Guild Wars 2

oflow.2157:

As an elementalists I can keep warriors from killing me but they can basically still out damage me when snared with rifle so basically I wind up running away.

A warrior with a rifle is not doing any meaningful damage at all unless they stacked precision and +crit damage, and took Rifle focused traits. And if they did they have no defensive abilities at all, just base toughnesss and base vitality.

No, it will never be removed.

Anytime a player is in stealth, it should count as being in combat. Stealth should not be an easy way to get out of combat and heal to full. Please change stealth to count as being in combat for regeneration purposes.

I’m not trying to bad mouth any other worlds, but I do want to say that my group and I have been very impressed with the player skill level of SR and IJ.

In our previous matches, we seemed to always die to the enemy zerg, and rarely to smaller groups. In fact, we pretty much handled most of what came our way fairly easily, even when pretty outnumbered.

Not so this week. The small group tactics that used to work so well before, aren’t always doing the trick now. After each fight now, everyone in voice chat is saying things like, “Wow, those guys were tough,” and “They were good.”

My theory is that a world that can’t always rely on large zergy numbers to win, tends to become better skilled, because they have too. Either way, very fun and challenging fights this week, so hats off to SR and IJ.

waeren.9743:

Has me wondering why the current system was never considered a potential problem. Didn’t this occur during beta/alpha testing?

In my experience, this is only a problem when there are lots of people out in WvW already, and I’ve been moving from place to place, so this probably didn’t happen enough pre-launch to be flagged as a significant issue.

Obviously, whenever something like this happens, (you run into a camp to kill the one guy attacking it and suddenly realize he has 25 friends) it’s a big deal and super frustrating. On the other hand, keep in mind the number of times that this DOESN’T happen.

Overall, the current system works very well 99% of the time. I encounter issues when there are lots and lots of people from all sides out in WvW, and I’m moving from one zergy battle to another. My feeling is that the game (server and/or client) is still busy tracking the 100+ people that I just ran away from, and chokes abit as I enter the proximity of another group.

I’m glad they are working on it, and agree it should be improved, but I don’t think the current system is as much of an epic fail as some people make it out to be.

tagnut.8621:

Kil shot, singular, is a cast time – albeit a short cast time – shot that has been documented in the 15-20k plus range. This is far too much.

Kill shot crits for 4k to 14k on level 80s in WvW, depending on their gear. If there is some documented way to make it hit for 15-20k, please let me know what it is.

Vendris.4201:

The fact that you think 15k damage against a glass cannon when you “only” have 20k hit points and “close to base toughness” is somehow bad shows you really don’t understand the capabilities (or lack thereof) of other classes in the game when compared to the warrior’s damage.

Correct. 14k damage (max I’ve ever CRIT a level 80 in WvW). Only against people without any toughness gear at all. Only when I have no toughness gear at all. Only on a shot that requires a super long and super obvious windup. With the best gear and all timed buffs up.

I didn’t say it was bad, I said it was fine. You pretty much sacrifice all survivability for that one, easily avoided, ability.

Everyone, everwhere, is playing a thief. Why are there not a million Rifle Warriors out there if this is some horribly over-powered ability? There aren’t because it isn’t.

I have a rifle warrior. Here are things to keep in mind:

- I am in all exotics, including weapons and jewelry.
- I have berserker gear (Pow, Prec, +Crit Chance)
- My weapon sigil is +5% damage
- My armor is +10 to all stats and +2 Crit change (Divinity)
- My trait build is focused entirely around Rifle and kill shot
- I use butternut squash buffs that give +100 precious and +10% crit damage
- I use sharpening stones for the power % bonus of vitality and toughness (small since my vit and tough are low)
- I use Signet of Rage and Great Justice just before my killshot
- I need to use another signet or heal to give myself full adrenalin for the shot
- I need to kneel down, in plain sight, for several seconds to fire kill shot
- Kill shot can easily be dodged and all decent players do it easily.
- When it’s dodged, we keep the endurance but we need to wait 8-10 seconds to fire it again.
- Kill Shot can be obstructed by terrain and sometimes just other players, even your own.
- Sometimes Kill Shot inexplicably misses.
- Because of my build, I have 20k hit points and close to base toughness
- I take huge damage from attacks, have no effective heal or defensive ability
- Thieves gravitate to me and they drop me in seconds.
- Everyone seems to be playing a thief.
- The most I have ever critted someone for was 16k and that person was lower level.
- I can consistently crit glass cannons for 10-14k.
- I crit enemies that have toughness for 4-8k.
- I’ve never one shot a level 80 (but close if they were a glass cannon)

I could go on and on, but the bottom line is that you need to keep this in context.

To crit for 15k on kill shot, you need to have a glass cannon build and you need to be hitting another glass cannon build.

You make great sacrifices in survivability and utility to be able to do that kind of damage, and the rest of your dps is very low for the 8-10 second cool down time. If anyone attacks you at all, you either run for your life or you die.

At the end of the day, it’s not a very decent build. I’ve tried other warrior specs, but they seem very lackluster. I want to try and make this one work instead of just rolling a thief like everyone else, but it gets harder everyday.

The last thing we need is a nerf.

You should be able to see an enemy’s name after they’ve killed you 10 times.

Were I to design a Realm Ability like system for WvW, this is what I would do. Maybe some of these will give anet some ideas, who knows.

WvW Ability List

- 1 hour reuse timer on each ability
- 3 levels for each ability
- Ability points earned a max of 1 per week
- Requires completion of WvW weekly (points given for kills, captures, and defenses)
- World based, so you need to start over from scratch if you move to another server

Name – Effectiveness per level – Description

Scrounger – 5/10/15 – Player summons x supply.
Combat Repairer – 50/75/100 – Player takes x% less damage when repairing. (30 seconds)
Combat Resser – 45/70/95 – Player takes x% less damage when ressing. (30 seconds)
Yak Motivator – 10/20/30 – Player gives targeted supply yak an x% speed bonus that stacks with other bonuses. (120 seconds)
Yak Protector – 45/70/95 – Player gives targeted supply yak a buff providing x% damage reduction. (30 seconds)
Siege Protector – 25/45/65 – Player gives targeted siege item a buff providing x% damage reduction. (30 seconds)
Guard Leader – 25/45/65 – Player gives targeted veteran guard a buff providing x% damage reduction. (30 seconds)
Battlefield Healer – 50/100/150 – Player gains x% healing bonus when ressing downed or killed enemies. (30 seconds)
Pocket Sieger – 15/30/45 – Player MacGyver’s together a makeshift version of the selected siege item that works at x% effectiveness compared to a normal one.
Secret Passager – n/a – Player can port into a contested waypoint due to knowledge of secret tunnels.
Dodgey Sieger – 25/45/65 – Player takes x% less damage when operating siege equipment. (60 seconds)

Can anyone think of anymore?

Not specifically talking to you, Blade, but in general I am okay with people leaving BG. Anyone who gets frustrated enough to leave a server because we’re not winning, is more than welcome to leave BG. They can go ahead and pile onto SBI if winning is that important.

Long term success isn’t won by fair weathered WvWers. There are people I see out there every night, doing their best no matter what the odds. Those are the people I want to fight alongside. Not people who whine about leaving the server if we don’t start winning more. Here, let me open the door for you. We’re better off without you, because eventually you’re just going to leave anyway.

I hope that any new WvW progression system is only world based. You transfer to another server, you start from scratch, pal.

So that video was actually the inspiration for this post. I’m super curious what the build was. The notable differences (other than the pre-legendary weapon) was the healing ability and the Root Utility. My crit damage is about half that in the video. Great stuff tho.

I’d be interested in seeing what builds other warriors are using for their Rifle Builds. I’m using what I call the rifle skirmisher build:

Rifle Skirmisher

10/30/0/0/30

Berzerker’s Power
Deep Strike/Crack Shot/Furious
Heightened Focus/Signet Mastery/Quick Bursts

Healing Signet/Fear Me/Signet of Fury/Endure Pain/Signet of Rage

Weapons:

Exotic Berserker Rifle with +5 Damage Signet
Sword/Horn for Escape abilities (Sword Leap & Horn Speed)

Armor:
Exotic Berserker with Rune of Divinity

Play Style:

I am using moving at run speed with sword/horn and switch to rifle when I get an enemy close. I fire off Signet of Rage for the might/crit bonus and Signet of Fury for full adrenalin so I can open with an Kill Shot alpha strike.

I orbit around the battle field firing off Kill Shot every 8 seconds, trying to keep enough distance between the enemies and I to try and dissuade them from coming after me. If they charge me, or if a thief unloads on me (and they love to), I hit endure pain for immunity and/or Fear Me to get them off, switch to sword/horn and sword leap away then use horn for speed and to drop movement restrictions, then I loop around for a few seconds waiting for weapon change to refresh. Once it does I go back to rifle and start Kill Shotting again. Rinse and Repeat.

I have a lot of fun with it, and I find it’s a great for scouting. If the enemy turns to come attack me, I leap/speed away, and if only one or two keep chasing, I’ll switch to rifle, turn and try and kill shot one. I tend to crit glass cannons or undergeared folks for 12-15k will KS.

Cover Girl.2580:

Blackgate players that have been playing on SBI BL this week, you have earned my respect. You guys must have bought a playbook from somewhere, or decided to stop following a bad commanders advice, because you guys, with the small numbers you have, are pulling off some amazing plays. Not only that, but you are using your head, and attacking JQ now, who is in first place, and not solely focusing on SBI. (not claiming we’re 2v1 poor JQ, cause as soon as we push them back to nothing BG comes right after us for more points).

Keep up the good fights!!

Thor from URGE did an awesome job of leading in SBI BL this weekend. BG is mostly a server of PuGs and more casual WvW/PvE types, and his ability to communicate over /t was the secret to our success. It’s something I hope to see more of our commanders start doing.

Please add:

- No Default Chat Channel. Channel defaults to the last channel typed in.
- Alt/Mouseclick spams whatever you’re clicking into your default chat channel.

Nkuvu.2570:

If the player takes control of the camera, that spin stops. Entirely. Player can readjust the camera once and then not touch it again, and the camera will not try to restart the spinning randomness.

That’s exactly how I expect (and want) it to work when I use the camera control now, and it’s frustrating to wrestle with it when it doesn’t. This is a better solution than the toggle, but I’ll happily take the toggle over having it stay the way it is now.

hahawinner.5273:

Instead of taking it out altogether, why not just have an option added to the “video” tab in the options menu to “Disable Spinning Death Cam”?

Good idea, best of both worlds.

Please add a keyboard setup option for linking items. Currently it defaults to left control + mouse click. Also, anytime you do this, even if you aren’t currently typing a message in chat, it will link whatever you click on into the last channel you typed in.

This is an issue because many voice programs like, vent, teamspeak, etc use the left control key as the default “push to talk” key. The net result is that anytime someone is fighting and they hit their key to speak, it will put a link into chat for whatever ability they click on to use. This results in a large amount unintentional ability links being sent across chat.

Allowing players to set the key they use to link items would solve this issue. Additionally, if you only let people link items when they were currently typing a message, that would also resolve the issue.

In most games, a player selects a chat channel and that is the default channel their text enters, unless they change it to another channel or they use one of the channel short cuts such as /gu /p /say /team, etc.

In GW2, there is no default chat channel, so every time you type something into a channel, your default changes to that channel. For example, I might be talking to my group in /p by default when someone in the guild logs in and says hi. I’ll type /gu Hello, then go back to talking with my party, unfortunately, everything I type ends up going into /gu until I type /p again. Or even worse, whenever you whisper to someone, everything you type in after the first whisper ends up going to that person.

This can be very frustrating in WvW, when it’s necessary to coordinate across a lot of different channels, such as /gu /p /team /map /whisper /squad. If you want to stay on a default channel, for example /p, you would need to type /gu hello, or whatever, then /p <enter> after everything single chat message you type in game.

Yeah, after spending a few hours in SBI Borderlands today, it looks like the exact same thing is happening to JQ. A map imbalance of sorts, I guess.

Ljiona.9142:

Its because you are on BG. If you were on JQ, it would feel like SBI and BG were ganging. These maps at really small and there really aren’t that many objectives. It is always going to seem like it 1 vs 2 unless you are fighting a server like ET that lost a ton of people.

I understand that it always feels like that, and Covergirl is correct that right after reset we pushed from AB into garrison and ended up getting into a huge fight with JQ in the courtyard for about 10 minutes before we were pushed back and wiped out by SBI.

But this wasn’t just a perception issue. Listen, two huge enemy zergs met and fought for hours directly outside our border keep entrance, to the point that we couldn’t even exit. JQ held the camp to our west and SBI held the camp to our right, so essentially they had us bottled up. They were clearly killing each other, and I came across smaller JQ forces trying to siege Greenvale once or twice (I assumed they eventually got rolled), but there was no denying that the majority of both enemies ended up focused around our border entrance.

sazaw.1347:

I understand your concern. But if I were SBI I would do the same. Ofc it’s not like they are not attacking JQ either. I will state my opinion here. Why JQ attack AB instead of hills? simple because we can treb AB from Garrison and easier to reach than Hills in terms of terrain. So our full force will be focusing there while defending other side. For SBI, attacking our Garrison and tower is harder than taking keep. Ofc I’m sure if JQ attack hills they will response full force and focus on us. But then again if they don’t have enough people then SBI would focus on red while holding their ground. Well that just my pure opinion on the situation.

I suspected it might be something like that. If that tends to be the natural order of things, we probably need to start doing that ourselves when we’re in our borderlands.

Lifewaster.5912:

Your best recourse could be to abandon Bay (retake Briar if possible) and push Lake, and wait for the home team to see a chance to push Hills. Ultimately the Home team will prefer to own Hills since its so much more defensible then Bay and if they see the chance to get it they eventually will join the 2v1 vs the right corner team.

When that happens, they will eventually choose to lose Bay back to you rather then lose Hills, so ultimately you end up with Bay and Briar while they battle over Hills.

That’s interesting. The trouble is that it’s hard to hold onto Bay without a steady stream of supply from Champs and RV. Unfortunately, it’s pretty hard (for BG anyways) to defend those camps so they end up getting flipped often, meaning they rarely get upgraded. But it’s something worth trying, thanks.

I’m not a big fan of people who whine about 2 on 1 and things of that nature, because whining about things being “unfair” never gets anyone anyplace. To complete in T1, a world needs to be able to handle both enemies at once. That’s just the nature of a 3 way battle.

Putting any of that “woe is us” BS aside, I am honestly trying to understand why it seems like it’s SBI/JQ vs BG, especially in the JQ borderlands.

I was out there fighting for BG for probably 7 hours after reset. BG started off pretty well. We had good numbers and we had some good leaders and excellent coordination and defense going on. For a while, we held AB and RedBriar, as well as the two supply camps closest to our border entrance, Redvale and Champions. JQ would assault AB and we’d go and hold them off, and then SBI would come in and roll Champions then threaten RedBriar and we’d have to respond over there to drive them back. It was tough, but everyone was having a good time and there were many exciting battles.

But then I watched as a huge SBI zerg came upon champions and started to siege RB. At the same time, JQ had portal bombed AB and destroyed our defensive siege. Eventually we lost the very upgraded RB, as well as AB. At this point, we had the whole JQ zerg attacking us from the west, and the SBI zerg attacking from the right.

Obviously, the BG force was smaller than both the JQ and the SBI zerg, so there’s really no way we could defend against both. Eventually, we had the JQ and SBI zergs clashing with each other, right in front of our border entrance. And this is how it went for the rest of the night.

A couple of times my group broke out and started running around the rest of the map, capping points and camps. While I am sure JQ and SBI were sieging each other someplace during that time, it seems clear that the major zerg of both sides were clearly focused on the RB area.

So my question is: Why are both sides drawn fight near the BG border camp on that map, when there’s clearly lots of open real estate in the other 80% of the map where they could grab camps, points, and siege the keeps of each other? I know there has to be a reason, and I don’t think it’s any form of collusion or cooperation. I don’t notice the same thing happening in the other borderlands which have the same layout, where SBI or JQ have the border entrance that we have in the JQ borderlands. So why on that map does it seem like SBI fights clockwise and JQ fights counter clockwise?

Tallis.5607:

In other words: a server gets the same ranking boost for taking out the camps of the weakest enemy than they get from taking out a camp from the stronger enemy.

This would mean that the winning server shouldn’t be fightin the number 2, they should be fighting the number 3: the are weaker and taking a camp from them adds the same to their ranking.

This was exactly my thought as well.

HabibLoew.2590:

In standard Glicko 2 scores are represented as 0.0 for a loss, 0.5 for a draw, and 1.0 for a win. We use a slightly modified version that takes into account score differential. I’ll explain how using the wA vs. wB battle as an example. To calculate the Glicko 2 score for wA in the wA vs. wB matchup we do the following:

wAPercent = wAScore / (wAScore + wBScore)
wAGlickoScore = (sin((wAPercent – 0.5) * Pi) + 1) * 0.5

where wAScore and wBScore are the raw scores from the end of the match.

I am assuming the +1 in the above formula was indicative of wA winning the match?

While the Glicko/Glicko 2 system works well with 1v1 competition, I’ve never been a real fan of having it applied in 2+ competition. However, I like the way you guys have modified it and I think it’s not a bad system overall. (and to be fair, the algorithm itself is beyond my mathematical capabilities to understand, but it seems to always produce fairly decent results, regardless of what’s going on in that mathematical black box)

There is one aspect that I think is problematic, that maybe you guys could mull over. When a score is measured wA v wB, wA v wC, and wB v wC, the highest Glicko Score is awarded to a world based on how well they score relative to each opponent, in addition to the bonus for coming in first or second.

Assuming that each world wants to score as high as possible (at least in theory), the best results will be achieved by:

Primary:

A) Winning overall to get the +1 bonus.
B) Coming in at least second to get the .5 bonus.

These are good incentives that achieve what I suspect to be the intended results in of the system.

Secondary:

First Place:

A) Score as many points as possible.
B) Keep second place to as few points as possible.
iC) Keep third place to as few points as possible.

Second Place:

A) Score as many points as possible.
B) Keep First place to as few points as possible.
C) Keep third place to as few points as possible.

Third Place:

A) Score as many points as possible.
B) Keep First place to as few points as possible.
C) Keep Second place to as few points as possible.

The problematic part I see is with the incentives in italics above. Because the reward for the difference between each of the other worlds is constant regardless of which place the respective realms are in, it behooves a world to obtain points for themselves, and deny points from their enemies, in the most efficient way possible. Unfortunately, this system gives the first and second place worlds an incentive to attack the weaker third place world, since the point rewards are the same and the opposition likely weaker.

This is a long winded way of saying that I think that system should be modified to award less points to the score difference between 1st v 3rd, and 2nd v 3rd, to help provide incentive for the second place world to focus on the one in first place, and the first to focus on the second place, instead of just bouncing the third place into rubble.

So I dunno, maybe something like: GlickoScore = ((sin((wAPercent – 0.5) * Pi) + 1) * 0.5)*.9 if the percent score was versus the 3rd place world?

Jacklo.4230:

While being chased down, I have occasionally opened up the map and ported back to the keep if out of combat. That might cause some confusion to some players.

That’s a good point that I’ve never really thought of. People always seem to inexplicably disappear when I am chasing them down and maybe this is exactly what they are doing.

They probably need to make some changes to things like portal and logging out after recently being in combat. I’m pretty sure that portals, log outs, and Alt+F4s, were never intended to be used as escape abilities.

Syphen.1980:

Win or lose just fight your best is the key to fun.

Exactly my point. If only I could have said it so succinctly. :p

Walay The Brave.6813:

anyone else thinks the upcoming match in 5 hours might be a little boring sooner than later… i guess we all got to do something to keep it interesting

The great thing about the WvW design is that as long as your server doesn’t hold absolutely everything on a map, there’s always something to do regardless of how out-manned you may be. Even solo, it’s possible to kill yaks, take control points, and even camps if you’re determined enough.

Perhaps I’m just finding a “game within the game”, but I’ve had some of the best fun I’ve ever had in an MMO this past week in the Eastern Borderlands. Despite being greatly outnumbered most times, there always seems to be a handful of us blackgaters out there having a blast.

Being a 3 way conflict, something that no MMO since DAOC has tried to do for some reason, even an outnumbered group of people can have some really fun and exciting battles. Zipping around capturing points and camps while dodging the JQ and SBI zergs and getting in lots of small scale fights has led to countless epic battles and sooo many times when we inexplicably managed to survive when there is no way that we should have, due to the shifting nature of the war between the other two forces.

Sometimes we prey on the stragglers, other times we try and bait some folks into pulling off the zerg and chasing us. Other times, we make what we think will be a clever escape from one enemy zerg, only to run right into the path of the other, getting ourselves caught between two large forces that are charging each other. Fun times.

Interesting things always happen in WvW if you’re willing to go out and have some fun with it. Just last night, a couple of us were harassing a couple of JQ folks at Redvale who were trying to hold the camp. We fought back and forth for a bit, managed to down the warrior, while their thief vanished for a bit. The thief appeared and tried to heal up the downed warrior and we were just about to blast down the thief when we saw the SBI zerg rolling and start smashing the guard camps. Instead of 2v2, the fight was about to be 2v2v25. And while I always want to kill every enemy I see, it made no sense for us to drop the JQ thief when all four of us were about to have much bigger problems. So I just waved to the thief as he healed up his warrior buddy, saving up my cooldowns for the impending SBI rush, and moved off away from the JQ folks to have our own last stand against the SBI. (I didn’t want to stick around near the JQ folks, since you can never trust a thief, ya know.) In the end, we killed a few SBI and died, and I like to think that maybe the two JQers did as well.

Either way, there’s always some of us out there fighting for BG no matter what, and having a great time. I encourage more people to come out and do the same.

I used to be able to right click on someone in my contact list or my guild roster and I would have several options, such as whisper and invite to group, etc. Now, for some reason, the only option it gives me is to report them.

I asked other people about it and half of them say they only have the Report option, and the other half say they have all the options.

Does the release of GW1 names mean that the name change service will be available from Black Lion soon?

Glass cannon can be fun in WvW, though.

http://youtu.be/eWTQhYDuYYE

Oh sure, I’m alone on the roof of Jade Garrison, ready to make a heroic stand after they take the keep, and just as piles of JQ run up to get me, the server goes down.

chronometria.3708:

Thankyou all for your responses to my topic so far. Good posts above and well worth reading. (Eg Lensar for monetarisation suggestions and Stiv for thoughts on Spvp)

One of the interesting things about the situation is that WvW is now so influential that the status of a server in the rankings is having major effects on server migration. This is yet another sign of how WvW is a mover and shaker in the very foundations of each server community. It is often a source of server identity and that is a double edged sword, with so called “zombie servers” whose guilds have abandoned them and that are doomed to slide down the rankings.

WvW can effectively wipe out a server population and yet arenanet is frustratingly slow to accept its importance.

What makes you say that they don’t accept WvW’s importance? Given the amount of design detail that went into the entire system, I tend to think they considered it very important. Much different than many games who seemingly just slap on some lackluster team based PvP at the end of development, just to say they have it.

Cover Girl.2580:

I don’t think any of this happening is ‘willing’. If you guys had your choice you’d be 500k above us right now and forum boasting how bad you stomped us and how Beastgate is the best pony.

I agree. Well, not about the boasting part. I’d prefer more of a patronizingly, “It’s okay SB/JQ. You did your best, that’s all that really matters.”

Psientist.6437:

Game developers have been following that strategy for 20 some years and it hasn’t worked.

Over the past 20 years, most games were subscription based, so banning someone for purchasing gold meant a direct hit to your bottom line. Banning accounts for purchasing gold in a non-subscription game means that you’re banning someone who wasn’t going to give you more money anyways. In fact, you may cause them to purchase another copy of the game if they want to keep playing.

The only real downside to banning gold purchases would be the potential loss of user base critical mass and any associated customer support costs in dealing with the banned accounts.

SoPP.7034:

WvW is a resource hog for Anet and it makes them little to no money. Now that you’ve bought the game, you can play it any time.

I’m not sure about the resource hog part, but you bring up a good point I hadn’t thought about regarding WvW not bringing in any money. I’m so used to subscription based MMOs that I forgot that we weren’t paying for our monthly WvW fun.

So the question is: What WvW items can be added to the marketplace to encourage people to spend gems on a semi regular basis?

- WvW Chests that require special BL WvW keys to open?

- WvW buffs that give small temporary bonuses? Maybe they are done like those tonics that change you into a random creature, in that you have no idea what buff you’ll get (+3% damage, -3% damage, +3% health, +3% healing, etc) until you use the buff, so people would have to fire off a few to get the exact bonus they prefer.

- Vanity items that allow people to temporarily change the name of a Keep, Tower, or Control point until it’s recaptured by the enemy? Maybe keeps and towers could have their names changed to a guild that claims it and then spends some gem purchased item to have the name on the map changed to their guilds. Individual people could rename control points or supply camps after themselves. It would be a great way to taunt the enemy, and provide them some added incentive to go take something back because they are sick of seeing that stupid “Rasnel” name instead of Godslore.

- Siege equipment that requires slightly less supply to build.

- Personal supply caches that allow people to scrounge an extra 10 supply once every 15 minutes or so, working similar to the repair canisters.

I think there are a lot of things along those lines that could be added to provide a revenue stream for WvW without making it feel mandatory for anyone who wants to participate.

-Lensar

Hardcore WvW guilds and alliances that are the least bit serious will be using external means of communication (Vent, TS, Mumble, etc) for coordination in battle. My question is regarding how people who really on only in-game communication are able to effectively coordinate with the rest of their server in WvW?

- Commanders are limited in squad size. (50 I believe)

- /map and /team seem to have squelching issues that prohibit commanders and others from sharing updates with everyone else.

- There is no custom chat channel functionality that would allow people to “tune in” to be alerted about server wide events requiring communication.

Any competitive team based PvP system is going to heavily favor the very organized hardcore folks and there’s is really no way around that. However, I think the current limitations on in-game chat communication further penalize the less hardcore folks by prohibiting the effective spreading of information and coordination.

Am I missing something obvious here? While I only have about 600 WvW kills and less than 200 BoHes, but I’ve definitely spent many many hours out in WvW and yet I’ve never heard any mention of alliances or coordination via /map or /team. It was only when I came to the forums that I realized BG had some external coordination going on. In general, only a tiny percentage of players ever read MMO forums.

Anyone have any insight on this?

-Lensar

Things are actually much better now. Back then, there was literally NO ONE out to fight at all and we owned absolutely everything. It was pretty crappy.

I understand that the devs need to be careful of specifics regarding chat squelching since I imagine that it’s intended use is to combat gold spammers and other disreputable types. But my question is regarding normal usage.

Very often, it seems like our commanders, as well as others, end up being squelched by the game when trying to talk in /map and /team. I’ve even seen it happen with a groupmate who hadn’t said anything, ever, as far as I know.

So here are my questions:

- Is there a known bug with players being squelched when they shouldn’t?
- What circumstances constitute “acceptable and proper” use of /map or /team? If a commander says 10 things per minute is that over the limit?
- Would it be possible to raise the squelch limit for commanders? It seems unlikely to me that gold sellers would shell out 100 gold for better spamming.
- Does squelch apply to /squad? If not, any chance of increasing squad size? (didn’t think so)
- Are there other ways to allow for mass in-game communication that aren’t subject to the squad limit and squelch limitations?

-Lensar

People transferred on and people transferred off. Seems like most of us were spot on about this thread you necroed.

I don’t really have a problem with how things have been going. I’m out in the JQ borderlands every night, either solo or with two or three others, and we run around doing our best, despite the fact that Blackgate rarely owns much and we haven’t been fielding much of a force there. I just happen to like the layout of that particular borderland, and did the exact same thing last week when it was SB’s.

With challenge comes opportunity. We’ll zip around back capping, killing the trickle of SB/JQ reinforcements when we can, and occasionally have no choice but to stand our ground to die against an enemy zerg, content to kill the first handful of them that were brave/foolish enough to lead the charge against us. They say fortune favors the bold, and I like to think we’re training them to be a little more cautious and hesitant in the future.

SB and JQ can beat each other bloody, or they can sit holding hands in the middle of Daemonspell Lake singing kumbaya and sharing candy corn for all I care. There’s quite a few of us that’ll be other there fighting either way, and we’re unlikely to be deterred by anything our enemies decide to do.

-Lensar

Was Kill Shot changed recently? I’m doing about 60% of the damage that I was doing with it last week.

Crawford.4135:

I think it is a bit strange you would make this post. If you’re not worried about being banned or investigated, then why make this thread? (don’t change the subject)

And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn’t for you meddlin’ kids.

That would like a thief trying to quietly slip off into the darkness by loudly ringing a bell and juggling torches while dancing gangum style. Op..op..op..op!

But to answer your question, it’s both annoying and insulting to be accused of something like that, especially given how frequently I get rolled by SB/JQ while running around capping points solo or with one or two others.

The game becomes less fun if everyone starts assuming that everyone else is using some kind of cheat or hack.

Ralathar.7236:

I just wanted to create a positive thread expressing my gratitude to Anet for creating a wonderful WvW experience that I have gotten many hours of fun out of. It’s not perfect, but it is good and will improve.

I almost feel like it IS perfect. Maybe I’ve just been starving hard over the past 10 years for some form of 3 way team-based PvP, but what GW2 seems to have going on now seems pretty awesome to me. I dare say it feels even more fun and dynamic than the original DAOC, and I’m fairly biased.

Fiction.6418:

Just by flipping objectives solo or larger ones with guild members killing mobs here and there and when fights aren’t do or die gather. I seem to make “really decent” money in wvw.. it just isn’t the same for the time spent as dungeon instances.

This is my experience too. Lots of money is to be made per hour in dungeons or doing other stuff, but as long as I kill a Pak or two, and manage to cap at least one point, I’ve more than paid for my next repair bill.

I’m not sure exactly what’s going on with people posting about hacking and so on. In my personal experience, people seem to have a knack for finding something to blame when they lose.

But an interesting thing happened to me tonight. I was out playing my warrior in WvW when, as usual, I bit off more than I could chew and I tried to flee back to the safety of the wall. I really didn’t think I’d make it, since I don’t usually have a lot of luck in escaping bad situations, but I gave it my best shot.

I hit Endure Pain (5 second damage immunity), as I switched to my horn for speed boost, I then hit Healing Signet and dodged forward a couple of times. It was close, but I managed to out distance my persuers except for one, who quickly died to me and a couple of others.

I then immediately got a tell from someone on my server, “How did you just disappear?”

I replied saying that I assuredly didn’t and that he probably mis-saw something or it was some server bug. He replied with, “Yes you did. Three different people saw you invis.”

At this point I told him to shove off, because I’m not one to suffer fools that gladly. But he told me he was going to report to anet and let them sort it out. I wished him good luck in his travels, well…more or less.

But my question is: What gives?

I feel like people seem to disappear in WvW all the time, and I just assume that everyone is playing a thief or it’s some other class that has that ability. But now I wonder if there isn’t something going on with the server that makes people appear to disappear when they really don’t?

I don’t think the guy that messaged me was being a punk; I suspect he truly saw me disappear on his screen and was worried I was up to no good. Is there something more to this than meets the eye?

The issue maybe less about server transfers and more about queue times. When WvW focused players and guilds have to wait hours to get into the fight, they are going to start thinking about transferring to a server that has fewer queues. Of course, the reality of things is that the top tier servers might always have some form of queue.

On the other hand, it will be interesting to see what happens this weekend. Hopefully, the fighting lasts more than a couple hours after reset before two of the realms give up. The only action I’ve seen in the past week was border keep camping on blackgate.

It’s not good if a week long fight gets decided in the first 2 hours, and the rest of the time involves everyone waiting around for reset. I’m not sure how often this happens on other match ups, but if this is systemic, maybe they need to make new pairings/resets happen more often? Every 3 days? Every 24 hours?

I’ve been on Blackgate since launch and I don’t think this is a troll thread. I haven’t experienced any long queues personally, but I have been out in WvW without finding any enemies to fight.

I have no issue with new players/guilds moving to the server, but I’ll admit that the notion of Zerg transfers is somewhat concerning. I think it’s too soon to tell how this will all really play out and ultimately it may not be a problem at all.

In the spirit of the upcoming election, I’ll lay out my thoughts on this subject, campaign-style:

1. Community

I think community is key. The idea of alliances, coordinated efforts, inner and inter-server politics and drama adds longevity to the gaming experience. Giving people a sandbox and letting them play out their own struggles as they try to work together in WvW is provides richer and deeper content than any patch or expansion ever could. It creates personal stories that people will remember much longer than any quest line or series of encounters.

2. Progression

The idea of working together as a server to improve WvW effectiveness and success over the long run is very compelling and exciting. Efforts put into coordination and relation building one week, can pay dividends weeks and months later, providing a steady sense of personal, guild, and server progress that can help keep folks engaged for a long time.

3. Drastic Change

Logging in one day and finding your server suddenly dominating everything in WvW isn’t a good feeling. If our success or failure as a team seems more dependent on what guilds decided to transfer on/off our server that week than anything else, it can make greater long-term efforts seem futile. It’s the difference between feeling empowered and powerless.

4. Personality Churn

If you WvW enough, you’ll start to get to know all the regulars who are out there. You learn the leaders, the highly skilled players, the determined defenders, the brave ressers, the self-fish gankers, and the steadfast suppliers. Learning the personalities of these people is a very compelling part of the fun. If there’s lots of churn due to player-organized group transfers, you lose the ability to discover these personalities since people are there one week and gone the next.

5. Pride and Loyalty

Very few things drive people’s actions more than pride and loyalty. How many people in this thread identified ourselves as being part of the Blackgate community for months? When people take pride in their community, they are more likely to keep playing. When people feel loyalty to those they fight alongside day in and day out, they become hesitant to abandon them for another team, another game, or often even real-life.

6. Server Transfer Problem

I’m the last guy who wants to go spouting off suggestions to fix a problem when it’s unclear if it even really exists yet, but assuming it turns out to be: Server transfers seem to be an important and necessary feature for a variety of reasons, so it may be entirely off the table to take them away. If that’s the case, one solution would be to add a Loyalty bonus.

Loyalty Bonus: Provides a small incremental cumulative bonus of some type to those who stay on a server. Maybe it’s a daily thing that accumulates each day you engage in some meaningful WvW participation. It could max out after 2 months or 2 years, it just needs to reset to zero if you move to another server.

Then again, maybe I’m just crazy.

-Lensar