Guild Wars 2

We are aware of the bug and are working on a fix for it.

To clarify you won’t be able to activate them while in combat.

So if you are transformed then enter combat you will not transform back to your regular model. So you can still fight as a kodan if you activate it before the fight.

We are aware of the Kodan tonic ‘spam’ and the use of tonics in WvW to trigger weapon-swap effects. I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up that in the next update the Endless Kodan Tonic will have a 5 second cool down and will not be useable while in combat. We also plan to make it so you can’t use any tonics in combat going forward, but that will be coming in a later update since doing this work to all tonics in the game is going to take more time to implement and test.

11/11/16

We made several temporary Glicko rating adjustments for today’s reset:
• Far Shiverpeaks: -100
• Seafarer’s Rest: +100
• Gunnar’s Hold: +150
• Jade Quarry: +100
• Dragonbrand: +150

These adjustments were made to help adjust worlds into tiers where they will experience more competitive matches.

The team will update this thread with new temporary glicko adjustments going forward.

Blackgate and Jade Quarry both opened because they were below the population cap. Blackgate currently has a smaller population than Jade Quarry and some of the combined linked worlds populations (combined linked worlds population example being Crystal Desert + Darkhaven + Devona’s Rest combined has a higher population than Blackgate). With all that being said, we do keep track of the transfers that happen. Since we have been seeing an increase in transfer behavior with the past 2 world links, we are discussing whether we want to change how we calculate WvW world populations or if we want to lower the WvW population caps.

Thanks for the feedback everyone! It still seems like there is a general lack of interest in the idea, so we’ll pass on it again.

The poll has ended! The final results are:
60.1% WvW Scoring Improvements Phase 2
39.9% WvW Matchmaking Improvements
This means that the WvW team’s next big priority will be adding rewards to Skirmishes and improving the Skirmish UI. Thanks to everyone who voted!

Since a lot of nameplate suggestions are coming up in this thread I figured I would let everyone know that the simple nameplate feature will be coming. Simple nameplates will be an option to replace either enemy or everyone’s names with a colored icon – red, green, or blue – and the only thing that will show besides the colored icon is the guild tag and commander tag. We want to reduce nameplate clutter in WvW and not add to it, which is why a nameplate suggestion was not one of the 3 proposed solutions. Also it should be noted that titles do not display in WvW (outside of a soon to be fixed bug where they display to squad members.) So displaying your world name through the title system would not be a good solution either.

World Linking would still exist in the new world system. For example, maybe the current world links for EU would be the same but now Kodash, Jade Sea, and Seafarer’s Rest are now linked with a new empty world (we would probably have done different links but just to give everyone an idea).

If players on the bigger worlds don’t transfer but other worlds do, we could still end up with better pieces to create more balanced matchups. For example say World 1 is 120% of our population goal and World 2 is 100% and our smallest world is 50%. If we were to link the smallest world with World 2, then World 2 would be at 150% and now is much bigger than World 1 creating a matchup that isn’t competitive. However, if the smallest world split their population creating a new small world that is 20% we would have a better world to link with World 2.

Tiers would still remain the same as they are currently. We wouldn’t be adding new tiers along with the new worlds.

We wouldn’t force players to move worlds but stacked worlds would have a high chance of never opening for transfers again since we would be lowering the population player cap on all worlds. So for example in NA worlds like Blackgate and Jade Quarry would stay “Full” and wouldn’t be open for transfers unless player started to transfer off.

We could achieve more balanced competition in a world-versus-world setting if we had more pieces to join together with the World Linking System. It currently is not possible for us to establish an “equal” number of players on each link/world with the current world sizes. You may recall this initially was mentioned by Tyler a few months ago.

For example, world populations currently look something like this:
• World 1: 95%
• World 2: 82%
• World 3: 81%
• World 4: 60%
• World 5: 30%
• World 6: 10%

Since our final world total needs to be divisible by 3 because we need a team for each color—Red, Blue, and Green—we either need to avoid linking any of the worlds, or link some worlds even if the result is that they have the advantage of a larger population.

• Worlds 1+6: 105%
• Worlds 2+5: 112%
• Worlds 3+4: 141%

After linking, the difference in population between the highest and lowest teams is much narrower, but the third rank server still has significantly more population than the server that previously was ranked first. Also, the result of this theoretical world linking is that all worlds are now above our goal population cap, and probably have moderate to heavy queues.

If we instead had twice as many worlds, but if each had about half the population, it would be much easier to create linked teams with similar populations. This would lead to better matchups for everyone, and encounters would be less predictable. In this scenario, we would allow players free transfers to the new empty worlds for a period of time. These worlds would start out linked so that they wouldn’t begin in an empty state in a match-up. We would lower the player population cap on all worlds so that more worlds would become and stay “Full.” The result would be that guilds that want to expand would have an excellent option to do so with a move to these new open worlds.

Having outlined some of the thinking behind this proposal, we’d like your feedback on these three topics.
1. How do you feel about this proposal?
2. What, if anything, would you change about this current proposal?
3. Would you be interested in transferring to a new free world?

The team has been looking at ways to improve the server identity within the World Linking System. We have come up with several potential solutions, and we’d like your feedback on them.

Solution 1: Alliance Names Proposal

Every time worlds are linked, an alliance name would be generated for the linked worlds.
• Names would be generated from a pool of names that we create.
• Once a name is being used it would not be used again until the pool ran out of names.
• NA and EU would not share the same names.
• An alliance name would be preserved until every name in the pool of names was used. For example, the linked worlds of Crystal Desert and Eredon Terrace would always share the same alliance name until all names in the pool were used.
• The alliance name would be used instead of the host world’s name in almost all areas of the UI. Specifically, it will be used as the map name, the name that shows up when something is captured, and the name on the mist war panel. On the mist war panel, the + would continue to list all the worlds in the alliance.

Solution 2: Guild Focused Proposal

Instead of having an alliance name, worlds would be referred to by their color.
• The borderlands would now be called Red Desert Borderlands Green Alpine Borderlands, or Blue Alpine Borderlands.
• The color designation would replace the “host” world’s name in almost all areas except within announcements.
• When objectives were captured, the name of the guild that contributed most when capturing the objective would be displayed. For example, “Objective Captured! [Guild Name] has captured [objective name].”

Solution 3: Some Guest Names Proposal

In areas where there is more player involvement, such as capturing objectives, guest world names may appear.
• When objectives are captured it would now display the guest world’s name: “Objective Captured! [Guest World Name] has captured [objective name].”
• The map name would remain the host world’s name.
• We would not display guest world names to enemies because we believe that would make fighting enemies more confusing since it would be harder to tell which world you were fighting.

Questions:
1. Which proposal is your favorite?
2. What, if anything, would you change about any of the current proposals?
3. Is there another proposal you think is better?

The crashes are being caused by the Ghostly Outfit and we are aware of the issue: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Ghostly-Outfit-Issue/first#post6378552

This maintenance is for NA only.

The WvW team will be performing WvW maintenance on October 25, 2016, at approximately 11 AM PDT as we migrate WvW match data. We expect that there will be no downtime involved. If issues arise, we will update this thread. Otherwise, we will update the thread once the maintenance is complete.

We will be disabling WvW for a brief maintenance period on October 24, 2016 starting at approximately 11 AM PDT. We will update this thread to let you know when WvW has been briefly disabled, and again when it has been re-enabled.

As a reminder, we held a poll 2 months ago and the community voted to beta deployable cannons: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Poll-18-July-Cannon-Blueprints-Closed/page/3#post6252969

We are going to make several temporary Glicko rating adjustments for tomorrow’s resets.

Northern Shiverpeaks: +150
Northern Shiverpeaks has been leading tier 4 for the past several weeks and we believe that moving them to tier 3 will create more competitive matches for tier 4 and tier 3. This adjustment will give Northern Shiverpeaks ~72% to move to tier 3 and ~28% to move to tier 2.

Dragonbrand: -150
Dragonbrand is not very competitive at tier 3 and we believe moving them to tier 4 will give them a better chance at being competitive. This adjustment will give Dragonbrand ~83% to move to tier 4 and ~17% to stay in tier 3.

Yak’s Bend: replace +150 with +75
We believe the +150 adjustment to Yak’s Bends is now too high. They still need a slight adjustment to remain in tier 1 where they are competitive so we believe adjusting it to be +75 is more balanced. This adjustment will give Yak’s Bend ~64% to stay in tier 1 and ~36% to move to tier 2.

We evaluated EU matchups as well. Riverside, Drakkar Lake, Jade Sea, and Vizunah Square are the worlds that could be adjusted for potentially more competitive matchups. However, those worlds have good enough odds to move on reset without any adjustments so we decided to not make any temporary adjustments for EU at this time.

The poll has ended! The final results are:

51.4% – Yes
48.6% – No

Since “Yes” did not receive the required 75% of the vote, we will not be adding repair hammers to the game. Thank you to everyone who voted!

We wanted to clear up some of the information in this thread.

The Battlegroup system mentioned in a previous post in this thread was part of an old discussion with alpha testers which then was leaked by someone who no longer is in the program. In the past, we would propose systems/ideas to our alpha testers to help gauge player opinion. However, as you know, the WvW Team since has moved to posting these discussions on the official forums.

For further information, the response of the alpha testers to the Battlegroup concept was very mixed, similar to the responses in this thread. Additionally, it would also have been a huge undertaking to build that system, and we ultimately decided it wasn’t the correct route to go.

In contrast, World Linking utilized a lot of existing tech and required considerably less time to construct, meaning we could move on to addressing other core issues in WvW much more quickly. Even though there is a lot of debate around World Linking, it is “easier” to change and adjust unlike other systems that have been discussed. With all that being said, the team does appreciate the feedback and discussion happening in this thread and will continue to evaluate World Linking feedback and make adjustments as necessary.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to address the idea of moving world linking to monthly instead of every 2 months, since it is being brought up more and more frequently.

The team isn’t opposed to this idea; we actually think it would be beneficial to move to monthly because it would allow us to iterate faster on how we are calculating which worlds should be linked. However, the main reason for not doing this right now is the matchmaking algorithm, Glicko. Each time we shuffle worlds via world linking it takes about 4 weeks’ worth of matches before Glicko begins to reliably match make those new worlds into balanced matches. If we did world linking monthly, Glicko would not be able to create balanced matchups.

Our next priority poll is going to be asking if players would rather have us work on adding rewards to skirmishes (and possibly other feedback items being collected from this thread) or replace Glicko matchmaking with a 1-up 1-down system (wherein the winner moves up a tier and the loser moves down a tier.) The 1-up 1-down system should work better with monthly linkings than Glicko, so we are most likely going to hold off on 1 month linkings until that system is in.

Another possibility we could pursue is 1 month linkings, but use the Glicko offset system to guarantee the matches. Alternatively, we could manually change Glicko ratings to what we believe they should be for each world. Either option would force worlds to start out closer to being in the correct tier and thus give better matches faster. These options are contentious, so even if everyone on the forums seemed to like this idea it would be something we would poll on.

Changing the number of Victory Points (VP) awarded for Skirmish placement is something we are considering. So far we’ve intentionally held off changing the live values (3/2/1), to avoid altering too many variables at once. First, we wanted to see how, if at all, WvW play patterns would evolve just with the addition of Skirmish scoring, before making any further iterations on specific VP values. That said, internally, we’ve been graphing-out current match results, using various sets of adjusted VP scoring to see how, if at all, existing match results would change when scored using updated values. We have also been investigating if adding something like a time-of-day or population-based scoring multiplier would have any noticeable impact on match results. For those interested, so far it hasn’t. Worlds who have been winning are still winning even if we added the time-of-day multiplier, but we will continue to evaluate if it will make a difference.

On September 9th we added Skirmishes to the game. Now that everyone has had a chance to play them, what are your thoughts on Skirmishes? If there is anything, what would you like to see changed/added?

It’s a bug with victory points. You can find more information here.

Hey everyone,

We adjusted Yak’s Bend rating by +150 so they would move out of tier 3.

There is a problem, possibly related to the new changes involved with scoring the match’s end by Victory Points instead of War Score.

We are investigating.

We will be retiring the Garnet Sanctum achievement in the next release.

You can post the information in this thread or PM me

The 6-5-4 score is because everyone started with 3 Victory Points. We will be fixing it so that everyone starts with 0 Victory Points but this change won’t be in for a few weeks.

Hello everyone,

I know a lot of EU players are asking why Far Shiverpeaks is linked with Whiteside Ridge and Fissure of Woe so I figured I would clear up why this link was made.

Our goal with World Linking is good matches. This doesn’t necessarily mean that worlds in tier 4 are intended to be competitive with worlds in tier 1, but ideally every world in tier 4 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 4 and likewise every world in tier 1 should be competitive with the other worlds in tier 1. It would be nice if worlds in tier 4 were competitive with tier 1, but it’s not realistic since the distribution of players across worlds is not consistent. The issue is compounded in EU, due to the fact that we are avoiding linking worlds with different languages. For example, there is only one Spanish world, so they’ll never be linked and thus might never be competitive in tier 1 worlds. Similarly making each set of German worlds have equivalent populations has proved equally impossible because if we were to link them they would have a much higher population than other worlds, making match-ups against them not competitive.

Far Shiverpeaks was linked with two worlds because we needed a third world that would have similar population to the French worlds, specifically Jade Sea and Vizunah Square so that the matchup could be competitive. Far Shiverpeaks, Whiteside, Ridge, and Fissure of Woe linked together gave us the best population to create competitive match-ups for that tier.

It is also important to keep in mind that this is the very first week of match-ups and it will take time before glicko adjusts worlds into their correct tiers.

Here are the worlds for NA:

• Dragonbrand
• Blackgate
• Jade Quarry
• Tarnished Coast & Kaineng
• Maguuma & Borlis Pass
• Fort Aspenwood & Sanctum of Rall
• Sea of Sorrows & Isle of Janthir
• Stormbluff Isle & Gate of Madness
• Yak’s Bend & Ferguson’s Crossing
• Crystal Desert & Sorrow’s Furnace & Anvil Rock
• Henge of Denravi & Ehmry Bay & Eredon Terrace
• Northern Shiverpeaks & Darkhaven & Devona’s Rest

Worlds have now been re-linked.

We have reset glicko volatility and deviation for all worlds to the same value, but have left their rating unchanged (this includes worlds that were previously guest worlds but are now host worlds). Just to reiterate, resetting glicko volatility and deviation will result in greater rating shifts in the first few matches. This will give worlds the opportunity to move into their ideal matchup tier much faster.

Here are the worlds for EU:
• Desolation (EN)
• Far Shiverpeaks & Whiteside Ridge & Fissure of Woe (EN)
• Gandara & Underworld (EN)
• Jade Sea & Arborstone (FR)
• Piken Square & Blacktide (EN)
• Kodash (DE)
• Drakkar Lake & Miller Sound (DE)
• Riverside (DE)
• Seafarer’s Rest & Ruins of Surmia (EN)
• Baruch Bay (ES)
• Vizunah Square & Augury Rock & Fort Ranik (FR)
• Elona Reach (DE)
• Aurora Glade & Ring of fire (EN)
• Abaddon’s Mouth & Dzagonur (DE)
• Gunnar’s Hold & Vabbi (EN)

Our immediate focus, besides scoring, was to bring the Desert Borderlands map back, in the mixed borderland setup, that the community recently voted for.

Now that both maps are available to players, at all times, we can begin deciding if we want bloodlust to become a feature in Desert.

We didn’t want to release Desert and scoring at the same time because we wanted to reduce the risk of something going wrong.

That being said, we are still testing how the scoring changes will impact performance and it is still our top priority.

We have a change that is going in (probably not today, but tomorrow, since we are trying to solve the soulbound issue) that should fix shrines if they end up in a state where they work for the wrong team.

Hello everyone,

I wanted to let you know that the mixed borderlands will be coming with Tuesday’s release! This means that the red borderlands will now always be the Desert Borderlands and blue and green borderlands will always be the Alpine Borderlands. Changing the map will require an estimated 45-90 minutes of WvW downtime around the time of the release. This change also requires us to end the match early (on the Tuesday before the release), and run a new match from Tuesday to Friday. As a reminder, that Friday is also when new world links will be happening.

Hey everyone,

The walls not appearing correctly allowing some to walk through is a known bug that will be fixed in the next release.

Also, the Wildcreek and Rogue’s Quarry changes were deliberate.

Thanks for the continued feedback everyone!

Repair Hammers will be disabled in the next release. You will be able to sell them to earn your money back if you have not used them by then. We will hold a poll after they are disabled to determine if they should be added back into the game, possibly with tweaks, as a permanent feature.

Hey everyone,

After reading through the comments and feedback, and some deliberation among the team – we have decided to adjust Crystal Desert by +300 for this match only, making them more likely to advance out of tier 4. Next week we will adjust them to +200.

Hello everyone,

As Chris mentioned last week here, we are going to be manually adjusting Glicko ratings during tomorrows reset for the purpose of improving matchmaking. We will be temporarily adjusting Crystal Desert, Sorrow’s Furnace, and Darkhaven rating by +200, so that they are closer in rating to other NA worlds, giving them a better chance to adjust out of tier 4. Tomorrow after reset the following ratings for Tier 3 and Tier 4 worlds should look something like this:

Tier 3
• Yak’s Bend: 1,864
• Stormbluff Isle: 1,765
• Sea of Sorrows: 1,770

Tier 4
• Crystal Desert: 1,519 + 200 = 1,719
• Sorrow’s Furnace: 1,414 + 200 = 1,614
• Darkhaven: 1,343 + 200 = 1,543

It is important to keep in mind that these adjustments are not permanent and that these are invisible adjustments to anything but matchmaking. If you have further questions, I recommend reading Chris’s forum posts in the thread I linked above for more information. Also, we will not be making any adjustments to EU at this time.

The poll has ended! After removing all votes for “Don’t Count My Vote” the finale results are:

56.6% Yes, Cannon Blueprints should be introduced on a trial basis.

43.4% No, I don’t believe deployable cannons would have a positive impact on the game.

This means that the team will add cannon blueprints on a trial basis to the game and will hold a follow-up poll to determine if cannon blueprints should become a permanent feature of the game. Thank you to everyone who voted!

Thanks for creating this thread! I will keep an eye on it for potential things people want to try .

DBL won’t be back on the 26th. We are shooting for late August right now.

Thanks for creating this thread! I’ll keep following it and add some of these to the QoL section for the next priorities poll.

The poll has ended! After removing all votes for “Don’t Count My Vote” the finale results are:

59.6% Yes, Repair Hammers should be introduced on a trial basis.

40.4% No, I don’t believe repair hammers would have a positive impact on the game.

This means that the team will add Repair Hammers on a trial basis to the game and will hold a follow-up poll to determine if repair hammers should become a permanent feature of the game. Thank you to everyone who voted!

Answering more questions:

1. Does the repair hammer work on all siege? Yes, it will work on all siege.
2. Can siege be manned while being repaired? In the current design, yes, one person can be using the siege while another person is repairing it.
3. Does it require supply? Yes, you can only use the repair hammer if you have supply.
4. How much supply will it cost to repair siege? In the current design, it costs the same amount of supply to repair siege as it does to create the siege. Example: it takes 40 supply to create an arrow cart it would also take about 40 supply to repair an arrow cart that is close to having 0 health.
5. Are there restrictions on repair hammers, for example only allowing 1 person to repair 1 siege for x period of time, etc.? In the current design there are no restrictions besides needing supply, however; if this does make it into the game on a trail basis and we receive a lot of feedback that repair hammers would be great if they only had x restrictions (and the restrictions are something we can feasibly do) restrictions could be added.

Also when I say “current design” this means that those things could be subject to change.

Hey everyone,

I wanted to answer and clarify some of the questions and concerns I’ve seen in the thread so far.

1. What is meant by “standard majority” and “super majority”? When we say something is decided by a “standard majority”, we are saying that the winning choice is decided by a majority vote. When we say something is decided by a “super majority”, we are saying that the winning choice must have at least 75% of the votes.

2. Why is this vote using “standard majority”? This is because you are voting to add the hammers into the game as a trial to test and play with them. Then after folks have had time to play with and experience the hammers, and decide if they like or dislike them – we will hold a second poll for the hammers requesting a “super majority” vote to keep the hammers as a permanent aspect of WvW.

3. How will repair hammers work? The current design is that you will be able to purchase the repair hammer from the tricks and traps vendor. When you consume the hammer it will replace your weapon skills with 1 skill that allows you to repair any siege. If you drop the hammer or die you will need to consume another repair hammer to use the repair hammer skill.

4. Why aren’t repair hammers part of the repair master ability line? If this item is voted to be a permanent feature of the game it will be added to the repair master ability line as a final pip. However, for the trial (the current poll) it will not be part of the ability line because it becomes harder for us to disable the item if it is attached to an ability line, and we need to be able to disable anything easily that is in beta. Also, repair hammers will work with the current repair master ability line; so for example if you are maxed out on the ability line you can spend 10 supply at once repairing siege with the repair hammer.

5. How much development time is spent on repair hammers? I’ll start with some backstory on repair hammers; they have been nearly complete for a couple years now but we had decided to never add them in game due to not having a way to properly test their impact on live. Now that we can beta this change on live and can disable them if players are unhappy, we have decided to see if players would want to test them on a trial basis. For those concerned about how this impacts the development of content already voted upon, it is also important to understand that different people work on different aspects of the game. Currently it is mostly programmer work that is left for scoring and QoL, but repair hammer work is design work.

6. Will repair hammers work on golems? Repair Hammers do work on golems, but only when no one is inside of them.

Hello everyone,

We will not be removing the Gift of Battle Reward Track or moving the Gift of Battle back to the vendor. However, we will be adding some mystic clovers and obsidian shards to the reward track to help it feel more Legendary themed. A release date for this change has not yet been decided.

We will be adding a red circle to the incendiary mortar skill to better display the area that burning is applied.