Guild Wars 2

Seems there’s 2 Phantoms now. We’re gonna have to have a dance off at the rec center to see who gets the crown.

Anyway, on a more serious note, the overall layout is the core issue. While, yeah, the auto upgrades and laser event and all of the other things that have been mentioned are problems, they’re more along the lines of the flesh, while the layout of the map is the skeleton. If the foundation is built properly, all of those other things can be adjusted to make major improvements. If the foundation itself is faulty, however, those adjustments are like sticking a bandaid on a broken leg.

Int he attachment below, I’ve done a quick draw up of what the overall layout should be like. It’s based around the dimensions of the Alpine maps. The keeps are behind the towers. The towers block the roads. The roads lead to the towers. People are funneled to the objectives. Fights happen either at the objectives or on the way to the objectives. The objectives relate to each other. The towers help defend the keeps, and the camps support the structures. There’s room for roamers to get to the camps, so roamers are not only viable, but important.

Combine this with upgrades needing x amount of yaks to get in, waypoints being in the keeps and only once they’re upgraded, and manual upgrades, and things become even better.

If you notice, I put an Asura gate in the center. This should work very similarly to the old orbs. A server has to go there, and activate an NPC. The NPC then runs to their keep, and the players have to defend him along the way. The other servers can kill him, and if they’re smart, they’ll try to. If the NPC makes it to the keep, he opens an Asura gate to that center area. This acts as a 2 way waypoint between that keep and the center of the map. If the keep is contested, it wouldn’t work. If the keep is taken, the Asura gate is destroyed inside of it, and the center event resets. This event makes holding a keep on each borderland important for sustained presence there.

Now, as far as the breakout event from the old borderlands go, have him go to that server’s keep instead of to a tower. Ideally, servers should be trying to hold their keeps in their thirds. This would also help minimize lopsided scores, since the keeps are worth the most points, and most of what would be getting flipped would be the towers and camps. Which reduces the effects of nightcapping, and people giving up when the scores are out of reach.

The overall design allows servers to minimize the areas they need to assign defenders to, which helps mitigate the effects of population imbalance. It won’t completely negate the effects of nightcapping and population imbalance, but it will lessen them to more manageable levels, and allow matches to remain fairly competitive. Especially since there will be clear areas to fight over, and clear paths to get to those fights, which will lure people to them naturally. All in all, a very positive step forward for all of the various types of WvW players.

Oh, I’m well aware of it, and that’s exactly why I’m making this point. I don’t wan’t some false narrative to be pushed, and silence allows that to happen. Facts speak louder than bluster, but the facts must be presented in order for them to be able to speak. And presented in an undeniable fashion, and a spotlight shined on them.

Granted, those who are familiar with the facts are easily able to ignore the bluster entirely. However, those who aren’t familiar with all of the facts start believing the bluster, and the narrative successfully gets pushed through. It’s an annoying headache to deal with, but it’s the only way to successfully counter this pattern of deceitful behavior.

coglin.1867:

It is not near as sickening as players who do not appear to know what was actually asked for. They listened to players, then they gave them changes that fir the criteria of what the posters unspecifically demanded.

If you lack of awareness of what was requested, “sickens” you, perhaps you should go back and read the “demands” for changes.

Once again…..

Specific, detailed suggestion on the map design: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Beside-bug-lag-Bal-how-to-improve-WvW/first#post3024534

And in the CDI: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/11#post3127179

And here, with a Dev post directly after it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Three-Likes-Three-Hates/page/3#post3550372

And here, and someone even included a picture for them to work from: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/I-think-WvW-needs-more-updates/first#post3921113

And a mention here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Three-Likes-Three-Hates/page/4#post3555006

And another mention here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Serious-zerg-question-for-REAL-discussion/first#post3678370

And after HoT launched, the same exact thing here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Feedback-Desert-Borderlands/page/2#post5700665

And here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Like-or-Dislike-new-WvW-Bordelands/page/4#post5701734

Every time you try pulling this “it wasn’t clear!!!” card, I’m going to post these exact same links. These are extremely clear, and there’s even a picture if they couldn’t figure it out. Stop lying, stop bullying people, stop trying to play the victim after you do so. Respond to these. How are these not clear? How are these not specific? How can anyone not understand them?

coglin.1867:

morrolan.9608:

coglin.1867:

Straegen.2938:

Someone pointed out in another thread that no game expansion should remove players earned capabilities.

HoT not only fouled up the BLs but basically killed the guild system for all but the most dedicated large guilds. Our small guild will never get back what we had.

How so?

When you make a complaint like that with no real reason to justify it, then the counter argument is a simple, “no it does’t”.

Probably because its self evident that EARNED progress being deleted is annoying, and he’s not saying it will ‘break’ his guild. My guild is very annoyed about it but we are working to get it back anyway.

I think you missed my point. My point was that it is not particularly constructive unless you name what aspect you feel were taken away with a little detail.

The other issue I see, is that your perceive something as “self evident”. I see some of these aspects through a different lens then you, as others do. We all have our own lens. It strikes me as very irrational to simply blindly presume they feel the same negative feelings as you do. I see no problem with it because they added great depth to the guild aspect. Such as filling demands for guild halls, guild arenas, and so one. As I see it, everyone started from scratch, at the same point t, when it comes to guilds. So if you want to have an honest discussion about it, perhaps it would be wise to drop the assumption, and explain a reasoning, when posting about an issue with something.

Poi t in case here, you continued to avoid offering an explanation, but instead, demanded I should be reading your mind for what you deem as " self evident". Which seems very counter productive in my opinion.

Guild upgrades. All of them. It is self evident, as long as you’re not being intellectually dishonest. Guilds worked hard to get upgrades, all upgrades were removed, replacement upgrades are behind extremely large material costs. It’s been stated numerous times in this thread alone. Only a troll would continue to play dumb at this point.

I’ve been on both sides of this equation before, and I’ve seen it play out numerous ways. But the key factor is respect. If the request is made in a polite, respectful manner, more often than not, the respect given back to the guild, and people let them have their run. But if they just kinda…. rage at a person and tell them to get out, because they happen to running in the same direction, it’s insulting and degrading, and said guild pretty much deserves the same treatment in return.

In the example given here, someone just happened to bump into a guild by accident, and both headed to the same camp afterwards. It wasn’t like they saw the guild, chased until they caught up and were following them specifically to follow them. They just happened to be at the same place at the same time by happenstance. They had no intention on joining them. It’s like going to the bus stop and a couple people there yelling at you for standing there, then demanding you go take a cab. It’s hardly the behavior of sane, rational, mature people. It’s the behavior of someone that should be slapped upside the head, then heavily medicated.

As much as I wish I could blame this one on the new maps, I have to agree with the general consensus here. I’ve seen really good groups that have taken areas regardless of how many people and how much defensive siege was in there, because they did an excellent job of attacking it. And I’ve seen really bad groups that have failed when I was solo defending and just firing a single cart on them, because they did a very poor job of attacking it. Generally, if 1-2 people can successfully defend, after offensive siege has been built, against a “massive blob”, it’s a failure of attack strategy. Even on the old maps, each area had several different spots that could be attacked, from several different angles, and there’s even more spots and angles on the new maps. If one spot and one angle failed, they could have, and should have, tried one of the other options available. Or, better yet, since they were a blob, try multiple angles and spots at once. So that 1-2 people wouldn’t be able to cover all of them.

Well, we’ll probably know in another 3 years. Until then…. it’s gonna be a bumpy ride for anyone that hasn’t stepped away from this massive downward spiral.

coglin.1867:

PauloJr.6410:

This game has three modes: pvp, wvw, pve. I see devs addressing the concerns of players from both pve and pvp. Since launch hero pints have been reworked, pvp stronghold bugs addressed, balance patch for pvp performed. However, with respect to wvw, no devs seems to care about the feedback given on this game mode or bother to properly address them, simply put no responses are given to the problems pointed out. If there is any dev out there, do you guys realize that the wvw players pays the same amount for this game as everyone else? With that said, please give us some respect and properly address our concerns in the wvw section. It is starting to become really frustrating to see hundreds of post with concerns and no responses ever given. Since hot release, we have been having issues with population on the new bls, skill lags, heavy pve farm to get wvw upgrades, cannon laser event unplayable and so many more. Now, I ask which of those have you guys bothered to take a look at or answer our concerns? This silence is making players like who have supported this game for 3 years now to start giving up on it. Show us some respect and at least give us some answers.

In my opinion, this is precisely the kind of uninformative complaint pot that got use here in the first place.

If your are going to make several broad complaints, unless you offer reasonable suggestions that a large portion of the community can agree too, all your doing is aimlessly demanding changes to things. That is what got us the changes we have now, that posters are unhappy with. Unless you detail how you want them to change, then in my opinion, you are literally being part of the problem, and not the solution, while potentially making things worse.

OK, so….. Suggestions should be detailed, reasonable, and informative? I agree, which is why I tried that here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Beside-bug-lag-Bal-how-to-improve-WvW/first#post3024534

And in the CDI: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/Collaborative-Development-World-Population/page/11#post3127179

And here, with a Dev post directly after it: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Three-Likes-Three-Hates/page/3#post3550372

And here, and someone even included a picture for them to work from: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/I-think-WvW-needs-more-updates/first#post3921113

And a mention here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/WvW-Three-Likes-Three-Hates/page/4#post3555006

And another mention here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Serious-zerg-question-for-REAL-discussion/first#post3678370

And after HoT launched, the same exact thing here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Constructive-Feedback-Desert-Borderlands/page/2#post5700665

And here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/Like-or-Dislike-new-WvW-Bordelands/page/4#post5701734

And for bonus points, here’s where I gave them a couple responses they could just copy/paste to use to address the community: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Our-Community-1/page/3#post3939227

There was no anger or vitriol being spewed at them. It was “Here’s the problem. Here’s why it’s a problem. Here’s how to fix it. Here’s why that fix will work.” several times, once even with pictures included and…… nuthin’.

Not only that, but then they went and dropped this doozy here: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/essential-elements-of-the-new-borderlands/ where they claimed, before HoT launched, that the WvW maps would have a more strategic layout. The very first line under that heading is “We’ve made towers more strategically important.” Then state that they’re no longer “isolated landmarks for invaders to easily sidestep” yet…… that’s precisely what the new towers are. Isolated landmarks for invaders to easily sidestep. On the old maps, they had minor strategic relevance. On the new maps, they have zero strategic relevance. The reality is the exact opposite from how they advertised it would be. So either they’re actively shooting themselves, and WvW, in the foot, or their grasp of strategy is so bad that they’ll never actually have the ability to create anything of positive value for WvW. It’s backwards thinking at the most basic, fundamental level. Until they do a complete 180 with their entire mindset, all the way down to the very basic core principles, they’re always only going to be able to produce extremely pretty massive failures. Their art team does a good job. Their design team….. not so much.

“Soon”

15 characters

Personally, at this point, I’d just have 3 instances of the same map, one for each server, and rotate them monthly until a good WvW map can be made. From what I remember, map creation is an 8 week development cycle, so… if they did a month of 3 desert maps, a month of 3 EBs, and a month of 3 alpine map, that would give them an extra 4 weeks to do a bit of actual research, talk with actual WvW players, get actual feedback, and do any post creation tinkering. They could even add in a month of 3 EotM’s, to give time for beta testing to make sure they actually got it right.

Or, they could just kinda say “Suck it” and not do anything.

Catalin.5341:

Let me ask you this. What benefit does a tower give? What benefit causes a server to defend it, and what benefit causes a server to want to capture it? What relevance does it have to the other structures on the map?

If the barricades were actual walls, then the zerg would have to take those walls down or go the other way around which takes a really long time especially circling the academy tower.

My guess here is that you’re confusing tactics with strategy. Things like knowing which wall to attack, and which combo fields to roll at what times, are tactics. They’re small scale, and only really affect the individual immediate area. Strategy is knowing which towers to push, triggering 2v1’s, which areas to defend and which to hit and run. Very large scale things that affect the whole map, or series of maps, and have long lasting impacts and consequences.

As it stands, there are tactics involved with the new maps. No matter what they put out, knowing the best way to attack an individual area is always going to be a thing. However, the areas don’t relate to each other. They’re completely separate, individual events. Meaning, strategy has been completely sacrificed.

Let’s use EB as an example here. The keeps are positioned directly in the center of the 4 towers. If we hold all 4 of our towers, it actually makes defending the keep quite a bit easier, since those towers can assist in the defense. However, if one of our towers gets taken, that tower (for the most part) can immediately be used to start attacking the keep. So the reason you want to defend the towers is because they help defend your keep, and the reason you want to take an enemy tower is because it can then be used to as a staging post to attack the keep. Don’t get me wrong, most of the time, you’re making a push, driving in as far as you can on the side closest to your third and you’re not holding those areas or continuing the attack. This pressures that server into falling back to defend, because if the attack isn’t countered, the attack will continue. This pulls the enemy server off of other important areas elsewhere on the map, and it also feels out their defenses and response times. And this is all strategy, the mental chess match. And it’s all because the actual layout of the areas not only allow all of these possibilities to happen, but actively promote them.

Whereas, on the new borderlands, if a tower gets flipped…. oh well. Nothing can happen beyond that. Which is why the new maps are laid out far closer to a PvE map than a strategic battle field. Look at any of the actual PvE maps. They’re just a series of individual events all spread out that don’t relate to each other in the slightest bit. And tactics are basically all you’re dealing with in PvE dungeons/fractals as well. “Everyone stand over here. When the boss does this, everyone do that. At stage 2, blah blah blah” But there’s never any thought of which bosses to attack in what order, how taking out one boss would affect another boss, or anything of the sort, because it’s all irrelevant. You take out the bosses in the order they’re presented to you, and taking out one has no affect on the rest of them. There’s no strategy involved, since it’s all basically on rails. The new borderland isn’t much different. Sure, you can decide which tower you want to attack, but… there’s nothing to be gained or lost from that tower that has any significant meaning. You’re not in a stronger or weaker position depending on which ones you hold and which ones you don’t. Holding the NW tower and SE tower is functionally the same as holding the two northern ones, or the two eastern ones, or the two western ones. Or even holding none on your own borderland, and just holding all 4 on an away borderland. It’s the same amount of PPT, no matter how you slice it. And that’s the only relevance the areas have, PPT, but that’s an artificial incentive. People pretty much have to force themselves to pretend to care about it. There’s no territorial relevance. And that’s the problem.

Aeolus.3615:

Phantom.8130:

Catalin.5341:

At the cost of total loss of strategical gameplay due to towers and keeps being completely disconnected from each other.

If you’re talking about trebing from one objective to another, actually I really hated that in the old borderlands.

The new borderlands map is really cool since it’s new and I’m having fun learning the shortcuts, siege placement for attack and defense, etc.

Let me ask you this. What benefit does a tower give? What benefit causes a server to defend it, and what benefit causes a server to want to capture it? What relevance does it have to the other structures on the map?
(…)

^touche.

Being towers just PPT, in that i agree, they improved the map but the core problem stayed behind, do you think that if Anet improved also the importance of the towers besides the boon they provide, players would want that or QQ that would be a pve element boosting other guild that owns the tower?

ex: Like towers and open field camps would serve to control territory that would provide more drops, raw materials etc..

sorry the bad english

If they fixed the layout, and provided real incentive to hold the keeps, it would fix half of the problems in WvW. Even problems that don’t seem related to the layout at all.

Keep is important, have to attack them, have to defend them: Actual purpose behind doing things in WvW.

Towers in front of the keep: Defense isn’t a futile effort and actually crucial for any form of success.

Towers are set in choke points, so they MUST be dealt with to get to the keep: paths lead to the towers, people follow the paths. Fights are VERY easy to find.

Not only that, but it would help mitigate population imbalance too. Instead of needing to try to spread a thin force even thinner, defenders can consolidate in the towers, backup can waypoint into the keeps, and rush to respond. Big battles ensue. Roamers would be perfect for cutting off/defending supply lines. Attack/defend the camps, or just focus on the yaks if there’s only 1 or 2 roamers available.

Open field battles would happen naturally, by opposing forces meeting naturally in the field, as the groups advance towards each other. So the areas between the territories would need to be set up for that. Preferably, chasm/corridors near the towers that lead out and open up into a large, relatively flat open field.

Oh, and the original orb could be brought back, and made into the purpose of the center area. Do an even there, the orb shows up. Run the orb back to the keep. Your server gets a waypoint in the center of the map. Could even take the waypoints out of the structures if that’s done.

The layout itself is the foundation everything else is built on. If the foundation is faulty, a lot of cracks will happen as a result of it. Trying to fix those cracks will be impossible, since the foundation is what’s causing them. If the foundation is fixed, most of those cracks never appear.

Catalin.5341:

At the cost of total loss of strategical gameplay due to towers and keeps being completely disconnected from each other.

If you’re talking about trebing from one objective to another, actually I really hated that in the old borderlands.

The new borderlands map is really cool since it’s new and I’m having fun learning the shortcuts, siege placement for attack and defense, etc.

Let me ask you this. What benefit does a tower give? What benefit causes a server to defend it, and what benefit causes a server to want to capture it? What relevance does it have to the other structures on the map?

The answers are: Points, an artificial incentive. And fights, which can be handled in an empty arena. So the tower has zero strategic purpose. holding it doesn’t put your server in a stronger position. Losing it doesn’t put your server in a weaker position. The only thing that changes is PPT. The fights in the other areas will be completely unaffected by that tower. Making each area completely irrelevant to each other, rather than a series of strategically placed defensive structures. The entire map is just one useless area after another.

If you want to know what actual strategic purpose would be, since you seem to be under the impression that it’s…. trebs? then I’ll explain. Real strategic purpose for the towers would be to place them on the road to the keep, blocking said road, so that attackers need to deal with the tower before they’re able to strike at the other server’s heart. Not directly in front of the keep, and not even necessarily within treb distance at all. Just a semi-defensible forward outpost designed to act as a front line. And the keeps should be heavily fortified compounds designed to act as the nucleus all the surrounding areas are assisting. So you want to hold those towers to keep pressure off of your keep. And you want to attack those towers so that your next move will be pressuring the keep. Think of it like this. The keep is the heart, the camps are the veins and blood, and the towers are like the ribcage, muscles and skin. You can’t stab someone in the heart without dealing with the skin, muscles and ribcage. You shouldn’t be able to attack a keep without dealing with the towers.

Instead, we get our hearts on the outside, our ribcage up by our ears, and our blood spurting all over the place. A complete lack of strategic design.

Dawdler.8521:

Phantom.8130:

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

Well, except that this cant be “fixed”.

What you describe is a new map, not a fix. This isnt photoshop, you dont mark an area and select rotate 180 degree then its done. Changing one area requires all the other areas to change.

Its not that I dont agree with you (I do, the objective layout is horrible), its just not a fix that Anet can do given the map that we have.

Oh, believe me, I know. I’ve done map building in the past. They’d pretty much have to rebuild each of the areas to fit the landscape they were moved to. The problem, though, is that this isn’t anywhere close to the first time I, and others, have told them of the problem with the layout. We’ve been saying it for years now. I know at least one thread even had pictures of how the layout needed to be. As well as why the layout needed to be that way, and why is absolutely shouldn’t have been the triangle, square, circle design they already had. Hell, I even offered to sit down with any dev and spend 8 hours (if needs be) just explaining everything to them, and basically spoonfeeding them all the information that they absolutely need to know to make a functional WvW map. That offer is still an open one. I’ll sit down with any dev, and spend as much time explaining things to them as needed. Though I did tag up one time, and let a dev lead our zerg. Sadly, that dev just ran around and got map completion, then left. None have taken me up on my offer to help them fix things.

I had hoped when they advertised the new maps as having structures placed in strategically important locations, that they wouldn’t have been flat out lying. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Not only are they not in strategically important locations, they’re actually worse off in that regard than the Alpine map was. At least there, the northern towers could treb back the garrison if it got golem rushed. Now they’re completely isolated from the one area they’re supposed to help defend, rendering them 100% useless. The southern towers have pretty decent interiors for defending, but…. once again, they’re useless to the keeps they’re supposed to be helping to defend. But, hey, Anet got a ton of cash from all the expansions that people bought, so I’m sure they’ll consider the whole thing a rousing success across the board.

Describe a typical hour for you in the Alpine Borderlands in the past. For example, What size of group were you running in? What kind of tasks did you run? What activities did you do?
I did a bit of everything. Sentrying, building siege, roaming, zerging, and commanding

Compare your experience described above with a typical hour spent in Eternal Battlegrounds, if you went there at all. Does your style of play change between the 2 maps?
Basically the same, except I didn’t command on EB all that often

Compare your experiences described above with an hour spent in the new borderlands.
With the new maps, I log in, open the map, immediately feel my stomach drop, log out, and go play GTA Online.

Describe the nature of combat in the borderlands in the past. How have the new borderlands impacted this paradigm for you? What style or build changes might it cause? For example, knocking people off cliffs or into lava might play a more important role.
On the old maps, it was mainly about capturing chunks of areas that connected together, the north, the SW, and the SE. You’d hold the area closest to your spawn, and then push out and capture the other areas until you held the whole map

In your experience, compare the time it takes take a structure or objective here, then it did in the past.
attacking the walls took about the same amount of time, gates seemed to take considerably longer

How is the loot and wxp for you compared to in the past? Will it be able to sustain whatever you are doing? Did it take a hit, or was it improved? If you are planning to unlock an elite specialization, do you think you were helped or hurt in these regards? Do you think you could pursue any other in-game goals just by playing WvW?
How will the map change impact the long sessions (multiple hours) you spend in WvW?
I’ve never been able to sustain myself from what I get in WvW. WvW has always been a massive gold sink, and nothing has changed.

In 100 words or less, describe how the new BLs could be improved.
The layout of the areas is hideously flawed, and is the real root problem for countless other complaints. That can be fixed, and I was hoping it would be with the new maps, but the same flaws were repeated. The keep needs to be in the very back line, the towers need to be between it and the enemy thirds (in FRONT of the keep, not behind them….), and the camps need to support them. Flip the entire north upside down, and it’ll be a good start. The south would need a bit more shifting around to fix. The paths should funnel the players to the objectives, which is where the fights should be encouraged at. Not funneling them away from the objectives, and encouraging fights to never happen.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a new WvW player.
With the new maps, look for a tag, join the karma train, spam 1, wave to the 2 enemy players you see along the way.

In 100 words or less, describe how the borderlands work to a veteran WvW player that is new to the maps.
Simply put…. they don’t. They took out what they had right from the old maps, and went full steam ahead with what they had laughably wrong.

Which map am I most likely to find you currently, if you’re on Gw2?
I used to spent 95% of my time on the home borderland. After spending a couple hours going around to each of the areas to see how defensible they are, and then tagging up and taking each area on an away borderland, I’m sorely disappointed in the new maps, so I’ll probably end up going to EB for an hour every few days, though that will most likely end up tapering off over time

As someone that’s on TC, I can honestly say that anyone saying SoS is outnumbered all the time really really needs to log in during the OCX timezone, and you’ll understand why SoS is considered full. SoS may be slightly outnumbered during other times of the day, but SoS always has blobs on two maps during OCX. TC, on the other hand, averages around 30 during OCX spread across all 4 maps, and that’s being generous. Our “massive TC blob” is 7-10 people during OCX.

And if you’re outnumbered on one borderland during the other timezones, map hop. Your zerg may just be on another map. All 3 servers tend to have a zerg on EB for the majority of the day. FA has a sizable OCX group, but they seem to fade away for the most part after the weekend. SoS has been the Oceanic server since launch, it seems that still holds true.

Bottom line, there are 4 main timezones to consider. NA, OcX, SEA, and EU. Just because you may be outnumbered during the timezone you happen to play in, that doesn’t mean that the opposite of that situation isn’t true during other timezones.

Twinny.9304:

I think we have 2 major issues on why it happens:

1. They are under the assumption that they are doing nothing wrong.

2. Hard to prove that it is them doing it, so as long as they think they are invisible they will continue.

Of course this does not count for every siege troll, but a large portion of them. So any methods is just as good as getting rid of them.

1. Evidence – Make siege placement a map wide addition to the chat system, similar to combat log but in main channel. “Twinny Todd Deployed Balista.”

a. If a tagged Commander placed siege it would say something like: “Commander Twinny Todd Deployed Balista.”

2. Action – Make it reportable with screen shot of given evidence from the chat window, and announce it’s a ban-able/suspend-able offence.

How will it help? – It will partially help as a deterant, in the troll knowing that he is now visible to all on that particular map of his actions. This alone will reduce trolling considerably, and in addition making it reportable will reduce trolling even more.

To avoid people getting reported when they shouldn’t be, for example small Havoc groups/defenders etc (who do usually communicate in map chat what their upto), the report will need to be made but multiple people to be flagged.

Each Siege unit can be dismantled/recycled supplies back into the structure, or to the recyclers if at enemy structure or in open field, but to avoid trolling of dismantling well placed siege, each siege requires 3 separate individuals to interact with it to recycle it.

In addition to this each siege could have the persons name prefixed infront of it, for example looking at the siege built or unbuilt on the ground would be named “Twinny Todd’s Superior Balista.” So you could even see for example, if I was the troll and their are 5 x balista’s and and 2 x rams at a random indestructible wall, all with my name infront of them, weather im still on the map or not u have screen shot evidence that I have been trolling.

I mean things like this are much more simple to implement and may not get rid of every troll, (imo nothing will get rid of all of them), but will certainly make them near non existent in time.

btw this recycling siege business could even add some fun tactics to the game recycling rams on a outer gate to use on an inner gate.

I like this idea, even if there weren’t any siege trolls at all. Though I’d take it a step further. I’d add having it broadcast the general location of the siege as well. As someone who tends to drop a ton of legitimate defensive siege, it can be a ton of work to set it all up on your own. If a message popped up in team or map chat along the lines of “Phantom deployed trebuchet in Cragtop” people would know to stop by and help build it. It would also make sure that people get the credit they deserve. A LOT of defensive players go completely unnoticed, because they’re not put in the spotlight to be recognized for their efforts.

I’d also make sure to have the name on the individual piece of siege as well, to really highlight troll siege versus legitimate siege. There are a few odd legitimate placements that someone could mistake for troll siege, but if it’s the name of someone that’s known for setting up defenses, it would be trusted. But if there’s 5 trebs set up behind a supply depot where they can’t hit anything, it’s pretty obvious what’s really going on there, and the name on the siege would act as evidence for reporting, while the chat broadcasts would expose the culprit to the community at large.

And I’d also support some way to manually despawn siege, because sometimes I do mess up some of the more precise placements, and don’t realize it until it’s already built and go to test it. Then I have to wait an hour for it to despawn so I can fix it, and during that timeframe, that’s a vulnerability there. It’s a bit of a sticky situation, though, because you don’t want to have a system where a troll can come in and actively remove all of the legitimate defensive siege, but you’d like for there to be a way for legitimate players to correct innocent mistakes. I dunno, maybe have it so players can remove their own siege with no problems, and commanders can initiate votes to remove siege placed by other people. Which would also combat siege trolls, while helping legitimate defenders out.

I see problems with the “exhaustion” thing though. If I have a group that can help build siege, I can drop a lot more than 3 pieces in 3 minutes. Commanders can burn through that timer at every target they plan on attacking as well. 5 rams or catapults isn’t exactly uncommon. While it would be nice to kinda scale back how easy offense is, injecting new artificial artificial limitations is never the right answer.

This is a phenomenon in MMOs that I’ve always found both amusing and disturbing. What is a MMO? It’s a video game. And what is a video game? A form of entertainment. It’s not a competitive sport. No one’s getting any shoe deals or million dollar contracts, or even a trophy, or really any kind of prize whatsoever. There’s nothing for winning, and not a whole lot of penalty for losing. It’s pretty close to watching TV, only….. you press more buttons. There’s not a sane person on the planet who would yell and insult someone for not watching reruns of Seinfeld the right way.

What it all boils down to is ego. Some people live vicariously though video games, and take them waaaaaaay too seriously. They’re called addicts. They need psychiatric help, not excuses being made for them. So someone came in on a low level character and got killed, and that caused the other server to rally and the fight to change momentum. Oh well. Suck it up. It’s a video game. It’s not serious business. It’s a leisure time activity.

That’s not to say that people shouldn’t want to try to improve, and learn strategies, and encourage others to do so, and be willing to teach what you know. That’s been a part of healthy gaming since the beginning. Even Pong had strategies that people would try to learn and share with each other. People got better at the game, and enjoyed getting better at the game. The people who were abusive found that no one wanted to play with them, so they ended up having to adjust their attitudes.

Frustration happens, sure. It’s natural. But when things reach a boiling point, it’s important that those frustrations don’t spill over onto other people. And it’s never cool to be a jerk from the get go because you’re afraid one of the “unwashed plebes” may not treat a video game as though it’s a second job, or try to base their life’s worth around success and failure in said video game.

As someone mentioned earlier, being polite is free. It doesn’t cost anything. The only thing it requires is a bit of patience and decency. If someone’s not capable of that, especially if they want to use the “it’s the internet/it’s a video game” excuse, they really really should just take themselves out of the gene pool. Because all they’re doing is polluting it.

PetricaKerempuh.7958:

you “defending is hard” QQers have already done enough to wvw, tyvm. i remember once having fights in wvw, not trying to break walls under 55.735 sup AC’s firing on my head to get to 3 guys inside!

less siege, nerf ac’s.

And the “mindless blob, easy karma train, afraid to use strategy, whine about a challenge” crowd has done consistent irreversible damage to WvW since launch. I remember once needing to actually think and communicate in WvW, and not just spam 1 while running in a giant circle with 80 strangers and facemashing against whatever got in our way.

To each their own, I suppose. Some people actually like rising to a challenge, others are terrified of the very concept.

Brother Grimm.5176:

Asacledhae.2650:

For A-net wanting to shove a bazillion of people on the same instance, simply creating the “illusion” that all the worlds are “full”?

While I don’t think they are trying to create that illusion as much as actually getting players together with other players (sans the RP issues being discussed here), there is another motive here that most players seem to miss. An economic one that is possibly quite large.

How many map instances do you think Anet had running on a 24 hour average before MS? The number would ALWAYS include multiplying by the number of world servers under the old system (51 worlds)

How many map instances do you think are being maintained on average over a 24 hour period with MS in place? It’s possible that it could be 5 to 10 times less (and possibly more). Considering each of those zones likely takes a separate VM (don’t know that to be the case) in a hosted server farm, that could end up being some SIGNIFICANT cost reductions over a monthly billing cycle.

Now I personally feel this change is a HUGE win-win for players and Anet, but I DO see how this may not be the case for the RP community. I know Anet wants to avoid splintering the community any more than necessary, but they are obviously having to maintain some separate server groups based on language, so I’m not sure a separate server set for RPers would be out of the question (I think they would need to evaluate just how MANY players would play on RP servers to justify or discount the idea).

Actually……. they said the Megaserver has nothing to do with the costs, and that the cost difference is negligible.

I like this idea, if not for any other reason than it promotes people spreading out to all of the servers instead of superstacking on only a few. That being said, however, the first time this sort of tournament would happen, it wouldn’t be so much about the tournament, but about getting everything sort out. It might take a couple attempts before competitive matches would be seen, but that would be across the board. Which is much better than 1 match, and even that match would be a maybe….. sometimes.

Once the population would be sorted out, they should mix in the other styles of tournaments, and use this one as a rebalance in between then.

Karuna.1357:

I think the whole tangent topic of ‘what does or doesn’t constitute a RPG’ is taking attention away from the fact that there is a large RP player base in this game, despite the fact that GW2 doesn’t seem very inclined to make it easy for them.

Well…. it’s kind of the same issue, really. The RP part has been slowly getting removed from RPGs, and other genres have been plugged into the gaps that were left. It’s a trend in every MMO, really. The RP playerbase has been gradually pushed out of the genre, and is now considered a “niche crowd”, and support is treated as a waste of resources.

RP communities still persist, however as someone on the EQN roundtable put it, that’s not because of the games, but in spite of them. There are millions of roleplayers that would actually like an online roleplaying game, but they know what to expect from MMOs so most avoid them. Whereas if the games weren’t continually making it harder and harder for RPers, and actually reversed that trend, it would draw many many more RPers back into the MMOs.

The problem, however, doesn’t lie with the development studios. It’s the parent companies, such as EA or NCSoft. They don’t care about the product at all, just as long as they get a profit from it. The genre, the quality, the communities are all non-factors. The development studios basically get told “do what we say, or find another job”, and are forced to make sacrifice after sacrifice, and end up with something much different and many times much worse than what they originally wanted. If you look at TOR, the devs from Bioware said there were many nights where they left the office in tears because of what they were forced to leave on the cutting room floor. This isn’t unique to just EA, it’s become a common trend in all MMOs.

Conversely, if you look at indie games, they’re almost the polar opposite. If you ignore the quality of the graphics, and just focus on the meat of the games, they’re much much better. They have to be. However, the problem a lot of indie studios run into is needing to cut corners due to not having enough money to actually develop what they want. If the money were spread around a bit more, or if the parent companies would butt out and let developers have full control, the overall quality of the games would skyrocket. Ironically, higher quality games would lead to more players, which would lead to much more money overall.

Today’s industry is primarily just about the short term profits, and funneling that money into the next short term profit venture. Basically….. exactly how flipping drugs works. There’s no long term. Anything that would promote long term health of a game, such as RP and PvP, gets ignored in favor of the revolving door design.

What’s even more ironic is the wedge that’s been driven between the RP and PvP crowds, when they’re actually fairly similar in a few key regards. They’re both very low maintenance, mainly just needing a good core starting system and only minor future updates. They both stick around for the long term, due to being able to make their own fun and not needing it made for them. They’re also both creative thinkers, instead of rotation spammers and facerollers. As we’ve seen in GW2, support for both the RP crowd and WvW crowd is sorely lacking. sPvP got minor attention, due to the esports delusion, but it’s primarily about the living story, throw away content, and the revolving door dynamic. RPers and PvPers really should be banding together to stand up for long term players, but most are too busy continuing to demonize each other based on myths to do so. Those who actually do both RP and PvP often get it from both sides, because they’re not strictly one or the other. Which just makes the revolving door dynamics even easier to pull off. It’s….. a very sad state of affairs, really.

lakdav.3694:

I had a thread a month or so before megaservers came, trying to discuss the very point most of us bring up, putting RPG back into MMORPG. (I would search this subforum for it, but you know, the search feature of this forum is what it is…)

It was bad timing it seems, because back then all i got back from it was people pointing out that “RPG” is not about roleplaying but about character customization and stats and builds.

I can’t help but find it amusing, in a morbid sort of way, how easily most people are fooled. The truth is every game has stats, but that doesn’t even register to most people if it’s not shoved in their face. Hell, Rock and Roll racing for the SNES had gear, stats, customization and build possibilities, but no one in their right mind would call it an RPG, yet it would qualify based on what people have been trained to expect these days. Even first person shooters have stats, if one gun is better than another gun, it’s because it actually has better stats. They’re just not visible, but that’s a matter of UI not a matter of genre. I was having a discussion with a friend the other day, explaining that the new batman games fit into that category. You have stats, you get gear which you can upgrade, and are able to customize your character’s build.

Conversely, by the actual definition of RPG (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Role-playing_game ), GW2 wouldn’t qualify as an RPG. It’s an action platformer, with minor third person shooter qualities. Most MMOs fall into a similar category, because whether they like to admit it or not, they all copy previous MMOs.

Simply put, you were right, based on actual facts. The people who were arguing with you were…. well, marks. Every con man knows how to trick a sucker, and that’s what the current MMO market revolves around. Tricking people into thinking a duck is a goat, and then getting them to defend their quacking goat.

Wasbunny.6531:

Yumiko Ishida.3769:

Trolling? Nah I’m just going to act normally as I do always in character everywhere. Everyone should do the same if they RP, then we will drown out the haters.

There is a right or wrong way to conduct yourself and go about it. I’m taking the high road and doing as I normally do which is: RP everywhere!

My characters are no strangers to battle, so would it be so hard to think WvW is no different than say acting out slaying 1000s of centaurs or risen on a daily basis fighting for the common good? If it fits in your character’s personality and they have a reason to be there… Why not RP it?

Its not trolling if it makes a lick of sense.

Most of the time I’m half OoC (out of character) anyways.

Fair enough.

Absolutely nothing wrong with RPing wherever and whenever you want, just so long as the intent behind it is not to disrupt. I guess I envisioned the aggravation of having commander directions or scout intel being drowned out by RP in /m chat. If it’s all in /s & /e I see no problem with it, in fact it might bring a more epic feel to WvW.

I suppose if we start seeing groups of RPers just RPing in either WvW or PvP and not actually partaking in the battle we’d have a problem and things would escalate in a predictably ugly way.

So yeah I see your point, we just gotta be careful as to what our motivations really are.

As a very long time commander on TC, I can honestly say that we love RP in our WvW. A good chunk of our WvW players are also RPers. We’ve held large scale RP events (yak parades, all asura zergs, etc.) We actually used to have a pirate themes guild that was IC everywhere (WvW, dungeons, even the forums), and it brought an incredible energy to the maps. Those who can handle doing both are highly revered.

The main thing is to just not chill in our spawns RPing. The northern towers and the garrison on TCBL are great for it. We have guides on how to set up defenses on our community site, and as long as someone calls out any attacks in team chat, you’ll encounter next to no trouble. In fact, it’s something we’ve been both needing and wanting for quite some time. A 5 man group can defend a tower from most threats as long as the proper defenses are set up beforehand, and a 10 man group can do the same in the keeps. We’re always trying to find volunteers to do exactly that, and are lucky if we can get a single person in each.

Sure, there will be one person every now and then who gives you trouble, but that’s very few and very far between. Most of our commanders will try to reign that occasional person in, since RP is a major part of TC’s overall identity. We’ve always done our best to debunk the myths that RPers are bad at PvP and PvPers are all jerks, and we try to maintain a friendly encouraging environment.

Nage.1520:

pixiedancer.1526:

Nage.1520:

Teofa Tsavo.9863:

A chat channel is no substitute for a physical home server location you can reliably log into by choice. Cities have no good reason to be Megaservers except to give an illusion of population.

Regarding just Cities, in my opinion there is absolutely no “pro” argument remotely strong enough to justify the considerable damage done to all server communities, RP included.

But there’s absolutely no reason not to have a city off the mega server AND an RP channel. None that I can see anyway.

Not too sure about the chat channel, in my experience, they usually end up as cliquey trollbait. The server “cool kids” and egomaniacs flaunt themselves there unless they’re heavily regulated. What starts off as a useful tool turns into <social media site> 2.0, trolling, calling people out etc. Especially if someone from an rival WvW player server decides to guest to watch.

But with the megaserver, the servers are too busy to allow RP in map chat. There are too many other things going on in map chat. A channel just for RP would take the RP out of map chat and allow people to not have their RP interupted. Anyone who would troll you there, could guest to the old server and troll you in map chat anyway.

The thing is, people don’t usually RP in map chat. People RP in say chat. Map chat tends to either get turned off entirely, or used for general out of character chatting. That being said, however, Rpers get trolled in all chats. say chat, map chat, and there were to be an RP chat Rpers would get trolled there too. In fact, even moreso, since it would be so easy to turn on and disrupt. It would be useless for its intended purpose, and would end up getting avoided due to it being a giant magnet for trolls.

The best solution is to let people manually select the variables the megaserver uses and just add an RP option to that list. Keep guilds and party members as top priority, and have a “home server” option on the list as well that can be selected so that it will allow for guesting. That fixes each of the problems that have cropped up from their implementation of the megaserver. RPers et to stay together. Guildmates get to stay together. Large PvE guilds get to stay together. Problems solved, call it a day.

Atromir.6042:

As someone who bought and plays this game entirely for roleplay, I don’t want to be in a position where I feel my notable expenditure to play this has been wasted. What sort of message are you sending out when you have created a situation inhospitable to a large number of players? If you want to make the game feel more alive, more active, then cull dead servers to consolidate server usage, don’t try to mash them together in this… ham-fisted farce of a system. Sure, this system might be more tolerable on the NA servers, but for us on Piken Square, in the EU servers, it’s a more evident problem because there are language barriers. I’ve heard accounts of my friends being caught between the French and the Germans and being unable to pull the pieces of their guild back together.

As much as a person’s pride and determination seek to drive them forward, sometimes it’s only right to reassess your choices and turn back. This has been a very poor system from the outset, a clumsy way to avoid the inevitable – that servers need to be consolidated. It’s easier to move a community from one world to another than to have to play a puzzle game across a number of shards to have even a single roleplay. And that’s just roleplay events, as this change is tantamount to lethal to spontaneous roleplay.

So really I’d like to see a U-turn. There’s precedent for it in MMO developers to reverse a planned change, and there’s no shame in it. It’s just about doing what’s right to keep the integrity of your communities and thus maintain the quality of the game.

To add to what you said: “An error doesn’t become a mistake until you refuse to correct it” – Orlando Aloysius Battista

lakdav.3694:

As awesome as it may look on paper, if you try to RP in WvWvW, prepare for meeting massive hate even from your own server. WvW is fast-paced, sometimes stressful, and aims for maximum efficiency. Stopping to type in some snarky IC comments in the middle of a siege will be either drowned in the ocean of tacticly actually relevent information (like “inc.west” or “dont waste supps on outergates!!”) or after the defeat it will get lots of hate. If RPers keep to the only safe parts like the keep of their servers borderland, you will also be hated for taking up slots from those who would actually contribute to the WvW.

Also if the WvW maps would turn to the last RP haven, there would be queues, reaching into the EotM, and you are back where you started, unable to meet up with RPers.

you’re clearly not from TC. We’ve had a TON of RP in WvW, with pirate commanders, yak parades, and even a few RP weddings in other servers’ garrison. We like RP in our WvW. It wouldn’t be the same without it.

To give an example of good communication with the playerbase, I’ll link this update: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/info/news/Black-Lion-Trader-Armorsmith/first#post3930797

Basically, “Something’s wrong, we’re looking into it, we apologize for the inconvenience.” This is a PERFECT example of how they should communicate to the playerbase. Continued communication in the same vein as this will do a great deal to help restore faith in Anet. I give the staff member kudos for the way this was handled.

I would also like to add, it’s alright to give an update of “We checked it out and it turns out this issue is much more complex than we originally thought, and will take much more time than we anticipated. We ask for your patience, and apologize for the delay” if an fix will need to take some time. Don’t get me wrong, people will still be unhappy that the fix isn’t there, but their unhappiness will be directed toward the bug, not the staff themselves.

Things such as extended periods of silence, or even disrespectful responses toward the community will do the exact opposite. It will channel all of the unhappiness toward the staff, and will compound and grow with each and every new issue that arises.

This is the difference between good community relations and bad community relations. The thread that I linked shows an example of good community relations. It’s something I hope they take notice of and start to build on.

Personally, I’m tough, but I’m fair. When they make a change that positively affects the community, I give them credit for it. When they make a change that negatively effects the community, I call them out on it.

For example, I’m not a GvG player, but I did tell Devon Carter he did a very good job by creating an arena in Obsidian Sanctum for GvG players to play. I’ve also called them out numerous times on the Commander and Squad system, because it’s something that’s been needing improved since before the game even launched and so far, no improvements have come.

I give feedback in both regards, unfortunately, most of what I’ve been able to say has been negative. I’m not going to lie to them, because that doesn’t do any good for anyone involved.

anzenketh.3759:

Phantom.8130:

How many of them have screenshots posted on their official forums of a developer taking advantage of those bugs, where that issue still isn’t resolved 6 months later?

My point is it will take as long as it takes. Rather then assume neglect assume it is a difficult problem to solve that they honestly do not have a best solution to fix it right now without the possibility of it causing more problems.

If you know a lot about the issue and have a idea on how to fix it try emailing the exploits at arena.net email address with your suggestion. Perhaps you thought of something that they have not.

I went back and found the exact situation I was talking about. I was wrong. It was 9 months ago. Here’s the thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/ANET-Fix-Your-Towers/first

anzenketh.3759:

Phantom.8130:

Now, about your last paragraph, all you need to do is take a look through the WvW section to see thing clearly. It doesn’t take a year and a half to fix any individual issue. When a developer is caught in a screenshot glitching through a gate in WvW, and 6 months pass and that gate is still glitched? That’s neglect, pure and simple. especially when that glitch was reported countless times by countless people, with videos explaining it in detail sent to them.

As a experiment go to any open source community bug reporting system. Look for reported bugs. Look how many there are. Look how many are unsolved. Look at how many are duplicates. Look at how many are filed incorrectly or are problems that do not even exist anymore. After doing that you can get a idea of why some issue may take 6 months or longer to get resolved. Especially if it is a complex issue that not a single person has no quick solution for.

How many of them have screenshots posted on their official forums of a developer taking advantage of those bugs, where that issue still isn’t resolved 6 months later?

Star Ace.5207:

Ardenwolfe.8590:

I don’t RP. But, I do choose an RP server because the maturity level tends to be better. One of the fears I felt about the mega servers was the influx of trolls or generally idiotic behavior would help kill the community.

Well, after some of the behavior I saw tonight, I have to say that fear came true.

One can call that elitist if they’d like. But, I call it being respectful. And again, generally speaking, the RP communities tend toward this.

It’s like the intellect and maturity fell off a cliff with the new patch.

The intellect and maturity remains, but now you get to see more of the trolls. The community is the same, let’s keep reporting them so we can get rid of them once and for all.

Also, asking for a respectful attitude is not being snobby/elitist. You need not be “special”, “select”, or “smarter” to go about playing the game in a considerate manner to everybody else. I don’t mind people fooling around with their characters, but trolling/bullying others (whether it’s against RP or something else) is unacceptable.

As I said before, I would seriously suggest that ANet’s anti-troll policy be as strong, if not stronger, than that exerted towards bots. Those players are worse than bots, and they don’t need them, nor their money-not at the cost of a healthier community. They should pay some more people responsible with in-game moderation now more than ever to get rid of these kind of negative players-especially BECAUSE of the newness of the Megaserver.

People have been suggesting that they get some GMs for as long as I can remember. It was mainly due to all of the rampant hacking/exploiting in WvW, but is just a good idea in general. Instead of putting in GMs to deal with the cheaters, they began removing parts of the game. The original orbs are the clearest example. People were constantly fly hacking or wall jumping into keeps, and instead of banning the cheaters, they removed the orbs. It did nothing about the problem, since people are still flyhacking, but it took a very valuable dynamic away from WvW.

Adesia.5138:

Phantom.8130:

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

I just want to chime in here; I am quite passionate about the game but I often don’t really post on the forums. Does that mean I’m not as passionate as someone who does post? I know people who love the game who never even look at the forums because they don’t really like forums. I’m sure not all people who post here are as passionate as you give them credit for… some people just like to kitten. XD

Also, I don’t think Arenanet is ignoring all complaints or negative feedback. I think some issues just take longer than others to fix with their given development timelines.

This boils down to issues with wording. There can be very passionate players who don’t post on the forums, but the vast majority of the forum posts come from very passionate players. Of course, there are always trolls and those interested mainly in PvF, but they’re not really the majority. Also bear in mind that just because someone may be passionate about something, that doesn’t mean they they’re actually knowledgeable about it. It just means they’re really into it.

Now, about your last paragraph, all you need to do is take a look through the WvW section to see thing clearly. It doesn’t take a year and a half to fix any individual issue. When a developer is caught in a screenshot glitching through a gate in WvW, and 6 months pass and that gate is still glitched? That’s neglect, pure and simple. Especially when that glitch was reported countless times by countless people, with videos explaining it in detail sent to them before those screenshots ever happened.

anzenketh.3759:

Phantom.8130:

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

Yes however if that feedback is not delivered in a good way it is hard to prioritize and understand exactly what they poster is trying to say. If the majority of the post is filled with emotion the actual message is often lost and all someone reads is “I am upset about X”. When the player may be trying to get across is “This is why I am upset about X.” Even better feedback would be “This is what I am upset about X feature. Please implement Y instead. Here are the positives and negatives that I think my solution has.”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/How-to-Give-Good-Feedback/

This goes back to what I was saying before. The negative feedback actually started off very constructive As time went on, and the issues remained ignored and unfixed, people grew more and more frustrated, especially as new issues were added (and the negative feedback about those also went unaddressed) and it gradually evolved to this point.

Ashen.2907:

Phantom.8130:

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

How many people do you think have suffered sickness or death because of an exploit or a bug in GW2 ?

No offense sir but, as annoying as they can be, no issue in a video game is really anything other than a bit trivial.

Ok then, imagine if Hoover ignored complaints that their vacuums were blowing dirt out instead of sucking it in. The point is a faulty product, with complaints of those faults being ignored. Competitors lick their lips when they see that happening.

Stephen McBeaven.5640:

Phantom.8130:

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

Can you explain this? It sounds like a myth. Also, “the most passionate about the game” is by definition not representative of the majority.

It’s actually basic sociology. If someone was neutral about something, they wouldn’t give any feedback about it either way. They wouldn’t care, so they wouldn’t be bothered. People have to go out of their way to post on the forums. That requires conscious effort. People only put conscious effort into something they care about. Those who post on the forums have made the conscious effort and have gone out of their way to post here about something they feel passionately about, instead of just quietly playing the game.

The most valuable thing any company can get is feedback from their customers. Negative feedback is also far more important than positive feedback, because it shows the company the areas in which they need to improve. Better product, more customers, more money. If they ignore that negative feedback, or actively steer into the skid, the result is a bad product, with fewer and fewer customers wanting to buy it, less and less money every day, possibly ending in bankruptcy.

Alice.8694:

Phantom.8130:

That being said, however, imagine if McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of the food tasting too salty from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about their seats being too uncomfortable during long drives. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

Fixed that for you.

No. You really didn’t. Countless bugs and exploits have been reported, and have gone ignored since the betas. Countless reports of hacking have gone ignored. Countless reports of griefing have been ignored. These aren’t trivial issues.

Star Ace.5207:

One of the silliest complaints on forums is that every player’s favorite Profession is being “nerfed to the ground”, while every other Profession is “OP”.

This I agree with you 100% on. I think it reached a boiling point when Ranger Pets were declared to be OP. (Because them charging blindly into AoE and dying apparently can’t be countered….) The classes were actually pretty well balanced around launch, but a lot of people hadn’t adapted their playstyle from other MMOs to GW2’s combat, and that started the whole ball rolling. Then again, every class is considered OP in every MMO, except the one the poster happens to be playing. However, they started tinkering with the classes, based on the countless “x is OP, please nerf” threads, which really translated to “I got killed by an x, please help me win”. Which….. just spurned more threads in the same vein.

Pandaman.4758:

Phantom.8130:

No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Actually, the grass isn’t greener on the other side, much of your complaints can be applied to most other gaming companies these days. Personally I can say that my experience with Anet’s communication is still leagues above Bioware/EA and Cryptic/Perfect World’s.

Actually, Bioware was pretty good about things in NWN. EA, however, shouldn’t ever be allowed to even touch anything video game related. All they’ve shown that they’re able to do is destroy an IP.

That being said, however, imagine id McDonalds was ignoring thousands of complaints of food poisoning from their customers. Or if Ford was ignoring thousands of complaints about steering wheels falling off. And that those companies exhibited a pattern of ignoring customer complaints for a year and a half. Burger King and Chevy would be delighted.

The most impressive guild I’ve ever seen has been HB. There were a lot of times where I’d just stop and watch in awe as they were kicking the crap out of me. I remember when I first saw them shortly after launch. I was defending the NE tower, and they rolled up. They had 3 rams up, perfectly placed, and built within 2 seconds and came in and took the place like none of us were even there. I got to see them a lot that week, and as a result my repair bills were astronomically high.

I don’t know how good they are at GvG, but they’re the best I’ve ever seen at WvW.

Will.6210:

Players who are satisfied rarely post about how satisfied they are. Forums generally represent a vocal minority.

Actually…. that’s a myth.

The people who post on the forums are the most passionate about the game. Good companies understand how customer feedback works and pay attention. Bad companies believe the myth and wonder why their customer base is shrinking.

If you look back to the threads that were created within the first 6 months after launch, most were pretty civil. As time went on, Anet responses became fewer and fewer. Countless bugs and exploits that have existed since the betas are still not fixed. New systems were introduced that no one asked for nor wanted, and each were filled with several bugs that still haven’t been fixed. Suggestions that would actually help improve the game went entirely ignored, or worse, the exact opposite was done. The CDI’s were the same way.

Look back at the massive thread concerning ascended gear. People overwhelmingly HATED the idea. What did they do? They added more Ascended gear, with an even bigger grind than the jewelry.

Look at the WvW CDI’s. the first one listed Population imbalance as the biggest problem in WvW, with the commander tags being the second biggest issue. What did they do? They added incentive to superstack further, and haven’t done anything with the commander tags in the FOUR months since the CDI.

In the week leading up to this patch, Anet was told what problems would present themselves, were offered solutions on how to avoid it, and ignored that. Now we’re seeing exactly what people were concerned with happening, and as usual, Anet is nowhere to be found to deal with the mess they made. A mess they could have easily avoided, but chose not to.

This is the result of those sort of things. To lay this on the community is to completely ignore what has actually been happening over the past year and a half. This is large scale customer dissatisfaction, with ample reason for it. This one is on Anet, and Anet alone. If they hadn’t completely mismanaged what was the most promising MMO on the market, none of this would be happening. Instead, they caved, tried to turn it into yet another WoW-clone, and neglected their paying customers to do so. If people are angry with Anet, it’s because Anet actually deserves it. No other company on the planet would expect to behave this way and still be in business, let alone continue to neglect and look down upon their customer base.

Truth be told, this community is owed an apology from Anet, at the very least.

Adamus.1287:

Here is a thought, why dont anet just make, gasp, OFFICIAL role playing servers, dun dun dun, and give free transfers to it and maintain it with the context of it being an actual rp server. Oh right, its because your RP is NOT and this needs to be made very clear, it is NOT an actual function of this game, nor is it any of areanets legitimate concern or responsibility to accommodate and cater for it. Its annoying to see “this hurts RP” and “this will be bad for RP” with what seems like zero regard for how this will help the ACTUAL players, well to bad, companies can not accommodate the needs of people who make up things to do in their game.

Option B
Or, to aid in the current way things work, ask anet to make “channels” for zones, sort of like overflows but you can instead choose to enter it. So for example, lets say that every zone has, ballpark, 5 “channels”, it could be made the standard that, say, “channel” 5 is the RP “channel” in all zones and that if you enter it, you are knowingly and willfully entering a specific RP “channel”, as opposed to RP’ers simply claiming where ever suits them that day as “theirs”. Though with “mega servers” in place now i guess its not really an option.

It’s an MMORPG. If you actually learn the history behind those, you’ll learn that RP is the reason this genre even exists in the first place. We ARE the ACTUAL players. I’m not even going to get into what you are, because I’ve gotten enough infractions this week.

Asacledhae.2650:

We kept suggesting for A-net to add “RP flags” for us to use, so the megaserver could see who’s into RP or not, and sort us accordingly. Maybe that will happen in time..

keep in mind, we’ve been suggesting “different color commander tags” for WvW for a year and a half now, and….. nuthin’.

I think it would be best if they had a box on the world selection screen, with all of the different categories they’re using. Let people check them off manually. Add RP, and all of the different languages that they once had separate servers for. Have those selections override the current metrics driven system. Then people will be where they actually want to be.

Star Ace.5207:

UncleOris.1892:

Star Ace is basically a troll at this point. He has gotten so many good answers to his questions and concerns it’s almost insulting that he’s still trying to play some sort of poor victim in this thread.

But that’s the thing I was talking about, there certaily are few outliners in the case of the megaserver that somehow think that this is a great change. However – not one of them seems to be able to explain “how” this change is good, not just for themselves, but for everyone. Because, as we’ve established, most people hate this change – going so far as to prompting them to |leave the game|.

You know, now that I think about, when everyone could easily become a jedi in SWG – The community also hated it, except a few outliners going “yay now i can haz teh laz0rsw3rd”. Guess what happened to that game? Yep. Servers shut down, baby.

Can’t refrain from attacking others? Isn’t it better to accept there are many sides to a story? Clearly your opinion is valid too. These “outliers” are not wrong just because they disagree with you.

And you certainly can’t speak for everyone, and not even “most” players. Not that it’s wrong to be a minority at ALL, but to claim that “everybody” or “most players” “hate” the Megaserver is not true.

I don’t feel like a victim at ALL, but it’s irrefutable that some people are being attacked on this thread for simply disagreeing with the premise that the Megaserver is “bad for RP.” Many of us contend that it doesn’t have to be, that’s all there is to it; feel free to disagree, but “trolling” is the farthest thing in my mind when stating my thoughts.

i’mo just leave this right here….

Star Ace.5207:

This is a perceived inconvenience for RPlayers, not a true one. People just afraid of change. It comes off as arrogant, and may even turn off some other players from role playing in the first place (note that I am also very adamant against people mocking/ridiculing role players, so I stand with you-just not in the often negative way seen on this thread, as in “ANet never cares about RP”, which sounds very immature.)

pot, meet kettle.

Suddenflame.2601:

Main issue i see here is no one is differing between NA and EU. The forums contain both but people play on different megaservers (NA and EU are still separate).

I do not know the case of EU since I am in NA. The NA servers from what I seen are doing great (since we dont have the language barrier in the first place as English is pretty much the most common). I havn’t seen the issue of breaking up the Guilds as every map i been on that uses megaserver (which by the way are not many atm and would never break up the guilds as they are not populated enough to do so) I have been with my Guildmates each time.

NA server towns are not widely populated such as the Grove is still pretty dead as is. I think the problem lies in EU servers more than NA.

From all the reports I’ve been reading, the ones getting hit the worst by this are the EU servers, the RP communities, and large PvE guilds. In that order, as well. There’s also smaller segments that are getting hit hard by it too. I’ve heard reports of small guilds from the same server being put into separate maps even when they’re in the same party.

Star Ace.5207:

The argument "if you disagree with us you must not be a “tr00 roleplayer” or “be against roleplaying” doesn’t work. I love RP and RPers. A friendly RP poster here from TC was attacked for simply disagreeing with the mass “megaserver must suck for RP” idea. Also, implying that people who disagree with you must by all means lack common sense is not only offensive, but irrational, as there are other points of view out there other than our own (including yours, to be sure.)

I surely oppose anti RP trolls much as you do. I will report them happily and help keep the game clean from their toxicity. Don’t let them keep you from enjoying the game your own way.

You do realize that any can look back and see the reality, and see that it’s quite different than the one you’re spinning, correct? You’re one of two posters who came into this thread and immediately began insulting everyone, then immediately began playing the victim the instant they returned fire. Furthermore, you’ve continuously overlooked the facts that have been presented to you and have simply been repeating “you’re all wrong because I say so.”

Simply put, you are wrong, but not because I say so. But because the facts of the situation say so. The Megaserver has split up the RP community. Fact. The Megaserver has split up guilds. Fact. The Megaserver mashed all the different language servers into a single one, then slapped a bandaid solution onto it. Fact. These are the things that have actually happened. You might feel that these things are good for the game, but thousands of other players (and anyone who has even a minor bit of business sense) do not.

If you had simply stated that you like the Megaserver, that would have been perfectly fine. No one would have taken exception to it. Perhaps people may have tried debating with you, but would have done so in a fair and rational manner. You didn’t, however, and are still trying to act like a victim when it’s your own actions that prompted any negative responses that were directed to you. At this point, it really is coming off as textbook trolling.

Hannelore.8153:

All they know is whether its “WoW” or “Not WoW”.

This really is the heart of the matter. When WoW came in, the RPG started getting phased out. There’s a science to making an RPG. A clear, distinct science. Though WoW kept some of it, they also sacrificed a good bit of it. The copycats that came afterwards sacrificed more and more. Not understanding the science of RPG creation, or even what made WoW successful, but just seeing how much money WoW was making and wanting a piece of it. Pretty much all of them failed in spectacular fashion. WoW was successful because it made RPGs more accessible to the average gamer, and fans of other genres.

Flash forward to today, RPers are considered “a tiny niche crowd”, get harassed on a daily basis, while their basic needs have all but been entirely removed. When someone points to actual RPGS as an example, people behave like it’s impossible to carry them over to computer games. I’ve also been told that RPGs are just the settings and lore, which couldn’t be further from the truth. RPG ARE the system. The d20 system, the d10 system, the d6 system. THAT’s the core of RPGs. The settings and lore fill in around those, and are usually custom made by individual player groups. These are systems meant to quantify real life occurrences (before anyone says “magic blah blah blah”, it’s prevalent in fantasy stories throughout history and even modern fiction. Therefore it’s something that they would need to quantify.)

If you take a look at a game like Neverwinter, nearly all traces of D&D have been removed from it. It’s Forgotten Realms, however that’s just a campaign setting. One of hundreds of thousands, if not millions. But we’ve seen the actual RPG side of the equation continuously water down for over a decade now, and now it’s drowned out in favor of what actually are third person shooters or action platformers. Modern players have no idea what they’re being cheated out of, while older players continue to hopelessly dream of days gone by. MMOs have become nothing more than thinly veiled cash grabs, continuously defended by fans who just plain don’t know any better. The RPG portion has gone the way of the dodo, yet these companies continue to falsely advertise their games as RPGs. And they get away with all of this due to over a decade of social engineering. It really quite an appalling situation.

Henrik.7560:

I agree with phantom’s points, the towers should protect the keeps, not sitting behind doing nothing. having keeps next to each other doesnt make sense either, a zerg can just rush in and take all 3 in 30 minutes.
See attatchments for a rough sketch of a borderlands idea that would make more sense.
grey is cliffs,
squares are towers,
stars are camps,
pentagons are keeps.

Now that’s an intelligent layout. Everything is in a position where it actually makes sense to be. The towers are set up in the front and in choke points. The camps are off to the side. The keeps are the hearts, but within distance of dispatching defenders to each of the other areas of the third. In order to take another server’s keep, you’d need to deal with their tower(s) first. There’s a good amount of room in between for open field fights. Those absurdly ridiculous “surprise! there’s 20 omegas at the gate of your keep” moments would be gone.