Guild Wars 2

Skeletor.9360:

TWO problems:

1.) When a server goes to bed or to work the other server has a off-peak time guild run the map fighting nobody and claiming PPT.

2.) Some servers simply win because they outnumber the other team 4 to 1.

THE PREMISE:

This is not supposed to be a PVE game mode. WvW is a player versus player game. Therefore there should be some linkage between score and players.

THE SOLUTION:

The solution to PPT abuses is to link PPT calculations to player ratios and player numbers.

The first linkage should be to total number of players on the map. If there are NO players on the map the PPT contribution from that map should be zero. If there are few on the map then the contribution is reduced. If there are say 20% of maximum then full PPT can be awarded. This prevents the zerg showing up…flipping all the items and then leaving. If they leave then as soon as there population goes down they lose their PPT.

If you are vastly outnumbering the enemy then your PPT should be reduced by a direct percentage of the population ratios. Twice as many players…half the ppt. Half the players twice the ppt. ZERGS will find that they will lose every match.

They can still have fun smacking 1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1 however and getting a hit on that 1 guy before he dies.

Pardon my confusion, but aren’t your two fixes in direct conflict with each other? #1 punishes for low population and #2 punishes for high population.

I find this whole thread hilariously delightful and ironic. Thieves complaining about another class?
Thieves who can one-shot burst almost every class?
Thieves who can stay stealthed over 50% of the time in combat?
Thieves who can easily escape the AOE nuke of a zerg desperately trying to locate them?
Thieves who regularly win 1v3s and cap towers solo?
Thieves who are the absolute darlings of Anet?

Are we really complaining that one class may just have a chance against thieves 1v1 if traited specifically for that purpose?

In its current state for my tier the idea of PPT is generally out (mainly due to a night capping issue between 1-5 am) and the fact that my server has had several guild departures causing a lack of coverage.

Despite our low numbers, my server has refocused on WvW with an emphasis on fun and fighting well as a server, and it’s been working out pretty well, including:

a) BL defense – we can still muster enough numbers to get our bl upgraded during the day and some of the best fights have been defending bay and hills from invaders; it also allows you to develop those roaming skills in small groups during the slow times.
b) mentoring and training nights – learning / re-learning to command and run as a unit
c) server “surge” night – mustering all the troops (on a non-reset night) for big fights and rolling over maps
d) theme nights – these are very fun nights; some examples: bearbow zerg, mesmer zergs, necro minion zerg, uplevel zergs, naked zergs; and last night we did a zerker zerg

Yeah, our server is still dropping in the rankings but since this refocusing, I’ve had some of the most enjoyable nights ever in WvW these past few weeks.

I would hardly call building omega golems siege trolling; at 3g per golem that is some of the most expensive trolling in history.

Is the keep fully upgraded? Or do your keeps flip often? Omegas might be much more valuable than a keep upgrade depending on the situation.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Check out the biggest blowout matchups for a week.

It’s settled then, he’s coming to IOJ (applies to every week).

Fudge.9527:

People are seriously defending Applied Fortitude / Strength? The mastery that gave you a ridiculous stat boost for what—-training down useless NPCs? And required you to grind out 230 mastery points in order to do so? You guys thought this mechanic made WvW better?

It should never have been added to the game in the first place. WvW was fine without it; I don’t ever remember anyone back then asking for an unnecessary grind in order to get a huge stat boost. Kudos to ANet for getting rid of it.

The bigger issue that nobody is talking about is that ACs are getting buffed YET AGAIN (5% damage modifier going up to 10%)

Well the mastery points are about the only signal of accomplishment we get in WvW (yeah I’m THAT close to getting Yakslapper, only 999,000 more yaks to go) and some of us did work to get those points, playing the game as it was presented to us. Now they moved the goal posts on us again and flushed our work down the drain and handing the reward out to everybody instead. Not exactly inspiring for continuing play.

Jim Hunter.6821:

So if you are on a server without a night crew look forward to waking up to your bl being fully upgraded by an enemy server…. Yay!

If they are going to do this they really need to bring back the “no white swords” thing or make upgrades take twice as long in enemy bl’s during off hours.

Yep exactly. And I can’t think of anything more fun than sitting around 2 or 3 times longer on a ram, cata or golem taking stuff back in an empty bl in the morning. This will greatly lower the reward rate in WVW by taking longer to re-flip.

Wait a minute; so they are basically making camps useless except for building siege and repairs? There will be no way to prevent upgrades by cutting off supply routes?

Also, I’m so happy I spent all that coin on boosters and spent hours and hours to get my rank up!

This may be radical but they need to do away with the server based system entirely (since servers mean nothing now anyways). Distribute guilds across matchups based on population and performance and have guild based ratings and reward systems.

He’s just using that new rune “Superior Rune of the Flash”

He’s actually leaving streaks in the video lol!

Welcome to T3. My server IOJ and NSP have been dealing with the endless T2 hordes for about 2 months now.

Err, did I read your post right? Guards CAN use hammers so a norn guard shouldn’t be a problem for you.

Naus the Gobbo.5172:

Black Frog.9274:

if i could kick the designer in the nuts, i surely would

This. It is litterally impossible for me to do this.

I have not been this frustrated since Crab Toss.

I found this fight to be much easier than the Pale Tree dragon fight (after I figured out I needed the flame to kill the shadow things). It could be due also to the addition of sigil of energy to my weapons, which made evasion much easier.

So, if you could do the fight with the dragon at the pale tree, this one should be easier.

phirefox.2568:

Jim Hunter.6821:

Maybe the better argument is that they should remove all the random npc’s that get in the way of combat. I personally hate when I’m fighting 1vX and I watch someone rally off a firefly because I can’t get in for the stomp. Who knows, it might even take some strain off the servers and make WvW a little less laggy.

this so much. Or, if a-net doesn’t want to, at least limit the rally-up mechanic to deaths of enemy players

I think that retargeting may be the biggest issue with stealth enemies, esp with NPCs around. Many times by the time I cycle back through all the targets the thief is stealthed again.

One easy solution to that is to have automatic retargeting once stealth comes off (ie you target a thief and he stealths, your targeting of him will pop back up automatically when he comes back out as long as you don’t retarget anything else.)

AnniMira.2506:

To me WvW is too often instant “Game Over!”. E.g., just before posting this, a thief got 95% of my health with one hit. I had been 3 minutes in WvW. I rather would like to play the game longer.

Classes should be modified so that nobody can do instakills. Longer fights. Longer gameplay.

Alternatively the game should have a difficulty level. Those who like instakills would play with level “hard” and we the rest would play with level “casual”. Perhaps in different WvW maps if the idea causes somebody to rage.

Shhhh! I just made a Medi-guard thief killer ! Don’t ruin it for me!

Karizee.8076:

Hamster.4861:

Karizee.8076:

Hamster.4861:

Karizee.8076:

Just a couple months back the problem was with T2. It appears to be moving down the ladder.

the problem is still with T2. We are just the ones who deal with the consequences. There are 4 T2 servers, and 2 of them are cycling the other two in and out of the matchup, and we get to deal with it.

T2 is actually really great right now, very good, tight matches. A couple months back we saw the lopsided matches that are now in T3, natural selection moved more servers up to take Maguuma’s place, the cycle will continue. The only issue is how long it take Glicko to react to these changes.

you seem to be missing the point – there are 4 servers with the glicko and coverage to be in T2. There are 3 slots for T2. SoS may be crumbling a wee bit. We’ll see if they tumble. Even so, it will be another few weeks, maybe even 6 weeks that we’ll have horridly unbalanced matchups

I understand completely. A couple months back we had lopsided matches in T2, we now have lopsided matches in T3. The issue is how long it takes Glicko to react.

Some people seem to expect tiers to remain static, that believe things are “broken” if they change. I posted this a couple weeks ago showcasing the changes over the last year.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/2014-Server-rank-changes/first#post4666374

So in theory, movement will most likely come from T3 guilds moving down and strengthening a lower tier server until it reaches T2 strength? Once this happens to two lower tier servers, a new balanced T3 emerges.

Unfortunately, this means IOJ and NSP will suffer heavily from departures by guilds moving down to avoid the slaughter.

The alternative is for people to move into IOJ and NSP, but that is not going to be an exciting option for most. But hey, if you love being outnumbered and fighting hopeless battles 300 style, come on over!

Hamster.4861:

It’s been like this for something like 9 weeks. The T3 that everyone remembers – where there are map politics, decent sized zergs on all sides – this is dead. It died with CD a few months ago.

What we have now is now is entirely guild driven. Our PPT comes up when there are guilds rallied on the field- and when they call their rallies, it drops back down. There are no pugs/militia left. They only tolerate getting steamrolled by GvG guilds once or twice before they call it for the week. If all of the guilds work together to push a map – we can queue one map, compared to green, who can queue 4 at once -and deeply too.
http://www.gw2wvw.net/sites/default/files/gw106_2.jpg

It’s like trying to part the ocean, but the ocean tries to sneak 15 people on top of your garrison to build arrow carts to kill the 15-20 defenders trying to fend off a queued map. The population difference is really, really clear.

Good God, that picture explains a lot.

Kanebrake.6192:

ChoChoBo.6503:

Sigh…

I think IoJ and NSP have pretty much given up. They’re tanking and its not deliberate.

It was even more devastating because of the Sneak Attack, everything felt more hopeless in T3 against big brother Green.

Rather than merge servers, maybe a merge Tiers would be a better option. T1+T2 where T1green and T2blue are allied in one corner, T1red and T2red are in another corner and T1blue and T2green are together in the last corner. And you do this for all the other Tiers. T3+T4, T5+T6, etc.

This allows for weekly alliances where you team up with higher Tiered/“skilled” wvw servers and lower Tiered/“ranked” servers.

I don’t know about IoJ but NSP has not given up. Yes we lack the numbers to fight against the kind of coverage a t2 server brings but no one to my knowledge has given up. At least I’m seeing no overt signs of it.

I can’t speak for IOJ’s major WvW guilds as I typically only roam. My guild does do runs twice a week; we didn’t do too bad holding our BL on reset night but it took a large amount of our population just to hold BL while EB went completely green and has been ever since.

Our guild run last night was less successful as we tried to breach the fully upgraded and impenetrable keeps in the FA borderlands. Having waypoints in keeps is a big bonus and I think FA has had a waypoint in our Bay for most of the week.

As the week has progressed, our tick has gotten worse and worse (we were actually ticking ZERO for some time yesterday), so I’m guessing our major guilds may have lowered their activity in hopes of dropping down a tier. Or it may just be that upgrades and numbers have made it impossible to take much back and keep it.

I would also guess that the return of white swords will make the situation worse, not better, since FA has the coverage and the waypoints to defend almost everywhere.

Aww c’mon, I’m at 999,998 yaks killed right now! Don’t change it! /sarc

Novuake.2691:

Guys guys guys, can we PLEASE just remember this is a TEST run.

ALL tiers of play are broken, even AG is winning consistently vs servers we never used to because of individual commie play styles being based around “white swords” or not.

So there are BOUND to be some crazy balancing issues that ANET could not POSSIBLY have guessed at before the test started.

No, this is not a white swords issue; the two T3 servers have been getting demolished by the 4 T2 servers for the past 9 weeks. None of the T2 servers want to stay in T3 so they go all out in crushing us to get back up as high as they can into T2.

The T3 matchup is completely broken right now, making WVW unplayable for 2 of the 3 servers (actually 3 of 3 probably). FA is currently winning by a 6 to 1 margin; the largest I’ve seen yet.

I would avoid EB totally for the near future and concentrate on your BL or EOTM until something changes with the matchups.

Unfortunately for you, my server IOJ is winning the race to the bottom to get out of T3. Those poor souls in HoD don’t know what they are in for when they pass us up.

Regarding a few of your issues:

Downleveling – Trust me, when you are level 80 with top notch gear and traits and return to a lower level area, you will notice a difference.

Society – You are correct that leveling is pretty much an individual activity in PVE (at least it was in my case). Once you reach the higher levels and get to places like Orr and the Silverwastes, that changes, as coordination is required for progressive successful events. I’ve also noticed a lot more communication with the new PVE event dailies that are restricted to a certain map zone.

And a few of the world bosses like Teq require coordination other than the mob blasting away. In my case, most of my interaction comes from guild related activities. WvW also requires A LOTof coordination and interaction.

Mining – I’m not sure how well the “old” concept would work with megaservers. I have a feeling everything would be stripped clean at all times whenever you entered a map.

Edit: reading above reminded me that I have made several friends just doing an “lfg” on the world boss tour (you supposedly get better drops partied up); we stuck together through several bosses and now I have someone to ping in my contacts for PVE and dungeon activities.

OP, my guild has a PVP room that people jump into to get the dailies done without any combat (unless someone needs a kill for the daily). I would suggest finding a similar guild with this setup.

Also, most of the WvW dailies aren’t bad to do if you just follow along with the zerg. Try jumping into EB or EOTM once in a while.

Need for gold = Gem purchases = money for ANet

And that is why the market, precursor drop rate etc… will not change unless GW2 switches to subscriptions.

And sure, they could add craftable precursors, but I’m guessing it will still cost 1500 gold’s worth of materials to craft it, so what difference does it make?

This week marks 7 out of 8 weeks that both T3 servers are getting beat down 3to1 by a T2 server with a Glicko rating nearly 300 points higher than us. There happen to be four T2 servers and only two T3 servers, and it is not fun for all parties, I’m guessing.

With no white swords, the new procedure for gameplay in WVW for me is to

a) go to home bl
b) watch everything turn to the T2 server color
c) patiently wait for the “outnumbered” buff to disappear
d) gather up the 4-5 people on the map and reflip everything
e) repeat

There are rare occasions where guild runs will give us the numbers to fight for things in our bl, but the default is sitting and watching the enemy zerg move around the map. Anybody throwing defensive siege down in an environment like this is crazy. It’s a total waste.

EB is not really an option and has stayed rather monochrome all week; my server can’t even take their own keep back.

Since this isn’t much fun, the problem exacerbates itself, with fewer people getting into WvW.

If they aren’t going to change the server model, my idea above of giving huge buffs to servers getting badly beaten is the only other thing I can think of. If 5 people can beat a 15 man zerg due to buffs, people may become interested again to experience that.

I saw queues for the first time on our server during the fall tourney but that didn’t last long. We don’t even have much for queues on reset night any more (Tier3). This sounds like a Tier1/2 problem only.

The delineation of the top seven servers to the rest is quite clear, as my poor server (IOJ) and NSP have discovered these past few weeks (having to play servers 200-300 points higher in Glicko rating).

So, if you hate queues, move out of the top 7 servers and you will have free reign, its as simple as that!

We had a problem with +5 last night but it was temporary.

Goose.8195:

Drink beer while playing. That’s pretty much how I did all of map completion without it getting old.

Well, drinking beer is a given for pretty much everything in life and should always be assumed.

Is he leveling up? My understanding is that leveling up a new character is no longer much fun with all the limitations. Perhaps personal story or exploring with him until he is leveled enough for pvp / wvw or dungeons?

Pug / militia zergs will always have trouble surviving vs organized/guild zergs because of all the details listed above. If at all possible get in TS so you can hear your cmndr as he will call for water and the like and will help you avoid the bursts better.

If that isn’t possible, stick as close to the tag as you can and try to get general sense of the empowering/stability/attacking/healing cycle going on.

Back to your original question though; check out the meta builds for guard and warrior for survivability; My guard doesn’t win many 1v1 fights, but I don’t lose many either; It can be quite funny having 2-3 enemies trying to bring your guardian down as you slllllooowwwwly make your way to a safe point.

I would agree that it is highly dependent on what you are doing. In a zerg if you want to live, you will probably be relegated to a support role. I classify survivable warriors and guardians as “support” in a zerg since they act as the meat shields to protect the dps classes. I do run with a GS on my guard to get some licks in now and then, but staff and altruistic healing is your friend for surviving (and for your party to survive) as a guard.

Also, I’ve been told several times that healing power is a useless attribute but I found it makes a huge difference in survivability, esp. with regen builds.

And I’ve noticed that condi damage is becoming more prevalent in WVW so you need decent condi clearing and stability to live and fight. If you are being melted down, I’m guessing its because you are being stunned and bombed.

I would agree with some variations of the above:

1) Make some new NPCs and different types of upgrades, – wouldn’t it be interesting to have a champ escorting yaks or plop a dragon at a chokepoint? Or how about building your own walls?

2) Have more chokepoints into defensible zones to encourage fights; people complaining about a lack of swords would have set areas where a legitimate defense could be mounted instead of “guessing” which tower will get hit next or running around a huge wall trying to see what is getting hit. It should get harder and harder the further you get into somebody else’s territory (perhaps making camps non-flippable to stretch supply lines for an invader?) This MAY aid lower populations in keeping their game fun instead of sitting by hopelessly watching their entire bl turn over due to lack of coverage. As the above mentioned; maybe you need to take the enemy keep in EB to even gain access to their BL? (or something to that effect).

3) Make a neutral zone that means something. Right now ruins give a slight buff but overall are not really important. Make some zones that you need to conquer that give interesting buffs to aid you. These zones would also be gathering points for fights. Stonemist? Flush it for something more interesting and useful.

4) Daily reset: This may be a bit out there, but to help with balance, the leader at the end of each day should be put at a disadvantage and the maps reset. This would keep it interesting for servers getting crushed or suffering from low populations. A bad day can be forgotten, and if the losing teams are getting huge buffs, they can have fun getting some vengeance against the hordes that had rolled them over the previous day. If the horde wins again, the buffs get larger. I would think this would make it more fun for the dominant server too as it will give them some challenge and an interested opponent

5) Map variation and randomization – This may be difficult to pull off, but part of what makes WVW tiresome is the same old maps and the same old opponents every week. Add some randomization to the maps so invasion pathways and enemy strongholds need to re-discovered. This would probably need to coincide with the daily reset.

You forgot:

- When the commander lays down rams in front of a gate, be sure to dump every trebuchet print you have in your inventory right on top of them.

I’m guessing they are using WvW servers for Wintersday events again like they did for Halloween.

briggah.7910:

sephiroth.4217:

briggah.7910:

If this test event just brought out more K-Training on your server, well sorry to say but sounds to me your server is just a K-Train server to begin with. Sounds to me your server lacks decent roamers and scouters.

Let me guess.. Before this change you all stack on a commander and run around taking things while reacting to white swords on the map? Now with no white swords your stuff gets constantly flipped? YUP K-train server. Break out of your zerg for once..

.

Erm, no not really… I is on IOJ in [DOLO], and before the change we were only using white swords for fights… As for stacking on a commander… LOL, what commanders haha

Well we fought IoJ the week before this no white sword thing and I can tell you I solo/duo’ed a few of your towers when swords were in play. I did it to bring out fights which never came.. Like I said lack of scouts and roamers as far as I can see.

Truth be told, IOJ WVW population is pretty sparse, spare a few dedicated guilds who normally work in EB.

I’ve read complaints about IOJ “hiding in their towers” but in reality those towers are probably empty save 4-5 people patrolling in the BL.

At least with white swords, those 4-5 people could run and attempt a defense with siege while the EB float team moved over to defend (ending in the cherished group vs group fight)

Now without white swords, the 4-5 roamers have to see what flips and go flip it back or try to organize into a single group to flip it or wait for a zerg to show up to flip it back. (All with 5 minute wait times). Not much fighting going on with that dynamic.