Guild Wars 2

I am pretty sure we will hear about the transfer lockdown in the same blog post that will announce the guild transfer system.

However, I’d still hope people would relax about the current WvW rankings. See it this way: Season 1 of WvW has not even started! We are currently still playing in one-week pre-season friendlies, and who really cares about the results of pre-season friendlies?

~MRA

I already had a crazy idea idea some while ago and posted it here:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/suggestions/Release-the-Kraken-balance-WvW-through-PvE-events/first

However, as much fun as it is to play game designer, don’t expect any radical changes to the system in the near future. ANet is currently pretty occupied with fixing the status quo. And I am also sure they designed the status quo for a reason.

~MRA

orci.5019:

Nope. Not fixed. Shouldn’t be too surprising.

Darn. But yeah, it is kind of expected, with still way to many critical bugs around …

Thanks anyways.

~MRA

(Sorry if this has already been discussed/answered, but the search didn’t bring up any meaningful results.)

A short question to you avid ranger players: In the betas, there has been a bug that made a pet forget its name every time it was switched out. The bug also seemed to be in the game at release. Has this bug been fixed in the mean time?

I am about to start my seventh alt and it has been this bug that kept me from rolling a ranger so far. And I certainly don’t want to play a ranger when I cannot name all my pets. (Yes, I take my pet names very seriously.)

Thanks for any information.

~MRA

BubbaLicous.1328:

Next you’re going to tell me you are not able to access the Private forum area of Anet? I guess they limited the voting to the community leaders that have actual influence and are looking out for the welfare of their guild / clan members. You might want to get proactive and actually attempt to provide constructive feedback in lieu of trolling.

Yeah, I should have probably read more than the OP before repeating the same joke two guys already did before me.

I do not doubt your honorable motives in opening this thread, but I encourage you to consider the following: What do you really expect ANet to do? Changing a system they worked on for years because some random forum guy gives a moving “We the people” speech? Do you really expect that your post is the final push that ANet needed to go to action?

For quite some time the discussion in this forum, including your post, is just repeating the same complaints and arguments over and over again, without getting anywhere. All points have been made, and developers have stated multiple times that they are monitoring WvW and are working on some fixes. Although they need some time to implement them.

Hence, it occurs to me that opening a new topic for the same old discussion every 17 minutes to allow the next guy to announce his preferred three to five tweaks to the current system can no longer be seen as ‘constructive feedback’. If you just wanted to give feedback, then you would have found many, many existing discussions in which you could have participated.

Of course you are free to start any topic you like. But as someone who is trying to find some new and worthwhile information in the forums, I am under the impression that the umpteenth clone post isn’t helping.

Nevertheless, please excuse my polemic reply above. That wasn’t helping, either.

~ MRA

BubbaLicous.1328:

The consensus of the community is that …

Oh really? When did the vote take place, and why did I miss it?

~MRA

Umbra.5180:

Has this world event Ever worked correctly ?

I know of nobody who has ever successfully played this event since release. I checked several times; when it was up, the event NPC was always missing.

~MRA

Cayafas.8290:

I have a question: Why did Gandara drop in rating? We won our week this time (and rather convincingly, too).

Winning parties may loose points (and loosing parties may win points) in rating schemes. I haven’t studied the details of Glicko-2, but the reasoning is usually as follows:

The given ratings of a match-up give an expectation on how much the higher ranked servers should dominate, and on how much the lower ranked servers should be dominated in the match. If this expectation would be met exactly (quite unlikely), the score would not change. If a server exceeds its expectation (wins much higher, looses less harshly), the score rises. If a server misses the expectation (wins not high enough, is pwned beyond all recognition), the score gets lower. However, the recalculation of the scores is usually designed in such a way that a loosing party cannot jump above the winning party.

As said above, I cannot say how Glicko-2 actually implements this, but such effects are not uncommon to other systems like, say, ELO.

~MRA (also always exited about math)

I agree that a well played zerg beats a poorly played split, but I would assume that thats also true for well played splits beating poorly played zergs.

And by a “zerg”, I understand (mainly) a single contingent trying to cap stuff, with no other contingents. If you consider, say, four commanders each with their equally sized army operating at different fronts while other guys defend the keeps, then I wouldn’t call this zerging. That’s actually good gameplay, and if it is winning, then rightfully so.

~MRA

The obvious counter to zerging is splitting up. If the zerg is in location X, let your team be at any location except X. If the zerg takes your tower, take two of his towers and a supply camp. A well defended keep can pretty nicely stall a zerg using way less people than the zerg.

~MRA

@Wolve: While I agree that universal servers would have benefited WvW, there are two obvious explanations for the solution ANet chose:

1. Regional server parks keep the ping rate low and allow for a more responsive connection. As you know, nobody likes lag.

2. Some servers are tagged because of the language barrier, which is actually quite important to many players. Blame the Babylonians.

~MRA

@hunTShoo: Just checked all four queues on server Riverside and every single queue is full. So I guess the answer to your question is: No, they still do.

~MRA

Just look at the queue data and you can see that (unless you choose, say, one of the top 5 servers) there is never a queue at night. The same is true for NA servers (at NA night) as well.

However, I have no idea about the ping rate.

~MRA

(edit: corrected links)

Kaine.3501:

you sound like my mom

Sorry. Didn’t intend to sound rude, just tried to be concise.

~MRA

@Kaine: It’s a design decision, please read this reddit answer for a detailed explanation.

@ANet/all: Can we please find a way that such question don’t come up over and over again in this forum? Something like a sticky FAQ, or whatever?

~MRA

Can we please arrange players from all eight professions, each in their favorite running spec, to meet up, say, at the Gendarren Fields waypoint right outside LA for a race kittenaches Vigil Keep waypoint first by running? This would be awesome.

~MRA

(edit:) btw, ‘kittenaches’ was once ‘who | reaches’.

Wafflesomg.4820:

So I understand that “nightcapping” has become a deterrent from WvWvW.

[…]

Don’t be entitled and stop inflaming the situation by being a massive troll.

Wiser words have never been spoken in this forum.

~MRA (casually playing for Riverside)

(edit:) It is truly ironic that people are willing turn this thread into the same pointless “But this server has an unfair advantage” discussion the OP spoke out against in the first place.

I’d rather like to keep a mesmer able to portal enemies into a keep in the future, and not having that labeled as an exploit. But only in chunks of small strike teams, and not whole armies (or, say, 200 golems) at once. Hence, I’d prefer to limit the usability of the portal skill.

~MRA

rudeguygames.3978:

Arena.net is being really generous about the whole “world transfer” thing.

The current “free transfer system” is just for the first weeks, it isn’t meant to stay. And I think it was a wise move to allow players to switch to there friends servers without problems.

However, I hope that they will change this soon to close the obvious exploits. A good compromise could be to let every player make exactly one further transfer for free. After that, we would have to pay.

~MRA

kitanas.3596:

how can you stop it? lockouts won’t stop a sffincintly determined player, and that doesn’t even take into account trolls on your own server. how do keep them from sabatoging your suply without limiting ordinary players?

First, ANet could easily remove the siege-builder-achievement (whatever it is called) to discourage “accidental and thoughtless” waste of resources by usually benevolent players.

Second, once the free sever switching will be locked down, most of the problems with malevolent players will just go away. So just be patient. And if the problem will prevail even when server transfer isn’t free, ANet could install further mechanisms like a 7 day “cannot build siege equipment” debuff after the switch (which does not go away when you leave the spawn zone). The effect is already in the game.

neoxide.7320:

I wonder if ANet will say “war isn’t fair” just like they did with the nightcapping exploitation. Because you can apply that excuse to any cheap, advantageous, or unfair tactic, exploit or abuse.

And I am pretty sure when ANet stated “war isn’t fair”, they were referring to “playing according to the rules” (like night capping), and not “exploiting a free transfer window”, which is not intended as a gameplay element.

~MRA

Midway.2319:

Please put a cap on how many people can use this ability. I just saw 40+ enemy players from Dragonbrand use it to portal past the walls into a keep in one of the borderlands. Sorry but tactics or not, this is way too over powered and needs to be looked at.

I agree, the unlimited uses of a mesmer portals in WvW seems kind of too powerful to me, too. If Anet would just, say, let portals expire after 7 uses, there would be almost no impact on sPvP and PvE. And a portal strategy in WvW would still be viable, although it would be a little bit more difficult since you now have to coordinate 5+ mesmers for one mass portal move.

Midway.2319:

Now we know how Dragonbrand works, they’re not very good players and use exploits to win any wvw matches. Kinda sad small minds can’t use real tactics and cower down to exploits like this.

Sorry, no offense intended, but this is the kind of bullkitten I read far to often in this forums. Everybody is complaining that server A hacked keep B, servers C and D are cooperating against E, and all players from server F are overweight and have ugly ears. And no, this is not funny smacktalk, this is just whining.

Can we all please accept that every server has its fair share of black sheeps who are not acting very sportsmanlike unless ANet fixes all bugs and exploits, and can we please stop pointing fingers? Can we, please?

~MRA

I remember an old interview or blog post (sorry i don’t know the exact source) where a developer stated that they actually want the commander icon to be used in PvE, too (e.g., commanders leading attacks in events). So this might be working as intended.

Nevertheless, I agree that the commander should be able to switch his icon on and off. If this is currently not implemented (i don’t know, i am no commander) then it should be added.

~MRA

This bug is still active. I encountered it just now (Sep 30, 8:45 UTC) on server Riverside.

~MRA

Yesterday, I was able to play this event from beginning to end.

Now (Sep 27, 17:30 UTC) the messenger is stuck again on server Riverside at the exact the same location described in my post above. Only this time, two Eben Vanguard Soldiers are stuck with her.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Break up the fight instigated by the Renegate (34)
Objective text: Renegate [empty health bar]; Renegate sympathizers subdued: 4/5
Date when encountered: Sep 26, 6:45 UTC
Map: Fields of Ruin
Server: Riverside

Description:
- No enemy to fight is in sight; in particular, no boss enemy
- Matching the event description, four Disgruntled Soldiers are lying downed on the floor.
- Maybe unrelated, but one charr soldier is lying dead on the eastern part of the plaza where the fight is supposed to take place.

~MRA

Combat RNG, at its core is a flawed design principle that first was proposed as a game mechanic for real world games, where an unpredictable element was needed to stop games from becoming tedious.

I disagree with this premise, especially when it is stated as if it were a fact.

I don’t understand randomness as necessarily bad game design. It simply introduces an amount of uncertainty, which makes a game “less chess” and “more yahtzee”. Whether you will like or dislike randomness in games isn’t what “next gen” game design dictates, it’s simply a matter of taste.

And any of those who think “RNGs” would ruin a game and make it a cheer game of luck should please do the math. E.g., in GW2, the deviation introduced by crits, etc. is relatively low; you do not “one-shot by chance”. A “20% per shot” effect will kind of happen each fifth attempt. And in the long run, the random elements of GW" do not really matter that much compared to circumstances, skill, and build. They just make “certain success” of an action a little less certain, which also helps to increase the tension.

Randomness or no randomness is simply a design decision, and there is a justification for either approach. ANet made their choice, and I cannot see where this decision breaks the game. So go out and make the best out of playing the game according to its rules.

~MRA

This bug is still active. I encountered it right now (Sep 23, 14:00 UTC) on server Riverside.

Although in my case, the messenger is stuck a little bit further down the road: east of Vultures Waypoint, directly south of that hill on the map.

She was already standing there when I came along, so I don’t know what happened up to this point.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Help Nia rescue Cymbel’s hunds (32?)
Objective text: Cymbel’s hunds alive 3; Nia [health bar]
Date when encountered: Sep 23, 13:00 UTC
Map: Fields of Ruin
Server: Riverside

Description:
- Nia is just standing with dogs next to the fireplace, doing nothing.
- You can talk to her, but nor dialog window pops up, and she just gives a one-liner response.
- From time to time (~every three minutes) an Ogre Brute and an Hawkeye Griffon shows up and attacks. Then she and the dogs fight back, and the health bar decrease a little. After the attack, however, she simply resets to her position.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Defend Forlorn Hope from the ogres (32?)
Objective text: — none --
Date when encountered: Sep 23, 11:45 UTC
Map: Fields of Ruin
Server: Riverside

Description:
- Scout Trevor at the eastern exit of Blackwing Excavation doesn’t stop begging everybody to defend Forlorn Hope, although the event is not running.
- When talking to him, he consequently doesn’t provide the “show me the way” option either.

~MRA

Did you try “right-click → report” on that guy?

I’d guess that video recording wouldn’t help much, since you still cannot see the name (but now in moving pictures).

~MRA

Also stuck right now on server Riverside.

~MRA

RavenDaughter.1857:

Minor update since I can’t seem to edit my previous post: The event is NOT blocked in Queensdale Overflow, but as soon as I transition to the standard zone, it’s blocked again.

Yes, but the overflow servers are, technically, just another server/world (I guess). The event doesn’t seem to be stuck on each server, just on some. I guess some special conditions have to be met to freeze the event.

~MRA

Actually, i find the limited supply carrying capabilities a great mechanic to encourage team play. Another problem with unlimited supply would be that the individual supply of each player is part of the world’s “total instantly available supply” (lets say, TIAS). This amount is limited also through the supply depot caps. The TIAS essentially limits a world’s capabilities of playing a “treb rush” or a “golem rush”. If you would drop the individual cap, the TIAS would skyrocket. So the individual cap is actually pretty good game design.

On the other hand, I would appreciate to see smaller (more gimmicky?) devices added to the game that have a strictly limited use but can be powered by a single player for just 5 or 10 supply. E.g., I imagine:

• a smaller arrow cart which has only ammo for ~30 seconds, or
• a ladder which allows a single player to climb an enemy wall (this might actually game breaking be if you would be able to portal your friends in, so maybe not)
• a dwarven powder keg which can be detonated to damage doors or walls, or can be planted on the ground as an invisible booby trap to highly damage the next enemy who triggers it.

~MRA

Thanks!!! That’s exactly the kind of information needed to calm the many, many whiners.

~MRA

edit: Since I am a sucker for data like this, or just greedy:

• Please keep posting such information regularly, this really helps the community to understand why there may be some hick-ups or other problems with the user experience.
• If possible, please consider using the same absolute y-axis for all charts. Then players could immediately see which servers have a high WvW load and which don’t. You gave the warning in your post, but it is rather cumbersome to find this kind of information.

Date when encountered: Sep 20, 20:25 UTC
Map: Dredgehaunt Cliffs
Server: Riverside

Description:
I don’t know what is going wrong with the Aggressive Patron event(?) thingy at the lodge in the Snowslide Ravine, but a single (?) Patron turned into about 20 Aggressive Patrons in Norn Bear Form, all shouting the same battlecry, and then, well, started beating the kitten out of me like some weird Norn clone army. Immediately after that, the same happened again with another single (?) Patron turning into 20 Aggressive Patrons in Norn Snow Leopard Form.

The whole time, there was no event announced in the event monitor.

I am not against such stuff to happen, but it seemed to me that this “instant cloning” wasn’t intended. Beside that, 20 enemies at the same time is quite challenging for just one poor Engineer.

~MRA

Dynamic Event: Join Armas in hunting the jotun chieftain (38)
Objective text: Event succeded!
Date when encountered: Sep 20, 17:45 UTC
Map: Lornar’s Pass
Server: Riverside

Description:

• The chest Armas digs up after the event succeeded does not interact in any way, and no items are received.
• Standard event rewards (gold/silver/bronze) are given as usual.
• I have already encountered this bug at least three days ago.

~MRA

Agreed with OP.

As much as I’d love to see events and jumping puzzles as a serious part of WvW, they currently are just misplaced PvE content.

If you include them to WvW, make them have relevance to the ongoing match, and don’t let them have benefits beside that (POIs, skill points, harvesting nodes, etc). Otherwise, they only attract tourists or completionists or people who want to grind level 80 stuff, who just waste scarce WvW slots.

~MRA

Valnar Arylith.5793:

why are we reduced to having to trust if someone is going to mail an item to us via the in game mail? when you guys at Anet could no doubt strip the programming from gw1 about in game trading.

Obviously, direct trading has been discarded intentionally to cripple real money trading (and, in my opinion, rightfully so). Use the trading post instead.

~MRA

Rounder.6703:

What do you think about the new compromise proposale of staring with 3 “lives” and being able to aquire more “Lives” for participating in WvW dynamic events.

None of that fixes the problem that the “supply” doesn’t match the “demand”.

Rounder.6703:

The only players who will be alienated with this proposal are players who don’t contribute and who constantly die.

Which, most likely, hits “non-pro-below-average players” hard. Whether one likes it or not, crappy players have a right to play WvW, too. And no, they are not “hurting” their team, since the other wolds have (on average) just as much crappy players.

~MRA

Don’t care about loot — kill the kitten enemy!

They came from beyond the Mists to take and destroy everything we hold dear, and you talk about your personal gain? What a shamefur dispray …

~MRA

Praytell.8164:

I think the people who are saying that this isn’t a good idea and that they would spend more time waiting in a queue, haven’t spent 4.5 hours in the queue. It’s an aggravating wait

(my answer is not exactly aimed at you, I just hijacked your quote)

Then, please people, do the math.

With the OP’s idea, you (the average player) would NOT spend less time in the queue, since there still would be the same amount of spots left on the WvW maps. If the demand stays the same, people will (in total) spent exactly the same time in queues, only that the waiting time will now be stretched over play-wait-play-wait-etc intervals.

The only “benefit” this approach would have is that it could potentially alienate a number of people who would no longer queue up for WvW after beeing kicked for the n-th time. This isn’t exactly what I would call good game design.

I still claim: The only solutions to full queues would be additional maps to raise the number of open WvW slots (with all the possible problems of such a move). But this isn’t something ANet will simple implement over a weekend.

So get used to it, or switch to a server with empty queues.

~MRA

Crimifa.2361:

there is a big grub that spawns sometimes in the eternal battleground. its super awesome fun to kill. really tense, watching out for invaders coming to steal grub.

what could be cool would be a couple more of them (not up all or even most of the time) but more agressive… if left alone they head towards a base and start attacking the walls/gate.

this would create opportunities for players to capitalise on and incentives defending /upgrading bases.

This is also an interesting idea.

Crimifa.2361:

(if worried about the “strong get stronger” problem, just make it that you only get the buff if score is X or something like that)

Yes, I would be worried, as I would be about any mechanism that allows the dominating team to gain something from it. We already see this problem with the orbs in the Borderlands. A balancing mechanism should always work as follows: who’s in lead can only lose unless they act, and who’s behind can only win if they try.

~MRA

Lord Jaguar.9504:

3) PvP has to have a winner and a loser.

While you are certainly correct with this point I would argue that in WvW (as opposed to sPvP), the “fun” more important than the “competition”. It is designed as “the casual gamers PvP”, and I would think that this was the right move.

I am a little afraid that many players (up to 2/3 of the players?) could get frustrated during a two week match if they have to face a stronger enemy and do not really have many tools at hand to oppose them (at least, that is what they might think). I would credit lots of the whining here in the forum to this frustration. With such an option or any similar mechanic, a loosing team might say: “Well, I may not be able to beat your world in the scores, but I will be kitten if I do not at least send you that godkitten motherkittening kitten up your kittens to trash all your precious toys! (evil laughter)”

And, again, I would never vote for an idea that cripples the leading team. Just give a little strain to one in lead, and a little bit of hope to the other two.

~MRA

US scientists discovered that any game with a Linux client is at least 10% more cool than the next leading brand.

~MRA

Out of combat, and maybe with 10 sec cool down after combat: agreed.

But give some love to the Engineer, too!

~MRA

Tiborb.1453:

I don’t do it almost never except when i kite, when i feel the need to have more control with movement.

This. +1 to this suggestion, for exactly the same reason.

While ANet is at it I also do have a suggestion for non-fast-cast-ground-targeting:

When klicking for a location, and the location happens to be to far away (red pattern, “too far away” message), then please do not let the spell fizzle, but remain in “select ground target mode”. Just let me click again until I find a spot within reach (or I dismiss the spell).

Far too many times when I try to blink while kiting mid-fight I try to aim for a point “as far away as possible”, but click a little bit too far. Then I have to select the skill and aim for a ground target again, which might be the difference between escape and down-state.

~MRA

Kal.2376:

More PVE in PVP? I think there should be less… This would just give more power to the already dominating server. If they have more people/organization, they can just camp the godzilla button like the hold the central castle all the time. Sure, the losing server could take it sometimes, but the majority of the time it will be taken by the big servers kicking butts.

There is no power gain for the dominating server in my suggestion. Maybe they are organized enough to camp the location, but, more importantly, the SHOULD do so, since a failure there would cost them dearly. And they are facing two faction who really have no reason not to cooperate on this objective. This is a diversion that essentially weakens the position of th leading server.

After all, the idea isn’t meant to cripple a well-organized server, but rather to make it a little bit more difficult to be in lead.

~MRA

MRA – no, it’s not choice. I have no choice in the gazillion ways I earn experience. It just happens.

Maybe then it’s no choice for you, but choice for the 2000000-x players who choose to not 100% everything and play at a more moderate speed.

Actual level is not meaningless in concerns to equipment

It is actually possible to equip gear that is a lower level than you, you know? If you are, say, level 79 in a level 35 area, and you equip only level 35 equipment, you will never notice the difference — thanks to downscaling.

So, your arguement IS pointless

I see we disagree here, so let’s call it a day.

~MRA

Nighthorns.2569:

I would say kicking players who haven’t performed any PvP (or map objective, such as taking an unguarded supply camp) in the past 15 minutes gets the boot.

I am not a huge fan of automated kicking since, in a structured approach to WvW, you also need guildies guarding towers way behind the front line, or people scouting the enemy and doing nothing other for some time than reporting the enemy’s movements.

~MRA

Panda.1967:

This is pure speculation since ANet won’t tell us yet how the system works.

I acknowledge that, and part of my comment below is also speculation.

Panda.1967:

When queuing for WvW it’s a first come first serve basis, across ALL SERVERS so for the 3 servers involved it’s quite possible that Server A can fill 80% of the WvW population while Server B gets 15% and Server C gets only 5%.

I have heard this rumor for some time now and I fail to believe it. First of all, ANet spent years on designing and testing this game, and they are not stupid. I cannot believe that they would implement such a system, which would be imbalanced beyond kitten. And, second, I wish I could recall the interview I read to link it as source, but I am pretty sure that a dev has already stated at one point during development that it would be an equal number of players from each world (it was ~150 per world at that point).

~MRA