Guild Wars 2

When is the World Vs World 2.0 coming? :P

Number One: Removing Edge of the Mists and moving it into the Borderlands Category

The EotM players are not WvW players. They are 2 completely different breeds. EotM is quite popular among those who like easy mindless farming. Let’s not take that away from them.

Number Two: We dont need Three Borderlands

The lack of migration policy has led to both stacked and empty worlds over the years.

When ANet does the population rebalancing, they should consider reducing playable area as well.

2-map matchups seems too extreme, though. There is often a queue on 2 maps even at the EU low tiers during the reset nights.

Maybe some dynamic area system would be work: 3 maps available during the weekend and prime time; lock 1 map during quiet hours.

Thirdly: Change Obsidian Sanctum into an actual WvW Map

OS has its purpose as GvG and dueling arena. It is good those are distinct from actual WvW.

Earlywood.7438:

Is there any way we could get the score we see to be more relevant? I don’t understand why we focus on showing PPT in the ticker over all else. I’m glad you guys added time left for each skirmish, but this whole concept makes little sense to me and I’m getting tired of explaining this to new people.

The way things are currently displayed, unless you go further into the WvW tab, you can relate this to a football game showing yards per attempt and we recently added time remaining until the end of the quarter. The actual score (points from skirmishes) should be front and center.

I totally agree the war score should have better visibility. I also listed this item in a QoL wishlist thread.

Earlywood.7438:

After that gets added, I’d like to suggest an “Number of 1st place skirmishes required to win the week.” I know that’s a long shot but it is very odd that this is getting overlooked. With skirmishes, a server can win before the end of the week. This happens often. You don’t make this apparent though. Not only do I believe this should be displayed, but the glicko scoring should take this into account, maybe it already does. However that calculation works with WvW levels and such, they should be made while matches are relevant. What happens after a server reaches first or last place early in the week should have less of an effect on their glicko score.

The upcoming Last Stand feature will shift the matchup decision point until later into the week.

As long as the matchup victory rewards are not in, it doesn’t matter which team wins the matchup.

You can only hope for a better rank on the leaderboard. The rank is decided by teams’ total victory points and relative Glicko ratings. Every skirmish counts.

That is if you are on a host world. Guest worlds have absolutely nothing to fight for. And if you don’t mind ANet manually adjusting the ratings and changing the teams by re-linking worlds every 2 months.

All in all it is pretty pointless to win in WvW at the moment. Just wait for the manual rating adjustments and world linking to end, for the populations rebalancing and for the matchup victory rewards.

“It’s only in your mind” type change to illusions:

• Illusions cannot be affected by damage nor heals, or pickup conditions or boons.
• Illusions cannot be targeted.
• Illusions expire over time.
• Illusions teleport to the target location on F1, F2 and F3 shatters.

Implications:

• Mesmers could rely on illusions in heavy AoE fights.
• Less lag in WvW due less target and pathing calculations.
• New players would not be in disadvantage trying to figure out where the real mesmer is.
• Retargeting unstealthing mesmer would require less effort.
• Target cannot avoid shatters by walking away nor moving to a non-path location.
• Players can get out of combat when the illusions expire if the mesmer nerver uses a shatter.
• No exceeding the 3 illusions limit due travel time to target on shatters.

Implied additional changes:

• Time Catches Up
• Protected Phantasms
• Persisting Images
• Phantasmal Fury
• Signet of Illusions’ passive
• The 3 dots UI display remaining time

The shrine jump pads are an attempt to fix the poor design of the DBL map. The more shrine jump pads, vertical portals, jump pads, windfall, lava pools and hay bales get added, the more the map starts to resemble Tangled Depths. Natural movement seems to be impossible to instill on the map retroactively.

Apparently the jump pads can be used for scouting. It’s probably an unintentional side effect the testers missed.

X T D.6458:

-I got to use the new launchpads in DBL last night with my guild during a raid, and we enjoyed the mechanic. But I would suggest that some of them be repositioned. I dont think they should land you right next to any objective or shrine, and the one that takes you over Earth Keep should definately be moved. Even though you cannot get off while traveling you can still see whats inside the keep and that seems a little unfair.

hactar.1903:

• Communicate at least a little bit about what we can expect from WvW, we can deal with some disappointments, but we cannot deal with a continued communication blackout.

ANet should be working on adding skirmish rewards and improving UI according to the roadmap.

There is one root issue standing in the way: population imbalance.

• In conjunction with population rebalancing, updating Scoring allows us to decide a winner of a match more fairly, and thus reward players more fairly
  • Currently we can’t give out worthwhile rewards for winning, as most match-ups are already decided before they begin

Because the current WvW team doesn’t have the skill set to rebalance populations, they develop minor quality of life improvements instead. (Tyler has left the WvW team)

If there will be any communication, you can expect to see a vote whether to stop trying to follow the roadmap. Maybe ANet offers easier access to BiS gear to quell the dissent. How would you vote?

ANet considered server performance when they:

• increased target caps from 5 to 10
• added new AoE effects to existing skills
• reduced recharges of AoE skills/traits

That’ll do the trick. The WvW skill lag is a thing of the past. :P

Skirmish or matchup victory rewards cannot be handed out before population rebalancing.

It is not possible to create equal teams with the world linking. Stop expecting it would.

It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes.

source

• Evasion Disruption Trap added to WvW

Phew! The balance team dodged the issue. :P

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Ovalkvadratcylinder.9365:

dont expect alot

Epidemic which was considered balanced by the community for 4 years has now apparently become super OP and must be nerfed.

Watch the squeaky wheel get the grease.

Release notes 2013-04-30

• Epidemic skill: Now unblockable.

Release notes 2015-06-23

• All damage conditions will now stack up to 1500 times.
• Epidemic: With the changes to condition stacking, Epidemic now only applies up to 25 stacks of any given condition. Increased recharge to 20 seconds.

Release notes 2016-07-26

• Siege weapons can now be affected by conditions and critical strikes. In addition, their base health has been doubled.

TBH the biggest complaint seemed to be that players finally learned to use Epidemic on a downed enemy killing those trying to revive. Like “damage on the downed” was never called before.

Not so much complaints about defenders having to worry about conditions near cannon/burning oil in addition to Meteor Showers.

• All HoT AoE skills and traits are changed to single targeted in order to reduce skill lag.
• Resistance is no longer a boon but an effect which does not stack duration.
• Stealth no longer stacks duration.

Not likely? :P

Hitman.5829:

jamesdolla.3954:

Hitman.5829:

Why? why is the siege in WvW like mortars and cannons positioned in places where they can easily be killed? It makes no sense from a defense stand point.

It’s fine the way it is m8. just think if mortars and cannons were super hard to kill nothing would ever flip and everything would be t3. that sounds like a lot of fun.

Karma trains exists because of bad siege placements, correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t this game called GUILD WARS 2 or perhaps I got the wrong game and bought the karma wars 2?

Karma trains are not the best way to get war score. Your team would be better off defending high tier objectives and killing enemy formations.

Karma trains are good at keeping objectives at tier 0; both yours and the enemies’. They are also good at entertaining large group of fair weather players.

Karma trains happen because lack of competition.

Shazmataz.1423:

I do agree with these qol changes….but wvw as a game mode needs a massive overhaul.

I don’t want Anet to give us token qol changes and ignore the major issues of pop balance, profession balance and rewards that are on par with the other game modes.

About a year ago we got a poll asking if players wanted Scoring changes or QoL changes.

We never got a vote to fix the main problems in WvW (skill lag, population imbalance, lack of competition). I guess it was too obvious to even ask. They recently (some months back) mentioned they are working on rebalancing populations, so a problem is being addressed.

Solutions to the main problems require designer/architect/lead dev work. The developers/testers need to work on something else meanwhile. Let it be QoL changes. That is better than assigning them to the next expansion pack. Or to create more Repair Hammers, Deployable Cannons or Golem Rush events.

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

• Add an option to refresh all friendly siege in an objective by talking to the lord or the overseer
  • Alternatively remove the refreshing of siege. i.e. make siege always decay but let it be built half the supply cost within friendly objectives.

Thanks for all the contributions!

One of the problems with the idea of being able to instantly refresh all siege is that it can easily promote siege trolling. One of the nice things about siege decay timers and the need to refresh it is that it allows paper/troll siege to expire and the only other way to remove it is to have it get destroyed.

The talk option could be available to the guild which claimed the objective – if they choose so. Like using tactivators.

• Improve objective contested status indicator’s visibility on the map and mini-map (The white crossed swords get hidden under the guild claim and the upgrade pip symbols.)

• Add an option to refresh all friendly siege in an objective by talking to the lord or the overseer
  • Alternatively remove the refreshing of siege. i.e. make siege always decay but let it be built half the supply cost within friendly objectives.

This feature is already implemented to some extent. DBL shows breakable status on almost all walls. ABL and EB display walls’ damaged status more or less randomly.

• Display breakable/damaged/destroyed/full health status of walls on the map and the mini-map
• Display damaged/destroyed/full health status of gates on the map and the mini-map

• Line-of-sight and pathing
  • Communicate when a ranged skill is going to be obstructed by an indicator on the skill
  • Allow players to hit Burning Oil sites and gates without obstructed error
  • When player is placing a siege build site make the validity check based upon where the siege will land instead of where the player is targetting
  • When player is placing an arrow cart communicate areas the arrow cart will be able to hit (the AC LoS rules are incomprehensible)
  • Add some elevation and an arc to thrown Siege Disabler so that player can throw it on rams while standing on the wall
  • Make Siege Disabler unblockable by player skills
  • When player is using a teleport skill communicate all the valid targets locations
    • For example mesmer skill Blink fails without any logical reason with an error message “No valid path to target”
    • Alternatively remove all “NON PORT SPOT” locations in competitive game modes
      • They are way too powerful not to have any indicators
      • For example thief v mesmer was 4-6 loss for the mesmer without using NON PORT SPOTs and 7-3 win with NON PORT SPOTs (YouTube source)

• Miscellaneous
  • Fix the returning dolyak position already (They move faster when returning to their supply camps but the game client does not understand this and displays the dolyak way behind their real position. The dolyak snaps to its actual position if the player manages to land few hits on it.)

Not all objective siege are placed badly.

Mortars and inner cannons in ABL and EB can hit outer gate areas and most catapult spots. EB double gates’ inner oil is well protected. If the attackers do not pay attention to these weapons the assault will fail even with handful of defenders. And that is the point of siege – clear the defensive siege first or gamble breaking through before scouts spot you.

The DBL objectives are not that lucky – whoever thought the gate kill box design is any good? At least the earth keep’s inner west cannon can hit rams at the outer gate, fire keep’s top mortar can hit the south supply camp and Necropolis gate cannon can hit the glitched catapult spot through the wall.

As for the 3 defenders on a wall trying to kill off 30 attackers outside… that’s not going to work and it shouldn’t either. Use siege you silly rangers!

• Improve inventory management
  • Add gold-only WvW Reward Track
  • Make the user selected WvW Reward Track not switch to some random other track on completition
  • Change WvW loot tables to contain meaningful items only (blueprints, BiS consumables and gear, guild war chest items)
  • Add open all inventory option to reward track boxes
  • Make salvage all option to do their work inside WvW Reward Track boxes, too
  • Make the UI designer of the Trading Post Sell tab to use it to sell 100 crap items every day

• Simplify infusion slots
  • Add ascended backpacks with 2 infusion slots to WvW vendor
  • Remove duplicate stat WvW ascended amulets
  • Change WvW amulets’ enrichment slot to an infusion slot
  • Change all WvW ascended rings to have 3 infusion slots
  • Remove Unique attribute from WvW ascended rings and accessories
    • Then remove duplicate stat rings and accessories
  • In appreciation of the 2016-01-26 simplification of infusion slots:
    • Add account bound +23 Agony Infusion that can only be bought by WvW currency

• Improve on-screen WvW elements
  • Change the on-screen skirmish timer
    • Display minutes remaining instead of 1 hour remaining
    • Move it somewhere else so it does not overlap with target details
  • Replace the on-screen PPT, PPT chart and tally timer by war score, war score chart and skirmish timer
  • Add option to hide the on-screen flashing WvW Reward Track boxes
  • Add option to hide the on-screen WvW Reward Track progress bar which overlaps the mini-map
  • Hide the floating war score indicators for enemy teams
  • Improve the bloodlust event display
    • Change the description to be less of a wall of text and more informative
    • Display the event only when player is in the ruins area or when any team holds at least 3 ruins

• Improve spending supplies
  • Allow spending supplies at 1 supply granularity per tick (instead of 2 ticks of 4 and 1, you would spend 5 supplies in single tick)
  • Cancel build/repair channeling when the siege is built or structure fully repaired
  • Make Supply Master #4 add supplies into the currently channeled build/repair instead of after the channel
  • Fix the squad supplies total bug

• Objective NPCs
  • Remove quartermaster NPCs
  • Remove siege vendor NPCs at supply depots; add the vendor to the vendors area of the keep
  • Remove F-key interaction from guard and worker NPCs (I do not want to talk to them, I want to pick up supplies)
  • Move the DBL earth keep vendors and the mystic forge to inner keep next to the waypoint

• WvW Panel improvements
  • Add war score breakdown (score from objective ticks v captures v kills v finishers)
  • Add war score leaderboards (top 5 players/guilds contributing to each war score category in current matchup)
  • Add WvW leaderboards
  • Add projected Glicko rating changes, break even point and % chance to move up/down a tier in the next matchup
  • Show list of commanders in the map selection tab for each map

• Miscellaneous
  • Remove camera spin when player uses siege
  • Extend view distance when using long range siege
  • Change combat log time stamps to show seconds and deciseconds
  • Show Trebuchet Mastery #5 in the combat log
  • Add on-death instant replay and damage breakdown statistics
  • Display squad details in the map and the mini-map squad tooltip
    • Description, number of players, amount of supplies
  • Remove pan/zoom lock from the mini-map in in-door areas

Dayra.7405:

So range shrinks to 3/4 resulting in “wild matches” are 4/3 or 33% more likely.

It is not that straightforward. The leaderboard doesn’t immediately shrink to those values. The underlying formulas are quite complex; GW2 treats each matchup as 6 Glicko matches. And all the transfers, linking, resets, randomness and game mechanics cause extra turbulence.

For example let’s look at NA T1: BG v Mag v TC with BG winning all skirmishes and Mag at second place half the time. The victory points are as you said.
The current ratings are: 2019.6664 v 2060.1248 v 1839.9296
The new 2-1-1 ratings: 2085.6452 v 1946.9204 v 1886.4536
The new 5-4-3 ratings: 2041.1317 v 1969.9772 v 1910.3349

One would have expected the new 5-4-3 ratings to be more closer together. The new 5-4-3 rating are closer together than 2-1-1 ratings as expected.

(Note! I didn’t have the real deviation and volatility values so I just put 200 and 0.06 for all teams.)

Edit: Re-calculated the new ratings using the real deviation and volatility from the leaderboard. Thanks Dayra.

Dayra.7405:

If the server come closer in Glicko, the matches are more likely to contain server far away from each other.

So if the 5-4-3 runs longer, I guess matches like e.g. 1 vs 12 become more more frequent than they are today.

Can you show some mathematics to back up those statements?

While I at some level agree with your reasoning, I’d expect the difference will be too small to notice.

The random factor in the match-making probably overshadows this effect. Not to mention ANet’s manual adjustments, world relinking, Glicko deviation and volatility resets and transfers.

DeceiverX.8361:

The irony being that 2-1-1 actually makes nightcapping contribute more to PPT than 5-4-3 or 3-2-1.

You mean contribute more to the Glicko rating adjustments, not PPT.

If you compare the nightcapper team and the second team, yes, 2:1 ratio is greater than 5:4 or 3:2. If you compare the 1st team vs the 3rd team, then the ratios are 5:3, 2:1 and 3:1. In that sense the night skirmishes (and any other skirmishes) are more valuable to win under 2-1-1 than under 5-4-3.

Jski.6180:

The walk on lava at 2 is going to be a nice changes. Your going to NEED to flip shrines now if you want to attk a keep vs a defing group. The tick going to be fliping the shrines all at once to not give away too soon that your attking the keep.

Indeed. The fire keep lord room fight can easily go sour if the defenders have Flame’s Embrace. The back of the lord room still has enough lava to sit in and to pull the attackers into.

Namer.9750:

The only suggestion I’d make about Jump Pads is that you shouldn’t be able to activate them while in combat. Otherwise, it just allows for too much cheese.

Frankly, I think this does absolutely nothing for the overarching problem of DBLs, which is that there’s a lack of strategic connection between the objectives, and it is too fustrating for the Attackers to travel around. The only way I see this to work is for attacking groups to have roamers running around ahead of them, otherwise this isn’t helpful.

That said, roamers now get a bigger job: cap the shrines and cripple enemy mobility. It’ll also be nice to see shrines being used for flanking purposes or for rapid response (i.e. you hear a callout from Air that West Garri is being Cata’ed. You can take the East earth shrine and get to the west shrine in seconds. In the end though, it just makes DBL even more defensive and even worse to attack, which isn’t going to help population on the map.

Apparently the themed jump pads can be activated while in combat. That’s how the elementalist escaped me.

Also the themed jump pads work for the owner of the keep. If you plan to attack the keep, then you can only hope to reduce the defenders’ mobility by capturing one of he three shrines. Which is usually a trivial task for a solo roamer.

If the west earth keep is being catapulted, the west earth shrine is probably taken, too. You’d have to send a roamer to recapture it and then walk your team from air keep to the east earth shrine, use jump pad, then walk up to attack the enemies. The roamer may report back that the shrine still has RI buff on it. That’s a lot of coordination, waiting and walking.

Dawdler.8521:

Korgov.7645:

And secondly by encouraging 2v1 against the strongest team.

You say this like its some sort of pro.

It only work if a server truly hate another server so much they are fighting to loose the matchup. No I mean literally, for 2v1 to function in a 2/1/1 score world, the weakest server has to fight tooth and nail to come last while making sure the dominating server comes 2nd, that aint easy.

Especially not since your 2v1 “ally” will at the same time pound your weak kitten mercilessly after they got tired wiping against the strongest server.

I think it is for the better to give the weakest team a kingmakers role instead of silver medalist makers role. The weakest team also has an option to build up momentum for the next skirmish by leaving the current skirmish for the other teams to fight over. Or fight to lose as you put it.

In 3-2-1 and 5-4-3 systems the weakest team only has one role: PPT piñata.

Recovering to win is not easy under any system. As it should not be. But it is easier to win X skirmishes than to win X skirmishes and ensuring the dominating team also comes 3rd X times.

New Shrine Effects

The desert borderlands shrine effects got changed in the 2017-02-08 patch.

World vs. World
Desert Borderlands

• Shrine bonuses have been rearranged and changed in the Desert borderlands. The last shrine bonus for each shrine is now a themed jump pad that will allow players to travel from one shrine to the next. These jump pads will make it easier for players to traverse the area.
  • Shrine of Earth:
    • Activates lodestones that grant protection and stability to allies. This is used to cripple enemies.
    • A sandstorm that reveals all enemies.
    • Asura launch pads that launch players to all the shrines and inside the keep itself.
  • Shrine of Fire:
    • Inferno Hound
      • Increased the movement speed of the hound.
      • Added swiftness to skill 3.
    • The Flame’s Embrace effect allows players to walk on lava. It functions the same as it used to but is now the second bonus instead of the third.
    • Fire tornadoes that launch players to all of the shrines.
  • Shrine of Air:
    • Air jump pads that allow players to jump to high ledges at various places in the keep. No changes were made to this bonus.
    • The Windfall effect allows players to not take fall damage while near the keep. This functions the same as it used to but is now the second bonus instead of the third.
    • Eagle clouds that transform players into eagles so they can glide to each shrine.

I’m really happy all the old earth shrine effects are gone. I walked around the keep and found it lot more pleasant than what is used to be like: https://youtu.be/QD9Q3zJ8IoU?t=9m35s.

I haven’t had chance to try out the themed jump pads yet (The ones that teleport you between the shrines as opposed to air keep jump pads which launch you up a cliff. Not enough time to come up with a unique name?).

The only experience I had was an elementalist attacking me when I was capturing a shire. He used the themed jump pad to escape. Which seemed a bit unfair but then again most profs can escape from me jump pads or not.

The themed jump pads seem like PvE style bandage to fix problems in the map design. <notextile>cough Tangled Depths cough</notextile>

As for the jump pads actually helping to move around… well, I’m not convinced. I mean in order to move from one side of your keep to the other your team needs to hold all 3 shrines, you walk up to a shrine and then appear on the shrine nearest to your destination. I have hard time to imagine a scenario where these teleports would be useful. Maybe that escape gimmick.

Some questions the scoring can answer:

• Which of 2-1-1, 3-2-1 or 5-4-3 represents the teams’ relative strengths the best?
  • This is what Glicko wants out of the scores.

5-4-3.

Some matchups are subjectively very unbalanced when you are on the battlefield. You can look at the war scores for a more objective view.

After the population rebalancing even closer victory points distribution could be justified, like 9-8-7.

On the other hand the “how much a team won” is not that important. Players have even asked for 1-up-1-down outcomes for matchups.

• Which of the 2-1-1, 3-2-1 or 5-4-3 encourages 2v1 against the strongest team?
  • This creates more interesting matchups.

2-1-1.

A skirmish victory reward would be a nice extra incentive – a bragging right or cosmetic reward would probably do. But no rewards before population rebalancing!

• Which of the 2-1-1, 3-2-1 or 5-4-3 prolong the winner decision the longest into the matchup?
  • Decision point is preferably towards the end of the matchup.

3-2-1 and 5-4-3. Those can decide the matchup winner by 2/3 into the matchup the earliest.

The upcoming Last Stand feature can prolong the decision even more than this 1/6th difference.

Currently there is no matchup victory reward for winning a matchup. But that is coming after the population rebalancing.

If there is lot of 2v1 against the strongest team the matchups are not so predictable.

• Which of the 2-1-1, 3-2-1 or 5-4-3 is the simplest to understand?
  • Players want to know the matchup status at glance.

None. I would argue 1-0-0 would be the simplest to understand. Then calculate Glicko rating adjustment whichever way you want (multiply or add victory points or derive additional points from war scores before adjusting the ratings).

Most players (including me) have no clue how the current score affects Glicko ratings. Unless they visit an external web site. Or unless they are on a guest server, then there is no change.

The WvW panel UI needs projected effect on the servers’ Glicko ratings. Maybe with a +/- comparison to the break even point. Throw in % chance to move up or down a tier in the next matchup.

• Which of the 2-1-1, 3-2-1 or 5-4-3 allow the weakest team to recover to win a matchup the easiest?
  • If there was a matchup victory reward no team should just give up trying.

Until there is a matchup victory reward it doesn’t matter which team has the most victory points – Glicko ratings aside.

2-1-1 keeps the weakest team in the race the longest. Firstly by keeping the distance to the strongest team at 1 point per skirmish. And secondly by encouraging 2v1 against the strongest team.

2-(-1)-(-1) where the losing teams have a victory point removed would keep the weakest team in the competition even longer. But then again the meta would become: ignore the first days of the matchup and catch up later.

PS. Did I mention population rebalancing too many times? :P

Consider this:

The score is already hidden. Just ask anyone how your server’s Glicko rating will be affected by the current matchup.

Even if they were mathematical geniuses, ANet will still manually adjust the ratings.

Unless, of course, if they are on a guest server then the effect is 0.

Has this improved the matchups? Not the least bit. In fact I believe WvW would be a whole lot better if all servers could actually compete against each other in some measurable way.

DeceiverX.8361:

Korgov.7645:

What do you miss out on when the enemy uses alt-F4?

Bonus PPK. Spiking gains more points when under the effects of bloodlust.

True.

Warriors and elementalists can already avoid the bloodlust point using Vengeance or Vapor Form. But then again you didn’t have to go through the inconvenience of casting a finisher for 3.5 seconds.

Automatically granting the bloodlust point whenever a downed enemy disconnects is not that easy to do fairly. Think of a 3-way fight where both teams took part in the kill. Also real disconnects are common place near large fights and it would be unfair to reward both teams in that case.

What do you miss out on when the enemy uses alt-F4?

2017-02-07

• The residents return to their homes once the houses are rebuilt.

2017-02-21

• Added garden gnomes in front of a house.

2017-03-07

• Added colourful curtains on the front facing window of a house.

2017-03-21

• Made the garden gnomes more robust so that players cannot knock them over so easily.

2017-04-04

• Erected a white picket fence around the garden gnomes with a no trespassing sign.

2017-04-18

• Built a steel wall around the house with the garden gnomes.

2017-05-02

• Removed the trees near the garden gnomes so that players cannot jump over the steel wall anymore.

2017-05-16

• The steel walls around the garden gnomes can no longer be destroyed by siege weapons.

2017-05-30

• The garden gnomes are now immune to siege projectiles.

That pretty much covers the first half of the year. :P

I detest PvE. Farming/gathering/crafting/doing-the-same-scripted-event-for-the-hundredth-time-with-same-tactic-copied-from-someone-else-with-maybe-even-a-tool-to-help-with-timings is not my idea of a fun game.

The PvE developers sell you this kind of content by slapping the best rewards on it. For example Flax Fibers or infusion slots. If the rewards got removed then they’d be forced to create interesting, engaging, fun PvE content instead – everybody wins, right?

My guild is small. We have exactly one person who plays PvE. I can assure you I am not upgrading haphazardly.

Jeknar.6184:

Glass Hand.7306:

X T D.6458:

Over the last several months, Anet has made several changes to glicko and to scoring that greatly increases the chances of having more variety in matchups. The downside of this is that it can lead to lopsided matchups with a dominant server rolling a matchup with servers from a lower tier.

The problem with the matchup variety is that the server populations and coverage are terribly imbalanced. The result is half the matches (or more) are complete face stomps.

If there was decent population balance the matchup variety would be a good thing.

Right now it’s just driving people away.

Staleness prior it also drove people away… There is no perfect system, but i’ll take varierity over fighting the same people for months any day. We get nothing from “winning” in WvW anyway. Why Should I bother if the matchup is completely loopsided in PPTwars?

Because the game experience changes a lot when you shift away from meeting your opponents toe-to-toe to when you cannot hold any objective beyond T1.

You could argue that low ranked servers can actually gain rating by losing to very high ranked server. There are strategies to play the underdog successfully but it is frustrating for both sides.

Players wanted more variety than balance in the matchups. ANet listened and added some randomness to matchups instead of only using the ranks. It dates back few years.

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/big-changes-coming-to-wvw-matchups

The world linking and the victory points features caused problems in the match-making; Glicko could not keep up even with the volatility and deviation resets. One thing ANet did was tweaking the ratings manually:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Glicko-Temporary-Manual-Adjustments

ANet also proposed to split all servers in half so that they had more options for linking worlds. But that plan received a very negative response on these forums. So into the trash bin it went.

I think they are working on the population rebalancing but it’s not ready to be discussed on. (or at least this should be their #1 focus because so many things in WvW hinges upon it)

This would be a nice quality-of-life improvement.

My server (or my servers because of the linking) often have multiple squads on the map. Many players have tried to agree upon which color badge means which kind of squad. Blue is usually open for pugs.

There already exists a squad message field where commander can type what she likes. it shouldn’t be such a huge effort to display this message in the badge tooltip.

However the field is multi-line and some commanders may type there TeamSpeak details and such lengthy information. Adding single line edit field for the tooltip message alone is reasonable.

Stephen.6312:

Offair.2563:

How about a way to salvage enemies siege into mats to make new ones.

It would probably be better to give the player who demolishes a piece of siege the chance to recover supply, just as they do when you kill a dolyak.

That would make defending keeps harder: “go destroy some siege to resupply”. And that opens up another exploit: trolls building useless siege for the attackers to destroy.

• The Skirmish timer is now displayed on the top of the screen.

But it’s the kind that say 1 hour remaining for 1 full hour until it starts to count minutes.

It does not show the war scores. Or even which team is in the lead.

Yet another prematurely released feature?

Xenesis.6389:

Korgov.7645:

The symbols do stand out for more than they are worth. They are also not dynamic – that is showing if the tactivators are on cooldown or even assigned on the objective. And they don’t hint what type of tactivators they are. There’s a lot room to improve leading me think the feature got released prematurely.

Just click on the objective to see what tactivators are there and which are on cooldown, how much instant information do you guys want to see flooding the screen?

A tooltip would probably do the that without leaving the map screen.

I feel the yellow triangles itself are already spam – if a player can’t find the tactivators he’s probably not welcome to use them.

RodOfDeath.5247:

Korgov.7645:

Another quality of life feature that got accidentally released in the latest patch:

• Tactivators are shown as yellow triangles on the map and the mini-map.

Those look really awful and are extremely similar to google map road hazard icons. Brilliant lol

The symbols do stand out for more than they are worth. They are also not dynamic – that is showing if the tactivators are on cooldown or even assigned on the objective. And they don’t hint what type of tactivators they are. There’s a lot room to improve leading me think the feature got released prematurely.

Offair.2563:

How about a way to salvage enemies siege into mats to make new ones.

When you destroy an enemy siege you have a chance to gain the corresponding blueprint?

Another quality of life feature that got accidentally released in the latest patch:

• Tactivators are shown as yellow triangles on the map and the mini-map.

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Another possible idea would be to have a recipe that allows us to create flax fibers from flax seeds.

Even more boring crafting to fill the war chest? No thanks.

How about we save raw materials into the guild treasury and then we can simply use any upgrade that can be derived from those materials?

Material Promotions are all done through forging, as far as I know, not crafting. It could be done in bulk.

For example a recipe could look like this:
250 flax
1 pile of crystalline dust
5 philosopher stones
1 bottle of elonian wine

could create 10-40 flax fibers

So walking to a Mystic Forge instead of a crafting station. Both are equally boring and laborious game elements.

As opposed to how we make siege? The issue is not about making the acquisition of flax fibers more fun or less boring. There are many important recipes that require flax fibers, but no reliable method for farming them as they are basically an rng drop.

Blueprints are bought by BoHs and PoHs – no crafting, no PvE, no Trading Post, no gathering, no sPvP, no daily farming. Just play WvW. I like this design.

If Flax Fibers are used for non-WvW stuff, then making Flax Fibers easily available through WvW is not a good idea. Better would be remove the Flax Fiber cost from the WvW upgrades. Otherwise you create another inter-game-mode dependency and the non-WvW players are unhappy.

I made that suggestion as well, in an earlier post. Removing flax fibers as a requirement and replacing it with a more reliably farmed material but increasing the amount required to balance it out.

Basing material costs and requirements off of what we get in WvW alone does not seem like a practical alternative. It would be extremely limited, and devalue the contributions from players in small guilds or PvX guilds, and players that are more casual. Whether we like pve or not, it offers more options, hence why the material requirements are mixed. Some of them come from wvw, some from pve.

Small guilds and casuals can support WvW efforts the best by playing WvW. PvX guilds have chosen a mixed identity and should live with that decision.

As for more options… If your team is losing the matchup, running to play PvE cannot be an option to recover. PvE is megaservers and there is no way to fight your enemies there.

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Another possible idea would be to have a recipe that allows us to create flax fibers from flax seeds.

Even more boring crafting to fill the war chest? No thanks.

How about we save raw materials into the guild treasury and then we can simply use any upgrade that can be derived from those materials?

Material Promotions are all done through forging, as far as I know, not crafting. It could be done in bulk.

For example a recipe could look like this:
250 flax
1 pile of crystalline dust
5 philosopher stones
1 bottle of elonian wine

could create 10-40 flax fibers

So walking to a Mystic Forge instead of a crafting station. Both are equally boring and laborious game elements.

As opposed to how we make siege? The issue is not about making the acquisition of flax fibers more fun or less boring. There are many important recipes that require flax fibers, but no reliable method for farming them as they are basically an rng drop.

Blueprints are bought by BoHs and PoHs – no crafting, no PvE, no Trading Post, no gathering, no sPvP, no daily farming. Just play WvW. I like this design.

If Flax Fibers are used for non-WvW stuff, then making Flax Fibers easily available through WvW is not a good idea. Better would be remove the Flax Fiber cost from the WvW upgrades. Otherwise you create another inter-game-mode dependency and the non-WvW players are unhappy.

X T D.6458:

Korgov.7645:

X T D.6458:

Another possible idea would be to have a recipe that allows us to create flax fibers from flax seeds.

Even more boring crafting to fill the war chest? No thanks.

How about we save raw materials into the guild treasury and then we can simply use any upgrade that can be derived from those materials?

Material Promotions are all done through forging, as far as I know, not crafting. It could be done in bulk.

For example a recipe could look like this:
250 flax
1 pile of crystalline dust
5 philosopher stones
1 bottle of elonian wine

could create 10-40 flax fibers

So walking to a Mystic Forge instead of a crafting station. Both are equally boring and laborious game elements.

X T D.6458:

Another possible idea would be to have a recipe that allows us to create flax fibers from flax seeds.

Even more boring crafting to fill the war chest? No thanks.

How about we save raw materials into the guild treasury and then we can simply use any upgrade that can be derived from those materials?

Friendly fire causes too much grieving. Just imagine the new levels of trolling.

Also defending your siege becomes impossible with all profs having only AoE skills. An enemy warrior just needs to stand on your catapults and your own squad will destroy them.

Electra.7530:

WvW reward tracks with WvW-oriented rewards don’t encourage more pve players to come to WvW and work toward things they need

Why should WvW Reward Tracks attract (force) PvE players to play WvW instead of what they enjoy playing?

Sarrs.4831:

Korgov.7645:

Why jump the extra loops to buy Flax Fibers with Badges of Honor, craft Flax Fibers into Linen Supply Sacks, craft Linen Supply Sacks into Bags of Energy, craft Bags of Energy into Schematics, put Schematics into Assembly Device?

because it’s more interesting & holistic.
if you just put the objects that Flax Fiber is required to create on the vendor directly, you immediately tank the prices of not just Flax Fiber but all the other items required to create your wvw upgrades.
it gives casuals a reason to care about badges of honor because they can spend their badges on flax fibers.

Korgov.7645:

Memories of Battle and Shards of Glory are not needed for PvE. They are for crafting legendary weapons only. You get the same stats from ascended gear. I don’t play PvE, but I am pretty sure PvE is fully self-sufficient when it comes to acquiring ascended gear.

Upgrades (Flax Fibers) are used in WvW as part of the daily warfare. They are more that just some cosmetic touch.

i’ve acknowledged that in the part of my message you’ve pruned, and you haven’t directly countered the point that these materials link the economies across the three distinct game modes

ignore the scale for a moment, ignore HOW IMPORTANT it is; is it important to HAVE those links between the three game modes?

To me the extra loops are just that. I wouldn’t mind so much if crafting was even remotely interesting – it’s just labour.

For the economic links… There are no items PvE players need from WvW to do their daily business. The money flow is from WvW to PvE only.

I don’t see the importance. Why do you feel it is absolutely necessary for WvW players to feed gold to PvE farmers? How would PvE players feel if they had to buy consumables, repair kits or such from WvW players?

Sarrs.4831:

wvw and pvp have memories of battle and shards of glory for a reason. that cross-mode dependency helps to keep each mode profitable.

Memories of Battle and Shards of Glory are not needed for PvE. They are for crafting legendary weapons only. You get the same stats from ascended gear. I don’t play PvE, but I am pretty sure PvE is fully self-sufficient when it comes to acquiring ascended gear.

Upgrades (Flax Fibers) are used in WvW as part of the daily warfare. They are more that just some cosmetic touch.