Guild Wars 2

We should be allowed to burn it at the very least. Otherwise, if your condi, pretty much only other option is golem, which is great if the siege is up vs the wall.

saiyr.3071:

If it’s like the Kaineng rise, they’ll beat us like 400k to 100k and we’ll have a very lively forum thread, especially since they already hate us

If so, I’ll predict a lot of bags to be had in defeat. Not being rude either cuz I don’t like Magoomba’s either.

saiyr.3071:

Pendragon.8735:

I don’t think SBI is ready for the SoS / Mag / DB tier to be honest.

Ready in what sense? Seems they have the numbers. I don’t think we have the coverage to do to you what they are doing to you, but I guess it’s been awhile since I’ve seen YB.

What I’ve seen the organization is just not there. Now granted, they haven’t needed it the last few weeks just zerging up the chain, but right now their style reminds me a lot of the Kaineng rise, which kind of fell apart when they met stiff upper resistance.

Other servers we fought on the rise, very early Blackgate, even SoR, had a solid organized base even before they were dog-piled on.

I could be wrong and they may power up on sheer numbers, we’ll see. I think this matchup looks a bit more lopsided than it should be because Kaineng is either dead or pulling one of their pouty not playing weeks. When they do show up, its to hit our BL on the other side when SBI is zerging the other end.

Johje Holan.4607:

Regarding where the top servers people came from – they came from other servers. And I completely disagree that they were the bad players. In fact, just the opposite, they were the best players (read PvPers) from those other servers. They went to the top for the fights and competition not simply to win or get rewards..

You realize everyone thinks their server is the best if they just got even fights. Unfortunately a top tier server only has 1 or 2 other peer servers to actually test their ability vs even numbers, that’s an exceedingly tiny pool to draw conclusions from.

A test of the ‘top 100’ players is going to favor the big zerg servers because they simply have way more to choose from. Take a random 100 from any server and I think most matches would come out pretty even.

I don’t think SBI is ready for the SoS / Mag / DB tier to be honest.

When conditions hit a full stack, say 25 bleeds, I don’t see why they just don’t make one new condition stack, let’s call it in this case “mega bleed” and each mega bleed ticks as 25 regular bleeds.

Adding one new condition can’t be that taxing on the servers because they’ve already added a new one recently in Torment.

Johje Holan.4607:

But lets be honest, SoR, BG and JQ are more skilled than any other NA server. (Another reason they need their own league).

They probably have more skilled people AND more bad people, just because they have more people in general. Basic math.

But where do you think all those players on those servers came from? Most certainly didn’t start on those servers. They came from all lower tier servers that were likely being beaten a lot. So were they bad players when they were losing, but good when they came to a high population one? In my experience the players that are the first to bail to a high pop server are often the ones that don’t have a lot of confidence in their own ability and just want to hide behind numbers or go somewhere that is already winning without them.

Ulion.5476:

Well a 6 team league would be more of the same match-up. For 7 week you will fight the same servers 3-4times.

That sounds great actually, if those same few teams are actually going to produce fairly even coverage fights and scores close enough to mean something. You might see some real rivalries develop that make people more invested.

There is no positive gain or fun that comes from seeing a few more different servers, if they are either enormously stronger, or enormously weaker, then they just aren’t worth fighting in the same matchup up all.

earendil.1290:

we would probably lose the matchup and a lot of the casual WvWers that are on right now – but who cares anyways ?

This is the further problem of bandwagoning. People bandwagon because they want to easy win. But then once these choo choo servers get where they claim to want to go, a real even coverage fight, many of the fairweathers hop back off, or on to another promising new train further down, and the server tumbles back down, starting a cascade of many more weeks of crap matchups. Ask Kaineng about that.

earendil.1290:

The real question should be why are all 3 BLs so similar (for balance, I know, but still) and why are there no more new maps added.

They way Anet always answers this question, it seems WvW maps are about the most laborious thing for them to create in the whole game. Probably why they cloned the BL three times.

Or just maybe not enough resources and devs are being spent on WvW.

I prefer the borderlands a lot more. EBG is too zergy by nature and doesn’t have as ordered predictable map flows that simulate a real war front. Also, too much trebbing.

However the suggestion to cut down on maps might have some value, as then the top overpopulated servers would face enormously long queues, which would necessitate the player base spreading out to far more servers.

AndrewSX.3794:

Pendragon.8735:

AndrewSX.3794:

3 – way is much better than 2 – way.

See DaoC vs WAR/SwToR.

Except not in GW2.

And i told ya why.

So ultimately you agree, 3 team does not work in GW2.

I disagree with your analysis anyway, even in closer fights, they dynamics still don’t encourage going after the top dog. Even in close fights you still always get a fight for 2nd place between the last two teams, with the top team determining who gets that 2nd place, by who they decide to focus on more.

The only way to make 3 faction work in this game is to make it more rewarding (via more points, more loot, more rewards, etc) to hit the assets of the team with the most points. And this can easily be done by making assets accrue in value the longer they are held.

It’s simple risk vs reward. And right now higher reward and less risk is always attacking the weakest team.

style.6173:

Who cares who gets 6th? The reality is that the league is going to suck for 4,5, and 6 anyway. None of those servers can compete with 1,2, and 3.

If ANET was smart, they would separate 1,2, and 3 into their own league. 4 and 5 are not as strong anymore given that they had a number of people bandwagon to the T1 servers.

It’s also going to suck for whoever gets 7th and 8th (unless you like blowouts), as those at the bottom of silver tier, (10th thru 15 about) are nowhere near the same coverage.

The whole league idea is just bad, I don’t see really any good cut-off points that is going to make for strong competition per tier. Though having 4 tiers would be better than 3 for NA.

Anet originally said they did not want 4 tiers in NA because 6 teams might not be enough variety in matchups over 7 weeks.

Yet then they go and make Gold tier in NA just 6 teams…

So if we are going to have a tier with 6 teams, why not every tier? Obviously you would get far far better matchups competition wise by breaking it up more.

Whoever loses out on 6th for Gold tier between SoS, Maguuma, or DB, is going to walk all over the remaining silver tier. You can look right now at SBI ticking over 600 in Tier 4 as an example of the disparity that exists between 9th and 15th.

AndrewSX.3794:

3 – way is much better than 2 – way.

See DaoC vs WAR/SwToR.

Except not in GW2. And GW2 is the game we are playing. Old games mean nothing to what happens here.

There a ton of great matchups you could have with 2 servers head to head via the ratings. But it is very hard to have a great fight with 3 teams. And more than not when you do get 2 teams in a match that are even, the third team is wildly weaker or stronger which actually ruins the match, based on who they decide to focus on more.

3 Faction warfare in this game has been an utter failure. It’s more of a harm than good actually.

Ideas have been suggested to Anet on how to encourage 2v1 vs the top team to bring about natural balance, without the unrealistic dream of every server evening out in population. But so far, it seems there is no action and no one listening on this front.

Seen a few SBI small groups sneaking around outside their blob. SC, WAR, I think. Need more people like this.

The green is nice but I think the design of the Ascended stuff is a bit too decorative to be that necro-ey. Seems more like Ele design.

The dark aura oozing off the Teq drops are very necro, but still pretty tame compared to some of the flame and frost effects that come off those kind of weapons. Not really a perfect enough of a fit for me to want to camp the dragon to try and get.

earendil.1290:

I disagree with you. Players moving from server to server are just people looking to have fun.

Ticking over +500 much of the day, and outnumbering every fight 4 to 1, is not my idea of fun. I’ve been in matches where our server has been that team and its hardly any better than being at +50. Yet it happens for weeks every time when a dog pile of transfers happen.

You’re correct it need not ultimately be about the PPT, but even so the dynamics created in such a lopsided score make finding quality fights that aren’t massively imbalanced, exceedingly difficult, and often not worth looking for for a large portion of each day.

Need more than that. Because even if SM at 50 points creates more incentive to take it, and it its taken, the strongest server in a matchup that is lopsided can easily take it back instantly and still hold it 99% of the matchup, even if they fall asleep and lose it once or twice.

The way to make 2v1 occur more is make the objectives of the strongest team worth far more and for them to accumulate in value the longer they are held, so that when they do flip, they are a big score boost to the lower two teams.

So for example, an SM that has been held for 2 days by the strongest team is lets say worth 2000 points to initially capture or whatever. But once it gets flipped by a weaker team its value reverts to nothing (other than +50 per tick), and only slowly regains takeover value.

earendil.1290:

So – you could try something like this (pick your own challenge if a WP in your own BL is too easy). It would compensate for the lack of purpose that you probable feel right now.

Pleas to ‘keep trying and playing’ and ‘come out and fight’ fall on deaf ears when servers that were bandwagoned on to created their own bed. Then they have to lie in it.

Everyone knows by now that the ranking system is garbage and when you get a massive influx or export of players either way, that it takes weeks, if not months, of crap matchups, for the rankings to finally sit a server back in its right place.

People need to stay on their servers and stop hopping around, and then players wouldn’t have to search for these silly morale type victory motivations, amidst boring, first day decided matches.

Been through about a half dozen of these “wave to the choo choo train bandwagon server on their way up” scenarios now, and there isn’t much in the way of silver linings to make them better. Mass server hopping is as damaging to WvW as anything Anet is doing.

Don’t forget viewing stands. While its not my thing, to play or watch, I think that’s kind of a neat aspect to the GvG thing. Ups the ante for the participants too. Though might create some difficulties in trolling or griefing in an official mode.

But you could probably do a thing where enterting as a fighter vs a spectator would send you to a totally walled off area where you can see but not actually interact.

The battle for the 6th spot may unfortunately end up a lot more interesting than what comes after in league play, both for the server that ‘wins’ the spot, and likewise even those couple that fail and get to sleepmode silver tier.

I would wait for the next patch that helps the vampiric traits before using them in a solo build. They just heal for too little to really give you any serious amount of sustain in a 1v1 scenario.

They are ok for PVE, or even large scale zerg WvW, where your AoE’s are returning lots of little digits in siphons from how many people you are hitting.

But solo, how many times do you even hit the other guy, 20 to 30? Talking maybe 1000 health over that combat, which is a pittance compared against other sustain builds, what a healing ele or guardian, etc, can do.

I think a good question is how many are doing GvG in some part due to the failures of WvW as intended?

If that is a large number, then Anet might feel a separate game mode might actually hasten the death of WvW as a game mode, while ultimately the new GvG they create would not likely ever embrace the numbers that a proper functioning and successful WvW mode could. (See sPVP failing as an E-sport for the limitations on the number of people liking this game as a highly competitive vehicle).

However, if a lot of people want to GvG, even beyond the great guild or team fights that could potentially occur naturally in a truly competitive WvW envrionment, then there might be enough meat on the bones there to justify its own mode, arenas, servers, etc.

I think they should go for it myself, because it seems like it would be easy to create something fairly simple – at least to start out – to give all these players a place to do their thing.

Especially as the reality is right now, WvW is very much broken in a lot of ways, and while they work on trying to fix it, better to keep people playing, even in other aspects, than having them potentially leaving because of the difficulty for them in trying to play this alternate playstyle in a hostile envrionment.

And just maybe when, if ever, WvW can function properly, a lot of these guild teams can take what they learn in GvG areans, and bring that back into WvW much more frequently down the line in an organic setting.

sirflamesword.3896:

It’s kinda funny because I think without GvG or some type of Karma train on weeks like this WvW would probably be completely dead.

IMO, longterm its going to die anyway if they don’t fix population imbalance and make the scoreboard somehow have relevance more often. Karma training, nor GvGing endlessly, can I see offering enough by themselves to keep this game worth playing for most who see WvW as their endgame.

AggieTechGuy.4901:

You like to solo roam and go kill random players. You are absolutely wrecking 90% of the people you run into. Are you skilled? Somewhat. You are at least killing some people just trying to get to the nearest zerg.

After a while, you get bored with killing people that can’t really compete with you. Killing unsuspecting pugs is fun, but it loses its allure after you’ve done it over and over again. You want to challenge yourself; find someone who can fight back and give you a run for your money. After all, you can’t be the best if you aren’t winning against the best.

You check the forums and read about fight clubs. This is where most of the like-minded people like you go to fight and test their skill against each other. It sounds appealing, and you start regularly attending.

---

This is pretty much the exact same thing for GvG, but with larger numbers. Instead of synergy within your own build, you are making sure your group has synergy. Instead of you calling all of the shots, you have someone else that is coordinating everything that happens within your group.

I would argue that managing people into a well-synergized group (builds, personalities, personal skill, composition) takes more skill than becoming the best solo roamer is. That is the allure of GvG – highly competitive group combat.

I think roaming and GvG are apples and oranges in mindset. And the better comparison you try to make from first part to second, would be from roaming to havoc squads (~5 players) where the combat is still very much reactionary and twitch based, where above this number at GvG levels its much more meta based and about executing a plan vs adaptation, which is the allure of the roamer.

GvG is not really just the same thing with more people, because its about the individual subsuming his own decision making (including in fight action, when to use prime abilities, and build designing) to someone else. The most important person in a GvG is the person designing the team composition, understanding what for the current game build is making for the best skill and class combos, etc.

The best comparison I think to be made for GvG is actually something like a PVP version of raiding. The same organizational level and teamwork that drives people to like raiding is apparent in a lot of aspects of a successful GvG team.

And of course, easy to understand why it generates pride at the Guild level, something that is very lacking to achieve in this game elsewhere.

Cynz.9437:

Because ppl tired of fighting same server over and over again.

Bah. When you are fighting a zerg server, massively out populating you, which happens most weeks, does it really matter if their server name changes? Does it matter if the guild acronyms over the zergs head changes?

Being +500’d or more really plays pretty much the same to me, no matter who is doing it. It’s not like these different servers use different strategies from each other once they have such superior numbers that they simply don’t need strategy to win.

Zephyrus is correct in that the increased rewards would need to be in the form also of increased gold, karma, and WXP, not just scoreboard points, to offer the proper incentive.

But make no mistake the end goal is ultimately to create a situation, through this or any other design change, where the 2nd and 3rd place teams are always extremely encouraged to be attacking the first place team in order to help population balance.

Fixing bloodlust (reversing it with undermanned for instance) would also help along the way, but is a different topic.

It’s true that some people may never care about PPT, but the reason most don’t now is because its meaningless due to the current system, there is no competitive balance, and not because the idea in general is bad. sPVP is the deathmatch mode in this game, and is blindingly simple, if you just want to fight people. In WvW though, most would want ‘good fights’ on top of good strategy pvp if they could have both, its not a choice. Sadly right now we are getting neither in most matchups. 2 on 1 vs the bigger guy would in fact increase the quality of the fights. It’s a win/win.

Also, by reducing the value of ‘just flipped’ targets, to something very small, you would reduce the desire of karma trains and pvdoor, and just maybe people would think about picking battles against real players more often, as they would be more rewarding in relation.

Very little. The vast majority want fun gameplay, fun WvW/PVP, not more rewards for enduring lopsided beatings.

Thinking that most servers and players are going to accept or want to get beatdown for 7 weeks, just to be thrown a ‘token for participating’ lower grade reward than the best population/coverage server in each tier gets, is almost a sign of give up from the dev team, if they think that is what WvW is missing.

The problem of population imbalance leading to joyless WvW is a problem that the modes inherent design already provides a built in, but unfortunately, non-functioning, solution to.

The missing players in these undermanned servers will not be found very easily by trying to create 24 perfectly population balanced and WvW participating servers. Nor does it need to be. Because your missing players are already there – on the third team!

Whenever a factional PVP game goes to a 3 faction mechanic, it is an accepted crutch, that inherently allows for uneven numbers in fights or less than perfect fairness. But the ultimate objective of this crutch is supposed to be that its better for the game in the long run for the top dog to get piled up on, because it will create a more balanced and more fun game.

Unfortunately in GW2 WvW, we gain no benefits from having a 3rd faction. In fact, it has a negative effect. And the reason why is because the most rewarding and path of least resistance is always to attack the weakest team.

Rarely, rarely ever do the 2nd and 3rd place teams gang up on the first, because there is no good reason to. The top team has the hardest objectives to take, and they are not worth anymore to take them. So instead, its always the bottom two servers fighting for 2nd, and the 1st choosing at whim which side to pile on. Either way, end result is that having 3 factions is actually worse than just having 2.

When Anet figures out how to incentivize attacking the top team, only then will balance begin to happen naturally. I don’t pretend to know entirely how to do this, it is what Anet devs get paid to figure out, but I’m sure some part of the answer lies in objective value.

If I’m on the team in 2nd place, why should we target the Fortified first place team’s structures, when we can endlessly flip paper objectives of the weakest team for the same value? The team in 1st often shows no interest in defending any of the opponents structures they take, because it is most lucrative for them to let those be flipped over and over. They might hold only their own borderland and SM castle out of some sense of pride.

However those objectives they do hold – their own borderland, SM, etc – should gain in value the longer they are held. Taking an objective is far harder than holding it, so why are most of the points in this game accrued simply from holding structures while they are not being attacked? A much much bigger majority of the points should come from initially taking the objective, and then its value should revert to some low number – to penalize re-flipping – that then only grows large again if that Tower or Keep is held for a long time.

If the first place team’s Garrison or even a Tower, fully upgraded and held for days, is worth the same value to take one time, as it is to take the weakest teams Garrison or Towers 5 times, then suddenly it becomes a much much greater target for both losing teams. And even if it remains hard to take, just the fact that it will be targetted more, will force the top team more often on the defensive and less able to simple zerg train around, while leaving their own stuff mostly undefended, due to that it never gets attacked.

This seems a simple and workable start to a solution. Anet even understands clearly this concept in PVE and even in individual combat in WvW, as monsters and players that have not been killed for a long time in the world are worth more experience and loot. Why are not WvW objectives worth more and more points the longer they are held? Generally something easy to take, and re-take, is less valuable than something difficult.

Make 2v1 faction WvW work, and you will have your population imbalance mostly solved.

Ross Biddle.2367:

Tier 1 Sor/BG/JQ has its competitive weeks (with different emphasis for each server). Sometimes though one or more servers aren’t into it, and that’s ok.

No matter what, Friday, or Fursday Fun night, is SoR’s karaoke karma train, and the community is stronger for it. Much drinking and singing is involved.

We always hold our garrison though as a point of pride, and it also retains the games competitive edge. Interesting that all you need is the one garrison to do that.

Maybe it’s Anet’s goal to get every WvW player onto one of the top 3 populated servers. Certain changes do seem to suggest that.

And it’s one of the few redeeming qualities of tier 1, (when it is the real top 3), actually having each team with respectable and comparable round the clock coverage.

Unfortunately, a lot of players do not like PVP where even the smaller fights are still zerg vs zerg. And the normal ones are unsightly messes of mass blobs so large that you are reduced to seeing nameplates and a blinding cacophony of special effects on your screen threatening a seizure.

They have to find a way to better balance the scoreboard and pursuit of competitive combat for everyone else though.

Sadly, even for you in tier 1, the relative competitiveness of that tier is about to be shattered once leagues start, as 6 out of 7 weeks you are going to be thrown into laugher matchups that are no challenge. The only challenge will be how long you can sustain spawn camping the other teams, or mustering the will to keep entering WvW, when the outcome and interest of the engagements will be decided and pointless after the first day.

This is the only way this mode is going to legitimately have two equal sides to it, instead of massive over incentive for just offense.

With the inclusion of lord chests, and now ascended materials dropping, it has pushed the desirability of offense over defense to ten times even what it ever was, to a truly untenable position. Where players are almost happy to see held objectives fall, so as to get to take them back for more chests.

However, the advantage defense can have over offense, if properly rewarded, is that you can run defense events over and over without ever actually losing your objective, or having to wait for the opponent to take it back, so that you can then take it back again yourself. Defense could potentially be more rewarding than offense because of this.

Defense events would likely need to be extended to justify a chest reward, likely to 10 or 15 minutes. Additionally, some minimum amount of damage to walls or door might need to be instituted to prevent abuse from someone simply tagging a door. But ultimately I think this is the direction they have to go to restore any sort of equal front balance to the idea of world vs world.

Last day? Lol, Karma train starts on day 2 from what I’ve seen.

It might as well start on day 1, as you can tell just from the match-up data, how 90% of the matchups are going to end.

But because so many people show up for reset, they have no choice but to fight each other for a little while, since there isn’t room for all those karma trains to exist at the same time.

Most players no longer care about fighting other players, they don’t care about defending, they don’t care about upgrading. This is because matchups are so lopsided, they don’t feel its worth it to give any effort, and its only going to get worse in leagues.

There is little to no competition, and very few interesting engagements with opponents.

In my tier, and its been this way for most of the last few months, its just zergs running around playing musical keep trading, avoiding each other. Even on the winning side, people tell other players not to defend, not to upgrade, they just want to farm the most Wxp. If you lose an objective, no big deal, actually its considered a good thing, since you now have an extra thing to take back and be rewarded for. It’s becoming a boring joke.

Losing sides actually have no choice but to have this mindset, because they can’t defend against massively superior numbers, and now with bloodlust, an even more stacked deck against them in combats.

What good are WXP ranks, which give bonuses to intended play mechanics, if no one is actually playing the mode in a way that makes those skills even remotely important.

WvW for the majority is just another farm mode, like Scarlet’s invasions became, or like the Pavilion was before the nerfs. WvW feels little different than the old karma trains that used to operate in Orr, with mass zergs of people running in a cycle over the same curb stomped events, for gold, karma and loot.

Maybe this is what gets the mass casuals and pve players out in the field, and the developers don’t care so long as people are playing. But its a shame that a gameplay style with so much potential has been reduced to this.

If Anet’s big hopes are on leagues to get people to care again, I don’t see it. As most servers won’t have a chance right out of the gate, and will know they won’t. Perhaps the top 2 servers in each bracket will actually try to play as intended to win, for the rest, I imagine more of the same of what is going on now.

CrassBippy.4619:

They are just doing what makes money. People have mentioned they spend 100+ $ a month in pve forums. Those are the whales, and Its who anet is targeting. Wvw is just a sloppy afterthought

WvW could be the ‘whales’ though if they actually had competitive matches and balanced mechanics such that people cared about PPT and the way the game was meant to be played.

Because so much of the above is a joke and people only want to ‘find good fights’ or else farm WXP, the mode has much less meaning in terms of encouraging people to buy gems or invest tons of gold in helping their server.

Right now its more of a selfish mode where players come in looking to get whatever fun out of it as an individual, and thus, do not want to pour resources into it. And it doesn’t help that WvW rewards still pale in comparison to PVE, as far as how much gold you earn and such.

If you buffed a dolyak (with speed), buffed an ally in a fight in which they took or dealt damage, or healed them, you should be included for the reward, as well as a bag to the person they damaged.

In Warhammer online healing was equal reward to dealing damage and it really made healers feel rewarded and like they could progress. Now this game doesn’t have ‘healers’ in the trinity sense, but certainly healing as part of a support build is support, and should not be overlooked.

Justine.6351:

Well if it makes hod feel any better,

Some time late night / early mourning we had yaks garison. I hopped on my mesmer and hid in inner waiting for them to recap which they did. After waiting for the sweep I realized that they didn’t sweep cause hod was working on their bay (which failed) and so I told the commander to leave and come back in 5min cause I had inner Garrison. After porting them in we flipped keep super fast. Needless to say the second time they came to recap they swept VERY well ;-(

Lot of people don’t care about doing it for obvious reasons in a match-up like this.

Anet’s fault for not rewarding defending properly, almost more incentive not to. :\

The advantage to defending is your sacrifice of helplessly being rolled over is keeping people in the game, because the karma/wxp train enjoys when there is a little light resistance, but not so much to challenge or stop them.

The somewhat missed negative of ram mastery is it solve the overpoweredness of arrow carts, but only for the guy on a ram.

They would have done far better to just nerf arrow carts, then make the bonuses for ram mastery a lot smaller. 25% reduction in damage taken say, and a smaller boost to ram damage.

Siege reining supreme must be the end goal here, I don’t know, maybe because siege costs coin, and needing in game coin translates to Anet making real coin.

If it’s about money its going to end up a huge blunder and mistake financially.

Yeah they might get a quick cash grab up front, but when WvW population and participation starts drying up, it will lose them money in the long run.

And even for those players that went to the high pop winning side, it won’t be fun for them either to be running around in zergs without anybody to fight. How great will a finisher be with no one to use it on, or any other rewards, with no meaning or consequence because most weeks will be blowouts.

Yes, but its not a mistake because its overpowered.

It’s a mistake because its only fun for one side to fight in a combat where one of the combatants is invisible half the fight.

Not sure everyone is aware but, Putrid Mark doesn’t need an enemy trigger anymore. Try it.

You just can’t appreciate how great it is to lose a fight on the map you are on, just because the other side has extra men on 2 other borderlands, doing nothing skillful, or hard, but squatting on some uncontested control squares, that your side unfortunately doesn’t even have the manpower to contest.

You should totally be at a huge disadvantage for that, for not being wise enough to jump to a top tier / population server.

/end sarcasm

More live players are going to be worth more than a stats buff, so I don’t buy the devs comment about people yelling at each other to get off the map. Not unless those players care only to have 1v1 dueling advantage and have no care for the intention of the mode, and someone like that doesn’t have a worthy opinion anyway.

The alternative and what we have right now is far worse than what is envisioned above, and that is a slow drip drip evacuation of lower servers to higher tier servers as everyone stacks on the already overpopulated servers in order to secure the better buffs and to win at the same time.

This will kill the game far faster than any wild fears about people actually wanting to be outmanned just to get a buff. Extra stats won’t help an outmanned side defend multiple positions on a map, it won’t help them have enough men to man all the siege to properly defend a structure. It wont secure camps and supply routes.

20 guys, buffed or not, are not going to overcome a map with 60 because they simply can’t be in enough places at once, even if they could somehow through skill and the buff defeat all those players at once. All the buff is going to do is give them a little better chance, and more fun underdog experience, instead of them getting slaughtered even if they run into even numbers of an opponent that already has 3x their numbers on map, due to the bigger side also having mass statistical advantages.

Right now WvW is like one of those wrestling matches where one guy’s side rushes in a gang of people from the locker room to beat down their opponent. And Bloodlust only compounds it, like saying to the gang, “Here, its already 5 v 1, but why not have some steel chairs to beat them down even more!”

Roamers domain used to be entire map, with the chaos and unpredictable nature of that in interacting with larger groups or even zergs. Heck you could divert half a zerg to chase you if you wanted.

Now it seems like they just want to shove all the roamers into thunderdome in the middle and the rest of the map is for the zergers. I think there are actually less options for playing the terrain to your advantage now, in the way that a good roamer could really master. The fact that you have to go into those cap points ultimately takes something away from dictating a fight as it used to be meeting people out in the open.

Conquest points as the only game mode is a big part of what ruined sPVP. Now that is what WvW roaming has become, Conquest based. It’s not the same playstyle.

The full terrain nature of roaming is gone. Too often your’re either attacking a defended position that several players already hold, or just standing around yourself, bored, camping a point, waiting for someone to attack it. Some of the dynamism of roaming is gone, the sneakiness and ‘setup’ of an engagement.

Perhaps its better for small groups, more consistent fights, though I kind of think sPVP is the domain of small teams, less you just want to roll unorganized noobers. But for the solo or duo roamers, now worse.

mistsim.2748:

but isn’t this what WvW needed? everyone was complaining about zergs. now you’re complaining about lack of zergs.

It’s actually not that hard to zerg this area still actually. The close proxmities of the ruins actually benefits higher population servers just like everything else in WvW.

They should have spread these out to the corners of the map I think to kind of stop the sort of steady stream of same players going back over and over to the same place on the map.

Say put one at the Ice worm, one where the quagg weather island was, one south of the centaur camp.

I guess my complaint is there isn’t a lot of tactical thinking or choices to make about the ruins, its just a place to send all the people that don’t care anything about the score, or overall wvw strategy. No logistics to it. Just run into the center and fight, and hope you have the most skirmishers around.

The word ‘roaming’ itself suggests movement, and quite varied movement in between points of interest. Thinking about where you are going and choosing with a purpose hopefully. Not just endlessly battling it out for crammed conquest control points.

As someone that roamed solo often, I find the new ruins too much like sPVP, a lot of the open field randomness, organic nature, and route running of how you roamed prior to the patch has been lost.

I.e. Do I hit this or that camp next, go after this yak or too dangerous. Hey there’s a zerg, better scout and tail them to notify my own team commander. Can I kill those 2 guys, one is underleveled, oh here comes 3 guys, better bail. It was an interesting cat and mouse. There was also less help around, committing was more lethal. Now its easy for people to stall out battles or escape into allies due to the central location.

The ruins are just like a big deathmatch area in the middle of the map, and while some want just the pure fighting only, the combined thinking about where to be on the map to best help your team that went into roaming is lessened.

If all people wanted was mindless preset point locations to fight over, the game already had that, hot-join sPVP.

You can still do it the old way I guess, but most of the other non-zerg players are just running into the middle over and over.

Many are guesting because the fight doesn’t scale down properly. And many servers can’t field the numbers for much of the day to even attempt the fight decently. This becomes a compounding problem then as after a couple of low turnouts, people start giving up on their home server due to the time a failure wastes with little reward, while figuring guesting is a so much easier of a way to have a real chance.

When Anet designed their combat system, and class skills, it seemed like they had learned and understood a lesson from past games:

Players do not like losing control of their characters.

There was thankfully a lack of long or abundant crowd control skills in GW2. Outside of perhaps Moa, fears were short, stuns were short. Etc.

But now in these boss mechanics, more and more the developers seem to think increasing fear lengths and usage, somehow make a fight more fun or challenging. This is baffling, because its just the opposite. It makes them annoying and frustrating. Especially for classes lacking easy access to stability.

Teq’s fears now last seemingly 5-8 seconds, if you stun break them, you are just feared immediately again. Jormag’s fears are also now longer and more frequent.

Can we please stop resorting to these out-dated, annoying mechanics, simply as a crutch to make a fight more difficult? Please come up with something better. It is no fun to spend 25% of a fight running away from the boss.

I understand ‘Dragon Fear’ is kind of a fantasy lore staple, and it was alright in limited doses, like what the Bosses used prior to this patch. It was still annoying, but at least relatively short and infrequent. But now it has gotten carried away and to a severe irritating point, that really detracts from the quality and interest of the fights.

Sarrs.4831:

There’s a difference between “optimal circumstances” and “waiting a few days for the pubs to stop marvelling at the SHINY NEW THING”.

Of course, everyone just wants to try out the new stuff right now.

But once they realize the individual rewards aren’t much, and that they just need someone in their zerg to go secure the areas for everyone to get the buff, the big zergs will get bored of trying to maneuver around those areas, and they will send more wise size forces, with always enough reserve to bring more when needed to secure them.