marginalized by these stab changes, which imo were unnecessary. The changes have encouraged blobbing even more than before, and that seems opposite of what they wanted them to do. Unless their goal was to make WvW exclusively for the complete casual it was a bad change.
And honestly for those who have no idea who NS, Agg, or Syn is….have you been hiding under a rock? I get you’re EU, but Agg and NS completely destroyed TA during their NA tour, TA which was the poster child guild for all of EU in 2014. They are the epitome of skill groups in the WvW gamemode, and losing them makes the game worse.
I have to say I made a Char guardian after playing my Norn for…well since day one, because I finally couldn’t take poopy-pose empower anymore. I feel like it makes him look like he was aiming a squirt at the guy next to him or something. I went hammer/GS for a long time to avoid seeing it, but alas my guild favors staff/GS guards.
Just give Norns the Char empower, and all would be well with my Norn.
The largest issue I see playing in high tiers (mainly T1 and T2 since game launch) is that there is less and less offhours as you move down servers let alone tiers.
If you saw some dilution of the offhours coverage from T1, and to a far lesser extent T2 to T3 and lower you might see a resurgence. If you merged EU and NA servers, which would make significant offhours improvement to all servers, you would definitely see some of these lower tier servers rise.
Broken record here, but disadvantaging the way people play, because YOU don’t like it is ridiculous.
It is akin to me saying something like, “Those kitten havoc groups bug me, they should transfer down so they don’t gank me on the way back to my group.”, or, “Why are these roamers all over the map? They need to go sPvP.”
It’s a game-mode meant to be played as a clash of forces. Those forces can be bigger than some would like, and smaller than others would like. There are jobs for havoc groups, jobs for roamers, and, yes, jobs for zergs. That’s how it was sold, and that’s what most want. Call it skill-less if you will, but it’s pretty darn fun.
they said they rework the skills applying stability, so that skills apply more stacks of stability i guess
No matter how many stacks it applies it no longer stacks in duration and so is by definition worse than the old system where your stability negates all cc and can be stacked in duration.
It won’t matter how many stacks you get. Trying to force a choke will now be next to impossible without siege creep. The new stability stacks will be stripped so fast it won’t even be funny. Stack elementalists and necros and flood the choke with every CC you have will be the new game mode.
Blobs of ranged whaling away on whatever melee happens to feel like bashing their head against the wall it looks like to me.
I really don’t see where HEAVY armor just screams, “Give me a bow!”
I mean c’mon, bows and rifles for warriors? Longbows for guardians?
Heavy armor screams, “I WILL BASH YOU IN THE FACE!”
Just fix the freaking scepter for range(fix traits or otherwise), and give us axes or offhand swords as our new weapon.
I really think it will either be sword mainhand, or torch offhand. Although torch offhand really makes no sense when attuned to anything except fire.
Once again I still don’t see a problem. T2 has plenty of roaming groups/havoc groups. T1 even has some, and sure you have to dodge the zerg, but so what? I’m guessing alot of the people in here wanting to kill the zerg are from T3 and lower.
This thread is full of people that want to force people to play a certain way all the while trying to make it seem like it’s about some kind of freedom. It doesn’t matter what example you want to make WvW is not supposed to be about punishing groups larger than 10, 20, 30, or whatever arbitrary number you want to throw out there.
There are plenty of guild groups that run specifically to test themselves against larger numbers. You can’t do that with tons of zerglings following you around. Unfortunately there are some/many servers that don’t really have PUGmanders that they can depend on to be either; 1 effective, or 2 playing often.
The guild groups I have been a part of would run max 20 versus whatever a map could throw at them. This is fun, and a very exciting part of the game for that kind of player. Running tagged would eliminate that part of the fun.
I was just thinking about this before I read your post.
To be honest I really like the idea, BUT there are so many who completely reject the idea of server mergers, and this smacks of merger. I really think this would be a great one off event that could really ignite interest.
I think the thing that really holds all of this back of the fact that NA time is generally solid for all NA servers, but the offhours players have really concentrated themselves into T1, and, to a lesser extent, T2, which would make the matches fun during NA, but KTrains all the rest of the day.
I am not too sure how YB got matched with two T4 servers honestly. It was like a 3% chance and whammo it happened. For whatever reason T1 doesn’t want to mix with T2 at all. You see it week after week. Whichever server starts to drop close to T2 levels mysteriously wins that next week, and the Glicko rises too high to roll T2. T2 servers don’t have the offhours coverage to really threaten any T1 servers, but NA would be sweet.
Dragonbrand has the off-hour coverage to compete in T1, but not the NA coverage.
I’ve seen it mentioned a few times before on these forums that the T1 servers do actually work together to make sure they fight nobody else. They manipulate Glicko rating constantly.
Really though for DB at least NA IS their offhours, whereas for FA/YB NA is strong.
The T1 servers absolutely do manipulate their matchup, and have for quite some time. The whole idea of “Push week” came outta T1. It allows for a server to get drubbed 2-3 weeks in a row then win a week to keep their Glicko out of reach of T2.
Like I said before I doubt any of the T2 servers would win a matchup with two T1 servers, but as it stands there is no way to find out until seasons, which is a whole different animal.
I’m still struggling to see the problem. People play the way they want to play. Most players want to run in largish groups. Majority still rules does it not?
It’s not like it’s super hard to avoid the zerg, and if you prefer roaming or havoc then go do it away from the zerg. As to sieging with a zerg. Yeah if a large enough group wants a structure they will take it eventually. The key is to make them pay as long as you can.
I am not too sure how YB got matched with two T4 servers honestly. It was like a 3% chance and whammo it happened. For whatever reason T1 doesn’t want to mix with T2 at all. You see it week after week. Whichever server starts to drop close to T2 levels mysteriously wins that next week, and the Glicko rises too high to roll T2. T2 servers don’t have the offhours coverage to really threaten any T1 servers, but NA would be sweet.
GG blobs will put out so much CC just based on the amount of ppl throwing out skills that any smaller group will have their stab gone pretty quickly. Sounds like this will make it alot harder to blob bust or win outnumbered fights. Seems to me that this will make blobbing around even more effective, hopefully i will be wrong. inb4 80v80 all ranger battles from 1500 range
This is EXACTLY what has me worried. With stability the way it is now a good guild group has an outstanding chance to wipe a blob by cycling stability. Depending on the change it might make an outnumbered fight favor the larger force even more. Honestly ANet needs to put more information out there on how things will synergize. Otherwise all they’re doing is inspiring ridiculous amounts of angst among the players that no longer trust them to make good decisions regarding WvW.
@ poster above talking about guardian bow etc etc.
I don’t play a heavy class to wield a bow. If I wanted to shoot arrows I’d play a ranger. I play a heavy class to jump into melee range and bash people in the face with a hammer. Same reason I don’t play bow or rifle on a warrior.
Some of this almost feels like devs look at EotM, and feel like that is what they want their WvW to morph into.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
Dunno, but if you want to fight groups that small go play sPvP. Seriously; many people, myself included, enjoy running with 15-20 guild mates. WvW is where massive groups collide, at least that’s how the mode was explained. I don’t hate on havocs or roamers, any server needs goodly amounts of both, but the bottom line is that WvW was designed for larger groups as well.
Can a PuGzerg get outta hand? Oh yeah that is not in doubt, but unless you’re T1 you don’t tend to see many guild groups running 30+. Most guild groups in T2 run in the 15-20ish range, and that, imo, is not anywhere near blob numbers.
Why not just one really really big map? Make the WvW map as big as one of the PvE zones. Put in random keeps and towers, and let people fight it out to their hearts content. Allow for “Waypoint Creep”, and watch the fun flow.
In all honesty I’m part of the T3 matchup this week on YB, and yeah there are good fights, but no it’s a terrible matchup.
FA would be the worst matchup for T3, but YB is a close second. We are the second strongest server in T2, and yet here we are. Hopefully soon one of the T2 contenders will lose enough Glicko to drop more permanently. This will cause that server to, at least partially, destack.
What’s funny is that YB has destacked to an extent. We lost our largest NA guild, our largest EU guild, and a large portion of our SEA force. This made T2 more balanced until FA overstacked themselves leaving YB/DB/SoS in the position of needing to PPT even more than we already did to keep up.
There is a bright spot for T3 and below. Glicko is nearly gone. Soon, whichever server drops to T3 is there to stay.
I’m not so sure the change to stability is a good thing. Worst case scenario is that melee/guardian essentially goes away. This is really bad for all the players that have invested tons of time/gold/affection into their melee/guardian characters.
Honestly, stability wasn’t/isn’t a problem even in zerg fights. Timely boon stripping was an essential tool when facing opposing groups. Often the best group at boon stripping was the winner. This change will make good boon stripping less important, and dropping tons of CCs the be-all-end-all.
Even in best case scenarios this change will turn a good number of players off to WvW. Many will simply migrate to ranged classes leaving melee in an even larger hole. Very much need to see more on this, and especially more on how they will mitigate the damage this will do to the guardian class before I cast final judgement.
There are things they can do, and things they cannot do.
I read all the time about incentivizing destacking, killing the zerg, etc etc. They won’t/shouldn’t interfere with how people choose to play, BUT they can change transfer cost without interfering with how people choose to play.
I agree with the notion that changing transfer costs might help, but I disagree with the costs provided in this thread. In reality they need to make it prohibitive to move to T1. I mean like 3500 gems prohibitive. Make T2 somewhere in the 2500-2000 gem range. T3 and T4 leave as they are. T5 around 1000 gems. T6 nearer 700. T7 should be cheap, very very cheap. T8 should be free.
It wouldn’t make/force/cause players to destack, but it would provide a very attractive option to players that, on there own, want to destack. It would also….inconvenience players wanting to bandwagon up.
T2 seems to have rotational lag. By rotational I mean that the lag strikes certain BLs for an entire week then may / may not move to another BL the next week.
For the longest time no one could even play on SoS BL for two weeks straight. It was incredible that they had to squeeze essentially all the players from FA/SoS/YB onto FABL, YBBL, and EBG.
Couple of ideas come to mind.
- Double down means you have to release. This would mean a war of attrition. Siege should help you more in this case.
- Let the poison shot on ACs refresh faster. Less healing = less effective blob.
There are others, but they would have some unintended consequences that I don’t even care to delve into atm.
The bottom line is that when I read this forum it is the eternal complaints of “blobs…blobs everywhere!”, or “don’t mess with my roaming by merging servers!”. If you love roaming and hate blobs move down, if you love blobs move up, but nothing can or will be done about either.
@joneirikb
That seems awfully underpopulated. I remember Kaineng from the old WM days when I was on CD, and they were always fun to play against.
Is the lack of players a motivational thing, a population thing, or do the players down there like it like that? I know many players feel tremendous server loyalty, and don’t move because of that. Do you find that’s the case?
I think making it so if there are no buffs running on a current claim it should be reclaimable by another guild who does have buffs running. That would solve the problem of people having to wake up at 4 am to pop buffs and people not doing so at all.
This is the solution.
I know this has been mentioned a few times in this thread, but how would you feel about a “trail run” of said changes? Such as removing the white swords in WvW. Which change would you like see implemented first? Why?
To many to mention, and I have to admit half of them just out of pure sadistic glee. I’ll let others fill them out, just take them with a grain of salt. A lot of us makes personal wishes and some times wishes that would right out harm other servers but not ones own etc. Rule of thumb: if multiple people mentions same idea, it is worth pondering.
Please just keep in mind many players that play WvW have never even read this forum.
Instead of merging low pop servers they should merge BL maps. 3 BL maps +SM is too much for low tiers.
Make it 1 BL + SM + New HoT map.
In my earlier post I pointed out I’ve never been below T5, but what do the BLs really look like below T5? Is it more time of day(I’m guessing OCX/SEA) when you don’t see many players, or more often than that?
Would it make sense to get rid of BLs altogether, and make one large map(not EotM, but kind of like that) for the players to congregate on? Maybe like a mixture of EotM and EBG?
Whatever happens DO NOT turn regular WvW into EotM. EotM exists to level new characters, and for WvWers to make money. It is in no way, shape, or form REAL WvW.
Addendum:
Was reading a thread in which some players from lower tier servers advocated a reduction in # of BLs in those lower tiers. Instead of having 3 BLs, EBG, and now a new map with HoT perhaps making it more condensed by removing red, blue, and green altogether. Would that be a solution to the “dead server” problem?
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
First a little background. Never played below T5(CD). Played about 9 months in T1(BG). Bounced around a bit in T2/T3(SoS and YB).
The following will be a little long.
I personally have never enjoyed dead BLs, and when CD suffered their 2nd or perhaps 3rd exodus my old guild left CD for BG. BG was fun, but way too crowded especially during S1 for my guild and I(almost killed the guild it got so bad), so shortly after S1 we left for SoS. T2/T3 was/is really nice at the time, and even today T2 is great for what I like to do in W3.
I get it that the T2 level isn’t for everyone, but I really think many of the people that proclaim they don’t want anything to do with higher populations found in tier 1 and 2 have never experienced tiers 1 and 2, and so they really don’t have any idea of the playstyle in tiers higher than their own.
My proposition
For a period of 1, 2, or even 3 weeks try something entirely new.
Anet has a golden opportunity here with the introduction of a new BL when HoT rolls out. Forget cycling out old BLs. Add this one and make 5 BLs instead of 4 (If the populations are too high for this then add a clone of EotM that is tied into the weekly score). Then allow for partnering; not merging; of servers. Partner the #1 in T1 with the #3 in T8. #2 in T1 with #2 in T8 and #3 in T1 with the #1 in T8. Do the same with T2 /T7, T3 /T6, and T4 /T5. This will spread the populations over 5 BLs instead of 4, and thereby(hopefully) queues won’t be as much of an issue(at least during NA when we see the most queues).
This is sure to be a contentious suggestion, but as we see with megaservers it’s well within Anet’s abilities to do, and who knows, it might generate some interest.
One thing I’ve been thinking that could, maybe, perhaps balance things out would be to disallow transfers based on Tier instead of on population. You want to transfer? That’s fine, but not to anything higher than T3. Meaning a T1/T2 server that lost guild(s) would be stuck until they dropped to T3 or below.
Might seem a bit unfair, but you are already seeing guilds leave T1 for T2, and not small guilds either. It would also allow for more dynamism in the mid-tiers.
Honestly I wish there was a way to fix offhours coverage, because you see many servers able to field large NA populations, but a server can dominate NA and still finish third in a matchup if they don’t have enough/any offhours players.
T2 servers have as many NA players as T1 servers do, but they don’t have the wealth of OCX/SEA/EU coverage, and so you see them having great fights during NA, but if one or another of them have offhours you get lopsided matches, and you see this to some extent througout the tiers. As was demonstrated when SoS had a large OCX advantage.
T2 the last several weeks has been great, and I’m sorry it has ruined T3(and it has). But it’s only been great, because coverage has been comparable. You get a large enough SEA/OCX/EU guild moving to one of the servers, and it will be back to lopsided matches again in no time.
I actually really like the idea of not having “assigned” maps. Whoever was able to dominate the easier map would have an advantage, especially if the easier map wasn’t known prior to reset.
Many realms already do the whole; red, blue, green, EBG assignations so it’s a push there.
My only worry would be that one or two maps would be more static due to how hard they are to attack leaving more people trying to push into the easy map and EBG. It would, however, make the reset weekend very interesting.
I would be okay getting rid of the current BLs altogether, and making a giant EotM map that actually meant something, the new map, plus EBG.
This accomplishes a few things right off the bat. It will condense players into three maps instead of four. EotM is large enough that you could greatly increase the queue size for it over the normal borderlands. Then you would have the new map plus EB. This would make for some epic clashes, and some seriously intense defenses. EotM is a fun map to fight on, when fighting actually occurs. The concentration of the 3 servers forces on 3 maps instead of 4 will also make it feel more fast-paced over the current meta imo.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
Confirmed, new map for WvW, Borderland rotation, core changes to WvW, including defense becoming more important.
New map for real W3, or a new EotM “W3” map? Like the idea of defense getting rewards. I don’t do it often, but props to those who do. I also heard something about guild halls so GvG guilds can do their thing there when not open fielding? True/False?
I honestly don’t think they will do much for the WvW community at all. This is clearly evident from the way we get nothing for the past two years. It is quite sad all they do for this game is the living story. We get no attention from Anet except for a week of no white swords or something that is really irrelevant.
The match-ups have been really broken for months and they do nothing but let it continue week after week. I see a lot of people say it’s because they don’t make money from WvW in the gem store. I would buy stuff from the gem store more often if it was actually something good like upgraded siege or good looking armor. Anet is missing the boat with it’s WvW community.
I really hope they fix it soon though because it is getting harder and harder to log in.
If ANet thinks that W3 players don’t buy gems they are nuts. There are tons of people in W3 maps wearing top hats, arctic explorer outfits, Phalanx armor, etc. If they want MORE gem sales from W3 players they need to tailor their gemstore items more to W3 players. The backflags they put out were pretty good. Seeing quite a few of those around. Make the backflags bigger with more customizable graphics on them though. Make it almost like a rally signal/ghetto tag.
But you say, “WE give you special finishers for WvWvW.” Super duper I say. How about something that makes my treb look like a Risen treb. Skins for siege would be a potential moneymaker. Guild siege looks a TON better than normal skins, and some, SOME, might pay some money to make their siege look super special (sarcasm….but maybe not).
The biggest thing they could do imo is to refine and reimagine some things. The PPK was a good start, but then was gone. Turn white swords into a signal fire or something so I don’t need to keep my map open. I could just look at NWT to see if there’s a fight there. How about making the outmanned buff a real buff for a change. If your realm is outmanned give each player an extra 200 toughness and 200 power across the board. How bout we get some variation to the map? Oh, you say, “but that would make it unequal for all realms.” Really? You can’t design 3 different maps that are equally difficult/easy to attack and defend? You aren’t trying very hard then.
(edited by Kaiser.9873)
I hope it’s a bug. I don’t play enough PvE to accumulate enough dragonite to do anything of any import, and would jump in EotM to farm it on occasion when in need. Yesterday I hopped in EotM to farm a bit(first time in since Dec 16th patch), and there was none to be had. Now I wonder if they meant to remove empyreal fragments(because of the new dealio that converts them from Wintersday), and got both instead.
I have personally paid for many transfers. I have never been on a low tier server, but have some experience with T4 and T5 from CD days. For myself and what I want to do in W3 I find T2 is the right spot. I did the T1 stuff…twice, and it was okay, but a bit too blobby for me. T4 and T5 was too desolate. T3 is okay, but T2 has the right balance….for ME.
The issue arises when people just blindly move without finding out what the tier they are moving to has to offer. Some move to T1, because bigger is better right? They then find that they cannot stand that style of gameplay. Each experience is going to be different, and all I can say to you is that if you hate what’s going on in whatever tier you are in atm then move, but do your homework first.
None of the T2 servers want to stay in T3, and since DB gained enough population to be considered a legitimate T2 contender they are going to push hard. SoS is most definitely a T2 server, and they have no intention of staying in T3. Due to the way ANet has decided to determine who belongs where the ONLY way to regain T2 status is to crush T3. This is very unfortunate for the real T3 servers who simply cannot compete with the coverage of SoS, DB, FA, or YB.
Now I don’t pretend to know exactly how Glicko is meant to function in depth, but it seems that eventually all the Glicko would be leeched from the T3 servers. This would mean that whatever T2 server that lands there at that time won’t be able to squeeze enough juice to move back up to T2. That will end up with a server implosion on a grand scale.
This is actually a very dangerous situation. If the gap becomes too wide for any movement to occur then what’s the point? If there are never any real chances to move then you end up with a stagnant, static set of matches that never change. This becomes increasingly boring and frustrating for everyone.
I agree with misterman. Set points for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd place finishes rather than Glicko. This would give more movement, faster movement, and would balance out in the end. It would also make for a more clear picture of the real status of a server. You couldn’t lose for months on end waiting for your Glicko to decay enough for your server to move to the real spot it belongs. Meanwhile servers that are falling, like SoR and Mag did, don’t end up artificially inflating certain servers that hit that Glicko sweetspot with them. Likewise winning over and over would move you up the ladder faster allowing you to reach that sweet spot you deserve.
Removing white swords is a two-edged sword. It really does benefit the more populated servers more than the less. In general a more populated server can spare players to go cap something when the less populated needs everyone out there fighting(can’t spare people to be scouts like a more populated server can).
I love your suggestion to use the undermanned buff as a boost to structures.
Well the issue that I am seeing is that it is in ANet’s short-term interest to make you pay to move. I don’t know if they see the longterm detriment to their bottom line however.
I have moved around more than once looking for a better W3 experience. I found it a time or two, but it often is for a short duration. The sweet spot for me is T2. Big, but not too big. The problem for ANet, longterm, is that there are a large number who won’t pay to move. They will stay until where they are is boring, and then quit the game completely. ANet is betting on the fact that there aren’t any other games out that compete in this market right now. The issue is that if they don’t do something soon it won’t matter for many players, they will jump on anything that comes out.
Every player that leaves is one less player to buy gems, any expansion that might come out, and yes, pay to move. They really should give a free transfer option annually that allows player to change their server experience once per year. As long as that move isn’t to T1, or maybe even exclude T2 as well, I don’t see that destroying the game.
It’s TC’s village idiot, so to speak.
I bought a second account to experience different tiers and the zerg and roaming fights between them. The large zerg battles are definitely better in T1. The roaming is… Dependant on what you want to get out of it. Duels rarely happen in T1 unless organised. Small scale stuff is(was… RIP white swords) more about distracting the enemy zergs than getting kills.
Where as in lower tiers, it was more of a fight between builds, classes and skill, in T1, the builds and classes matter less and skill matters more (e.g. Managing to keep a 20 man zerg occupied by 2-3 guys kind of skill, it’s harder than you think)
All in all, it’s really up to personal taste
I’m going to disagree here with you about builds, classes, and skills. The builds are well known throughout the tiers, as are the classes. They have dubbed it GWEN for a reason. The main difference here in T2 is that guild groups run 20-25 max(in general), and so there is less margin for error.
I played on BG for almost a year in total, and fights there seemed like cruise control compared to T2 fights. Much of the reason for that is the lag situation that existed/exists in T1. Players there are/were used to the 1-1-1-1-1-1-1-1 type of fighting in zergs, because good luck getting anything else to fire when you needed it.
In T2 there isn’t nearly the noticeable lag, and so you have to be able to use all of your skills pretty much exactly when needed or you die. Lots more people able to run glassier builds here since their skills can fire when used, and so the bombs actually hit like bombs.
Having moved to JQ recently from T2 YB with my guild, there are definitely downsides to going to T1. I was never that big of a fan of huge blob battles and preferred 15s and 20s, but T1 servers definitely run fat. The bags are glorious, of course, but when you’re running with numbers that big fights essentially boil down to standing off each other and trying to bait the other into wasting their CDs. Melee can’t really push in without eating about 50 necro wells and melting instantly, so there’s a lot of standing around staring at each other, fake pushing, etc.
I have to say I seriously miss T2 reset night as T1 reset basically comprised of fights like the above, repairing walls/gates and queuing. It wasn’t half as fun as T2. Good luck running in 10-15 person groups if that’s all you have on in your guild at the time, you pretty much stand no chance whenever the blob shows up. You either blob up yourself or get farmed by 60 people spamming 1. GG.
Having said that, JQ community seems cool and the quality of PUGs/militia in T1 seems to be much higher than lower tiers, probably because they’re very used to this style of play. There’s also action pretty much 24/7 so there’s always something going on. Running around PvDing outside of NA hours in lower tiers or finding out there was just nothing at all going on was never that fun, although it was nice to be able to roam or run with a smaller group and still be able accomplish things; something which is exceedingly difficult to do in T1 due to the sheer number of people running around in blobs.
I’m hoping T1 will grow on me after I’ve been here for awhile. I definitely can see it isn’t for everyone, though. I’ll definitely be investing in an alt account next time GW2 is on sale to put on a lower tier server.
Ya know you guys are always welcome back on YB. The fights have been real the last two weeks. Those meanies on SoS and FA are teaming up on us since you left.
Rank 948 atm, and have gotten 1 weapon chest, 1 armor chest, and 2 rings total. Yeah they drop not so much.
I think a targeted tornado would be dandy. Have it cycle the old tornado powers through on a 1 or 3 second basis. The area denial aspect would fit well with some other ele skills, and would make a difference in a fight.
Another glyph based elite would/could be cool. A large AoE blind(dust storm) in earth form, a larger firestorm in fire, a massive chill field in water, and a ?Mass invis? in air perhaps?
A cantrip based elite would fit well due to what they did with guards. Perhaps a large AoE launch?
Servers have risen and fallen. overall numbers are down as the game has bled some folks in the last year. BG is still top dog when they want to be. T2 has a bit more volatility then it used to have. T3,4,and 5 still seem to have their moments. Don’t have an idea about anything below T5. Rangers are decent now.