Guild Wars 2

lil devils x.6071:

It is essentially a new " which servers have less players that hate the DBL?" win mechanic that did not exist in the game before.

It’s not new. There are players who dislike EBG. There are players who dislike ABL. There are players who like DBL. It’s not a new idea, it’s a new variable.

Ok I Did It.2854:

The DBL will either give a server a massive advantage over others as no one will go near it, or a disadvantage if the server that gets it, has there playerbase avoid it,

This makes no sense to me.

Nobody wants to defend the BL so it’s a weakness
But nobody wants to attack the BL so it’s a strength.

Don’t they kinda cancel one another out?

\o/

Looking forward to some more details on your precise plans about how to carry out the outcome of this poll, especially when.

This whole “we really wanted to delete DBL but they wouldn’t make maps otherwise so we picked to keep it” doesn’t make sense to me. Specifically, I don’t understand the internal logic of expecting ANet to make new maps for you when the last one they made was so poorly received that you demanded it be deleted and never see the light of day again.

PyrateSilly.4710:

A very vocal few came on here to complain about the new map and how much they hated it. BUT the voting comes from anyone that plays as in ANet sent an in game mail to vote as soon as someone went up a level. So more people learned about the poll than just the few that come to the forums. That’s way it seems that all of a sudden there are more voting to keep the new map.

Which by the way, I found the new map much more fun to play in.

There’s also votes coming in from other sources like word of mouth and reddit. It definitely is a vocal minority of dissenters, in both the Delete and Simultaneous polls. The poll is evidence of that.

Desert BL is perfectly playable. It is nobody’s fault but your own if you cannot play on it or refuse to play on it.

Crescendo Forte.4821:

1. The borderlands are inherently different from one another.

Yes, Desert Borderlands is different to Alpine Borderlands.

Thing is, the map’s layout and unique characteristics can be uniquely used by giving DBL to Red. DBL is broadly more defensible, has more PPT in the north and drastically less PPT in the south, especially the southwest- where green spawns.

Crescendo Forte.4821:

2. When a previous poll was released, Anet admitted that a 2/1 split would inherently be imbalanced, and people still voted for it. Why are we wanting to introduce unbalanced content when Anet can barely balance population?

Because people aren’t stressed about balance. They’re stressed about fun. Being able to play on the borderland they prefer makes the game more fun to them. Having more variety inherently makes the game more fun.

We know ANet can’t balance population. That’s why we don’t want them to target balance. Any effort at making a balanced game is undermined by population mechanics.

Crescendo Forte.4821:

3. Mathematically Speaking: The “I hate the DBL and want to play it less” argument.

Assuming maps are randomly distributed and not given to the server who will either be penalized (green) or given to the server which will benefit from it (red).

Assuming people have a massive priority on home BLs. Maybe they do, but I don’t see any evidence behind this assumption.

Also there’s the converse argument. I prefer DBL and want to play it more. I don’t care if I’m home or away team there; frankly, I’d probably prefer to be away team.

Crescendo Forte.4821:

Frankly, I don’t believe this question should have ever been asked of the general population. Especially once Anet acknowledged themselves that it would be unbalanced.

The imbalance is why they gave it a 75% pricetag. It’s still winning.
Frankly, this simply reeks of sore loser. Your position lost, so you don’t think the question should’ve been asked in the first place.

The armors in the box are Tribal, Apostle and Stalwart. First two are Light, last one is Medium.

There is a heavy armor that is currently unavailable; Heavy Scale. It’s a texture rework of the Worn Scale gear.

I don’t think Greatsword is the reason Greatsword is not viable. Necromancers simply don’t have the tools that they need to be able to commit to melee effectively. Unless you want to turn Greatsword into Scrapper Hammer, changing the weapon isn’t going to change that

I think looking at Blood Magic or Death Magic would be the best ways to find ways to bring melee necromancers, and therefore greatsword reapers, into viability

Personally I really dislike the idea of making these effects baseline. Child-proofing build strategy is not how you make build diversity; it’s how you make building irrelevant.

Xenesis.6389:

I’d much rather a better notification system that you finished a track.
Also does the last track you activated become the new track after you finish one?

it goes down the list in alphabetical order of eligible tracks

Stilk.6312:

The vote is rigged, 2:1 BL MUs would be too much of a trouble to code.

With the caveat that I don’t understand their code, this seems like an absurd assumption. Having 2:1 means that they don’t have to do any work adding the maps every quarter.

Astralporing.1957:

Once you finish a track, it should not return to rotation until you enable it again. So, after it gets finished once, just leave it in its disabled state.

it does but you may activate a track that you don’t want to do, not even once

for example my tracks always overflow into Citadel of Flame even though i have the entire collection done already so any progress in there is wasted

darkaheart.4265:

come on! i been paying attention to the result all day and is just b.s. how we have to reach at least 75%,
so far it has dropped from 79% to 77.4% , like if that wasnt enough!

mind that the actual percentage is something in the field of 81 percent when you remove the “show me the results” portion

Djinn.9245:

A Legendary item is not a WvW trophy, it is the highest level of rarity for the entire game. No other rarity is tied behind having to play in any particular venue. THAT is what is ridiculous.

Which is completely reasonable, because other levels of gear correlate with an actual stat increase. You should be able to reach the stat cap no matter what mode you play.

Legendaries are entirely items of cosmetics and convenience. You do not need one to reach the stat cap, so the same rules don’t apply.

Astralporing.1957:

Which in no way tells us anything about how succesful the guild is, by the way.

If I were in a guild with 1000 active members which also could not form a 10 man group at a reasonable hour….

Yeah, no, not a guild worth being in. Not successful by any stretch.

Blaeys.3102:

The fact that the conversation even took place – that an obviously successful guild (from a social perspective) is immediately labeled as “bad” because they cannot (or chose not to) raid is indicative of the attitude shift in the game – away from a community focus where people are actively encouraged to get along – to one where insults and silo-ing are the norm.

Being unable to organize a raid of 10 in a guild of 1000 members is, frankly, utterly bizarre. How in the world are they ‘obviously successful from a social perspective’ if they can’t even get a group together which is 1% of the guild’s total size?

Johje Holan.4607:

Anet, there is no reason this poll should have a 75% supermajority requirement to make it 2ABL and 1DBL. Its clearly what most people want.

This assertion is self-contradictory. If most people want it, then it should have no trouble achieving the supermajority put forward. Which it has.

Even ignoring arguments that they should respect 67% or 50% splits in favor of Simultaneous, Simultaneous is holding steady above the supermajority it needs. Very glad that we got this result.

I wonder when precisely the results of this poll will be implemented, one way or the other.

gloflop.3510:

The topic is the validity of the survey and not of all other approaches.

If that is the topic and the only topic, then we can end the thread very quickly and easily:

There is no reason to believe that there was any aberrant behavior that would invalidate the poll. The poll was clearly worded, and the outcomes and requirements of the poll were clear. There is no reason to believe that participants in the poll did not participate in good faith.

gloflop.3510:

Furthermore, I disagree with your argument that anet should not care about the reason for the choice of the players. It helps them understanding what the players actually want and this is the aim of the surveys.

Sure. But is the survey necessarily the best way to do that? ANet uses a multilateral approach when it comes to obtaining feedback; they use the surveys, they use the forums, they use Reddit and other external sites. They also track in-game activity and connect that with poll respondents.

Kyon.9735:

Every class aside from DD has two main dodges rofl. And as far as I can see, both Reapers and Berserkers are at the top of the food chain.

Warriors have blocks and Endure Pain, possibly double Endure Pain. Reapers do not have any defenses beyond those two dodges that cannot simply be powered through. There’s a reason that Reapers are always priority target no.1

Mea.5491:

When players’ mentality changes and they realize that DPS is not everything. In other words: never.

What else are you going to gear for? Funs per second?

I don’t think AoE cap removal would actually incentivise spread forces. It would probably do a lot to encourage stacking, as well. Yeah you have 50 people getting hit by a single meteor but you also have 50 people standing in a healing AoE and benefiting from it.

If your goal is to create a more interesting battlefield, and to do that you want to encourage people to split up, I think a better strategy would be to have greater distance between objectives. They did this in DBL, by both directly increasing the size of the map relative to Alpine, and also by making objectives much larger.

DBL strike teams would actually use large groups as the main offensive body, while also having support teams deal with secondary objectives like camps, shrines, sentries and yaks. The keeps were actually big enough that you needed to send dedicated teams to cut off yaks.

maniamsmart.7981:

With the multitude of stat sets in the game, everyone still only runs Berserker in PVE. I’d love to see some other stats actually become more viable. I’d love to build a Guardian Healer and Tank, or a Warrior Tank with some damage, or any sort of combinations, but there just isn’t a place for that in the game (excluding raids of course).

But there are like… Eight stat spreads that people use. Zerk’s, Assassin’s, Valkyrie’s, Sinister, Viper’s, Magi’s, Zealot’s, Commander’s.

Am I missing any?

DaikonSamurai.6714:

Even then, Kasmeer wears illusion clothing and is actually naked. So it is literally in lore that you can maintain an illusion constantly to look however you want.

so basically your character should be able to use a mesmer illusion to look chubby

i mean i don’t have any argument against this

um

…hm

…anet, illusory chubby people please

1. Clipping, clipping everywhere
2. Adventurers are always running, they do a massive amount of cardio
3. How much does your character even eat? Nal gets a few scoops of icecream a day if she’s lucky
4. There are already a lot of ‘chubby’ models, especially for Norn, Charr and Asura
5. Does sylvari physiology even work that way? For all we know they all about that photosynthesis

aw man, i should’ve moved to Kaineng, i want to play in the 9 server battle royale

lil devils x.6071:

The ABL was never the " savior" it was supposed to be the " first step" just a place to wait while they made a new map because players considered the DBL unplayable at all.

how long exactly do you think it takes to build a wvw map

Astralporing.1957:

Oh, so you’re saying that, contrary to what every raider is claiming, there are way more than 6 people working on raids?

The core raid dev team has been working on the raids for a long time. This ‘insane pace’ that people talk about is an illusion; they did most of the work before the expac launched and they have been purposely delaying the release of wings after launch (which is a standard practice).

lil devils x.6071:

I am guessing you didn’t read the posts on reddit… " although I am not a wvw player.." is a sure sign.

the half a dozen guys who posted something along these lines were surely enough to turn a supermajority of Delete voters into a majority of Keep voters :^)

Rednik.3809:

So raiders playing raiding game for storytelling? Cool story bro.

You’re missing the point. WOTLK did well because it did things other than raiding well.

Straegen.2938:

or teabag them… that works too.

I usually go with /shrug, I tend to be as confused as they are about why I won

ekarat.1085:

I often use that argument to argue for an easier difficulty level. In other MMOs, people do come back and do a level 70 raid at level 90 — yes, this happens and isn’t even particularly uncommon. In GW2, there isn’t this option.

Thing is, you do that solo. Having a solo mode is actually an idea I like to play around with, as it sidesteps a lot of the issues that come with multiple difficulty modes.

Rednik.3809:

Lolwhat, one negative and no positive? Do you know about Blizzard practice of nerfing raid bosses to ensure that wider audience can kill them after first weeks? Have you forgot about WotLK, where they finally split raids to multiple modes, and that made WotLK most popular addon in WoW history? Or maybe you forgot about Hellscream’s Warsong and Strength of Wrynn in Icecrown CItadel? It was failure in balance design in Cataclysm and after it, which caused the downfall of WoW, not LFR.

The key issue that means that any comparison between WoW and GW2 is pointless is that WoW explicitly designs its content for planned obsolescence and GW2 doesn’t. A WoW expansion’s content- its raids, its dungeons, its open world content, even its class designs- are designed with the understanding that at some point, they will be mostly thrown out as relevant content. Maximizing exposure makes more sense with this in mind; they want to make sure that as many people can see the content before they throw it out for the next best thing.

They have this planned obsolescence model because of the gear treadmill. It’s tangential, so I won’t go into it.

These elements completely undermine any argument for a WoW-style easy-mode because there is neither a planned obsolescence model nor a gear treadmill. If you’re playing WoW, there’s a really good reason to get an easier-than-heroic mode; if you don’t, you may never experience that content at the intended level ever. GW2 design contradicts the planned obsolescence model; both explicitly in its manifesto, and implicitly in its design choices (mastery levels instead of raising the level cap). If WoW’s lifespan is to be taken as the example, there is simply no need for an easy mode so that you can experience the content when you have nine years to get good enough at the content to beat it.

So when GW2 has a gear treadmill, and because of that gear treadmill it has planned obsolescence built into every facet of its design, then I will agree with you- an easy mode following Blizzard’s model might be okay. But it doesn’t. They are different games.

Life Transfer also has a 10 second longer cooldown. It’s drastically worse than Soul Spiral for Transfusion purposes.

Probably a good place for ANet to target for making base Necro more viable and frankly it’d probably make it more fun. Death Shroud is one of the most boring stances in the game because its 1 is so boring and everything else is on a huge CD.

msalakka.4653:

This caters to karmatrain zombies, nothing more. DBL is a lot easier for brainless karmatraining, which got already easier and more profitable. I am seeing a continuing degradation of skill among the increasing mass of brainless PvErs who follow a tag around for reward spam. Of course they will vote for DBLs to return since those are the maps they first experienced and karmatraining is not as easy on the Alpines since these maps actually get upgraded and defended. Even just 2 guys can hold off many times their number at Lake because they can see all 3 walls from one spot, so you can’t simply attack a wall or gate and send a guy or two to cata a wall on another side. Sparkplug has, what, 5 walls?

…Huh? I thought the main complaints about DBL were that it was too big and too confusing to navigate. Doesn’t that make it really, really bad for a karmatrain passenger or commander? Understanding the map and its unique elements including air shrine fall damage immunity, how the lava portals work, using the sand stealth and understanding how the haypiles work mean that the average karma drone is even worse than a skilled player.

Making the case that DBL is bad because towers and keeps are larger and have more attackable walls seems really, really odd to me. You’re only looking at it from that angle. The towers and keeps also have other unique properties. Towers have back entrances for defensive teams, meaning small rapid-response teams can more easily enter towers. The abundance of walls mean havoc teams have more options when it comes to making their stealth attacks. Distance between objectives means that splitting forces becomes a more viable strategy. Extra smaller objectives (shrines) give roamers and roam teams more options to provide assistance to their larger teams. A lot of elements on DBL mean that multiple coordinated smaller teams can actually fight more effectively than karmatrain blobs.

Saying “since alpine borderlands gets defended and upgraded”, implying that DBL doesn’t… Well that’s a problem that you can easily fix. Get some friends and go defend and upgrade DBL. Like, you say “two dudes can see all walls from one point”… Hey, hello, you have two dudes. You can see every wall+gate from two points in the DBL towers. Why not try splitting up your two dudes.

Usually if you give a /bow that gets the message across.

-yes i have provided arguments, multiple times, in multiple threads
-i’m not smart enough to understand your ‘gotcha!’
-again, why would raids not be something they show off? you can dislike them as much as you want, anet have publicly said themselves, multiple times, that they consider them to be a massive success
-HoT was not a hardcore expansion
-favoring development for wvw and spvp is not an argument for easy mode raids, it is an argument for discontinuing raid development completely
-the content drought was not caused by raids and will not be fixed by easy mode raids, it was caused by pipeline issues
-game development staff are not generalized, they are specialized; moving key personnel away from a project does not result in a percentage drop in production speed, it results in a key deficiency which delays the project until they can return

Astralporing.1957:

Neither is yours. Better for whom? And in what situation? For you? Possibly. For others? Debatable. Especially since you assume equity of content that does not really exist. No, getting more difficulty modes is not going to cost us a new dungeon.

you can try to boil it down to a popularity contest all you like but you haven’t actually presented anything to imply that multiple modes is a superior model to breadth of content. multiple modes is a damaging system in other MMOs and GW2’s systems would exacerbate those weaknesses

yeah i’d be very surprised if it cost us a new dungeon considering dungeon development is discontinued :?

the actual worry is that because they need to spend time going back and creating these modes that the next expansion, which considering raiding’s great success a raid is likely to be a front-and-center feature, is going to be delayed. and if you want to turn this into a popularity contest, i’m sure the wvwers and pvpers in the game would all prefer to see the next expac asap

Rednik.3809:

And I’d like to see new LS every 3 months, new dungeon+fractal every two and new raid with all wings every 6. Oh, and add more races, pve maps, emotions, activities, quests…
Too bad that in real world adding new mode to existing content costs less development time than making a full alternative from scratch. And because of that new mode is much more likely to happen instead.

mmos are long-term projects and short-term decisions like implementing easy modes because it consumes less resources are ultimately destructive in the long term. multiple difficulty modes are bad in the long term, and it isn’t a sane investment to make that sacrifice for the immediate

also any resource expenditure argument doesn’t really make much sense, unless that resource expenditure would also add or return extra resources to the dev team. adding a mode at this point would do the opposite; with the current raid complete, the team has probably already been moved to accelerate other developments, either on the next expac or in live development. moving them back to create an easy mode would therefore slow down anything that they’ve been reassigned to. that means either future live content (very bad) or the next expac (bad)

cranos.5913:

Your analogy is flawed. You don’t need “mastery” in wvw to get a legendary now either. Just need to pointlessly stand around for 8 kittening hours doing nothing constructive. The road is still broken, nothing got fixed.

you have to master the button to enter wvw

does that count

because you didn’t before

Ganathar.4956:

The GoB may not have been doing it’s job, but countless players have gotten their legendaries without playing the intended amount of WvW now, so I see the change as pointless. If Anet wants legendaries that truly show mastery of every game mode, they need new ones that nobody has ever obtained in an easier way.

Whether you see the change as pointless doesn’t matter. This is like saying you’ve already driven over a broken road so you don’t see any point in fixing the road.

You saying they should unchange it is like saying they should re-break the road because…?

Ganathar.4956:

Good guess, but it doesn’t excuse Anet suddenly making old rewards harder to obtain, which conveniently extends the legendary process during a content drought. If they want more people in WvW, they make it more rewarding in terms of gold gain, while also giving it new exclusive rewards. I’m simply not a fan of making people work harder for already existing content just to create playtime out of nothing.

They’ve given it multiple new rewards over the last few months, including Triumphant Armor, a return of Hero’s Weapons and a second round at the one-time tracks. They’ve increased the amount of gold you get by not only implementing the reward tracks, but by increasing the amount of gold you get each rank-up.

They’ve already done both of the things that you suggest. They are not making this change in an attempt to alleviate the content drought; they’re making this change because the Gift of Battle’s prior implementation did not do its job. The motives of them making this change now have no basis in making older content harder to complete, but because the feature was brought out of beta.

Yeah I would much prefer it if the requirement were removed in all circumstances for WvW objectives. If you can clear the objective solo, you can clear the guild mission solo.

Astralporing.1957:

Say only people that have no problem with current difficulty.

not an argument

If your plan is to spite WvWers, this is not very well thought through.

WvW players can get very good karma rates. Karma can be turned into mapping supplies. A WvW player could therefore get Gift of Exploration without doing much PvE at all; all they’d need to do is unlock the appropriate Mastery (trivially easy) and then go to the daily vendors each day and collect maps (even easier). You would make PvE content completion unnecessary; much the same as the Gift of Battle’s requirements were before they were changed.

lil devils x.6071:

Anecdote = witness testimony. Submissible in a court of law so I would think appropriate for a gaming forum.

Doesn’t change that it isn’t data. If it were a court of law this’d be like you presenting an eyewitness when an autopsy was being asked for. Don’t want anecdotes. Want data. Like the data we have in the poll!

lil devils x.6071:

Graphs that were posted by members of this forum on this forum months ago showing population of DBL and population of ABL = data.

Let me guess: Your graphs compare a long stretch of time of DBL, either from HoT release to the last week of DBL, or several months prior to the last week of DBL, and only a week or two of ABL. Manipulating statistics to prove what you want them to prove is easy. There’s a reason “lies, kitten lies and statistics” exists as a phrase.

At the end of the day I’m not sure why I’m responding. The poll’s already produced a clear answer; most people either want DBL, or they care enough about new map development that they can live with it. See you in the next thread.

Cecilia.5179:

3. The oasis is a waste of space. Stonemist is a good central objective. The ruins are bad. A lake is bad. Aetherblades are bad! Some brainstorming needs to he done for central objectives in the bls.

Honestly, I thought the superlaser was fine for a central objective. Hopefully we can see it fixed by the time they add DBL back.

difficulty ‘levels’ for raids are better provided via breadth of content rather than multiple modes

I play MM Power Reaper and I find it reasonably powerful. I don’t have any videos but I’ll quickly run you through the build.

Bloodbag/bonefiend/shadowfiend/“Rise!”/Flesh Golem
Full Zerk’s, some Knight’s accessories, Pack runes (Durability is also a very strong option)
Greatsword (Might/Battle), Axe/Warhorn (Might/Air)
Death(Top/Top/Top), Blood(Bottom/Bottom/Bottom), Reaper(Top/Top/Top)
Scoop of Mintberry Swirl Icecream (feel free to experiment but this is what I run)

You’re wearing mostly full Zerk’s but you have very good sustain; enough sustain that anyone who isn’t also running a full damage spread may have a difficult time applying enough damage to you. Vampiric, Vampiric Aura and Ice Cream give you huge health returns with each firing up to three times, and Blighter’s Boon carries a lot of weight when you’re running a runeset and sigils that fire multiple boons or are consistently applying extra boons.

Clearing Camps is a 5-second job and you don’t need to bother dealing with LOS or anything like that, even on a fully upgraded camp. Just stand on one of the Scouts and use your Greatsword 5 to hit the other Scout. Every other mob will either run to you or your Bone Fiend, so hopefully that’s right next to you. You’re extremely strong in this situation with Gravedigger returning something in the field of 1.5k HP each swing and dealing massive damage if you have enough targets. Overall, you have the sustain to solo pretty much everything, up to and including DBL Keep and Tower Lords (including the stunspam ogre) and the SMC lord.

Don’t underestimate your axe. Because you have multiple effects running off it, including all your Vampiric effects and an Air sigil, your swings aren’t weak. Axe 3 will also give you back a healthy amount of LF through Blighter’s Boon. It’s an effective ranged pressure option.

Because of how “Rise!”, Gravedigger and your Leech effects work, you are drastically stronger inside of an enemy camp than you are outside of one. You can effectively ignore a lot of encounters against bunkery builds (Dire, basically) by moving into an enemy camp. A meaty portion of the build is using NPCs which are <50% as Gravedigger refreshers and extra Shambling Horrors while you attack players.

I won’t go over the specifics of every matchup but your main weaknesses are thieves and berserkers. Thieves have the DD build that you really have no answer against unless you slot Spectral Wall, which you should have an entirely separate build for, and they also have the mobility and dodges to avoid your attacks- because your sustain is based on leech, not being able to consistently leech off them makes them tricky. Berserkers exploit Necromancers’ lack of Stability and dodges and usually have the AoE and high pressure to sweep your minions, leaving you defenseless. Keep in mind that these are only really unfavorable matchups if you are not in an objective; you can level the playing field by entering an enemy camp, which will re-enable your sustain by giving you NPCs to farm. This can also easily trick players who don’t understand your build; they might think that you entering the camp is an opportunity to apply more pressure from melee, or they might make other mistakes which will allow you to kill them. The capture circle is also an advantage to you; they obviously won’t want to leave it, which means they can’t kite you.

It’s a fun build and you can do a lot of very fast clearing with it, especially on DBL. If you have full zerks’ ascended, including the appropriate weapons, you have everything you need to give it a try.

lil devils x.6071:

Hmm.. I received notice for both. Just everyone I know that I talked about Beta with all said it was so awful they didn’t want to see anymore and were quite vocal about it being bad…

I know for a fact some messaged devs about it…

the plural of ‘anecdote’ is not ‘data’