Guild Wars 2

Ascended gear is just another piece of cheese, meaningless, and time consuming. Collectively, if you get ALL your ascended trinkets and your weapon, which will take some time, you’re going to see an overall increase of something to the tune of a 2% increase in damage, 5% maybe.

This then makes you wonder...why? Why add this barely better gear that takes so much time to get? The answer is the question: it’s barely better gear that takes time to get. Facilitates keeping player numbers up whilst keeping development costs down, it’s why every MMO has gear treadmills and grinding.

They can say it’s not a grind or a treadmill all they want, but if max stats is your goal, and you play alts, different builds, or both...grab a water bottle and lace up those running shoes, you’re gonna be jogging in place for awhile while...just not on a treadmill, we call it a "stationary running platform" around here, ANet doesn’t make treadmills or grindy games...just shallow and unchallenging game play that hands out rewards like free samples of Orange Chicken at the food court in the mall...and they call it challenging if you have to wait for your free Orange Chicken...

ANet doesn’t have the willingness nor the resources to support GvG. The sheer fact that we GvGers exist exemplifies a failure in core game design. We have Guilds, we have meaningless stuff to do in PvE with guilds, but there remains no outlet for PvP with guilds. Since sPvP is build restricted, numbers limited, and centralized on a “who can stand in circles better” mechanic, it forces the players and Guilds to do one of two things: ¹ Quit the game for its failure to service our PvP endgame criteria or ² take the initiative to do on our own what ANet cannot in WvW.

ANet failed all of us in its design. To not have things in place for PvP guilds to PvP against other PvP guilds using all the game has to offer in terms of larger groups, build diversity, and gear options, in a controlled environment, created the current unhealthy relationship between PPT groups and the GvG scene.

Don’t hate the player, hate the game.

Use loads of protection in giant ZvZvZ fights.

Go with full Rabid (or Carrion) armor and trinkets. Snag Protection Injection, Protective Shield, and Runes of the Forge. Knock the dust off that old flamethrower you used to level, pick up Incendiary Powder, Napalm Specialist, Fire forged Trigger, Juggernaut, and just toss those last 10 points wherever you’d like.

In fights that large all that matters is maximizing your tags and not dying, the above build does exactly that.

You could honestly just go 30/30/0/0/10 be naked and spam grenades, use healing turret, elixir gun, elixir B, and supply crate and do just fine in a giant fight. Skill lag will favor you every time. No worries if you die, GW2 doesn’t penalize nudists.

Alkaholic.3875:

Obscure One.4357:

Alkaholic.3875:

Obscure One.4357:

Bunker roaming is all about Rabid and Perplexity.

Please explain…

Lol it’s a bit of a contradiction to bunker and roam, but in the condition meta it’s viable for Necromancers, Warriors, and Engineers to spec heavy into survivability and let the conditions burn down the enemy. I.E. “bunker roaming”, very hard to kill, yet suitable for soloing or small group play as it maintains high DPS through conditions.

LOL, I know what a condi bunker roaming is. I should have stated that better, why is it all about rabid and perplexity. What advantage does rabid/perplexity have over dire/perplexity? Just curious, as I don’t understand why the precision makes a better bunker roamer as they have the same toughness and the procs from Incendiary powder(2912/4secs) and Sharpshooter (367/3secs) and Sigil of Earth (612/5secs) don’t seem to be that much additional dps but I guess over time they add up (728+122.5+122.5 =973/sec). Where as w/ a full dire setup, u’re sitting on anywhere from 21k to 24k hp while maintaining 3k armor.

Or am I just bad at theory crafting, those numbers were based on 1600 condi dmg w/ 0 duration boost.

It’s not bad theory crafting, Dire isn’t bad rabid is just an optimal spread for engineers. Precision and Condition damage share a trait line, simple as that. Smaller overall investment for maximum results I.E. 10/30/20/0/10 (my condi roam spec) will be more optimized with Rabid armor than Dire if for nothing more than the higher crit rate for bleed and vulnerability procs before counting in the higher DPS from critical hits over time. The overall HP difference is not without noting and with a % of both it and toughness contributing to precision via oils Dire does marginally make up for a lower native precision.

That being said, I’m not seeing a reason to use Dire to reduce DPS in the name of a health pool that wouldn’t need to be larger if I could kill it faster anyhow. Armed with Rabid and Perplexity runes an Engineer is flat out disturbing, with Dire he’d have less bite and more bunker.

Now it may be clever to use Dire trinkets with Rabid armor, but I’ve never tested the numbers. Suffice it to say I’m a slave to critical chance on my Engineer and if it dips below 50% I’m not happy.

Conan.8046:

Thumper Turret has stability on toolbelt! OH YEA! THUMPER TURRET HO!

Lmao. Sooo bad….
Lasts just long enough for the animation for Rumble…
Attached to a turret…possibly the most limited and build specific turret…

Meanwhile…on my Ranger, Warrior, and Guardian…

Dirame.8521:

Obscure One.4357:

Dirame.8521:

Personally, I’d like stealth on Toss Elixir S.

Smoke fields and plentiful blasting/leaping for Stealth is already available to Engineers, but Stability just isn’t an option. We can use Elixir X, but as an Elite form skill it’s obviously limited in viability. There’s also that atrocity mortar elite that no one would use even if it were a standard utility skill.

That’s the primary basis I use to justify removing the stealth option on Toss S. That and those two effects, stealth and stability, are used for wildly different reasons; stealth doesn’t help in a situation where you need stability and stability doesn’t help in a situation where you need stealth. RNG between the two is plain ineffective, at least with U or X there’s a common situation for their use.

We’ve only got 2 smoke fields and one of them you can’t use on demand. I like stealth, stability is nice but, I like stealth.

Correct. Our sources of stability however are unquestionably lesser.

Perhaps even putting Stability on Gadgets like on Slick Shoes, Rocket Boots, or Throw Mine (in addition to fixing its “unaffected by gadget traits” bug) and making S only proc Stealth is fine by me as well.

I’m not partial to where the stability gets added only that it does get added.

Dirame.8521:

Personally, I’d like stealth on Toss Elixir S.

Smoke fields and plentiful blasting/leaping for Stealth is already available to Engineers, but Stability just isn’t an option. We can use Elixir X, but as an Elite form skill it’s obviously limited in viability. There’s also that atrocity mortar elite that no one would use even if it were a standard utility skill.

That’s the primary basis I use to justify removing the stealth option on Toss S. That and those two effects, stealth and stability, are used for wildly different reasons; stealth doesn’t help in a situation where you need stability and stability doesn’t help in a situation where you need stealth. RNG between the two is plain ineffective, at least with U or X there’s a common situation for their use.

Alkaholic.3875:

Obscure One.4357:

Bunker roaming is all about Rabid and Perplexity.

Please explain…

Lol it’s a bit of a contradiction to bunker and roam, but in the condition meta it’s viable for Necromancers, Warriors, and Engineers to spec heavy into survivability and let the conditions burn down the enemy. I.E. “bunker roaming”, very hard to kill, yet suitable for soloing or small group play as it maintains high DPS through conditions.

Bunker roaming is all about Rabid and Perplexity.

Apothecary and Runes of Altruism is nice as well.

For a Dire set I’d say runes of the Noble are a favored set when combined with Enhance Performance, Sigil of Battle, HGH, and Juggernaut (20/20/0/30/0), though it’s a very specific build and only generates swiftness off of Drop Stimulant. Might in heavy doses is a fair trade for the loss of permanent swiftness from speedy kits.

It’s no secret engineer access to stability is extremely limited, and with that being the case a couple very simple changes could provide all we need:

¹ Toss Elixir S only procs the enlarge for stability.
² Armor Mod grandmaster trait also grants 3 seconds of stability when triggered.

The complex fix would be getting rid of the Mortar Elite as it is unusable in any efficient manner. There are a myriad of directions this could be taken in from a Clockwork Steamsuit armed to the teeth or a Machine Gun kit that pumps out waves of hot lead. No matter the change the skill needs to provide stability to viable builds by making itself viable.

These warriors wear full zerker armor and weapons, cavalier accessories, and spec around 0/10/30/10/20. You’ll see a large portion of them using Hammer and Greatsword or Greatsword and Axe+Shield.

Warriors are inherently durable. Proper trait and utility skill allocation is all that’s required for damage mitigation opening up the class to expand upon its CCs and damage output with its gear choices.

Only Necromancers and Condi spec Engineers can go toe to toe with them.

WvW is a sinking ship. We know it. The development team knows it.

Patching up the holes is hard when the ship is already out to sea. Thus all they’re capable of doing is just having the band play their violins for everyone who hasn’t abandoned ship. They’re grabbing buckets and bailing water when they should be changing their course to patch up the ship in the shallows.

To costly to justify development of something that was essentially never finished before launch.

By December this year WvW will be nearly dead. By February 2014 Arena Net will have a layoff. By Q4 2014 GW2 in its entirety will no longer be relevant to market competitors, as most servers will be ghost towns.

Feel free to quote me as these events occur.

Obtaining ascended gear isn’t fun. It’s purely reward driven, because the game is purely reward driven. Content is not challenging and if it is the rewards are interestingly less than those that are not. The greatest rewards available are not a matter of skill, nor completion of challenging content, nor difficult to obtain. They are strictly a gauge of how much time a given player has relegated to obtain the reward.

Fun is not in the design scope. Skill is not in the design scope.

It’s a basic concept that doesn’t require a complex understanding to determine if the implementation was done well or in line with Arena Net’s core values:

Is getting Ascended gear fun?

Just ask yourself that question before you start grinding away at content to obtain it.

If the answer is yes for you then go ahead, this game is for you.
If the answer is no for you then don’t do it, this game is not for you.

I don’t like having been mislead in regard to Arena Net’s design and development of Guild Wars 2, and I will not support this or any game that makes development decisions that directly conflict with a founding doctrine which established the premise many, myself included, used to justify purchasing an MMO.

They’ve systematically neglected or killed everything about Guild Wars 2 that was redeeming, leaving the fruit of their years of obsessive development to rot in the basket full of all the other bad apples in the genre.

The fix is stupid simple, but then again so is the dev team…

PvE should be the primary path to loot and gold. Mind numbing no-skill-required content is built for the MMO scrubs which make up the bulk of the MMO community. The success of any MMO is drawn from pleasing these drooling idiots who’re bad at every game they’ve ever played and only ever played on the lowest difficulty setting if given the option. So sure flesh out PvE with a volume of no-skill-required rewards ANet, it’s not like you’re capable of making quality content.

WvW on the other hand should hold the greatest non monetary rewards. We don’t need bull&#! rewards, we need prestigious rewards. Rewards that say "bad mother $&#!er!" and not "Yeah, I had alot of free time." . WvW is supposed to be about putting boot to #&! for your server, not trying to augment your bank account.

Fixing this is as easy as making WvW specific armor, weapons, backslot items, and skill based titles that are only progressed against enemy players ( ex: # of attacks dodged with less than 25% health “Catlike Reflexes” title. # of enemies defeated while you have less than 25% health “Killer Comebacks” title. 60 critical hits landed without a miss/block/reflect in 60 seconds “Steaming Pile of Crit” title.). When a seasoned WvW player that is genuinely good at the game is trapped in a queue, the PvE scrubs should be able to bare witness what awesome looks like and know they’ll never feel the sensation of being challenged nor offered the opportunity to showcase their skill (or more accurately the lack thereof).

If you’re looking for abusing the loot system you’re not in WvW, you’re zerging through Frost Gorge, and champ farming with a vastly higher time efficiency.

As far as ranks go, as they stand, they are virtually meaningless as titles only the enemy and you can see. Farming for WxP is more time effective in capping supply camps, sentry points, and mercenary objectives as they can be traded quickly and easily. Though once a player has obtained Guard Killer and Defense against guards, farming WxP is not as attractive and they’re likely to just go look for fights at that point.

The short answer is no, trading big ticket points like Stone Mist or a Garrison Fort are not really a source of intelligent XP or loot grinding.

We need a specific “take less damage from conditions” attribute, but toughness is not that stat for that.

Preferably reducing damage taken from conditions should come from Healing Power and scale around a .0001 coefficient (I.E. 1000 healing power reduces condition damage by 10%). Heavily investing in Healing Power I doubt most classes would be capable of much more than 3k healing power, which would serve as a sort of soft cap of around 30% reduction of condition damage. In terms of balance its the most viable concept as healing power scales the worst out of all stats and could be justified in scaling poorly by also providing reduction of condition damage.

Swamurabi.7890:

Glicko handicapping is going to save WvW, it has to. That’s the only way to get people to leave voluntarily the stacked servers. It also means that those who have since launch stayed on the Tier 3-4 and Tier 6-7 will get rewarded. Just look at the past 7 weeks results at Milennium. When a lower tier server went up against 2 servers from the tier above, the lower tier server GAINED rating. WvW league will have to use Glicko gain as the deciding factor as to which server wins.

Glicko handicapping solves most of the issues with WvW.
It also creates other issues.

Night Capping is irrelevent because that is already baked into the Glicko. You are supposed to be Night Capped if you are on a lower tier server facing a higher tier server. Nobody’s effort is diminished by using a score handicap.

Population size is also irrelevent for the same reason. You are supposed to get less points when you face a higher rated server.

Currently the WvW population drops after a few days because the match is already decided. With a Glicko handicap you might not have a clear winner until Friday.

Zergs/blobs will be less rewarding for higher population servers because they will have to defend against the lesser servers flipping points just before tick. If yaks heading to a destination give 3 points when killed it would force the zerg to spread out. I’d argue that yaks that don’t have a destination should give nothing. That way if a roaming group killed 4 yaks and then flipped a camp just before tick they would get +17 ppt. Do that for 3 camps with 6 people and you can easily get 50 ppt. Multiply that by 3 or 4 and a small population server could get 150-200 ppt by just flipping camps and killing yaks. That alone would win if you have a handicap. The 80 man zerg would be forced to defend 3 keeps, 4 towers, 6 camps, the 5 new lake points and 12 yaks. That’s 30 targets to defend at any one time.

Roaming would become relevent.

Servers of every size would have to have use strategy and teamwork to win instead of counting on who can put the most people on the map.

The first issue I see with this is that eventually the high population servers would have resort to spawn camping as the best way to secure a victory. The other issue is that when players from high population servers get tired of losing, they could jump to a single server like what happened to Kaineg to guarantee a win the following season

Actually wont work out this way. Your not factoring in the “snowball effect”. Glicko handicap or not lower tier servers are going to get beat down. As they consistently get beat by superior adherence to the siege/zerg meta they’re going to stop fighting. Once a server is demoralized its just the roamers and die-hard-try-hards left and they don’t play for PPT, they measure success in loot bags and the tears of scrubs. Once that snowball gets rolling, it’s already over for the losing server.

Glicko isn’t going to encourage a lower tier server to keep getting their faces caved in when the server blobs roll over them in every engagement. All they’re going to do is rack up a massive repair bill and then go play PvE to make up their losses…or just quit playing and do something entertaining with their free time.

So long as Dev-on-a-budget Carver is in charge there’s no saving WvW from it’s inevitable demise. Come this Q4 season the mode will gradually become a ghost town on nearly every server, and be near dead by Christmas.

Archon.7516:

Clearly Devon only cares as long as he doesn’t get any real feedback > <

The flaw in your logic is assuming he cares more at one point than he does at another. Given the history I’ve seen with this guy it’s mostly a pretty consistent level of not giving a %&#@ what we think.

Self solving problem though. Eventually we’ll just leave, ANet wont be able to justify the development cost, and they’ll just dismantle the team. Development of WvW will be left for the random nonsense that didn’t make the cut for PvE implementation and seen as a good way to not completely waste the development time burnt in creating it…kinda like how it is now, except with a lighter payroll cost for ANet.

“Here’s what we believe: If someone wants to play for a thousand hours to get an item that is so rare that other players can’t realistically acquire it, that rare item should be differentiated by its visual appearance and rarity alone, not by being more powerful than everything else in the game. Otherwise, your MMO becomes all about grinding to get the best gear. We don’t make grindy games – we leave the grind to other MMOs.”
-Mike O’Brien

“The rarest items in the game are not more powerful than other items, so you don’t need them to be the best. The rarest items have unique looks to help your character feel that sense of accomplishment, but it’s not required to play the game. We don’t need to make mandatory gear treadmills, we make all of it optional, so those who find it fun to chase this prestigious gear can do so, but those who don’t are just as powerful and get to have fun too.”
-Colin Johanson

Not going to say they’re liars. Not going to say they mislead their consumer base. Just going to say by the very definition of both these guys, Guild Wars 2 is not fun and is all about grinding to get the best gear making it just as tall of a pile of kitten !$%# as “other MMOs”. I just wanted to congratulate you guys on a job miserably failed.

They cross one more line (likely the impending WvW Orb buff and League implementation) and I quit until its fixed, I’m barely playing much as it is and hell I’m already not going to give them anymore money until they fix the game…but if they cross another line after that I’ll boycott anything that NCSoft ever gets their hands on, and ensure I talk as much trash about this game as possible, just to be sure I’m doing my part in spreading the word about Guild Wars 2. You know, just like I spread the word about how awesome and genre changing this game would be using these very same above quotes to eventually make myself look like a !@#$ing idiot when it turned out not even closely resemble the truth.

AphoticEssance.7592:

This seems like a money grab in disguise to trick players into paying for transfers so they will not get facerolled for 7 weeks.

If anet wanted it to be a competitive fun league they would of broken up the servers into 4 groups of 6.

If ANet wanted anything about WvW to be fun, rewarding, and instilling of a sense of accomplishment they wouldn’t have this out of touch development model for the mode.

The most proud I’ve ever been of my guild and my server was winning a GvG against the #1 spot NA guild…and I was just rooting my guildies on from the sideline! Made me proud to wear my guild tag and let enemies know to be wary of my server should you be matched up against us.

Funny. What they’re trying to do with WvW is what players have already done with GvG despite them.

Adding a power creep is stupid to begin with. Forcing a player to do something they wouldn’t do normally by discouraging them from doing it with a power creep is even less intelligent. Putting this development team in charge of facilitating this in any sort of balanced manner is just plain illogical. These guys couldn’t balance two five pound weights on a scale, and Devon? I’ve got more faith in Zeus hurling a bug fixing thunderbolt from mount Olympus at WvW than that guy ever doing anything good enough for this company to keep my business…

My head is filled with a myriad of rage inspired comments that, though they would facilitate my expression of distain for the level of incompetence to which I am witnessing, would serve to get me banned for language.

Who’s the guy that does the Super Adventure Box? Yeah that guy is a genius and Devon should be the gopher that makes sure that man gets his coffee in the morning…pretty sure he’d design something way better in his free time than whatever the $&#@ this WvW “development team” is doing.

DevonCarver.5370:

We are not trying to only ever match you up against your closest comparable server. That was what was happening with the system before and it was bad. If you are saying you don’t ever even want the chance to try and show your skill against a higher ranked server, then I don’t know what to say.

We will continue to look into ways to change scoring to try and even out some of the population based imbalances, but that is not an easy task and it won’t happen during the season.

First, you should only ever match a server up against it’s closest competition, otherwise you’re sending lambs to the slaughter. WvW is not skill based it’s numbers and coverage based, maybe if you spent some time learning what the metagame has become you’d know that. Winning and Losing this said contest of coverage is subject to a snowball effect. The pick up groups who actually care about winning, once they realize they’re up against superior numbers, coverage, and adherence to the seige/zerg metagame, will get sick of constantly waypointing and the repair costs that’re never offset by the already meager rewards of the mode, much less the slim pickings of constantly losing in lopsided engagements. The contrary is also true, when the fair-weathers learn they’re up against an inferior server they show up in force, queue every map, and farm the opposition.

The players on a lower tier server in a match up with higher tiers just stop fighting to win, and just play for fun. This fun only really occurs in open field fights where siege is not a factor, with near equal numbers, which ultimately makes GvG’s more attractive than playing the Points-Per-Tick meta. The rewards aren’t anything great even when you zerg up to Karma-Train across the map, and if rewards are your goal, you’re not playing WvW for them. Put simply you pit lower tiers against higher tiers you discourage fair competition resulting in hallow victories against weaker servers, and excusable defeats against stronger ones. Not providing these balanced matches is a development failure on your part, not on our part for wanting the match-up to be fair. Skill is only a factor when all other variables are equal, it’s a really basic principle to understand. You throw a tier 3 server up against tier 1 server blobs and they could be the best gamers on the planet, and it wont result in anything but another tier 1 victory.

Secondly, there’s no need to “look into” the “population based imbalances”. The answer to that problem is the problem itself. Gee, populations are imbalanced, why not match populations up against equal or near equal populations? Here’s what you do man:

Step 1: pull the login data off the login server and chart it in an excel spreadsheet for WvW populations. Look at the peek hours for each server, and add that to the match making calculation.

Numbers and Coverage mater more than skill despite your unfounded reference to the contrary. If you want that to change you’ve got ALOT of work to do, and I sincerely doubt you have the budget, time, or the comprehension of the mode to pull it off.

Step 2: alter the point system that contributes to the world score so that they scale up or scale down based on population. Lower populations can score higher for captures and higher populations score less for captures.

It’s the exact same logic used when scaling PvE content for larger groups. Just look at the features in the game that already exist and see how they work, why they work, and where they work and use them in WvW. Stop trying to reinvent the wheel.

Step 3: TEST IT BEFORE IMPLEMENTATION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! use the lowest NA tier server match-ups as the guinea pigs for all new features like this. Once they’re polished it bring it to the rest of us. Get the user feedback, listen to the user feedback, make your adjustments based on the user feedback, and then move into full implementation.

You know, Game Development 101; Useability Test, Alpha Test, Beta Test, then implement. Never go straight to implementation and then be forced into damage control with all your subsequent development time…that’s just stupid and costly. Though it would seem you’d rather never do damage control with your development time as basic and glaringly obvious problems have persisted since before you were in charge of the mode and don’t look to be resolved anytime under your watch. Way to avoid stupid and costly development re-work by just not doing the required re-work…clever strategy.

This isn’t a kickstarter bro. This is a full featured game with an established IP backed by a multifaceted corporation (NCSoft).

I wouldn’t donate money to EA, Activision, or Microsoft either. It’s a business who’s actions dictate their profitability. They start panhandling and it’s an indicator of a serious development problem with the business model. They know how to make money, and if they don’t want to use WvW as part of that then I’m happy to take my business elsewhere. That’s how it works. I’m not going to give NCSoft more money hoping they’re going to appropriate it properly as what I’ve seen thus far indicates their daughter company is incapable of producing quality content (level and art direction excluded, those guys are effin awesome).

Put simply they want money for WvW, they need to appropriate development to it and monetize it accordingly. Something I doubt they are willing or capable of doing namely because it’s “difficult” and “takes time” as per the department head, Mr. Dev-on-a-budget Carver.

To be honest I rolled an Engi in beta and absolutely hated it. It felt slow, unwieldy, and extremely inefficient. I main lined elementalist for the remaining Betas whilst dabbling with the other classes to see which one I might like to call my main, completely excluding Engineer from the line up.

For some odd reason, when launch rolled in, I decided to give Engineer a second chance right out of the gates. I almost immediately learned that my issues with the class were actually just issues with my understanding of it. They weren’t slow, unwieldy, or inefficient, my build style was. It taught me early that I had a lot to learn if I wanted to be any good. Engineer is a true to it’s core “play as you want” class. The Engineer is the class for the thinkers and the experimental…or just the lunatics who are exactly the right amount of crazy to pull it off.

If you can be a solid Engineer, you have the skill to be solid at anything else. But once you are a solid Engineer, you wont care to be anything else.

I’ve thrown down with the roamers of many servers from match ups against Jade Quarry to ones against Kaineng.

The best roamers I ever had the privilege of fighting against were on Kaineng. This is likely because Kaineng was the last grand band wagon just before the servers went to paid transfers…actually they band wagoned because of the paid transfers. That aside, some of the most competitive, mechanics competent, and dedicated players ended up there. Unfortunately the meta for winning in WvW isn’t skill based, it’s all in the numbers and coverage, and with that many people looking for fights and not playing according to the meta you have Kaineng; a rank 15 server with some dangerous roamers left over from it’s glory days before the biggest guild and commanders on their server jumped ship or quit.

Against those who share my tier (FA and DB) I pit my odds while roaming at about 75% success, against SoR I’d bet on 85% (JQ around 80%), but against KN it’s probably a solid 50/50 odds I’m gonna get !@#% stomped.

I think when players get to accustomed to playing in the zerg, no matter how good they may have been, they forget the technical precision of how to play their class and become easy prey for strong roamers. Just turns their brains to mush and then they leak loot bags all over my inventory.

First I need to express that gems and gem store purchases are not mandatory to play GW2.

Now that I’ve got that out of the way let’s talk money my fellow WvWers. We all know there’s only one source for income on GW2 after point of purchase, and that source is the gem store. This gem store content is interesting at times but for the most part doesn’t target WvW (or PvP) as much as it should. The concept I’m getting at is, based on the style of PvE updating and unprecedented rewards for little to no effort to it’s regulars, gem conversion rate from gold to gems is trending to make gems a difficult thing to justify forking over gold to obtain. That is of course unless you have volumes of it, which is pouring out of PvE content. This means PvE players are less likely to purchase gems with real world currency because they have so much gold and WvW players are more likely to spend real world currency because they have so little by comparison.

Now, before I go any further don’t read into that as if I’m probing for superficial rewards to demean the game mode. Quite the contrary. I’ve come to realize it should be that way. PvE is dumb, boring, and totally intended for talentless casuals, and those people need loads of superficial nonsense to obtain their unearned sense of accomplishment. These witless idiots are a part of the money machine that keep the conversion rate high to ensure the gem store model is profitable.

The thing that’s missing, and something they’ve also recently been honing in on, is targeting us players who don’t make large sums of gold from our chosen content and therefore are likely to actually buy gems. Unfortunately the current state of WvW and sPvP is patheticly underdeveloped and the number of players quitting, trolling, or here flame posting about the developers (guilty as charged) is increasing.

NCSoft, your best potential for seeing stronger Return On Investment is walking away because your daughter company is making bad development decisions.

The path ANet should be on is making Gem Store items exclusively for WvW and sPvP, and ignoring PvE exclusives, but to support that income the development of WvW and sPvP needs to fall in line with the demands of the consumer base. Read the forums. Fix the problems. Make your consumers happy. Give them something they’ll want to pay for. This is how you make money with the GW2 IP.

The short answer: move along. Nothing to see here.

The long answer is there are roaming builds for many classes, though Thieves have a unique niche as the quintessential troll class of all MMO’S. Your going to be painted into a corner that forces you to use stealth in high doses and an extremely high concentration on direct damage. The condition meta isn’t in favor of thieves even with the addition of Torment and Runes of Perplexity, it’s basically spike it and stealth away if roaming is your thing. It’s very effective and I’ve personally seen a 10k cloak and dagger, followed by a 20k backstab against a little over 2k armor (by being on the receiving end).

As for picking a server, it really doesn’t matter anymore. Match ups are randomized so we’re seeing tier 3 servers tossed into the mix against tier 1, or say a tier 5 against tier 3. Just absolutely imbalanced match-ups with winners and losers that are determined as soon as the matches are generated.

Ignore server WvW focus as your selection criteria. Just pick one you can go have fun on. Ranks are meaningless and any victory your server gets will be hollowly won against weaker servers, and any losses are excusable against obviously stronger higher tier servers.

salluks.6017:

King Amadaeus.8619:

PVP=Stand in a circle to cap it, hold the most circles to win the match.
WvW=Use siege to access circles, stand in circles to cap, hold the most to win the match.

R.i.p. players killing players, welcome to the era of the PPT watchers.

haha, u described it well.

to op hang in there, its coming “soon”

Indeed.

But on the bright side there’s no sub fee and all the content they release is bad, so we can all go play the good games that’re out while ANet attempts to get their #%&@ together. Aside from the Super Adventure Box, I haven’t had fun in PvE outside of doing the early Charr personal story content, so I’ll be back for that in this next update…but WvW? Meh, I only show up to attend/spectate GvGs or roam and wreck kids, nothing else about WvW is done well enough to justify my time which is better spent doing something entertaining.

Meh, it’s a non issue.

I use stacks, food, and sharpening stones to add alittle extra umph to my hits. Keep it the same and I don’t care. Change it and I just have to tag a target with another hit or two. No big deal. I only use it because it’s the current direct damage meta. If it stops being an option then so be it. It’s mostly just gonna nerf weapons with a DPS that relies on multi-attack skills if they take it out, I.E. ranger bows and warrior greatsword.

Gear progression in general has been entirely uneeded since it was implemented. The “bridge the gap between exotics and legendary” is a load of bull#%&$. It’s simply end game grind content that devalues exotic rewards. Gear progression no matter how minuscule is annoying, and deliberately designed to keep the players playing by forcing a grind to progress. It’s not like ascended gear or legendary weapons are rewarded for any display of skill or talent, just RNG and another time sink that’s not going to be fun.

Come on guys. I’d love to do something other than WvW, but none of it is fun, challenging, immersive, interesting, or even good. The level and art design team are straight up carrying the whole studio on their backs. Those guys make it look easy while the rest of the team needs to seriously step their #@&%ing game up!

DevonCarver.5370:

I’ll also point out here that I am not involved in this system, outside of making sure the interests of WvW are appropriately represented as it is designed and implemented. If you have suggestions for different ways to handle this, you should find a more appropriate forum.

I already know you’re being tossed under the bus by Arena Net. No need to reiterate that they don’t let you sit at their table in the cafeteria. We know you’re not involved in the system, that’s the problem.

Producing a system without consideration for a portion of the fanbase, alienates that portion of the fanbase. I’m not saying that like it’s news to anyone at you’re entire development studio. I watched every panel, read every blog post, and even translated stuff from german in which I can site multiple folks on the dev team stating that they know (beyond it being common sense). I’m saying that because you all know better yet consistently do so anyhow.

WvW is as much Guild Wars 2 as anything else, and it’s well past due Arena Net acknowledged that. Money talks, and that PvE development budget is loud enough to drown out every promise you make.

Only the hard things are worth doing, and anything that is worth doing, is worth doing properly.

WxP Should Not Be Account Bound

‘Why’ you say?

Well I’m glad you asked!

Arena Net’s Goal

“The goal for this system is to ensure that players always have something to constantly work towards. We want each character to have a unique experience in WvW, so World Ranks and WXP are all character-based values rather than account-based. We believe that in the long run, this will actually help incentivize players to experiment with various different ability builds for each character. It also creates a long term goal for players of multiple characters, as they can strive to rank up multiple characters to help show off their dedication to WvW.”

Problem 1: The system was designed to be constantly worked towards. It’s literally intended to never be completed as per the definition of something requiring constant work, I.E. a standard issue MMO “grind”. Making it account bound violates this design goal.

Problem 2: Each character is given a unique experience in WvW with this system, and being less traited with one character than another even with the same trait lines provides this “unique” experience…of not being as good as your main. Making the system account bound violates this design goal.

Problem 3: Each player can experiment with various ability builds for each character with this system. However there is no incentive to do this, and is thus a failure to meet an intended design goal.
Solution – package the traits into four categories: Defender, Assualter, Supplier, and General. Allow each player to gain access to only one trait category at a time in addition to General traits, and permit them to change this choice at the WvW instructor NPC (who’s largely unused) for 100 Badges of Honor. All General trait lines should be account based but Defender, Assualter, and Supplier traits should all be character based. General Traits would be Guard Killer, Defense Against Guards, and Supply Capacity only. Characters with the Defender archetype gain a WxP bonus for defending objectives to encourage them to fill the role. Assulters gain a similar WxP bonus for taking objectives, and Suppliers gain a WxP bonus when they spend all of their supply.

Problem 4: Each player of multiple characters has the long term goal of maxing out every character they have. There is however no incentive to do this and there is no mechanic that allows for them to show this off. This is another failure to achieve a design goal with this system.
Solution – ranking badges that’re account based should be added next to a players name plate in WvW much in the way the World Completion Badge is displayed. These basic icons (military style bars and chevrons or just various animals like those seen in sPvP) reflect total cumulative rank across all characters whilst retaining the character based naming convention for ranks. Additionally when a character reaches rank 100 they gain a WvW specific back slot skin unique to that profession. Obtaining 4 of these skins and putting them into the mystic forge rewards the player with a unique and prestigious back slot item so they can have the ability to “show off their dedication to WvW”.

Will this guide to fulfilling their own design goals be heeded?

…probably not…

The whole dev team likely just wants me to shut-up since I talk so much @#$& about them. But come on guys. I wouldn’t talk @#$& if I didn’t wish success for the game, which means in some backwards way I only hate on you all because I care.

Furiousbeard.7602:

Now people can yell GVG at him in person and not get moderated!!!!!!!!!!

Hugh: “so now were gonna open it up for some Q&A, anyone have any questions?”
Random Fan: “you planning anything for the GvG scene?!"

Fan’s head explodes and distant echo of a sniper rifle rolls in

Hugh: “Oh and yes the moderators are present to ensure this stays on topic…with extreme prejudice. Any other questions?”
Crowd: “…”
Hugh: “Glad to see we have an understanding.”

They just wanted to mirror the style of progression you see in every rank system…

…except for none of them…

Its just a nonsensical naming structure with no rhyme or reason to any of it. Invader to Assualter is even a suggested demotion. If you hit someone that’s assault, if you march into their country and usurp their government that’s invasion.

Knight to major? Really? From nobility to military middle management? $%&# it, why not.

The rank naming convention is just plain chaos of randomized promotions and demotions. It’s like someone let their 10 year old kid come up with it while they were sitting at their cubicle at ANet so they could spend their time doing something more productive…like playing Cube World.

Then again I know some 10 year olds who’d be smart enough to know a Knight is higher in the pecking order than a Major or Colonel, and is commonly deemed an equivalent to a General with the right qualifications. Could even stand to argue that Knights are equivalent to Legends as well, since they existed as a fighting force hundreds of years ago and we still talk about them.

Just a really long winded way to say the devs are just plain not even trying to make ya feel like WvW is rewarding even when it comes down to meaningless titles only the enemy can see.

Creaky.8596:

Vesir.1546:

You can get supply from enemy dolyaks… its just random and you can’t go over 10 max (you get 5 supply if you are lucky when you kill a dolyak)

Not the same.

WvW is an underdeveloped house of cards that’s slated to fall over as soon as the next big RvR title blows by. The development team is both too small to make anything substantial, and too out of touch with the fanbase for anything they do implement to matter.

Check back in 2015, they may have something done by then…like finally fixing the UI bug that prevents you from kicking people from your WvW party if they’re offline…only been a problem since launch, it’s clearly a complicated issue that’s much to complex to fix in a years time, gonna need a couple more to figure it out: WvW 2015!

Step 1 plant a stealth trap on the mesmers body.
Step 2 have an engineer plant a mine on the body (he can swap out the skill after its planted, no big deal)
Step 3 wait.
Step 4 kill the thief.

Don’t want to play defense? Fine. Lose your tower.

johnpoc.8732:

Thing here is that killing other players doesn’t require that you do anything special, you are not being asked to quit having fun and do something boring/less attractive.

Depends on what you’re defining “asked” as.

If someone is trash talking to my face they’re asking for me to trash talk back…or possibly baiting me to hit them.

If someone is offering me lavish rewards for a task that requires minimal effort they’re asking me to do that thing.

Personally I don’t care if ANet releases a Living Story line that poops precursors, I’m not going to do it because it sucks, its pathetic, and if I wanted to PvE I’d log off and play Skyrim or Left 4 Dead 2 (has a way better downed state mechanic BTW) because those are actually fun games with quality content.

ANets fascist laws of rewarding crappy content do not apply to me, because I have this odd obsession with being entertained by my entertainment products…pretty foreign concept in the MMO market.

Niim.9260:

Keep downed state, it is so useful for destroying zergs. Just remove rally.

Meh, being downed is silly. I already lost no need to make me play with a few stupid skills that only serve the purpose of trolling the victor. Unless you’re an ele (or a Ranger underwater) your downed state may as well just be a /middlefinger emote at the guy that just beat you.

Rally mechanics are a whole different level of silly allowing someone who got beat to get back up because bambi got near the fight and was low enough on HP to DPS down before a stomp…way to be stupid about it ANet…

Yeah…about that…

ANet really doesn’t care about downed states in PvP modes. If it works in PvE and satisfies the majority of ANets core fanbase made up of talentless scrubs, then ANet doesn’t give five fahrenheit of a flaming %#$@ about balancing them.

Driving good players away from their game and undermining skill based gameplay? Judging by the astounding lack of improvement to all things PvP in GW2 I’d say that’s working as intended.

Klawlyt.6507:

Hickeroar.9734:

I think WvW should be “rewarding” enough that we get the things we need in order to continue playing. I play WvW because WvW is fun. PvE has done this very strange morphing into nothing but an endless “reward” farm. I mean….do these people endlessly farming the same champion event over and over and over actually stop and think about what they’re doing? Like….really? All you’re left with is “why?”

How people think it’s worth it to spend hours and hours farming out worthless artificial currency while not actually having real fun….is beyond me. Yeah, it pays well (artificially), but it’s not….fun. WvW pays better than PvE at any level of rewards, because WvW provides real challenge and fun. Even if it’s a buggy, mostly neglected, mess, it’s far superior than what ANet seems to be investing most of their resources in.

What happens when ANet realizes that their game is nothing but farming and pulls things back to even half of what they added with this farm event?

This is a point I keep trying to make. Remember FPS games before they had XP? Remember when you played the next round of Unreal Tournament simply because the last round was fun, and the next one probably will be too? That’s what keeps me playing WvW and sPvP. Granted, I’d like to see a bit more evidence of development resources being poured into WvW, but for the time being, it’s still fun, and I’ll still play.

On the other hand though, all the farming that PvE enables does inflate the economy, and does make it harder for the non-farmer to afford some spicy mushrooms and weapon oil. In that respect, I think more if not most primary WvW players don’t want so much to be rewarded, as they want not to be left behind, financially speaking. As you stated, most just need it to be rewarding enough to sustain itself. It still kind of stings to see those who are into brainless farming rolling in gold while those engaged in something much closer to battle are rolling in comparative squalor.

Indeed. I’ve been making kids cry and rage quit from getting owned in online games since Quake, and I did it just to taste their tears…best reward system ever.

WvW is akin to that, but I only get two maps (sure there’s 4 but 3 are identical), it’s bug infested, there’s exploits you can run into virtually without trying, and there’s no longer fair or balanced matchups…most of which we’ve had to deal with for a year.

Bad rewards is just pouring salt in the wound.

Hickeroar.9734:

I think WvW should be “rewarding” enough that we get the things we need in order to continue playing. I play WvW because WvW is fun. PvE has done this very strange morphing into nothing but an endless “reward” farm. I mean….do these people endlessly farming the same champion event over and over and over actually stop and think about what they’re doing? Like….really? All you’re left with is “why?”

How people think it’s worth it to spend hours and hours farming out worthless artificial currency while not actually having real fun….is beyond me. Yeah, it pays well (artificially), but it’s not….fun. WvW pays better than PvE at any level of rewards, because WvW provides real challenge and fun. Even if it’s a buggy, mostly neglected, mess, it’s far superior than what ANet seems to be investing most of their resources in.

What happens when ANet realizes that their game is nothing but farming and pulls things back to even half of what they added with this farm event?

It’s actually pretty simple to rationalize their stupidity Fauntz. Everyone wants to feel like a winner, or at least have some sort of affirmation they don’t suck. Rewarding someone for doing something, even if that something is say, sleeping with Rosie O’Donnell for 5 million dollars, will encourage people to do it. Not because knocking boots with that train wreck of a human being would be enjoyed, but because you’re going to get 5 million dollars to do it.

No matter how stupid, boring, or disgusting the task is (remember Fear Factor?) if the rewards are deemed valuable enough to people they’ll do it…the dumber the person or the higher the reward the more likely the task will get done. I’ll never clean a chemical toilet at a Hair Metal concert, because I’m fairly skilled and intelligent and have way better employment options …but if they offer me 250 thousand dollars to clean that chemical toilet I suddenly realize my dignity has a price tag. My skills and intelligence suddenly become irrelevant if I’m motivated by money.

…just as a note that will blow your mind…all modern 1st world currency is artificial, groups give it a made up value, it’s literally just a bunch of paper we print dead peoples faces on, add a number, and say it’s worth a foot long sub. Game currencies operate the same way.

PvE requires exorbitant rewards because it’s literally the only reason to do it. The story is terrible. The characters are bland and unoriginal filled with stupid dialog less interesting than a teen drama. Your “choices” amount to nothing significantly different to anyone else’s, the ‘charm-honorable-ferocity’ metric is an unused footnote mechanic, and all the living story in it’s entirety exhibits the profound depth of a soap dish…not to insult the soap dish.

GW2 PvE is all about entertaining masses of really bad gamers who want to be equally catered to as good players thus devolving the entire difficulty level of the mode to just above playing “Go Fish”…except no one loses and everyone wins the same reward, so nobody tries.

Just a buncha bull&%#@ to keep the drooling idiots of the MMO genre sated with shiny things that took little to no effort to obtain.

PvP modes are meant for the actual gamers…you know, those people who don’t enjoy grinding their brains out on no-skill-required bull!#% content. Unfortunately the problem is that since the mode is actually challenging and requires effort it should present HIGHER rewards than PvE, but PvE sucks so much %$# that if it did NO ONE WOULD PLAY IT. Everyone would have every WvW map queued for days and filled with the lamestream MMO scrubs who suck at any game they get their grubby little entitled hands on.

Simple answer to why WvW rewards suck is because PvE sucks and players are rewarded handsomely for putting up with the bull&%#@. WvW isn’t bad, it’s just insanely buggy, highly exploited, extremely stale, and being developed by possibly the most consumer base ignorant team I’ve ever had the privilege to loathe.

Mesmers are required for a myriad of tactics that revolve around portal chains and time warping golem rushes, veiling to cover a your zerg approach, and null fields to counter boons as your crew winds up to drop the hammers. Run reflects with focus skills, and extra bounce to get tags.

Yes, you’re slow. Yes, you’re going to have difficulty getting tags. No, your not useless to a zerg. If you are worthless there’s a problem with you not the class: L2P issue.

Stealth stomping, invuln stomping, stability stomping, whatever.

You went down, you already lost, getting stomped whilst it’s covered by invuln, stability, or stealth is not the source of the problem. It’s like complaining that the guy who just hit a homerun gets to run the bases and you cant do anything about it.

I guess this is something I’ve rationalized a while ago since I main an Engineer and our downed state is a straight up death sentence. When you go down, your on borrowed time and have no place to think you should be able to survive and get back up…unless you’re an Ele near a friendly tower/keep entrance. You lost, game over, troll them with your downed state to buy time, but get stomped with some dignity and quit crying.

Don’t want to get stealth stomped? Don’t get downed.

Waffler.1257:

Radioactive.1248:

what reason is there really for PvE focused players to come into WvW other than to do jumping puzzles for their gift of battle? Perhaps they don’t even have to anymore, they’ll just buy the legendary straight up with the gold that’s dropping from the PvE Champ trains.

Na, Anet already fixed that with their achievement point reward system. Too many PvE players complaining about being killed in the JP, so they say what are PvE players good at that we can give them badges for? Well, as long as you don’t waste time in WvW you will have tons of achievement points so lets give them 100 badges every 500 points, 200 badges every 1000 points, 300 badges every 2500 points, and 500 badges every 5000 points. That way they will never have to step into WvW, because everybody knows it takes 50 yrs to make 30 achievement points in WvW.

Arena Net’s development model floats on the tears of the massive talentless MMO majority. It’s easier to get stupid people to buy things. As long as you keep those stupid people looking at you while they drool instead of someone else you’re good, and freely distributing shiny objects just for showing up is always a good way to sate their insatiable appetite for crap to inflate their unearned sense of accomplishment.

Halo.8976:

I think we need more perma-stealth thieves in WvW.

The average thief is like a TSA Airport Security Screener just patting down servers for noobs. Protecting WvW from scrubs, 1 loot bag at a time.

…also much like those unsung heros of TSA they are hated and ridiculed by their peers…and also much like TSA they kinda deserve it…ya soulless little !&#$holes…

They’re called Thieves because they steal away your sense of pride, dignity, and self-respect…and occasionally your desire to play GW2.

Roll a Thief sometime. You’ll enjoy playing Guild Wars 222222222222222222222222.

souless.1935:

No I think no one can point to a comment where AN has said they are refusing to do anything for us.

You’re right. They just lied in the beginning and haven’t brought it up again…because they know, that we know, that they messed up.

souless.1935:

I think no one can point to a comment where Devon or ANY member of AN team has been disrespectful.

Bold faced lying about a product’s design is disrespectful. Would you like me to compose a list and set of links to indicate the great many lies? I believe I actually have quite of few of them in my history on guru forums, it wouldn’t take to much time.

souless.1935:

I think no one should be disrespectful in kind when they have paid us no such disservice and you can be angry and voice your opinions all you want without being so base as to try and justify your right to be ignorant and rude as it if one exists.

Seems as though you’re the one who’s ignorant of the facts. I rode the hype train for two years hunting down even the most minute nuggets of information even if they were written in German (Google Translate FTW). I could bring you up to speed, but to put it simply, Arena Net failed to achieve their intended design, and instead of fixing the myriad of problems they chose to just ignore them and push out biweekly piles of unchallenging nonsense so even the idiots could watch bars fill up and get shiny things.

souless.1935:

It takes much less effort to form a coherent thought then to be dramatic, so if they do it for any reason I believe they put the effort into the attention they would get by being a clown show.

You say dramatic, I say being honest. Not everyone expresses them-self with elevated diction. More often than not I just use a few select four letter words to get my point across, so consider this the most civilized and coherent form of complaint structure.

scootshoot.6583:

Burnfall.9573:

Titan.3472:

I think it’s not the first time I see that thread subject.

Yet

No Action have taken place.

Working as intended.

LOL!!

Relevant Image Attached

Seriously? Petty jabs a maturity? Really? Way to be be childish about being childish… I can’t even believe I’m actually acknowledging you trolls…don’t you have a porch rocker to go sit in and whine about the teen boys wearing tight pants and listening to Justin Bieber?

Developer makes assurances
Consumer believes developer
Developer sells product on the basis of assurances
Consumer buys product on the basis of assurances
Developer fails to deliver on the assurances
Consumer asks for the developer to hold to their word
Developer consistently prioritizes other consumers
Consumer becomes angry and complains

Even a child can recognize when they’re being neglected, and even they act out; it’s a base reflex. Adults exhibit identical root behaviors, we just do so differently. Mommy and Daddy not paying any attention to the kid? Kid goes into the garage with a book of matches looking for stuff to burn. Mommy not paying any attention to Daddy? Daddy finds someone else to call him Daddy.

It’s really a simple concept…but hey I guess not everyone passed Psych 101…

I’m not from some bull!#$ "old school" filled with holier than thou jack#$%es. I'm from the real world in which when you say your going to do something you !#$ing do it. You don’t drag your feet, you don’t recant later, you !@#$ing do it. If you don’t do it you deserve everything that anyone who you did wrong by feels you should get, because you brought it on yourself.

I’d expect no less at my job, and they should expect no less at theirs.