Guild Wars 2

But servers with a weak late night presence don’t have zero presence.

People with late night presence aren’t necessarily packing their battlefields to full. They just have more numbers.

I leave a suggestion for how much the point cap should be. It could be less than what buildings are worth now.

And I didn’t even go into the possibilities for point gain curves. As one example, let’s say the gain is logarithmic. So the first couple upgrades you complete are worth more. There are people on at night even on your side, and those dolyak kills will matter.

Or make it linear. We want people to buy those final supply upgrades.

At night, a ninja team can grab a supply camp, get the supply for a catapult, and drain some supply from a tower by knocking down a wall. Even if they fail to take it, the tower is worth less, and it helps the rest of their team when they get on later.

The fact is that you don’t want something that directly limits point gain based on player population. Else you take a 24/hr gameplay system and make it only worthwhile for 2 days of the week and 4 or so hours on any other day. You want something that empowers a small group of people going up against overwhelming odds, allowing them to wound the beast even if they can’t get an outright win. Rather than catch-up mechanics, you want gap-clenching mechanics.

If they’re going to mass up and start a karma train, you put mechanics that make it tough to actually stack up those points.

And yeah, I’ve been on Stormbluff Isle. Had to face something called the Titan Alliance morning, noon, and night.

Here’s the fact of the matter: It can be said that in sPvP offense should win over defense, and in WvW it should be the opposite. That’s why we get siege, and counter siege. That’s why we get fortifications that we can run inside to heal up and call for help. That’s why the Supply Camp Supervisor has the “unkillable” buff every time his camp flips.

Solution: I’ve been seeing a lot of people suggest recently that the longer you hold a place, the more points it should give. With a cap, of course. This can also help for the servers with weak 24/hour presence by making their most congregated times matter more to them in the moment.

But, I can see people complaining that it doesn’t really solve the “nightcapping problem”, for those of you who see it that way.

So, addendum:
Upgraded buildings are worth more. If your server is out in full force, you should easily have the manpower to take things back and then the money split between you to quickly upgrade things. You can queue both a Personal and Structural Upgrade at the same time, after all.

Ramification: If you’re outnumbered and have to abandon your buildings, then go kill dolyaks. If your small band can run around, still making money and karma from killing dolyaks and having fun, you’ll be doing even more for the team than before. You will have a tangible way to help push down the point per tick of the enemy while you’re still outnumbered. Playing in parties and/or with the Outmanned buff adds to your personal gain from this as well.

You could even consider re-adding rewards for dolyak escorting, while removing rewards for failing a dolyak escort.

Possible modifications: Add a Badge of Honor requirement to upgrades. I know that gold is supposed to matter a lot for whatever reason (just look at the Commander’s Compendium), but you also have karma be a cost. Instead of karma, or in addition to karma, you can add badges of honor as a cost.

Another modification: Rather than upgrades, have the amount of points a fortification is worth be tied to the amount of current supply. Again, this makes protecting dolyaks more important, killing dolyaks more of a heavy blow, and the fact that an upgraded fortification automatically gives you a larger supply cap for that fortification makes for a neat solution.

Any other ideas? Disputes? Modifications?

Telljer.5469:

An exponential increase of points/tick for towers, keeps and camps. A tower might start at 2 points per tick and then go up to 10 points per tick over the span of 2 hours. This combined with an increased health for doors/walls, a “only-siege damages walls/doors” and removing the AoE cap for siege completely would offer a more defensive gameplay compared to the “zerg” mentality of today.

This is probably one of the better ideas I’ve heard…

Not bad. Not bad at all.

cold.3946:

Zenyatoo.4059:

“We’re in it to win it. If you’re not, you’re out.”

Thats the main issue with the 2v1. As I have constantly stated.
It’s not SBI. It’s JQ.
As the team in second they NEED to start attacking the team in first in order to actually take first. But they arent. JQ is literally playing to lose every time they focus blackgate.

2v1 is expected, nessecary, and obviously going to happen. But if anyone on JQ actually maybe thought about how to get themselves into first place, they might come to the realization that they arent going to take BG territory faster than SBI will, and all they’re doing is solidifying their second place position with every attack.

Now, maybe that’s acceptable to them. But I have a hard time believing that the previous rank 1 server finds it acceptable to roll over and take a second place position.

inb4 5 SBI posters with absolutely no clue come in and falsely accuse this post of crying.

Decisions about what to attack are dictated by the field of battle. Sometimes you just need to flip some stuff to gain PPT. That usually means targeting the weakest enemy position rather than deciding based on rank. Every T1 server has done this, SBI included.

This is not collusion. This is basic strategy; prey on the weak.

Proven.2854:

This. Back when it was HoD/JQ/SBI, whenever JQ would attack us instead of HoD I’d be forced to facepalm and then roll them back into their territory, hopefully driving home the message, “don’t mess with us; we’re actually here to beat HoD and win.”

After a number of weeks, JQ succeed in pushing us to third and knocking us out of the tier 1 bracket for a week. And the very next week? TA alliance disbands off of HoD, because they were getting bored. So JQ takes first place finally without much of a fight. And of course, SBI comes right back and this time, we’re better at fighting back 2v1s. And we don’t have any kind of massive alliance that will suddenly disband; just a group of dedicated guilds that all happened to choose this server independently and choose to kick kitten together.

You are certainly entitled to your opinion, but may I discourage you from undermining enemy accomplishments or making excuses for SBI in public forum? We’re classier than that, sir.

It’s just frustrating. Titan Alliance was the team to beat. There was no way to actually win in that matchup unless you didn’t go along with the path of least resistance and focused on keeping HoD’s ppt down. And now they’re gone. Who knows if I’ll ever get the chance to face them again? I’m still playing, sharpening my skills in all classes while constantly leading small groups for attack and defense missions to gather as much experience as I can. But it may be all for naught.

For me, it’s like JQ took away my favorite toy. I will only be able to see them as an enemy or familiar foe, never a rival now. A rival competes with you while always aiming for the win.

Well, there’s something partially like this already.

Squads have a finite limit of players that can join. You can join in one of three ways: through the party menu, by finding the commander and right clicking his portrait on the top of the screen, or by opening your map and clicking on his commander icon there.

From there, you can still make your own parties. You’re not limited to /party or /squad chat. Combined with /team, you then have three hierarchies of communication. The commander also has access to /squadinfo to make sure people are still following him.

From there, it would be great if we had a fourth hierarchy of chat, /world, that allowed people to call for help between all of the borderlands. While in PvE it could be used to gather people for events all across the hugeness of Tyria. But both of these uses depend on people not spamming the channel; it’ll need to have a very impeding message limit to frequency to keep bots/gold sellers out and keep people from going on and on about their day instead of using it for essential information.

I can’t believe people don’t know this, but the WvW server hopping goes both ways. EU guilds go to the NA servers too. Even as far back as Titan Alliance.

Zenyatoo.4059:

"We’re in it to win it. If you’re not, you’re out."

Thats the main issue with the 2v1. As I have constantly stated.
It’s not SBI. It’s JQ.
As the team in second they NEED to start attacking the team in first in order to actually take first. But they arent. JQ is literally playing to lose every time they focus blackgate.

2v1 is expected, nessecary, and obviously going to happen. But if anyone on JQ actually maybe thought about how to get themselves into first place, they might come to the realization that they arent going to take BG territory faster than SBI will, and all they’re doing is solidifying their second place position with every attack.

Now, maybe that’s acceptable to them. But I have a hard time believing that the previous rank 1 server finds it acceptable to roll over and take a second place position.

inb4 5 SBI posters with absolutely no clue come in and falsely accuse this post of crying.

This. Back when it was HoD/JQ/SBI, whenever JQ would attack us instead of HoD I’d be forced to facepalm and then roll them back into their territory, hopefully driving home the message, "don’t mess with us; we’re actually here to beat HoD and win."

After a number of weeks, JQ succeed in pushing us to third and knocking us out of the tier 1 bracket for a week. And the very next week? TA alliance disbands off of HoD, because they were getting bored. So JQ takes first place finally without much of a fight. And of course, SBI comes right back and this time, we’re better at fighting back 2v1s. And we don’t have any kind of massive alliance that will suddenly disband; just a group of dedicated guilds that all happened to choose this server independently and choose to kick kitten together.

Yeah, this is pretty much how I build my classes. I play a bit in PvE to find my favorite weapons, then look at the trait and stat combinations. Unfortunately, the other thing that bothers me is the finite amount of armor stat choices. I find myself building more around what armor is possible rather than what traits matter more for my weapons.

You essentially just described the A/D control point mode and the 5 control point mode in Team Fortress 2. For that, +1.

Really, because there are so few 1v1s in hotjoin, and tournament strategy is to only be a 1v1 burst or to hold out until you have a teammate making a 2v1 or 2v2 fight, wanting to practice in duels doesn’t help so much. So when I want to test a build to see it’s impact on a fight, I go to hotjoin and just follow people around to get into as many team fight situations as possible; it’s the team fight that’s most important to test.

As for community building, duels won’t do that. Server renting will do that. Having a server with a name, that someone owns, that everyone else can come back to visit on a regular basis, that builds community. What’s important is to have a place where people can always go regularly to meet. With duels, you’re just going to be thrown into some matchmaking with one other person, and as soon as that fight ends, you’d get thrown into another one. That’s how ANet would implement it, anyhow.

Also, while I know you’re going to say it’s a terrible substitute, there’s an area in the Heart of the Mists where you can 1v1 each of the classes, but AI controlled.

There are ways to get perma retaliation, perma swiftness, perma might, and perma regeneration on Necro, but they take specficic traits and unoptimal skills, so you never see them. Well, the perma regen can actually be mixed into other builds pretty easily, but perma might and perma retal force you to play and trait differently from the popular conditions and well builds, and most people hate Spectral Walk so there goes perma swiftness.

Did you test that out (use the skill then highlight the boon) or just read the tooltip?

Right now, sigils will correctly update tool tips for durations, but runes won’t.

That sucks. In other news, I’m annoyed that Knight’s was split between PvE and PvP as now I have a class who I’m using different builds for PvP and WvW.

Title says it all. It’s the big leagues. It’d be nice to see what team you’re up against ahead of time.

One thing that’s been bothering me in sPvP: generally speaking, the top banner UI is very good for both players and spectators. The close point for a side is next to that color on the banner. The exception is the Forest map, where Mine is on the right, but is the close point for Red team. But Red team’s half of the banner is on the left, next to Henge. Couldn’t this be an easy fix?

I’ve noticed recently that the Knights Amulet, which gives High Vitality + Power + Precision for whatever reason also gives a small amount of Toughness. Maybe it’s actually a four stat amulet?

For comparison, there’s a Knights set in PvE but it’s Hight Toughness + Power + Precision.

I just wish the downed penalty from PvE was used. Get revived too often and too soon and you’re immediately dead next time you’re downed.

Uh, isn’t the fact that all of the pros will move on to paid tournaments include the fact that free tournaments will be left wide open? If you want to tr something more competitive, you solo queue up for a free tournament, get matched with other players, play. You have friends? Then you group queue. The stakes won’t be as high, the pros won’t be stomping you, and you still get your taste outside of hot join. That’s why this paid tournament system is so important; it indirectly helps all of us casual pvp players by getting the pros out of our way, making free tournaments safe to use.

And your comparison to TF2 is weak. Competitive TF2 only allows a taste through community run leagues and tf2lobby.com. With paid tournaments, free tournaments essentially become the equivalent of the tf2 lobby system. Community run leagues and tournaments will come as soon as we can rent private servers. Some are forming right now, in preparation for the future and using the fact that you can “sync” yourselves into the same tournament if you queue at the same time.

And just like in TF2 and many other multiplayer online games, hot join is just something that people will play a lot of that has a lot more going on only to be toned down for comp play. For both GW2 and TF2, toning down means less players, as TF2 fits 12v12 on a lot of maps that the pros use for 6v6 or 9v9.

TL;DR There is already a casual league. It’s called free tournaments, which will become casual the second paid tournaments are out there.

3 minutes still gives teams time to talk, think up a strategy, take a bathroom break, and switch characters/classes.

You know what’s the annoying part about the Halloween update? The lack of people who realize they can still complete their monthlies in WvW. Hell, it’s even easier to do it in WvW it feels like, as the mining bonuses we’ve been earning mean that you often get two candy corn per pick swing, and there are about three nodes per base or camp that reset once every hour or two, so you can take them whenever you finish helping your team capture something.

@Diage: what you’re saying is what I’m also hoping to come from GW2. I came from a game that has a very similar setup in com games, with group health and pressure being the major mechanics. Team Fortress 2. They did it with an FPS mindset, and I’d prefer an action/adventure game model, which is why my hopes are in GW2.

Watched the video. Vampiric builds were half the reason I wanted to play Necro. Thanks ANet!

I always know it’s going to be a good time when I see Bahaness on the field. This is why.

Another one against K/D. It just creates kitten arguments. Same with having any Ladder/Ranking system that isn’t a team only ranking system.

Joiry.2504:

Proven.2854:

In the case of a sea of players, you have too much on screen. In the case of clearing a fight and looking for a handful go bags, you can hold down Left Ctrl.

As for changing badges to honor, right now badges are the one thing that can’t be efficiently “farmed”. You have to get a group and you have to do stuff, or you have to get to a location and defend. Both things botters have an overall hard time programming around. Still might be worth changing it to just objectives, but as I’ve been saying, the system now rewards most when you’re in small groups and skirmishes, and changing to something like honor for doing objectives would just benefit zergs more.

Its not simply about zergs (and trust me, I’d rather skirmish than anything else). Bags do literally spawn beneath the ground surface. I’ve seen just the top of the bag or its sparkly bit at ground level. And even if this wasn’t an issue, my general experience in WvW is, you move or you die, skirmish or zerg. Running around to find my bags back, visible or not, is not the purpose of WvW.

Its also the case that in a fight, you should be fighting. Not spamming to find your rewards. Its absolutely silly to have to do this. Do you have to pick up a bag to get your PvE xp? Do sPvP players have to pick up a bag to get their glory? No. And they would howl to the stars if they did.

In terms of bots, I don’t see how an honor points system would change this. Points would still come from player kills, just in different forms. it would be graded to your contribution – be that contribution damage, or in the form of buffs/healing to the players doing the damage.

I understand you like skirmishing over the zerg. Great, so do I. However, your argument that the current bad system somehow encourages skirmishing is weak. You want to encourage skirmishing – I’m sure there are a ton of better ideas.

I did say that you should finish the fight then pick up the loot. That’s why smaller fights are a bit better; they end sooner, and then while you’re recovering health and getting skills off cooldown you pick up all the loot that dropped during the fight.

But you feel my argument is still not strong enough in general, fine.

Finally, think about what you get for a kill, vs what you get when you pick up a loot bag. The rule about GW2 seems to be that end game goals take farming, while just playing gets you to a high plateau quickly. You get experience for every kill still. You are specifically complaining about badges, which you don’t need unless you really, really want that exotic set, or that gift for the legendary.

Blueprints are pricey, but outside of golems I quickly find myself making enough money to buy them outright with silver instead of with badges.

In the case of a sea of players, you have too much on screen. In the case of clearing a fight and looking for a handful go bags, you can hold down Left Ctrl.

As for changing badges to honor, right now badges are the one thing that can’t be efficiently “farmed”. You have to get a group and you have to do stuff, or you have to get to a location and defend. Both things botters have an overall hard time programming around. Still might be worth changing it to just objectives, but as I’ve been saying, the system now rewards most when you’re in small groups and skirmishes, and changing to something like honor for doing objectives would just benefit zergs more.

You already get 2 out of 3 rewards. Not only can you sell dyes for gold to get gems right now, but the paid tourney system releases in 7 days.

You complained about finding loot bags in a sea of players. Wouldn’t be a problem if you stuck to smaller groups and skirmishes. Sorry, I should have spelled it out for you in the first place.

The defaults:

Left Alt for anything that would have a green name. This includes other players and friendly NPCs.

Left Ctrl for anything that would show up with a yellow or red name. This includes enemy players, gathering nodes, and pearls.

Uh, you want something you can use anywhere in the game? You already get two things: Dyes and Bags.

Larger bags are valuable no matter what level you are. Dyes can be sold on the trading post no matter what level you are. You can even grind out for rare dyes and large bags to send to your alts later. There, external rewards to grind for.

When paid tourneys come out, you can earn gems. So now you’re getting character rewards that are worth something regardless of level, gold, and gems.

Still not happy? GW2 may not be the game for you.

@Antiriad: Play in smaller groups.

@swilkers: Play in smaller groups.

Considering some of the regen and condition cleansing available, I can easily see how bunker is supposed to beat pressure. Plus, Bunker is not just Toughness alone; there’s Vitality involved. Or did you forget about Necromancers? And the trinity is Burst/Bunker/Pressure, with it being Pressure, not Condition. There are Condition Spike builds, after all.

Burst builds tend to have CC to screw up a Bunker’s rotations and kill him before he can keep activating the abilities he needs to keep himself alive. Pressure just won’t do enough damage, since Pressure often uses their utilities for things like stun-breakers since Burst gives them nightmares otherwise. Burst is always like paper so if Pressure builds can outlast those utility combos then they have the natural advantage.

Edit: If you don’t believe me that Burst beats Bunker, think about it another way. Why do you need to bring 2 or more people to kill a Bunker? Because either A) Together you have enough CC or B) Together you have enough concentrated firepower.

Well, I wouldn’t completely agree. A lot of the top servers got to the top during the daily rankings. Mass server transfers to them hasn’t done much to change the ranking at this point.

The number one thing they should have done, especially when they went and increased the population caps on the maps, was make bigger WvW maps. The primary weakness to a zerg is that they can’t be everywhere at once. As it is, it’s too easy to run across an entire map in 5 minutes with swiftness.

If all the borderlands had Eternal Battleground-sized maps, or at least a smaller pop cap, that would be a step in the right direction. As it is, I might as well wait until after the holiday season for as many fair weather players as possible to disappear.

Actually, to add on to my last post, I’ll bold something. FOLLOW THE INCENTIVES.

The game has a downed state. Knocking a guy down to zero health is not the same as killing them like in other games. Adapt. In sPvP people all worry about CC, stealth, and stability for the very purpose of playing with the downed state. And the most successful teams? The ones that adapted and are still having fun.

You’re not given an incentive to take on 5 people at once and down them unless you can kill them all together? THEN DON’T DO IT.

As it is:
Playing by yourself – Don’t get much done, don’t get much loot.
Playing in a zerg – Get stuff done, don’t get much loot.
Playing in a small group – Get stuff done, and get loot.

They really need to update the LFG system as soon as possible, but until then you can use what bare bones system is there, or even join a WvW guild. You don’t have to play alone and you’re just making it harder on yourself.

You downed 4/5 people. Good job. They rallied off the wolf. That’s not a problem with the downed state, that’s a problem with rallying off of mobs. One thing they do in sPvP, in Raid of the Capricorn with the sharks, is not allow people to rally off sharks.

And again, the downed state doesn’t leave you at that big of a disadvantage when outnumbered. Only when you’re playing by yourself and outnumbered.

The dead state helps zergs. The downed state not so much. You want to be one against a million? It wouldn’t matter if you could just outright kill them without the downed state unless they teleported back to spawn immediately.

The downed state is probably the only reason why burst builds like thieves made it into the final build. A Thief can come out of stealth and down a guy in 5 seconds. So say a 3v3 can immediately become a 2v3. The downed state gives the other guys a chance to come back.

And yes, Rangers have an AoE stun while in the downed state, to make up for their 3 skill.

@Unleashed: Not all kills are created equal. You want a kill to mean something? Don’t go try to kill one out of 50 people! And again, even if there was no downed state, there’s still the defeated state. The fact that you would get no credit from one guy with 50 behind him unless you stopped to stomp him is just another reason for you to get the hell out of the way and get some teammates. At the very least, follow incentives.

And if you’re dying in the same amount of time as a tank build against a burst build, then you’re not really a tank build, are you?

Two best ways to get badges:

1. Use siege while defending.
2. Play in small groups. When you’re in zergs, you get less loot, period. When you’re in a group of 5, you get loot bags from just about everything; ganking a person, taking a supply camp, ripping up krait and quaggan. The more loot bags you get, the more badges you get.

This game doesn’t punish zergs, but it doesn’t reward them anywhere near as much either.

Have to echo foofad. You can’t just remove it and add health. You’d make burst builds the entire meta.

What downed state helps the most is small coordinated teams. Zergs don’t get as much benefit as they have enough to revive even if the player was defeated. People going it alone are just complaining about going alone in a game that does what it can to promote playing together.

Seriously, you down one guy out of 50 and want a reward? Why the kitten are you there in the first place? Run!

Some things I’ve noticed, especially after reading some of the complaints….

Ballistics are meant for downing, not defeating. You down a player, then switch to the guy trying to revive them. Same goes for arrow carte.

Siege alone doesn’t kill people. They’re support weapons. Being out on the battle field still counts. If you’re woefully outnumbered, it doesn’t matter.

The downed state being gone wouldn’t effect zergs. Even if a player is defeated, 4 people can revive him back up in about 10 seconds, even in combat.

I really like the downed state after more time with it. With the lowered health after the patch, it creates a quick decision mechanic, one that adds timing calculations if there are people downed on both sides.

The only thing I see it “suck” for are people going it alone. But even a 2v3 is manageable with it as it evens the odds for you and your partner a little.

Some things to clear up:

1. Dead NPCs = Downed Allies. Any skill that revives people for any class will revive downed allies but not dead allies. NPCs have no downed state.
2. Right now, doesn’t every single ground targeted AoE not work right underwater? That’s why the Enfeebling Blood trait doesn’t work underwater. You could call it a bug that they even give you access to this signet.
3. Vulnerability will never affect condition damage. This is working as intended. If you want, they can change the tool tip to say that it only increases direct damage to be more accurate. We already got our one buff to condition damage, and that was through Might.
4. If a character is using a skill that reflects projectiles, then yes, Spectral Grasp will pull you towards the target instead of the other way around. On the one hand this still makes it a gap closer. On the other, it’s another reason why I find Thieves annoying thanks to all the Dagger Storm usage in WvW.

Ok, I asked about the shroud stomping but I see that you did address it. Good video. I tried a build like this myself but it wasn’t working as well for me. Might have been because of main hand dagger instead of Axe? I was playing around with some other traits too.

I’ll probably end up putting 30 in Blood Magic or Spite though.

You’re being punished for miscoordination. Sorry.

But no game with stealth and capture points allow you to cap while in stealth. As Rika said, it would be too strong.

Transfers are still free because ANet still wants people to look inside themselves and do what’s best for future competition.

To tell you the truth, the TA alliance closing shop and changing up servers was the first real time I’ve seen a chance of this happening.

Err, a better option would be swapping the the icons on the UI at the top of the screen. Changing the spawns is probably a bit much…

If everyone is trying to double team the best server, then when you go up to the next bracket you won’t be that much of a threat anyway. Not until you become the number 1 server, at which point people will transfer to you and hopefully give you the 24/7 support you desperately need.

Not much has changed. I still see a lack of squad chat use.

It’s has bothered me for a while. From a spectator’s perspective, the team color at the too of the screen should be next to the control point close to that team’s spawn. But on Forest, it’s the opposite. Red spawns on the right side, but if you take a glance up at the HUD on top, you see the Red part of the banner next to the indicator for the henge point, and vice versa for the blue half of the banner next to the indicator for the mine point.

This would be a quick fix that would help players and spectators alike.

While Thief in melee tends to try to kill you before you kill him, and then get out of dodge, Necro in melee seems to be about killing you because you can’t get away from him. You get easy access to all three snares in the game from jus Dagger main hand, Axe, and Death Shroud.

So why not have some minor traits or innate abilities related to your tankiness?

Idea 1. Death Magic or Blood Magic minor trait: While in Death Shroud your red health regenerates.

Idea 2. Full on balance change: take the first idea and make it an innate property for Deat Shroud that you don’t have to trait for.

Idea 3. Allow the regeneration boon to affect your actual health while in Death Shroud. Right now, this is the only boon that gives us no effect while in Death Shroud, which is a shame, as it was really cool when I found out that using things like Focus 4 and the Blood Magic trait that lets you drop a Mark of Blood after you dodge roll (please update this tool tip) allows you to make a permanent regeneration build without having any points in Death Magic. It was something I was really happy about since much of Death Magic feels pointless unless you’re doing a minion build, until I found out all the ways Necro tends to be weak.

And I for one am another calling out for a range increase to Death Shroud 2 to be a more reliable gap closer. Let it home in quickly and increase the cool down if you have to.