Guild Wars 2

Will we be able to save different arena designs and use them for recuring events?

Now that guild puzzles are instanced will the doors remain open once a section has been cleared?

Will there be personal rewards for the guild trek mission, if yes how do you qualify for them?

Kodash used to be the strongest German server for quite some time, so I guess it accumulated one of the highest WvW populations, but suffers from the fact that most of the players are in the same time zone.

Cliff side on 43, whenever you hit an enemy, you would get a stacking debuff that damages you for .1% of your max health on hitting an enemy. This debuff is supposed to reset whenever you kill an opponent, the only problem is that all mobs in this fractal don’t drop loot, give experience or even count as kills for that matter. In the end we got through the fractal by excessive use of shadow refuge to get out of combat and reset the debuff this way.

The main problem I see is that the revenge system will shift the focus of a matchup to the end. It wouldn’t matter if your server is strong on weekends and can get an advantage, the other servers can easily catch up.

In my eyes revenge would affect matches that are now even more than other matches as the server that can organize the strongest Friday coverage wins.

Drakh.3128:

Glicko implemented properly works just fine. Before tiers were added and match-ups were random, it worked great. Creating tiers and arranging match-ups by glicko rating is where it all went terribly wrong. In order for it to work, all servers need to play regularly against all other servers. But people kittened about loosing to stacked servers when they should not have been concerned with winning or loosing, just doing better that match-up than glicko expected them to in order to gain points, or worse to loose points.

Having every server play against all others would result in a lot of very boring matchups and is not needed at all. Server strength is roughly transitive, meaning if server A is better than server B and B is better than server C you can conclude that A is also better than C without the two servers having to play against each other. The thing that should be worked on is to prevent servers becoming isolated (like NA T1 for some months). For every two servers there should be a way to compare them based on recent matches (no older than a few weeks).

The only problem I see is that a complete tier can be walled off, if the difference to the adjacent tiers is big enough. This way the 3 servers in that tier don’t have to compete with servers from other tiers.

FSP was just 50 points ahead of the 10th place, so the random part of the matchmaking put you in the 4th bracket, likewise Elona ended up in the 5th bracket. You will always have uneven matches, even if you have no random component at all, depending on the rating difference inside each bracket (e.g. 200 points difference between 16th and 18th place in the 6th bracket).

I noticed that the level of the vine crawlers partially differs quite a bit from the level of the area they are in, this is not the result of upscaling as their level is fixed for each spawning point (as far as I can tell). I’ve seen a level 26 crawler in a level 17 area which resulted in a lot of glancing hits and a very slow kill and I’ve seen a level 19 crawler in a level 23 area which resulted in a very fast kill, I doubt that this difference is intended.

There are a few problems I see with this event:

1. The incentive to just tag events and run to the next

You get one stack for each event you participate in whether you just kill a mob or stick with the event to the end. This could be resolved by granting stacks based on your reward level (e.g. 1 for bronze, 3 for silver, 5 for gold) or based on anything else measuring your participation and scale the rewards accordingly.

2. Getting to an event that finishes just before you’re there

When you pick the event you want to go to next you have very little indication of its current progress, so you might not get there before it is done which can be frustrating even without considering the time limit. To help players to estimate whether they get there in time these events could show how long they already are active (i.e. how much time other players had to get there) and how much life the crawler has left (e.g. full life, less than full more than half, less than half).

3. No rewards unless you stay the full time

Once you have passed a certain threshold there is only one thing that can deny you your reward and that is leaving the map (whether voluntarily or not), so why not just hand out the rewards once you’ve passed the threshold? To prevent people abusing this by getting the lowest reward over and over again, let people keep their stacks till the event is over.
In addition by having the thresholds for additional rewards so far apart there is an incentive to just stop doing events after you reached them, so having a system like 1 blossom for x events would give an incentive to do events till the end (e.g. 1 blossom for each event up to 10 stacks, 1 blossom for every 2 events from 11 to 20 stacks, 1 blossom for every 4 events from 21+ stacks).

Astralporing.1957:

It’s not that people can’t read. It’s that most people are not naturally suspicious, and when they look at informations like that they do not automatically start to think about what is not said, and about ways such things can be circumvented.

Now, if you are suggesting that whenever Anet says something we should parse the sentences and think of all the ways in which whatever has been said (and what has been omitted) is likely to bite us in the behind, then, considering the current case (and several previous ones) you are likely right. Of course, assuming such approach is needed is the best proof of what i have been saying – things like that are a very bad PR.

This actually reminds me of these ridiculous lawsuits that resulted in coffee being labeled as hot and microwaves being labeled not to use them for drying pets. I pre-purchased HoT and was never under the impression that this would grant me access to a WvW stress test they announced before; they even mentioned how they will pick the participants.

Ricky.4706:

right, and it would have been more enjoyable and clear as a Press Stress Test Event.

Then when people ask why they were not allowed in, anet could have simply said they weren’t ready to show it to the general public, they are only showing what they want to be promoted.

Completely clear and understandable, less the head games and word play. The only thing the head games and word play show me personally is that they are insecure.

a good product sells itself, do you really need to see a toilet paper commercial to get inspired to buy toilet paper ? no…those toilet paper commercials are to say …“Buy mine, not his!!”

I wouldn’t call inviting a bunch of streamers to broadcast live insecure and the only head games I see are from people who think that they should be for some reason in this stress test.

Ricky.4706:

again, the only issue as I see it, is that it’s a big bold announcement on their site, and in the login browser.

This can be construed as rubbing it in the faces of prepurchasers that are not allowed in.

I’m not a pre-purchaser, it’s just annoying to me, but i can’t take it like a ‘tease’ – i’d be way more upset if i had put faith in anet and the purchase. Fortunately i knew better this time around. lol

Of course they anounce it, it will be streamed by several people as far as I understand and there will be little those allowed in the stress test will see that we won’t so I’m very excited.

Ricky.4706:

you still don’t see the negative connotation though ? -

“That’s why they gave invitations to press people to deliver them as they see fit”
then the people that paid for the right to participate in those events aren’t fit ?

again, this isn’t bothering ‘me’ – i hate to admit i have an urge to listen to a benny hill theme song as i try to find a peaceful place all parties can be happy with. i just want my old guildwars back

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUYbu5DJA1U

Except that nobody paid for participation in this stress test, it was even announced before the prepurchase started how people will be selected.

It was announced that it will be like this 2 month ago even before prepurchase was available.
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/announcing-the-wvw-desert-borderlands-stress-tests/

There is currently one type of guild mission that can be soloed, this is the guild trek so even a solo guild will have the chance to get some favour.

Dawdler.8521:

I dont quite understand what you mean with the first part. Yes, if no one contest it, it will tick at 50% or lower. Thats the point of it not being contested. If you hold all the keeps and enemy is outmanned, its not a warzone. If the enemy hold all the keeps and you are outmanned… Its still not a warzone.

The problem I see is that this would punish a server for taking good care of their homelands (or any other map). What’s the point of upgrading everything to T3 and having scouts on the entire map if no one wants to come over and play and you are thus punished with reduced PPT, not because the enemy doesn’t have enough players, they just don’t want to go through the hassle of razing T3s. That’s why I prefer a single scaling modifier for all 4 maps, it helps servers who don’t have the manpower at a certain time, but it doesn’t help those who just don’t want to commit forces to a difficult map.

Dawdler.8521:

The abrupt jumps is because its supposed to be simple. Each border having three states. If you start to make it a smooth curve, its going to be incomprehensible. 34.9% ppt on red border, 78.2% ppt on green border, ugh… Seeing a boon saying “This region is at war! Full world points are earned from held keeps, camps and towers.” or “Only skirmishes has been reported in this zone, world points from keeps, camps and towers are halved.” is much better than one saying “There is currently 65 people in the zone which means points are earned at 72.45% rate of full”. Which do you prefer seeing in an immersive MMO?

GW2 already have a similar “boon” notification in the borderland bloodlust system, another reason that 3 states is simpler to understand in the current game.

Actually I wouldn’t show any hint on the current scaling factor, it would just result in people trying to manipulate it instead of playing the game which would break immersion much more. In my eyes a smooth curve is much less susceptible to manipulation than having just 3 states even if you don’t see them. In addition the difference between 50% total population and 50% – 1 player is negligible but halves PPT, which doesn’t seem right to me.

Dawdler.8521:

“Warzone”
Total population >= 50% and no side is outmanned. PPT = 100%

“Skirmish”
Total population > 25% or at least one side is outmanned. PPT = 50%

“Nighttime”
Total population <= 25%. PPT = 25%

If each map use this system, it should be simple and decently effective scaling of PPT.

While I prefer scaling PPT with the total player populatation there are two things I dislike.

First the per map character that means if no one wants to contest your homelands it will just tick with 50% (more likely 25% since one server has a hard time getting the total population above 25% when nothing is happening). I prefer to count in the total population over all 4 maps.

Secondly jumping from 25% to 50% and from 50% to 100% abruptly. I prefer a smooth scaling in this case.

In my eyes blocking the Border Lands when certain conditions are met (be it time or WvW-population) would be too drastic and would do little to solve the problem.

The approach I prefer is scaling the points from structures based on the current WvW-population in the matchup. To give an example (mainly for the sake of argument) I think of a linear function that is at 10% – 25% when no one is around and caps out at 100% at 2/3 of the total maximum population (e.g. when 2 servers fill all the maps and one server decides to stay at home).

One argument against scaling points is that it could be manipulated by withdrawing own players to reduce the opponents tick, but I don’t think this will work unless you use a function that has some hard jumps in it (e.g. jumping from 50% to 100% within a difference of a few players), but even than it would be hard to manipulate since players probably won’t know the exact point or the current WvW-population.

The other argument is that people who play during nighttime would count less than those who play during primetime. I firmly disagree with this argument, since the entire point of scaling the tick is to reduce how much more they count right now. In my last matchup the daytime pretty much provided a baseline and showed that all 3 servers were equally matched and nighttime capping ended up deciding the entire match. A strong nightshift will still be a significant advantage since it is able to raze T3s with just a few people where a few hours ago many more had failed.

The point of scaling the tick is to prevent a few people from distorting the (perceived) strength of a server and thus to better match servers of equal strength.

In the wake of the portal hunt in the Maguuma Wastes I spend some time in Dry Top usually doing the three events near the entrance (Tendrils, Serene, Basket) and helping Serene ended up vexing me quite a bit.

Escorting an NPC slowly walking through hostile territory never was one of my favourites, but that’s okay after all she just crashed down and maybe is still a bit dizzy and took a hit to the head or a few and I have to occupy myself for the next 5 min till the start of the next event or the sandstorm.

What I really find unnecessarily annoying is that whenever she sees opponents she rushes up to them and after they have been dispatched she slowly slinks back to where she left her track and only then resumes her walk. This is especially bad on her way to the last crystal where she walks around a small ledge and whenever she sees an opponent on the other side she runs around usually not even getting a hit on the mob because her player escort frantically tries to kill it before she moves any further from her track. This can take up to a few minutes if the mobs respawn at an unfavourable time.

In the end you try to kill the mobs on her way so that she doesn’t see them and so that they don’t respawn before she’s through the area, which feels to me rather like playing the system than the game.

In my eyes a simple way to fix this problem would be to either make her stop and cower whenever she sees an opponent or give her an attack with a range greater than or equal to her aggro range. It still won’t be the most popular event, but it will certainly be better.

The first thing I would like to note is that the current system performs quite differently in the task of making interesting (relevant) matchups and creating a ranking of the results.

The matches created involve servers that are close to one another, but the system has 2 blind spots and this is differentiating between the 3rd and the 4th place and between the 6th and the 7th place, this is due to the fact that these places usually swap positions without actually meeting.

The by far worse aspect of the current system is the resulting ranking. My 2 main objections are that it produces far more ties than there have to be and that the system is so unstable (in a very predictable way) that given there is a server that wins every match and a server that loses every match all matches prior to round 8 are completely irrelevant for the final result for all other servers.

In my eyes a very simple and elegant way of evaluating the matches is by using a directed graph and determining the score for one server against another as the maximum flow between these two servers. I will show this using the EU Silver league as an example.

First we make a table counting all direct victories between servers:
http://abload.de/img/wvwt1xsktj.jpg

The resulting graph shows a directed weighted edge from the winning server to the losing server:
http://abload.de/img/graphwvwsilver82bio.jpg

Before we determine the (indirect) score of each server against the others we remove all circles, in this case one for Abaddon and Gunner and one for Ring of Fire and Ranik (this doesn’t influence the final rating, but helps seeing interesting future matches).
The score is determined as maximum flow between two servers, for example Gandara only played once against Abaddon and won, but they also won 4 times against Shiverpeaks, who won twice against Abaddon, so Gandara’s score against Abaddon is 3.
http://abload.de/img/wvwt2okabj.jpg

We can see that the graph can resolve all but 2 ties from the current rating system and it also shows the next most interesting matchups, being Piken vs Abaddon vs Gunnar and Drakkar vs Aurora vs x, but these 2 matches would also mean that the leftover matchup would be rather boring, but then again every matchup in the Silver league involving Gandara and Shiverpeaks has proven to be boring (as far as the final result is concerned).