Guild Wars 2

Fomby.4295:

Account bound. Why is it a bad idea?

Would love to see an answer to this question. Might at least give me some hope that the developers aren’t completely clueless.

I’m probably going to put my WvW play on hold for a while; not out of any kind of protest, but because I’m not finding it fun. Might come back in a week to see how the meta’s adjusted, but not getting my hopes up.

FirstBlood.7359:

The buff does not make a difference.

I just turned two warriors into paste on my own. Didn’t scratch me even though I stood in the 100b. That shouldn’t happen.

I’m not really having very much fun with this. It’s basically spvp, except more zergy- which is not where spvp shines. There’s a reason tpvp is 5v5 and not 8v8.

The buff just doesn’t need to be here. So far, I see no appreciable increase in fun because of the addition of Bloodlust, and it still ruins GvG. Net loss in my books.

style.6173:

As I mentioned yesterday…. these types of changes really will prove a point. There is a huge disconnect between the dev team and the forum users. Very soon, we will find out which one knows what they are talking about, and which needs to learn to listen.

To me it just seems like they don’t have any idea what they’re doing. If the dev team can’t actually foresee these things, then get rid of them and get some forum posters in there.

Alternatively, they don’t care, and there’s strong compelling evidence for this as well so \o/

I’d say to drop the Shadow Fiend in exchange for the Wurm. Having at least some kind of out against a high-pressure melee attacker can buy you time to throw out a Charge, and if they don’t know where your Wurm is you can disorient them for a little while.

As you have Bloodthirst, it may be worth considering using Dagger MH instead of Axe; the 2 will give you a very nice amount of health whenever you use it. I find this is something of a matter of personal preference.

I’d also suggest considering using Runes of Lyssa. It might not quite jive with the Chill thing you have going on, but I personally find having the ability to set up Fury for a burst or wipe conditions a second time to be really helpful.

Lord Kuru.3685:

Draygo.9473:

I like it that the first few replies were people that couldn’t take a joke :p

@sarrs then you can roll the karka for anti-zerg action!

How do you ride a rolling karka?

Very carefully.

They should have a map with karka, and there’s a vendor that sells karka lassos and saddles, and you can ride the karka. Into battle.

Yeah.

That should hopefully keep the people asking for mounts quiet.

Jaaded.1870:

I received my ascended weapon from rank 207 chest but that is about the only thing I have ever gotten out of any of the wvw xp chests that is worth anything. I hope they change to at least start giving superior seige above a certain level and up the chance of an exotic.

I think every chest beyond level 5 has the exact same table for loot.

I wonder whether it’d be feasible to have MF or something affect the results.

IMO getting more feedback is always a great thing in a game, but they should be as unobtrusive as possible. If it pops up with “DID YOU LIKE THIS DUNGEON 1-5” after finishing a dungeon each and every time it’s just gonna feel like the game’s still in beta.

I’m somewhat curious about one of the side effects of no subscription, actually- ANet never gets the unsub reports that a sub-based game would.

runeblade.7514:

The problem with dungeons is not that trinity is useless.

The problem with dungeons is that Control and support are useless. The problem is that the group can be completely 100% DPS role without much trouble. The problem is that dungeons can be done with only dodging. You don’t need defensive skills, which have high cooldowns. It’ll be a waste, and you’re better off using a more damage support utility.

If I can throw a cripple/daze/knockback around and it will actually make a positive difference, then the game will be 10 times better.

Yep. It’s all in the encounter design. There are already examples of fantastic fights in the game that capitalize on what the game does well (the one that most immediately comes to mind being the two fellas in Molten Facility), but unfortunately, that’s a very short list. If dungeon revamps are a priority, hopefully we’ll see more like that.

It’s kind of a thing with encounter design in trinity-based MMOs. This is PUG content… How much effort do you put into Heroics in WoW by comparison? Other players are just as irrelevant there as they are here. While I was still raiding, on the other hand, I could definitely see fights not caring at all about the trinity- their mechanics would still operate just fine without a tank, and personal survival is still exactly the same, healer or no.

Jamais vu.5284:

Since when does you not understanding their reasons = them having no reasonable argument?

Well… That’s what reasonable means. If you don’t have a solid, logical reason for doing something, that argument is not sound or reasonable. If your argument does not make sense, you’re either a poor communicator or just plain wrong. ANet’s argument does not make sense; they are either poor communicators or wrong. Considering they have a PR team dedicated to making their message as clear as possible, I think it’s far more likely that it’s the second.

The argument is very straightforward. If you spend even one more minute on your character, or preferably in-game at all, due to the WXP progression mechanic than you would otherwise, it’s being effective.

Is it actually doing that? Because I feel actively discouraged from playing WvW when I want to level an alt. That is a Bad Thing. If I want to WvW, I’m more likely to experience burnout on my main. That is a Bad Thing. I haven’t found any Good Things that aren’t directly negated by these Bad Things yet.

If you don’t stat brand new twinks as gimmicks with full trees (treb gimmick, AC gimmick, etc.) and cycle between them without a single thought spent on the actual points distribution, it’s being effective.

Maybe I’m just sleepy, but this didn’t make sense. I mean, is this addressing the shared vs unique trait spreads?… Because yeah, alts shouldn’t be able to get different trait spreads, I agree with you there.

I know that that’s probably a much less sexy, individually appealing reason for the existence of this particular reward mechanism than usually expected, but so is reducing your carbon footprint for the environment.

what’s wrong with you

EFWinters.5421:

In a huge zerg the stat increase might not matter a lot, but it does when you are roaming.

Coincidentally, players who roam have a much harder time by far to obtain these two traits.

Even in a huge zerg that 2500 HP can make a lot of difference. If it keeps you from getting downed, and keeps the other team from killing you and therefore rallying their dudes, that can be the difference between making half a dozen kills and not.

Syktek.7912:

It would be similar to ask for stack sigils to be nerfed too since they clearly give flat out bonuses to stats too. 10% crit chance, 250 extra power, healing power, condition damage. Just as easy to build those stacks too. Why not nerf these too? They’re easier to obtain, more efficient.

By taking them, you’re giving up something else- A different sigil that doesn’t require stacking. Granted, that doesn’t… Actually work, you can just swap your weapons out once you’ve stacked, which I’d suggest fixing as well.

Applied Vitality’s really strong. Not only does it provide flat more stats than Guard Leech, it provides it in a hyper-concentrated form; every class/build wants more Vitality, or can at least use it. Guard Leech at least has the counterbalance that not quite every spec can make great use of both of its stats; most power-centric builds don’t really have many conditions to benefit from condition damage.

IMO, it might be worth changing Applied Vitality from granting flat Vitality to granting a mix of stats. Why not have Applied Vitality grant 20 vit/20 healing power per stack? This fits the line better overall (soloing camps is usually a matter of stamina, not surviving bursts, at least in my experience), gives it less raw stats, and splits the stat focus instead of concentrating it, bringing it more in line with Guard Leech.

Thoughts?

Why not the other way around; have Outmanned grant a reduction in the cost of siege/an increase in siege damage?

Also, does anyone know what exactly the rules for determining Outmanned are?

SkyShroud.2865:

anet is using battlefield series leveling system….
in battlefield, every class has their own leveling bar
this is similar to current wvw rank which is bond to each character

but the problem is, in battlefield, players do not have to level to gain all the basic skills and they can pick weapons from dead bodies

but in gw2, you have to level to 80 and u cant pick up people’s gears to use….

in comparison, bf has lesser deterrence for players to level up new class than gw2
so imo, this character bond wxp is acting as a deterrence to players who want to try different class for wvw

given anet explanation of character bound wxp, then they should be consistent with it and apply it to spvp as well. players will always make comparisons with existing systems, people are taught to do that in school.

I like this comparison, but there’s something more. When you unlock something for a vehicle, you do not unlock it for that class exclusively- you unlock it completely. For example, if you usually play an Engineer and you have all the tank unlocks, you won’t suddenly lose those unlocks just because you go over to an Assault to try it out.

timidobserver.7925:

The point being, it is pointless to waste time making a suggestion after they have said that it is completely the opposite of what they want to do. It would be better to think of other solutions instead of suggesting one that has already been shot down.

I don’t even know what they do want to do. What they’ve said (“we want individual characters to have different skill sets”) does not make any sense at all without an exponentially scaling XP requirement per level.

At the moment, the best and most efficient way to fill multiple roles is to get your main character up by a million levels, not get all of your other characters up simultaneously. At best, splitting up your levels will give negligible returns, and in exchange, it encourages people to only play one character- which results in people actively staying out of WvW on anything other than their main, which cannot be anything but a bad thing for everything other than the T1 servers.

Firefly.5982:

Given clones have the same priority as players…how about spirits and minions? Am I the only one seeing this as the possible biggest nerf ever to rangers and necros in wvw and sPvP? O_o

Not really. As an MM necro, unless your opposition’s a 100% rushdown build, they need to kill your minions to reduce your healing enough to deal serious damage.

Thorg.6809:

Conditions are so fun, but they’re really weak in any group bigger than 5.

Maybe the change with the popup numbers will also indicate some backend changes. I’m not sure but I guess we can hope, eh?

I can see it being done, possibly with a few enforcers to prevent PUGs from interfering, during GvG hours. I really hope that it can be done.

Dristig.9678:

Yeah that’s the sort of thing I’m afraid of. Rangers and Necros and Mesmers can just solo all your camps if they buff summons to the point of surviving Arrow cart spam.

I also don’t understand why they don’t base hp and power off of the players gear. You shouldn’t be wearing Zerker gear and get tanky pets. You want tanky pets? Get tanky gear.

Honestly, I like that minions don’t have the same stats as their masters. It gives them more of a niche for a player that might not otherwise use them.

I’d like it if they scaled to some extent with gear level, though. An MM in blues has just as powerful minions as an MM in ascended+exotic.

Zypher.7609:

Turrets are viable, now to come up with a toolkit +2 turret build. Thanks for the heads up!

I built one a while ago. Try this;
0/20/30/0/20
Rifled Barrels/Coated Bullets
Metal Plating/Autotool Installation/Rifled Turret Barrels
Deployable Turrets/Power Wrench

Medikit/Rifle Turret/Rocket Turret/Toolkit/Supply Drop

Throw your turrets somewhere inaccessible if possible, or just generally out of the way. They’ll plink at people for solid damage, especially well with the overcharges, and be very difficult to access. Then all you need to do is focus on keeping yourself alive while your turrets chew on your enemy.

Dristig.9678:

Lumping WvW in with PvE is really scary for this change. Summons that can handle PvE levels of damage in smaller scale WvW are going to be very overpowered. If for instance you buff summons to be able to stand in AoE in PvE and that strength is brought to WvW how are you supposed to kill them out in the field?

My MM necro is now immortal. 30k HP Flesh Golem incoming!~

I think this is really scary too. I can already take a camp+bad player, now it’ll be even easier with it taking a million hours for them to knock down my minions- which are now draining even more life for me with improved draining traits.

FirstBlood.7359:

GvG zealots dominate the WvW subforums, trying to force their narrow view of the game on everyone.

“can you please not ruin this thing that we find quite fun”
“NO”

that’s domination that there. eeyup.

Dynnen.6405:

A road map if you would sir! We’re in the woods with no direction and no answers! =*(

With leagues coming up and orbs about to be introduced, yeah, we really could use a good long discussion about the state and the future of WvW.

So I was writing over in “how is this supposed to be played” and I actually ended up with quite a lot of thoughts about the current state of WvW. It was a bit much for a response to one post, though, so I decided to write up a new thread.

Maximising PPT isn’t relevant to individual players; the rewards are trivial. No guild-based rewards, no personal rewards, actually winning the game isn’t seen as a valuable objective… There’s ultimately no motive to maximise simultaneous objective captures and upgrade objectives.

Maximising event completion and champion kills is relevant to individual players; it provides significant XP/WXP/Ascended material rewards. Optimal way to play (excluding fun factor) is to rotate around a map backcapping with a karma train.

PPT/overall score is meaningless. Player and guild skill levels have very very little effect on the actual score compared to coverage- give a T6 server another solid EU/Oceanic guild and it’ll be a T5 server in the blink of an eye.

Stale gameplay has diminished the fun in attacking/defending in real objectives battles. It’s been more or less the exact same game for the last year. We’ve already done these sieges a thousand times before; why would we want to do them again?

Only ‘big’ changes (which don’t transform how sieges operate, just make an aspect of them bigger) have been arrow cart buffs, guild catapults for sneakyninjacatapults and golems’ massive price drop. Both the increase in golem supply and overall inflation have made Omega Golems, which used to be an incredibly rare sight, into a mainstay siege weapon. Do not expect siege gameplay to normalise for a long time, if ever, because of inflation of gold supply and siege prices not increasing to match.

Masteries have not had the intended effect because the basic elements of the siege are already done to death- ‘Who cares about masteries, we’ve had our fun, we’re bored now’. Very short list of traits that people actually care about- Guard Leech, Applied Vitality, Catapult 1, Supply Mastery’s refund. Has very serious effect on player burnout because system feels restrictive towards alts; my personal attitude is ‘play necro or don’t play wvw at all’.

kingcragus.6810:

This horse is dead. Please stop flogging it.

That’s not how politics works. If you tell someone to do something once and then drop it, they’ll figure that you weren’t really that bothered by it and not do it. If you keep pestering them, they’ll figure it’s important and do something. This horse needs to be reduced to its base elements by repeated blunt trauma, because it’s a huge deterrent to more than a few people who want to invest their time in WvW.

SmoothHussler.6387:

Well in case anet has any doubts, GW2 appears to be entering a crucial period a mere year after its release with both its competitive communities in crisis.

Who knows? We might get lucky and this will be the wakeup call for their to dislodge their heads from their sphincters. Any company that thinks it knows what its customers want better than its customers is insane, and it’s crazy that Anet’s basically giving the middle finger to what is probably the most devoted casual PvP playerbase they have.

Now that I think about it, I kinda wonder why they don’t just have the Orb/Bloodlust stat bonuses only active in the PvE world. That’s why we’re fighting in the Mists, right? To get power so we can bash up Zhaitan or whatever?

Mordar.4286:

it’s one of the worst trait ever in any mmorpg, completely useless, I’d rather just have some stat gain than this thing

It can be useful because of the benefits it grants via Protection of the Horde and the three minion-oriented Grandmaster traits. I’ve also found them very useful as body blocks while stomping. Of course, how this justifies them as a viable candidate for an adept minor trait is still quite a puzzle.

These two traits could really use a look into. IMO, they should roll Protection of the Horde into Flesh of the Master, Reanimator into Minion Master, make Greater Marks the Master minor trait (let’s face it, everyone wants marks) and add a new Adept Minor trait.

Gamadorn.2659:

This is no different then me running into the camp when the circle’s up and getting full credit for flipping it even though I did nothing…

Well, you can completely afk and get yak credits if what Devon says is true. Just find a nice spot behind the gate and go study or whatever, maybe put yourself on auto-run into the corner. Free WXP!

Korgov.7645:

Why don’t you include Power of the Mists to the list?

Can’t servers agree on not acquiring Bloodlust for the brief period fo time when GvG takes place?

I had a thought; why doesn’t ANet slightly modify the EB JP’s structure to have more flat, uninterrupted sections, and disable the Bloodlust and Power buffs there?

GuardianOMS.8067:

Because standing in a circle of a camp/tower/keep is SO different.

Well, yeah. That circle lasts like 10 seconds. Yaks stay on the field for 4 minutes.

morrolan.9608:

Lord Kuru.3685:

I’m seeing more and more roamers with Guard Leech and/or Applied Fortitude.

For those of you who dislike Bloodlust because it makes fights unfair… what do you think about these two Abilities?

Plenty of us have raised objections to these in the past. Whilst they don’t affect GvG they are still something of a barrier to entry for new players.

I just had a very lazy idea; what if there were a relatively easy to get (say, 20-30 WvW points) skill line that had a 100% chance on crit or 100% chance on hit to remove the Guard Killer/Defense Against Guards buff (not including attacks made using siege)?

style.6173:

Completely disagree with you. What you are encouraging is actually the dumbing down of WvW. What would be better is for a commander to discuss with his team members at the beginning of the run what role a person would play. Some people need different skills. The commander would know who his trebber would be vs his golem person, etc. It adds a whole new strategy to the daily grind of WvW.

Strategy is a good thing. Points should be easily reset at around the same cost similar to resetting skills.

Strategy can work on larger scales than that. What if your guild group specifically builds to have every siege that they can expect to place on the field filled with a dedicated person who has built to fulfill that role? That’s a very long-term, large, group-driven series of decisions. Whether it’s actually being filled by the current system is a different question entirely and possibly a point I agree with you on, the skill system could use a bit of fiddling to get the costings right and maybe nail down the outliers in DAG/GK, but it’s at the least a good goal to aim for.

Yes, some people do need different skills- But you already have the means to get those different skills. If you’re in a guild group with dedicated WvWers, or have good information on how your server/BL of choice is going to spec, you’re going to have the opportunity to make an informed decision on filling a specific role in WvW. By allowing respecs on a dime, you turn everyone from structured, locked builds which have an incentive to grow, into amorphous grey sludges which has the means to seep into every role. Amorphous grey sludge isn’t fun and doesn’t make players feel special.

Kincaidia.3192:

I spent the first 2 months doing AC mastery. Now I don’t want to touch an AC again. How is me getting to do something different hurting anything ?!?

You’ll have that opportunity. You have that opportunity right now, even; you just won’t do quite as well as someone dedicated to the relevant trait lines.

GreenAlien.5623:

Will we be forced to respec? I actually like my points where they are right now and do not like to be forced to think about them again and again and again.

I doubt you’ll be able to turn it down; your points will just get refunded when the season starts. Kind of a pain if you have a lot of points to remember where they are.

I read this thread and was like “not this again…” and then I noticed that it was already in the title so at least there’s some tacit awareness that this horse has already been beaten into pulp.

On topic, no. Respecs aren’t necessary because you can just get more points. If you could respec, any points beyond 300 would be pretty much irrelevant. Scheduled, very occasional respecs are okay, but people will just game the system if they have the choice to change.

Also I find the somewhat political attitude people are taking towards account wide WXP ranks quite interesting. Hopefully they do cave though.

Blanche Neige.7241:

ukuni.8745:

I’d recommend them making a loot bag that can only drop from player kills that randomly gives some of the items you need for ascended gear

Forcing PvE players into a style of play they dislike is a bad idea.

The reverse is also true. PvP players should not be forced to do PvE either.

It’s not a WvW exclusive mat, it’s just a chance to get mats that already exist.

Lord Kuru.3685:

What do GvG people think about Guard Leech and Applied Fortitude?

They don’t really care. Don’t kill guards before going to your GvG event, and there’s no problem.

Whether Bloodlust is fair or not has absolutely nothing to do with standard WvW. 99% of Bloodlust complaints are directed to the destructive influence it will have on GvG. It’s simply an imbalancing factor that you can’t omit for the sake of fairness.

I think this would be subject to some abuse depending on the locations you’re bringing supply to and from. Bay keep and NW camp? They’re basically a stone’s throw away from eachother if you take the back route, and probably the shortest and safest route from a camp to a tower there is.

In my opinion, I think it would be better if you could order a special yak that took a route you picked to an objective of your choice. You’d have to defend it, same as usual, but you have control over where and when it goes.

morrolan.9608:

Sarrs.4831:

At a guess, it’s going to be a test to see if the playerbase responds well to it.

Why would they need to test that? They already know how ppl will respond to uneven matches because its happening now.

Thanks for missing the point?…

People might enjoy the structure of the league despite the matches, so ANet will continue with the leagues. People might not enjoy the league even if they have perfect matches, so ANet will not continue the leagues. I’m not sure whether you’re being daft on purpose.

Goodnight, GvG!

I know it’s insane and all but when people are having fun in your game, despite being in a way you didn’t initially intend, that’s a good thing and not something to stamp out.

Please no more timegating. If people want to pursue the drudgery of farming champions for hours on end, then have at, folks, enjoy your champions. If you’re going to change anything, maybe push up rewards elsewhere.

Two reasons I can think of;
1. It’s very difficult to judge and account for a lot of factors when it comes to a problem, especially in programming. Every wrinkle you put into the system is a potential place where it could break.
2. Any instance in which players are supposed to operate antagonistically for rewards could flip and cause them to operate cooperatively for greater rewards.

That’s not to say it wouldn’t be great if they’d put in some kind of real reward system for WvW but it’s still very difficult to do.

My 2c? When attacking a keep, its upgrade level can pretty much always be used for a rough approximation of how valuable it is/how determined its defenders are, and therefore what sort of recompense is fair to give on a successful attack.

Conversely, since attacking is lucrative on a personal level, defending should also be valuable- So defending a highly-upgraded location should offer better rewards than defending wood.

How to do this mechanically? Bump up the relevant reward measurement tools when in the objective’s vicinity (WXP mod/MF/GF), and maybe have a heavier guard presence throughout objectives to give more lootbags when the defending team doesn’t want to show up.

At a guess, it’s going to be a test to see if the playerbase responds well to it. If everyone’s like “nah this is rubbish” then it’ll be the first and last season.

I think that both structures and siege weapons themselves really need some depth added to them outside of the WvW level system.

None of the things you can do to a structure are really transformative upgrades; the only exception to this rule is Waypoint, and Anet even wants to get rid of those. By transformative I mean they fundamentally change how you view the objective. A keep is just a keep until you get a waypoint in it, then it’s a deployment platform for people and golems. If you upgrade a tower, it’s still… Just a tower. It gets more HP, but it doesn’t fundamentally change how a tower works.

Siege is the same. There’re three stages of each siege; basic, superior (more damage) and Guild (more cheaper and more damage). WvW abilities can be transformative once you get their capstone spells, like a basic Arrow Cart is very different when you have Revealing Shots, but it’s a huge time investment to try to get any of them and it doesn’t actually effect the base siege. Again, there’s an exception in the rule in the Omega Golem which goes faster and punches rockets, but that’s really just adding range to the equation as well.

Also the nature of structures being wiped completely clean when they’re taken, and of upgrades taking such a short time to complete, makes WvW feel really transient. The matches last for a week long, but the games don’t really change at any level at any point other than participation rates declining as the week progresses. It would be really cool if the game changed as it goes along, in a way other than “lol let’s karma train it up because they’re all asleep”.

On liquid XP:
Lol.

Why would I ever use liquid XP on an alt when I can save them for a Birthday Booster+Booster+Minibooster and instantly get a level and a half?

Vena.8436:

Rednik.3809:

Guildmate got ascended weapon drop in WvW yesterday. I think with new magic find chances on better drops become significantly higher.

I know of a few of ours who pulled in a rather bizarrely high number of Ascended/Exotics from their chests after the most recent patch.

ANet nefarious stealth chest buff?

I did manage to pull an exotic from one of today’s chests. I guess we’ll find out soon if I get any more.

Solstice.1097:

Lastly I really like the idea of R.I. based on population. If you outnumber your opponents greatly enough, you get no R.I. on captured structures. If you are extremely outnumbered, R.I. might even increase to 10 minutes for capping something.

I really like this idea, actually. If it came with some kind of protection for your fortifications if you recapped quickly enough, even better.

taek.9386:

Do you know what we need???

Screw showing titles of enemies, give enemies a special aura based on what rank they are, which will reduce the clutter on the screen

since i dont know what most ranks are but example

1-10 – no aura since you are a noob
11-20 – blue
21-30 – green
high levels – gold, silver, bronze, diamond etc

similar to what Ragnarok online had but they only had an aura for max level chars

I thought of something similar. What if commander tags had more detail in them? For example, if you were in the Bronze ranks, the commander tag would have a bronze edging. Silver, silver edging, soonsoforth.