Guild Wars 2

As far as I know, there were no problems with, and no objections to the lava font animation. This seems to be a completely arbitrary change.

This sets a really bad precedent. Who’s to say your cute, pink, plushy quaggan backpack won’t become a dark brown, boney, risen thrall backpack tomorrow?

Zikory.6871:

It’s all obtainable by all players. Even though some items are time gated, none of them require another to do.

1. Guard Stacks from WvW ranks – Takes time but obtainable by everyone.
2. Food stats – Obtainable by everyone
3. Stacking Weapons – Obtainable by everyone
4. Ascended Stuff – Time gated but still Obtainable by everyone
5. Orb Buffs – touchy subject right now so you can refer to the other 100 threads on this.

The way I see it is, if you want clear balance go to sPvP. They regulate everything. WvW should allow all of the above (Orb buff, I’m indifferent, haven’t personally played since the patch) Adding sPvP restrictions to WvW would be even more devastating to the current WvW population. Thats just my opinion.

Guard stacks and ascended can theoretically be obtainable by everyone but are bad for the game as a whole. Both these discourage alts — leading to less play variety and quicker burnout. Both these discourage newer players; to be disadvantaged for a short time while you learn the game is ok, but both these take a long time to obtain; no one wants to be disadvantaged for a long period of time.

Silver.9084:

Anyone else thinks TOO many stat bonuses are added into WvW?

1. Guard Stacks from WvW ranks
2. Food stats
3. Stacking Weapons
4. Ascended Stuff
5. Orb Buffs

You can basically get something like +800 Power and +4K HP .. That’s like really imbalanced…

What’s everyones thoughts about that?

EDIT: I am fine it’s not as balanced as sPvP, actually i prefer it that way, however – ALL these stats over each other becomes too much!

1. Guard stats: Discourages new players. Get rid of them.
2. Food: food is cheap enough that it’s ok.
3. Stacking Weapons: Make them only stack on player kill.
4. Ascended: Discourages new players. Get rid of them.
5. Orb buffs: Why unbalance even more what’s already unbalanced? Get rid of them.

WvW for world completion is one way they use to get PvE players into WvW. Anet sees WvW as a kind of “gateway drug” that moves people towards sPvP (esports!).

Maybe they’re just waiting to sell us the original molten axe pick animation in a future gemstore product?

Warlock.7136:

so it would appear that this thread was taken down.(that or i can’t find it). anyways shorter version of my previous post. my full cleric exo/ascended accesory tank(guardian) went from getting compliments on his ability to take a hit. to dying from every boss from 1 hit strike. 1 hit kills shouldn’t be capable of being done on chars whose stats are designed entirely to soak dmg. i did these bosses everyday. but unless the dmg gets scaled back. I won’t be doing them anymore.

This game was designed specifically to prevent players from being “designed entirely to soak dmg.”

Meadfreek.6789:

timmyf.1490:

Not to be a total jerk here, but maybe just don’t do this event? If you don’t like it?

I understand what you’re saying. But the players who like the revamped event need to be careful with that approach. What could happen (and I’ve seen this happen before in a game called Pirates of the Burning Sea):

1) The minority that likes it says “If you don’t like it, just don’t do it.”

2) Large numbers of people stop doing it because they don’t like it or how difficult it has become or the risk/reward balance is way off.

3) Then the ones who do like it rarely/never succeed because there’s not enough of them left on at the same time.

4) Then that second group gives up too because they don’t have the numbers and the encounter becomes a wasteland.

Everyone hates events that are too easy (the Jungle Wurm in it’s first version). I have no problem with anet making Teq harder. But not insanely harder. I’ll just say “why bother”? And I’m sure I’m not the only one.

Isn’t this exactly what happened with the Karka Queen event?

style.6173:

Personally, I hope ANET is right. If so, forum users need to learn to trust the dev team. If the forum users are right, then ANET needs to get a clue and realize they do not understand WvW at all.

There’s a third option: Anet does understand WvW, but understands it as something completely different from how we players look at it.

Anet wants WvW to be a vehicle that moves PvE players towards sPvP (esports!).
They do not care about the WvW game mode in and of itself. Practically all Anet behavior points towards this.

I believe Anet is trying to make WvW more zergy, to kill off all small man and solo gameplay. They hope that these players will move to sPvP (esport!).

Look at the new orb mechanic. If their true intention was to break up zergs into smaller groups, they would have put the capture points far from each other. This was definitely possible: there’s the centaur region and the skritt region that were never being used. Instead they placed them all together — making the area look like an sPvP (esports!) map. Coincidence? I think not.

Jansy.8463:

Friday is a weekday.

LOL.. I meant midweek.

If Anet really wanted this orb mechanic to encourage small group play, they would have put the capture points far apart from each other (e.g. skritt camp, centaur camp, quaggan island). Instead they’re practically all next to one another — very suspiciously like sPvP.

I think a weekday would be better. Only hardcore people read this forum and will get this message… none of the PvE’ers who usually only show up at reset will.

My theory: Anet wants to kill small group and solo roaming. They want those people to move to sPvP (esports!).

modDW.4187:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Has there been any talk of organizing a double team of CD? It’d probably make the week more enjoyable for everyone, including CD.

And even if we can’t do that, can we at least agree implicitly that letting CD have SM (much less a T3 SM) hurts both DH and NSP?

I noticed several times over the weekend where DH was in inner of SM — maybe even the Lord’s room — where NSP probably could have made a difference by either taking CD towers or killing CD reinforcements, but instead NSP attacked DH towers. In my opinion that hurt us (NSP) over the long run.

Yes, this was actually discussed at the council meeting last night. DH agreed to double team CD with us, starting on reset.

For anyone interested the meeting minutes were as follows:

The Lad Guy: “You have my sword.”
Kevin: “And my axe.”
Your Big Horse: “Then it is settled.”

-Your Big Horse

No bow?

You should have asked what server each person was on so that we can look up whether they’re dominating via coverage.

Has there been any talk of organizing a double team of CD? It’d probably make the week more enjoyable for everyone, including CD.

And even if we can’t do that, can we at least agree implicitly that letting CD have SM (much less a T3 SM) hurts both DH and NSP?

I noticed several times over the weekend where DH was in inner of SM — maybe even the Lord’s room — where NSP probably could have made a difference by either taking CD towers or killing CD reinforcements, but instead NSP attacked DH towers. In my opinion that hurt us (NSP) over the long run.

That they’re doing this for the transfer money seems a bit too tinfoil hat to me.

Considering how much this new area feels like sPvP (esport!), I’m guessing it’s yet another ploy by Anet to push WvW players towards sPvP (esport!).

Has there been any talk of organizing a double team of CD? It’d probably make the week more enjoyable for everyone, including CD.

And even if we can’t do that, can we at least agree implicitly that letting CD have SM (much less a T3 SM) hurts both DH and NSP?

I noticed several times over the weekend where DH was in inner of SM — maybe even the Lord’s room — where NSP probably could have made a difference by either taking CD towers or killing CD reinforcements, but instead NSP attacked DH towers. In my opinion that hurt us (NSP) over the long run.

Sreoom.3690:

Double Team Crystal Desert…

However much I would love that, at our tier, it’s practically impossible. Most of our players play as individuals or in small guild groups and would never get the message for a double team. All it takes is one tower to be flipped and the double team is over.

Draygo.9473:

I like it that the first few replies were people that couldn’t take a joke :p

@sarrs then you can roll the karka for anti-zerg action!

How do you ride a rolling karka?

Vanthian.9267:

I will be looking at a Thief with a backstab damage build.
20/30/0/0/20

Traits to consider in damage calculation:
Dagger Trainger: 5% damage
Executioner: 20% damage below 50% health
Flanking Strikes: 5% damage when attacking from back/sides

Constants:
Light Armor: 1836 (no added toughness what so ever)
Medium Armor: 1980 (no added toughness what so ever)
Heavy Armor: 2127 (no added toughness what so ever)
Skill Coefficient: 1.2 if hit from the front
2.4 if hit from the back/side

Exotics:
When using all berserker and all ruby orbs and a completely damage build for Thief:

Weapon Damage: 924-981
Power: 2089 without food buffs or bloodlust or might
3156 with food buffs and 25 might but without bloodlust
Critical Chance: 63.24 without fury or food buffs
66.57 with food buffs without fury
Critical Damage: 86%

Standard Damage of Backstab on target without Critical hit: (all will assume max Weapon damage/Skill Coefficient)

Light Armor: No Food Buffs/Might/Bloodlust
Damage: ( 981 × 2089 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 2,678.835
With Food Buffs/Might but NO BLOODLUST
Damage: ( 981 × 3156 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 4,047.105

What if we critical? Critical Damage is +86% on the normal 150% so we have 236% damage. Without buffs would be…
2,678.835 × 236% = 6,322.051
With Fodd buffs and such…
4,047.105 × 236% = 9,551.168

ASCENDED

Same set up only with ascended trinkets, back, ring, amulet and weapon.

Weapon Damage: 970-1030
Power: 2309 without food buffs or bloodlust or might
3376 with food buffs and 25 might but without bloodlust
Critical Chance: 69.24 without fury or food buffs
72.57 with food buffs without fury
Critical Damage: 112%

Standard Damage of Backstab on target without Critical hit: (all will assume max Weapon damage/Skill Coefficient)

Light Armor: No Food Buffs/Might/Bloodlust
Damage: ( 1,030 × 2,309 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 3,108.849
With Food Buffs/Might but NO BLOODLUST
Damage: ( 1,030 × 3,376 × 2.4 ) / 1836 = 4,545.464

What if we critical? Critical Damage is +112% on the normal 150% so we have 262% damage. Without buffs would be…
3,108.849 × 262% = 8,145.184
With Fodd buffs and such…
4,545.464 × 262% = 11,909.115

Comparing the two:
Exotic with buffs & critical: 9,551.168
Ascended with buffs & Critical: 11,909.115

Percentage damage higher? 9,551.168/11,090.115 = 0.861
Then 1 – 0.861 = 0.139 which is…..

13.9% difference in damage when buffed and landing a critical hit on a light armor target with no extra defense when welding currently available Ascended items over Exotics.

Also, please note I did not take into account the trait damage multipliers since they are the same with or without Ascended gear.

You can follow the above to figure out any of the other armors types or whatever you choose. I also done this very quickly so my numbers might be a little off, but I do believe them to be accurate.

Have fun!

You can end the thread now because this is the kind of analysis we really needed.

For Anet, WvW is simply supposed to be training wheels for PvE’ers as they move towards sPvP (esport!). The actually don’t really care at all about WvW as a game mode in and of itself, and it shows in their actions.

It’s just too bad because the open world PvP that is WvW is the perfect environment for the “play how you want” mantra — just look at the diversity of play styles that people discuss in these forums (zerging, sieging, GvG, roaming, soloing, duels…). There’s something for anyone who has even the smallest interest in PvP. That’s what makes WvW fun.

But Anet’s tunnel vision regarding sPvP (esports!) is killing the only truly valuable PvP property they have — WvW.

It may encourage the server with bloodlust to fight and stomp more, but the flip side is that it may encourage the server without bloodlust to fight less and hide in towers.

In any case, though the points for stomping make you feel like you’re contributing, the fact is that server score is still completely meaningless.

Prime.8792:

It’s obvious that collusion is the only option for the lower tier servers. Seriously though, how often does the 2 weaker servers ever gang up on the strongest server?

Do they even organize? Or is it going to be like 2 babies fighting an adult?

On the other hand, if the weak servers don’t put in the effort in communicating and organizing, then they deserve to lose.

That’s how I see it.

In the low tiers, the game is played mostly by pugs. If both weaker servers were dominated by a few large guilds, those guild leaders could get together with another server’s leaders and possibly form an alliance. And that’s already a rare enough sight.

As it is, with almost every player being a pug, there’s almost zero chance of an alliance forming and hold — all it takes is one tower to be taken and the whole thing is off.

Wukunlin.8461:

imagine if we can use those to make 20 slot boxes :o

Then we would have enough boxes to store all our dust!

Just delete them.

azizul.8469:

i made a study about this…. with 3 leagues for EU, you’ll have 9 team in a league….

with 9 team in a league you will have a total of 12 unique match up where no team will face one another more than once, and we’ll have 3 match ups every week that will last four weeks….

ANET says they will make 12-team leagues for NA, so i’m not sure how ANET is going to implement it, if the requirement is “no team will meet another team more than once”

I was under the impression that it would be 7 weeks worth of 1 week matches. And the requirement was that “each server will meet each other server at least once.”

It’s fine, but only because literally zero people care about the total score. It will be even less important when the leagues start because most matches will be over way before they begin.

The whole buff should just be +100% MF when in WvW, and that’s it.

By the way, anyone feel that this new area in the ruins is suspiciously like sPvP? Is this just another ploy to push us towards sPvP?

Joni.6830:

Neandramathal.9536:

The servers are likely top end already.

They did once lower the caps to try reduce lag, the result was queues and a lot of player complaining – people weren’t willing to move just because of queue’s. They put the cap back up, and players (different or same doesn’t matter) complain about lag.

It’s the same in every game, there is lag when there is big fights, and yet in every game there is zergs – whether the game benefits them or not (the key reason is safety in numbers, only way to remove that is direct PUNISHMENT of zergs but that would just create other problems). Players need to understand you cannot have mass-scale pvp without mass-scale lag, or at least not with mass-scale AoE involved.

You think servers are unable to get upgraded again because they are already top end? Do you think all MMORPG infrastructure is just “put some servers up – done”? The company has to DEVELOP the relevant infrastructure solutions to support their game!

Did you play Daoc or Warhammer? Daoc was in bloody 2001. 2001. This was when consumer CPUs were below 1GHz. Daoc did NOT have skill lag like Guild Wars 2 WvW has.

There was general normal lag in Daoc obviously, remember 2001 where internet connection speeds were a fraction of today’s. But there was not systematic skill lag that made playing your character impossible in large fights. Neither did Warhammer suffer from this systemic lag issue.

Please don’t tell me Arena.net is doing everything they can. They are not. Skill lag is solvable because other companies were able to have such large scale WvW (RvRvR) over 10 years ago.

GW2 fights may be more taxing on servers than DaoC fights, but please don’t tell me 12 years of hardware/software evolution aren’t enough to support dodging. That’s laughable.

Does any game major game company use Amazon’s Elastic Cloud Computing? That’s possibly a viable solution.

Rage.9723:

Ahh thank you everyone I guess I won’t uninstall after all since I hardly missed much.

LOL!! So Anet actually retained a customer because of lack of quality rewards!

Instant delete. I think if more keys dropped, players would be more aware of the goodies found inside the chests and that would probably spur gemstore sales of keys.

But as it is, with one key dropping less often than “once in a blue moon,” they’re seen as completely worthless. I actually feel angry when I get one — it’s probably the least valuable (permanent) drop in the game.

IOJ (the OP’s server) is ranked #15 and Yak’s Bend (the first reply) is ranked #13.

Not surprised you guys are excited for your free rewards.

Though in the end, prepare for disappointment when all you’re doing is spawn camping 24/7 for half your matches.

Celtus.8456:

Adding power/stat creep because they dont know what else to do…it sucks.

Rather it’s because they don’t want to do anything, but need at least something to show they’re not completely ignoring the game.

The very last thing we need in the WvW forum is an OP like this. Anet is, by all accounts doing an ABSOLUTELY HORRIBLE job on the WvW side of things with ZERO hope for optimism.

When you roam with a thief and are yourself not a thief, everyone focuses you because targeting you is much easier than keeping target on the thief.

Zoel.9154:

Marginal advantages from numbers, ascended stats, etc. isn’t a huge deal; like you said, it’s a losers game to try and get perfect balance.

The problem is that we’re accumulating more and more advantages. They add up. For veteran players, it’s not a big deal, but for new players, they are being put further and further behind. It’s not good to discourage new players.

As for balance. Just because we can’t really have balance doesn’t mean we need to go and make it worse.

kelman.9451:

WvW is the one thing that GW2 has above other games. Up and coming is Everquest Next, now this game has some big promises and some big ideas, if they come through with what they say, it may draw many away from GW2 PvE player base, WvW is the one thing that could keep GW2 going for some time. PvE gets old and stale quickly for some of us, and some of us bought GW2 for WvW mostly.

This. Exactly. Anet just refuses to accept that WvW has turned out to be the PvP that players want, not sPvP. It’s time to devote more resources and dev time to WvW.

It’s getting ridiculous. Get rid of Guard Leech, get rid of Applied Fortitude, rework Orb buff to be non-stat related (+300% MF?). This doesn’t even begin to solve the gear power creep.

Honestly, WvW is doomed because new players or casuals soon won’t be able to compete with veteran players. Without new players WvW dies.

OP brings out an interesting question. If you’re going to release it as a beta, why not announce it as such in the original reveal? Why announce the release of the LFG tool first, then later say that it’s going to be a beta?

The code’s probably not as ready as they anticipated.

Not sure why some people are obsessed with the idea that skipping mobs needs to be fixed.

Mobs that are skippable (without exploits) are designed that way.

If Anet wanted to, they could put a door that prevents you from entering unless certain mobs are killed (they do this in every single dungeon, in fact, for bosses). If they didn’t put such a mechanic, then they are giving you the option to skip if you wish. There’s nothing to fix here.

The goal is to get you to buy inventory space from the gem store and not for you to leave your inventory full with piles upon piles upon piles of Bloodstone dust.

dpaul.2759:

1. Change the system immediately to allow the 24th team to rotate into the green map, and

Server colors has been randomly determined for quite a while now.

GW1 had skill bar templates — it was clearly a good, desirable feature. I have no idea why it has taken a year for Anet to give us templates in GW2.

If you ever go into threads in matchup forums, you’d see that no one ever brags that their server is winning. They’ll brag about everything else: how their zerg owned a bigger zerg, how they held Hills against all odds, how they dueled 10 players and beat them all. But never about how their score was higher at the end of the week.

Every single player knows that the scores are meaningless because coverage and population trumps all in the end. So why is Anet treating these leagues as if they’re going to be competitive?

Zylonite.5913:

WvW won’t die but it won’t improve. Take it or leave it. The sad truth unfortunately, because people need more jumping puzzles.

It’s not even the PvE that’s the problem. Anet insists on trying to make sPvP into an esport — they don’t even want WvW to succeed. The only care about WvW as an intermediary to get people from PvE to sPvP.

Omaris Mortuus Est.2738:

They should have been account bound from the start. Character bound means people will play one class the most, so they’ll get bored faster and leave the game faster.

Anet really need to focus on fixing and improving WvW if they want those players to stay. They’ve probably already driven off 40% of WvW players by ignoring our complaints and suggestions for over a year now!

This. Both points.

Right now, you’re really pressured into playing only your main. This is especially true if you’re a roamer or fight in smallish groups because you really need the Guard Leech and/or Applied Fortitude buffs to be competitive (IMO they were one of the worst additions to the game).

As for focusing on WvW — Anet won’t do this until they give up on sPvP. They see WvW merely as a funnel to move players from PvE towards sPvP, which is really foolish because WvW is what players want to play.

To (mis)quote Kanye West: “Anet does not care about WvW.” And it really shows.

I don’t think there’s been any desire on the part of players to make WvW seriously competitive (esports level).

People just want a fun PvP-type environment where you can play-how-you-want, whether that be zerging, roaming, GvG, sieging, or whatever. I don’t think anyone wants WvW to become another sPvP debacle.

But definitely make it so that a new player to the game can relatively quickly be on equal terms with veteran players. That would mean getting rid of Guard Leech, Applied Fortitude, and Ascended armor.

Gudradain.3892:

They are facing BP (rank 11) and Yak (rank 12).

Wanna bet SBI will win this matchup?

With your new transfers, it wouldn’t be that surprising.

Cactus.2710:

As an active player who has regularly criticized ANet for poor communication and springing crap on us we didn’t want, I have to strongly commend the OP for this huge step in the right direction. Well done.

They probably only released this because of the leaked update notes yesterday. I hope they really plan for better communication, but this is definitely not evidence either way that that’s the case.

Sli Fi.7980:

The problem with WvW is that I have to find people to group with to have any fun + success. I don’t have to do that with sPvP (I can just join a random team there). I find joining a zerg to be completely uninteresting farming.

Then solo roam. Or roam with pugs. You don’t have to run with the zerg.

GrandmaFunk.3052:

Uther Deathhand.1570:

Well for the near future they are taking a break from working on wvw.

They aren’t taking a break from working on WvW, they’re taking a break from releasing new WvW features.

The impression I get — from how Anet treats WvW and how Anet thinks of WvW as merely a way to encourage people to try out sPvP — is that they are indeed taking a break from working on WvW. This “make no changes in order to not disturb the competitiveness of the leagues” is simply a cover story.

On topic, the WXP chest rewards are indeed very very poor. Making the drop a guaranteed rare wouldn’t even come close to making WvW as profitable as PvE so I don’t see a problem with doing that.