Guild Wars 2

lordkrall.7241:

If you were here at release you would have been fully aware that they do quite a bit about bots.
The amount of bots running around now is MUCH lower than it was back at release, so clearly they have done something about it.
But it takes time. They must investigate, they must try to find a long-time solution and so on.

What would be the point to ban a bot if a new one just pops up a day later?

I play the game since first beta. I played GW1 also and I know what problems both games faced with bots.

Yet I see they dropped the gun now.
As I told you in my post. I reported most of those bots several times and they haven’t done a thing for more than a month.

When I reported bots before they vanished.
Maybe it was different time or maybe more people reported them.
The fact now stays bots run on many areas and no one does a thing about it as I see it.

Activities were very empty for me without it.
I don’t like PvP that we have for now but I enjoy fighting other players in mini games. I still fight them but on another way and the way it’s way nicer than normal PvP.

The hard thing is that ANet doesn’t really care for bots as I see it.

There are some that I reported several times gathering resources on Straits to Devasation’s right upper corner.
I checked for them on many servers. They just guest on one server for few days and then jump to another. I checked for them for days and reported them, but there was just no action from ANet’s Team :/.
Even few days ago I checked them after more than a month and they are in there.

That really saddens me.

Basically bots usually gather resources and sell them on TP and additionally fight some monsters to make them look better. They usually use rangers and necromancers sometimes elementalists. They use their minions to make them almost untouchable. They have on themselves chap exotics probably around 70th lvl to ensure they would survive. When in combat they do few hits and dodge. You can see they dodge often without any reason. and they often use one WP to reset their path.

It’s really obvious, yet they hit economy of the game hard.
I loved to gather some materials to earn some easy money without champion rush, but you just can’t to that thanks to those bots and it kills one side of the game that I guess is not that important.

I have an issue with the current state of Legendary items.

They are hard to get only time wise.

If you sit and farm for hours champions do dungeons and such you will get the money and you will be able to just buy one and that is commonly accepted by now.

For me Legendary item would be something that consts you hard work to forge it and only by yourself. If in RL you have items that are priceless that means you wont normally buy them at any cost.

GW2 should have it like that also.

We will soon hit the legendary armors or accessories maybe new legendary weapons and I would ask you people from ANet to make it better this time.

At first Legendaries were supposed to be those items that were supposed to be indication that you explored the game in every way, exploring doing events, dungeons and spending time on it. Now you can just farm money.

I know that whatever you do people will farm – sure let them, but make them farm around all the game instead of looking only for the easy way for the money and money will let you buy all your happiness and legendary items.

Now Legendaries are only considered hard due to the money and of course every needed resource will jump into the price once you add new legendaries, economy will fluctuate etc.

Instead then idea is to make legendary weapons only by the means of materials that are bound to account. We have a lot of them Gift of Exploration, Karma, guild commendations, all kinds of dungeon tokens, fractal relics, all ascended materials (rave form), charged quartz crystals, badges of honor, laurels even glory.

You can add to that some materials like tokens for each dungeon path you make (similar to tokens from SAB tribulation mode), maybe tokens for meta achievements in each Living story?

This would make a grave difference between people who actually go through hardship of playing instead of flipping and gathering gold.
Gold can and should be used to make ascended items that were meant to be hard but common weapons and as far as I saw many people had them in the first day. People just were spending money on crafting materials and materials that were supposed to time gate the process but those were on TP in refined form.

Legendaries should be something more.
For example: They should be timegated by resources for some time, not too short, not too long. Something like 100 days (by materials: laurels, quartz and raw ascended materials) that would make new legendaries undoable quickly in some sort of berserk farming mode. Instead players should in those 100 days have time to gather other materials needed for it and after 100 days your epic quest would be done.
Dungeons, especially if you would have to do each path few times (like 5) would work great for those

I would also ask to make it so that you could craft armors as a set (box with all the pieces like you can with normal armors) instead of creating each of 6 pieces individually.

If any of you like the idea add your opinion or maybe some additional ideas how to make legendaries more content hard instead of making them grindable as they are unfortunately now.

JonathanSharp.7094:

These types of ideas (and this whole thread) are still amazing for generating ideas. Even if an idea might have a lot of problems with it, still toss it out! Maybe it’ll lead us to the eventual answer!

I also have a crazy idea.

Why don’t you make each player to be signed to a pair of servers instead of one.
Why make everything on one server and people mix population between PvE, PvP and WvW.

If each player could be on pair of servers: his PvE server and WvW it could work preety good. When you log in you would go to PvE server and when you enter WvW you would go to your WvW server (just like now you go to your WvW while you guest).
You could make like 10 or less WvW servers that would only work on WvW maps. It could probably make them more efficient and there would be no empty servers since if you would be on the server it would meant you entered WvW and you want to play it.

Balancing people across WvW only servers would be way easier since in there you would have only people who care about WvW.

This idea could made way bigger.
If you only like it.

Sorry for answering so late – it’s due the RL time.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

For what I can tell there is some imbalance in server population system.

I guest on many servers and I see that some of the have a very little people on the for most of the time and others are alive like bazaar at noon.

I have a feeling that population is calculated simply by the number of accounts that are bound to this server. If so what will happen if I stop playing for 3 months? Or even 6 months?
If it is as I think and I’m still counted for the server then it’s something wrong in the system cause we will see very populated servers with very little people on them.
If thats the case you can unbind the accounts after 3 or 6 months from server. People will choose their home server again if they start to play again.

No real player would consider not logging in for 3 months for save some gems on server transfer anyway.

More problems comes if server has more seasonal players that comes for few days after each LS update. The problem is kinda solved by overflow system anyway so I don’t get technical aspects of the problem with seasonal players.

The real challenge to balance servers would be to calculate how many people play how long and on that statistical value you would have to create server population value.

Sorry for answering so late – it’s due the RL time.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Wont the problem by solved with the edge of the mist map?
In there everyone who is above the cap will be able to play WvW while waiting. The cap in the map. Besides there are 2 other aspects of the cap.

1st. Server borderlands usually is occupied by people from that server. Many of them goes to borderlands to sell quickly, craft or use crafting station as a bank, repair sometimes use Mystic Forge and go to Lion’s Arch.

If you cut those options off it might help a lot.
You can basically remove them or make area like that on a different map (better solution).
I can understand that people want to do this for free since paying few s each WP is major pain of mine in this game. This makes problems on time vs cost of your time in game.

2nd. As I see it most people sit on their server borderlands and ethereal battleground. There are only big zergs on other borderlands before count time. They go and reset other servers efforts for points, but for most of the time other borderlands are kinda deserted aside from roamers.

So if you decrease the cap you will force people to spread more. Only those highest population servers would suffer but people from those servers should think about moving to lover populated servers anyway.

To make people move you have to redo the reward system for a season to be more equal not as much based on server tier and server place more on how much someone plays. This will prevent people from leaving servers going for the wining servers.

Will we be able to go into Edge on our own (if we don’t want to be on actual WvW due to the balance problems)?
Or will it only work as and overflow?

DevonCarver.5370:

So, if prices for server transfers were based on WvW population, what would a fair distribution of costs look like from the lowest population servers to the highest? Keep in mind that making it completely impossible to transfer to a server puts a burden on other players. That doesn’t mean that you couldn’t have an incredibly high price, just that completely blocked isn’t an option.

This could help.
Also it can’t be measured by server tank, since my server lost most of its population on WvW and we still probably have a quite high rank due the fact before season 1 we had many guilds on WvW. There has to be a way to check the population on the map or at least if the queue is forming and how long queue is needed or average time in queue..

You can try for now and them please try to build dynamic limitation of people in field system that I described. I sadly think without it there wont be enough to push people to switch servers.

sminkiottone.6972:

Why not implement a voluteer mechaninc ?

like spvp, a guy from the more populated servers can voluteer to join a less populated server for the entire duration of the league and get rewars for that :

- Wxp boost
- karma boost
- Gold boost
- Magic find boost
- The possibility to get back to the native server once the league is ended ( for free)
- Anything that can lure people out of the stacked servers, even entire guilds.

The idea is good, but it would not work for organized groups and those are needed badly to balance game after we balance population.

The idea is good anyway so it could be implemented probably.

Seras.5702:

It’s a personal opinion, but I’m just so against things like player housing and farms and fishing in a game like GW2. Just because it’s a Living World doesn’t mean we have to do all the menial things in the world. I’m supposed to be a hero, a slayer of beasts, defender of Tyria, commander of the Pact…and I’m going to manage a farm??!?

You see it just like me, but in the end there are those who would like to have that in game.
I wont agree there should be big priority for this, but it is a possibility that might show in and if it does it’s good. The key is to address those thoughts that have the most people backing them so most of players would be satisfied.

And it has to be balanced gold-wise in game – no easy money for shops vs players who farm on they own

Although I would just love to see the nature in GW2 taken to next level like day and night, seasons, fog, moon phases and all that good stuff.

lordkrall.7241:

kokiman.2364:

Add to that question:

When will the GW:Proph+EotN map be “restored” in GW2?

When we go after Jormag most likely, since J is currently “ruling” the north.

I would love to see that (as you can read ion my posts).
Yeah, lets go in there!

ColinJohanson.2394:

Conner.4702:

To me none of the LV felt like it truly impacted the WORLD. Sure zones got changed, but the world stayed the same. Just look at the current LV there is a huge tower in the middle of a lake, but the humans and centaurs still have their petty land disputes..

So how would you try and solve this? And a second question is how far would you like to see the impact of say a tower in Kessex be felt content wise? The balance here is of course total volume of work for those involved, to literally have the entire world react to what’s going on would take us 6+ months to build, which at that point isn’t actually meeting our goals of a regularly changing and evolving world.

That’s right.
Making new content takes a lot of time and I see many people in here don’t see that. I worked with programing and I know that first hand. You often see some little things kitten easy, but in the end those changes would really take chain of events often. So like Colin said think about it if for details you want to wait for 2m+ each release.

I know it’s doable, but there has to be a compromise and I don’t recall any problem with the state of Kessex as it is now. You could probably just turn off bridge event for now but that’s the most I would really do.

As said we aren’t hurt with the time of releases only the time to complete them.
Since I wrote about it in my previous post I won’t write it again.

*To sum it up. *
Kessex is awesome. Let there be remains of this in history as Karkas body is in Southsun!
You did a really great job with this update, I hope to see you getting better and better each update.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

timmyf.1490:

Randulf.7614:

I still not sure why every content has to be 2 weeks though. It should last as long as it needs to progress the story.

Said another way…

We LOVE that you ADD content every two weeks.

We HATE that you often REMOVE roughly the same amount of content every two weeks.

Hi Timmyf,

We are working on more persistent content and meta goals that bridge said content.

Of to a meeting.

Chris

It would be interesting seeing a plot like current WvW season for few month that you would add achievements in time and it would be in background. Some huge story like progressing through new areas to battle Dragon and on the other side there would be some smaller stories like current LS in main spotlight for us to enjoy. It would create nice perspective and it would stop the felling like something happened instantly.

I loved the intro to Flame and Frost although it was way too long but it build up some tension. When I saw Kessex before last patch I was also trilled. Cause some things were happening and it showed us that we are preparing for something more. We got curious. Nothing happened just like that out of nowhere. It was similar to Queens Speech.

You could do those teasers for a month revealing some slow changes by 2 updates (1 month) and it will be great. We will go analyze something changing (teaser 2nd phase) in here, when we break main release (final release), and something could start in 3rd place (teaser start) to make us wonder even more. It would work nicely and those I think aren’t things that cant be done and those hopefully can be done easily enough.
Anyway its definitely worth it since game becomes more alive when you speculate.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

videoboy.4162:

Chris,

What do you and the other Devs think about the idea of having a static server that people are transported to for their personal story? People could play on their main server with all of their friends and participate in the LS, while still being able to complete the personal story as intended. It would also give you guys the freedom to change the world as you see fit, without being anchored down by the Personal Story.

The switch could be something simple like the NPC is the Mad King’s Labyrinth, where talking to him transports you to the Inquisition or Clocktower.

I think this is an interesting idea. Let’s flesh it out some more. Can you give me some more details around your idea?

Chris

It could work as an auto guest system.
On Select world everyone would have 3rd server that they always guest on called Historical (always on 1st place). You could relog to it always.
(There should also be a little tweak to world selection to show only 3 servers once you used 2 guest tickets and PLEASE don’t force me to accept the 24h info every time I switch servers to play with friends…)

On your hero panel you go to “My history” tab and you should make 2 buttons: Historical server and Living server. When you click Historical you would be reloged to be on historical server. without showing charter select screen. After each of story instances you could be prompt (go live, stay in historical or I will manually switch).

Only in historical server you should have green stars and instance entries. You could also transform upper right area that informs you about personal story to have text like “lick to progress personal story” on click you would have the same prompt like after completing an instance.

Those are kinda basic ideas but you can add to that if you want to make them fancy.
I would at least do those basics then maybe add something more to it so you could as fast as possible be free from Personal story compatibility – like ORR problem.

I really would like to see it green in Orr and with Karkas roaming around since Consortium would finally pushed them from Southsun and they would find new home on half deserted island of Orr. We would go in there and see then battle rest of undeads that come from temples. Temples would stay in as they consumed so much power over years that you would need to cleanse them over and over until rests of Zaithan power vanishes (it could be slowly changed in LS to the point when you erase those temple events giving us something new in the future).

Hopefully we will see something like this.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I will however try be more direct in terms of our actions. Also bear in mind that i don’t make an decisions in isolation. None of us do. Therefore evolutions in design philosophy will be communicated over time.

I hope this helps?

Chris

It helps but sadly for me I hoped for another answer.
Thank you thou for your answer.

Could you please ask your colleges if you could give some detailed information to this question: What is the status of maps planned for GW2 release but didn’t go live up to now?
Here is the hint: http://thatshaman.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-much-room-for-expansions-guide-to.html

I would really like to know if those are even in progress.

ColinJohanson.2394:

That doesn’t make phasing wrong, but if you judge by the above pillar it makes phasing wrong for Gw2. Each design decision we make takes that into account as one of the games core pillars. When something in the open world happens, it needs to happen for everyone, and we gauge everything that way.

How about making instance out of LS for player or party to relive it.
It could be entire zone as far as I think or you can make part of it (similar to story instance in Tower of Nightmares). You could just cut of part of the zone for an instance and allow people explore as a sample how it was. You can downscale it a bit to allow one player to kill foes (remove champ etc) if you add story instances to it it could work as “here is what you missed” remainder.

I have to add this shouldn’t be a lot of work, but it would be just great.

You can add that for everyone of make an option to run instance from achievements panel of people who people who were in there when LS was in there (meta achievement would mean you did) and those people could invite to party others and let them relive their “memories”.

cesmode.4257:

Lore Book (or Story Book)

As a temporary measure, if other plans are in place to help people who have missed part of the story, could arenanet post some story pages detailing what exactly has gone on during the living story, in a story format?

It would be great and adding the option to go in as in instance mode to parts of those stories, even maps would be great way to work.

Dear Colin,

ColinJohanson.2394:

For me the original invasion of Southsun Cove was the best example of this, it had a lot of “story” style content that made sense to happen and then go away, and also left a lot of permanent experiences as a result of that storyline.

I also felt like the story content that came along with the Queens Jubilee and Clockwork Chaos did a good job of accomplishing this as well, though the outcome of the invasions don’t have enough impact on the world.

Thats basically true.
We really need permanent changes to the world and new maps.

Some of us know (cause out of passion we looked around) that there were a lot of maps in progress that never made to release.
http://i3.minus.com/iktSpBjeZ10NJ.jpg
This article shows around 10 maps that were or were supposed to be in development:
http://thatshaman.blogspot.com/2013/04/so-much-room-for-expansions-guide-to.html

The feeling I have is that you squeeze us in 30+ maps instead of making a real changes to existing world. (It was even worse when you forced me to go again and again through all the mini dungeons and jumping puzzles I already compleeted on some LS but thats gladly over).

Knowing that there is a base to future expanding the world makes me even more mad for months. When after more than a year you don’t even want to address the problem of constant reusing existing world that makes me feel like you don’t even care and there are people in this thread that feel that way also.
I said before explored in over 600% on my 9 characters i really need more zones. (why did you removed Bazaar map instead of removing the ship and some NPCs so we can jump around?)

Maps should have also been added to World Completion and none of the was (Southsun Cove or Bazaar map).

It would be OK if you said there will be an expansion or some kind of major patch that will have new maps in half of 2014 or something. Yet literally NO ONE want to answer why can’t the world really progress (new zones + permanent changes to existing ones).

We finally see big changes in this patch and I really hope we will see them stay forever in some way. I still love the fact that when I go for Ori Ore to Southsun I see dead Karka at the bottom of the cave. Thats really amazing for me and I want to feel like that again. Its like “I was here, I shaped this part of the world with ANet and other players” kind of feeling. Its great for me.

I said about the world progression now for the story itself.

I also agree that Southsun was great in many things. We got new place. We got a lot of new lore and fight although way to long and laggy, but was epic for me and the story had conclusion.

We have nice stories now at least half of them is decent or good for me, but we often miss a lot of lore. I know that you have everything set and there are logical ties between many things, but you do it kinda wrong. You don’t explain them well or hide key parts so they feel unattached. You forget often that for people to who play we don’t see it as TV series. I can wait for next episode for a week at best to see the conclusion.

I love Star Gate series. You should watch it. Each episode (sometimes 2 episodes) had a conclusion. Those were small one episode stories that formed great story through entire season and the seasons formed another even greater stories. Thats the way you GW2 story should be as I see it. I know it can be hard but please have it in mind. Don’t deny us outcomes and don’t make some never ending stories like Scarlet invasions that won’t ever stop… We want to see outcomes. We defended Tyria (some parts or it) and thats it (I know that it was out of need for permanent content, but I explained it in first part.)

You also tend to miss all the lore from GW1 and for me its just so grave mistake. I and many more people in here spent a lot of time in GW1. I liked it and I was so sure that I knew the world of Tyria. Now you made GW2 based on GW1, but now all the suddenly you try to make a new world?
Instead of making world that progressed from GW1 and have it’s roots in there. You tend to sever the roots and try to say it’s a new plant. Thats really sad. You could easily explan basics of lore to new players and use the sentiment of people like me for GW1 and use old lore at least 50% of the time. Instead aside from Halloween I don’t really recall any LS that based in GW1 lore. That saddens me greatly.

(Its another topic but please make exotic recrafting to ascended possible as help for us multi character users that suffer really now I will gladly write more details if you want.)

At the end I want to say I really love your work. I hope the world will expand and evolve and I hope I will be able to stay playing and have fun with you for a long time.

Kaleston.5671:

Septemptus.7164:

I asked for a simple system. It would work like this:
Let 25 people in on each server side.
Then make rest people queue till 5 people from each server wants to join in. Let those 15 (5 people from each server) in and wait for another 15, then for another 15 until the cap.

Have you considered scenario where strong server meets weak server? You will end up in situation where there are 25 people from strong server and 20 people from weak server. No one wanting to join from weak server and 200 people in queue on strong server side. How would you solve this kind of scenario?

Yep I considered it.
This would be a big sign – Go to weaker servers and balance all WvW instead of waiting in endless queues.

If people can move whole guilds for rewards at the end of Season 1, they would move to be able to play – believable me.

And ANet can make free or low cost transfers to help with the balance.

bobert.5428:

So fed up and tired of getting ganked and wiped in WvW playing on Vabbi…why can’t you balance this or make it playable?

It is so unbalanced it is almost pointless for us on Vabbi not what I paid money for.

I know the pain.
Underworld is deserted by most of the day due guilds moving to stronger servers.
It’s so unplayable it hurts badly.

Cherokeewill.7504:

Owner > Mastery level > No mastery

The person that invested in and dropped the siege weapon would, of course, be highest priority and they should know better than to drop/take control of siege they don’t have mastery in. But if a Level 4 Ram master clicks use on a ram currently manned by a Level 2, the level 4 would assume control and a message stating the ram “was taken control by a player with a higher mastery level.” Two level 4s would be on a first come, first serve basis.

This would allow players that have spent the points to utilize the enhancements. Newer players could choose to place their points in masteries if they really wanted to and the good of the group is upheld by keeping the best person for the job in place.

I love the idea!

I know some people had problems with mastery levels taking over but this would be very just.
Please, please do it.

Faranox.4217:

We don’t need game mechanics for something communication can solve. These people need to up their communication game!

Not communication on season 1 is almost dead. Believe me its useless. This system would work very good.

Invest money or time in getting mastery.

Since my server lost all major guilds that played WvW and we are constantly outnumbered thanks to the people who left, we can’t even resist other servers.

So my experience is terrible. Many people on my server also.
Thanks for asking.

It’s all due the reward system that made people leave weaker servers for those that were really good in WvW.

Which destroys both groups servers WvW experience.
It was sadly kinda grave mistake on ANet’s side. They wanted to encourage people to play in WvW and they make so big disbalance that people rage quit.

DevonCarver.5370:

I wanted to further discuss a couple of ideas. Firstly, several posts have called for reduced map caps in WvW. The problem that would create is that we’d be allowing even fewer people to play in a given period of time if we were to do that. So I wonder if there is another way to accomplish the same goal, while not disenfranchising people who would now be unable to get into the maps? It’s a hard problem because the more populated servers face long queues while the less populated ones face empty maps. From my perspective there aren’t a ton of good options, which is why discussing this problem is pretty important.

Secondly, there has been some amount of discussion about the nature of server transfers and how that affects population. I think there is some space for us to make changes there, but there is always going to be a tradeoff. For example, what if we restricted or completely eliminated transfers during a season? I think it has some positives, but it might be overly damaging to people who aren’t intending to bandwagon, but legitimately want to change servers. It may be the case, though, that that number is so small that it is worth the cost. Or, what if we prevented people from transferring to the higher population servers, but not all of them? Again, it runs the risk of being a burden on some number of folks, but it may be worth the cost.

I guess you never read my previous posts then.

I asked for a simple system. It would work like this:
Let 25 people in on each server side.
Then make rest people queue till 5 people from each server wants to join in. Let those 15 (5 people from each server) in and wait for another 15, then for another 15 until the cap.

How it would work in my mind (I hope its objective thinking).

• People from low population server would be able to play normally with high population servers due even chances on fields.
• The higher population servers would clash like they do now and those servers would nod suffer. The more people would be on each side the more potential those matches would have instead of crashing the weak (sadly it’s not like 300 move – it’s not a Sparta).
• Instead of encouraging people to transfer to high population servers they would see them as endless queues and some guilds would look for empty servers to play and not to be stacked in queue. Even if in other thread you wrote this might happen it won’t cause people won’t do it without a good reason that this system would provide.
• This would discourage people from leaving servers that were weak (that happened to my server) instead giving them more allies to back them up.

Additional system
There should be season server wide average time in queue calculated as a statistic next to the server and population to be shown in wold selection/transfer. This would show people which servers need more new blood for balance.

I would really aprikittene your answer to this idea.

DevonCarver.5370:

Oren.1736:

Community concern is that incentives will be high enough to draw players to transfer up the tiers, killing even more low tier servers, over filling silver tiers with players and so forth for gold. Can you comment on any plans to address community size issues?

I can’t comment at this time as we haven’t finalized anything. In addition, you should look at it this way, if people flee lower league servers to get into the top leagues, it opens the opportunity for people to move to those lower leagues and finish 1st or 2nd, rather than being in the top league and finishing 6th or 7th. The rewards for finishing 2nd in the Bronze League will be markedly better than the rewards for finishing 6th in the Gold league.

But no one does that. Every major WvW guild left Underworld (my server) and your great rewards are to blame. You told people (be on the better server to get better rewards) so people left Underworld and moved mostly to stronger silver league servers.

Now players cry that queues take hours but you just made the biggest disbalance that was possible. My server was in the middle of the tier and now we rarely (1-2h a day) aren’t outnumbered and we can’t hold any structure cause massive zergs conquer everything we take back.

This ruined my WvW experience and I don’t see any way you can repair it in near future.

People chase the rewards so the move on to the place they have a chance for better rewards. Thats just it.

You should focus on making it worth to make weak servers to be stronger yet I see you do nothing to back up or balance WvW. It’s unplayable for my server now and people are really frustrated in here. So I guess not only my experience was ruined.

At the end I will have to say I heard similar stories from at least one other server so that makes me even more sad. I wonder how many others have suffered…

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I wanted to say thanks again for being part of this initiative. Personally I think its going to be awesome, it is already impacting our day to day discussion so let’s keep it up!

Chris

I have a personal request. If you could even a little at the end of the thread could you write a bit more specific about what will change after reading this topic?

I think that its great what you wrote. You basically addressed all the main problems and let us know that you are aware of that, but I would really love to get some more informations.

For example: as for expanding the world, many me including wrote that we need new maps, so if you plan to address that let us know that new map will be planned to be released in 4 months or 6 month or something like that.

This would really keep me going and make me look forward to something cause now I very sadly have less and less reasons to log in and play in game after making 9 characters end exploring world so many times.

LW is a great idea but due of many disapointments it’s only kinda nice for me now.
I still give it a chance but its harder and harder when I feel like the wold is dying. I really look forward zone permanent changes and new maps for example.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Internally for a while we now we have been talking about positive and negative consequences of completion or failure of activities and challenges within the game and more specifically around events. For example Jon Peters one of our Design Leads was putting forward the idea of the above rules/paradigms around TQ. So for example if the players are fail to take down TQ then this would cause a ‘Darkness’ to fall across the zone, perhaps where he would fly around attacking locations and creating new events. A second chance on TQ would therefore be to complete these events and then perhaps rally the NPC forces in the zone to help you take him down. A positive modifier could bring ‘Light’ to the land for example and lower cost on NPC traders, give greater rewards from events and perhaps even create new events. Of course this is all brainstorming but it is the natural evolution of our current platform.

I love the idea and it should be present for each of 3 dragons. This idea rocks so much!
You can have kind of blizzard in Frostgeorge that will reduce visibility and make more ice broods when we fail. There can be tornadoes in blizzard that will be annoying to make people who farm champs care for Claw etc. I would love to see Shaterer ghet closer and closer if event fails. Move to Feilds in Ruins and attack Ebonhawk. and leave zone full of crystals that can be traps of few kinds (paralyzing, blowing up, summoning monsters etc).

THERE IS ONE “BUT”!

Please, please, please revamp TQ already.
Almost no one does TQ. Yes, there are some guilds, yes some players can atapt and learn mechanics, but you need way to many organized people for this event.

We do Karka Queen, all temples (except Balth), and all other world bosses on Underworld, but no one even tries to get people to TQ.

The reason is it’s too hard to organize. We killed it on the LW release few times and thats it. It takes too effort in organization. Normal players don’t do that. Great majority of people who want to enjoy the game like to have some challenges form time to time and even they don’t go for TQ stating it as “waste of time”, cause it’s way too hard to organize due it’s need for 80+ people, when we do Karka with like 40 and all the mechanics that make it too complex to enjoy.
TQ rewards arent also that great so there is no 2nd reason to even think about doing it. You can say that’s not true cause you can get ascended weapon from TQ, but I (as many others) don’t believe in RNG so thats something that don’t exist for me.

It was great for kind of achievement but no one wants to achieve the same thing over and over.

If there are guilds/groups who do TQ they will be bored in time and completely o one will ever do it so I guess we will have forever dark zone in the game.

I have to add at the end that i live overall revamps you made to the bosses but you have to balance them and make it more variant (but not so technical) instead of more impossible to get if not half of the server comes. Technical fight is good for small groups, not for world bosses.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

Yep the story needs to more ‘Epic’, meaningful and better at evoking emotion.

Not only. There is a need for variation.
I didn’t have a time to write it first so my best releases story wise were:
Bazar of the Four Winds/Cutthroat Politics and Dragonbash. Those releases had ended plot, both made great foundations to what’s to come but they felt whole.
The worst story wise:
New Clockwork Chaos that seemed rushed and had almost nothing in it and Scarlet felt so sticked in there for no reason (not to mention very annoying achievements after dungeon). Even if it had any good story reason for scarlet it was very poorly shown. Flame and Frost was also terrible. You made us wait for so long and made great dungeon but in the end nothing resolved and we just wend to another place barely bound to the previous thread that was taking 3 months.

So to sum it up.
There is a need for epic story from time to time, but be sure not to aim for it every 2-3 months or it will be boring and you have to make it really well. I (and as I read others) can wait for that so please do whatever you can to make a good and epic.
Be sure to make normal stories like election, zephyr sanctum or detective like Dragon Bash also. Fun releases like SAB (how I love it – but please make shorter levels, we can have 6 shorter or something) are SOOO welcome.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

I think we have learnt a great deal from where we are now with the Scarlet Arc. I won’t talk about future plans for her i am afraid as this goes against the rules i set for this initiative. I appreciate all the feedback in regard to our current story telling foundations and look forward to seeing the game evolve from them.

Chris

Can you give us Scarlet’s head on the plate soon?
Please.

( Half of it is a joke, only half )

Here is an idea for how to fix some things in the imbalance we have:

In GW1 we waited in PvP to have 5 people in one side and 5 people in 2nd side so we could have a balanced match. Why cant it be done in WvW?

Lets say we let 20 people to go in to WvW and then make others wait until each server have 5 waiting, then let them go in. Wait for another 5 people per server to let them in.
It could make servers feel a bit empty (only non hardcore servers), but there wouldn’t be just pure power in numbers anymore.

I would personally prefer waiting or not playing in WvW than being overruned just because people on my server are sleeping/working.

This would also make people think “If I want to play lets move to server that don’t have a long queue so we can really play not only wait for a chance all the time”.

Here is there I come from:

For some time I was a casual WvW player.
I entered from time to time. I play on Underworld server which is now on silver league. We had some stronger enemies, and some weaker. We held around 15th place which is kinda middle ground.

We always had some people on WvW, not 24/7 but for most time. It was hard facing those hardcore servers that don’t sleep but we had few guilds who even at night flipped and defended the map.

It all ended with season 1.
There is a major pain in my server.
Is a casual player I didn’t notice it until today.

Most of the guilds in our WvW left for join highest in our league servers.
So since there we struggle to have anything at all as it comes to WvW.

When we woke up we can be sure that all of the map is taken over and when we form a kinda medium group we are almost always outnumbered, cause other servers are full all the time I tried we get hit by the wall of players on every map and we can only resist it around 6pm to 11pm when some more people play.

Playing WvW lost its fun, since you cant have fun while you try to play and you get run over by a train from other server – again, again and again and more…

There is no other explanation. Since it was announced that the rewards will be based on how good your server is in your league people left aiming on servers that will reward them more.
Sure, now they all cry that they need few hours to enter WvW and its so bad for their achievements and all.

This huge imbalance is caused by Season 1 so I ASK HERE.
Please rewrite your rewards for the season 1 to be just the same for each server in a tier or even across tiers.

This is kinda the only right thing you can do after the damage you (undoubtedly not by choice) have done.

To all people:
Please show yous support if you think its right

Dutchares.6084:

I don’t think transfer costs will change people from high tier to move to lower tiers.
Even if you make it free , the people who transfer to the winning servers will stay on them as long they think they are the winning servers.(not that I do agree that prices shouldn’t be based on PVE coverage)

It doesn’t change people’s minds.
We have no people who have way too many people and those with almost no real WvW base. Just lime my server. Servers now are very badly unbalanced now. It wasn’t this bad for a long time.

I just asked on my WvW. So it happened that most of our active guilds left for Gunnars Hold.

It’s hard not to think that structure of Season 1 is to blame when FEW guild leaves your server for another one that just happens to have bigger chance to be high in its own league.

I try not to be emotional in here, but seriously ANets encouragement to change servers before Season 1 and Season 1 itself just ruined my experience to WvW. This is the fact that I don’t want to accept. You started even bigger unbalance, fix it now.
Imagined rewards for Season 1 (that will be better for people on servers that are higher league) made people move from medium servers to those with high population. So do something with the rewards or even entire season so people in servers like mine don’t feel so cheated and left out.

You really have to work it out or more people will feel the way I do now, and you can believe me – please come and see, ask on our lovely Underwold Server how people feel.

Another idea.

In GW1 we waited in PvP to have 5 people in one side and 5 people in 2nd side so we could have a balanced match. Why cant it be done in WvW?

Lets say we let 25 people to go in to WvW and then make others wait until each server have 5 waiting, then let them go in. Wait for another 5 people per server to let them in.

It could make servers feel a bit empty (only non hardcore servers), but there wouldn’t be just pure power in numbers anymore.
I would prefer waiting or not playing in WvW than being overruned just because people on my server are sleeping/working.

Since Start of the Season one my server which was in the middle around 15th place lost its players. Its all due the fact we are totally overruned by other servers just in numbers. There is no strategy or anything else. They just have at least 2 times the number of people that we have.

Sure around hours like 6pm to 11pm its balanced, then we fade and around 1am there is almost no one in there. I’m nut surprised since I usually don’t stay that long. People have families and live. We can’t afford to play 24h/7days but somehow other servers do that and that made me feel sad and bad to the point I don’t see another reason to go into WvW aside from making meta progression.

I was on another server that is now in bronze league and we had the same problem. It was usual strategy that people logged in at 1am or 2am and flipped all map to their advantage since people on my server weren’t online (I guess sleeping) since I have a live I have a family and I don’t play for even most of the day and logging in in the middle of the night is out of the question also since I have a job.

When I think about it will be rewarded based on our place in the leage so it means that my rewards will be crappy anyway so really I don’t even know why do I bother but I probably will try till the end of the season. After that I will probably leave WvW for good.

I understand that servers with many players online have a lot of fun and they will write that Season one is one of the best things that happened but I have a sour taste of playing WvW that probably won’t vanish for a long time.
So while you will gain some people who probably never tried WvW, you will loose guys like me from not great servers that lack power of peoples playing.

Only idea that I have that would have to make those matches really something is to make buildings unflipable for like 3/4 of the day and only make a window like 6h for real changes. Outside windows you can make some structures like ruins of power that don’t have real constant point base.

Yeah… I see the outrage, but seriously if you want to make people have any way to take game seriously it can’t be done 24h/7. You can read about people rage quiting because Living Story takes so much time. It also feels like that in WvW as for me at least.

13. Time gating and content rush – when you added ascended gear it only served those with money. Crafting gating meant only they needed to buy things instead of making them by theme selves so at first day I saw people with ascended gear. What does that mean? It’s unreflective.
In Halloween we had to make meta to progress the story, so instead of having fun with people to play in instance I had to wait not only my 3-4 days but until they will make their meta. It was only frustrating.

You add content every 2 weeks and most of it lasts 2 or 4 weeks and the what? We can’t take a break to enjoy making maps or take a break form GW2, many people for some time have very strict time limitations (exams in school or work) it doesn’t benefit those people and only frustrates them.
If you stop time gating content execution and add permanent content you will make it so people will be able to sit form time to time and complete past content. If permanent content is added people will have to play it anyway since they won’t want to have a stack of things to be done but make it as it comes out, but it wont be lost forever.

14. Minigames – fun are even more fun with friends. I like a lot of them, I love them changing and its great. I would really want them to have 2 modes – solo and party. For those than can be partied I don’t see party option in sanctum sprint or Suthsun survival for example. But parties in some games like Kagbrawl or Lunatic inquisition would just be great.

15 Separate maps – so annoying. I just loved Crown Pavilion but being forced to run out by foot to the door each time I wanted to go for a world event was painful. Please make map markers to switch maps to outside map and inside map so we can teleport inside the pavilion (and similar places) and outside with world map.

16. Orders – Please use them finally, Its hard for me that I walked in an order and I don’t interact with them at all. It makes it feel like totally unimportant while in the story it was like one the main things. You can make orders to be present in the story, just try to make it.

9 World needs to be alive. – When I think alive I think that maps are progressing. Not only LA or few cities progress when there is a celebration. I mean when I’m in southsun there is no progress on making new buildings or in Caledon Forest there are ruined buildings with workers who constantly repair them, but no progress in there. Orr is another example. There should be some green showing and over time some undeads replaced by some kind of wildlife? Maybe Karkas are pushed from Southsun by consortium and will start searching new place in Orr. Temples gathered so much energy that they will be active like they are for years, but other parts could slowly change (as living world but not living story).
You now kinda revive Kesex Hills but those changes have to be permanent and done to maps that usually are left behind – like Brisban Wildlands, Dredgehount Clifs, Timberline Falls or Sparkly Fen.

10. Living world need to expand – We have like 14 months now and we barely got 1 very basic map (not even counting as world map) and few temporary tweaks as LS goes. We need to have more spaces to explore. You kinda force us to run the same maps over and over. I know they are beautiful, I love them, but on my 9 characters I have over 600% world completion and for some of us exploring new places is very important. I loved when you added Bazar map, but I fail to understand why have you cut the map off after LS. You should have left the map only remove some parts of it like most crystals, some buildings, all ships etc, so it would be a real place on which from time to time huge ship docks.

11. Dragons should just stop being lazy. – I know that you could have some big plans (expansion like) for dragons but you have to stop making them like some toy plain coming and going all the time. Dragon event have to have expansion like if you don’t kill the Shaterer (don’t revamp the fight please) he will lead his minions nearer and nearer Ebonhawk. If we don’t stop him on Blazeridge He would come to Fields in Ruins until he would sidge Ebonhawk.

We should lead army into dragons territory
IMAGINE: We get map over Frostgeorge in Living Story? and pact is getting into there and fight off Jormag minions, after 2 weeks we get some bases built in there and for next month story could be frozen as Pact gathers resources (or some little tweaks planed), and the we go even deeper into Jormags map and gain we fortify and in 3rd Map we get to fight Jormag and some kind of event/instance or dungeon can be made in there. Wouldn’t that be great and meaningful story/world wise?

12. Stop the grindfest – its no fun. You should stop with the grinding festivals. You make Halloween rewards some kind of grindfest lust like wings in Dragon Bash. Wings dropped often so noone cared, but 15k candies for 20 slot bag? Why add reward like that that is really not usable if you don’t have bank full of sweets from last Halloween.

Rewards should be available for everyone not only rich and grindy people. If you state something as a reward and then you make it unreachable or not good moneywise, really think before you post something.

That also goes for all Halloween skins, WHY are their needs revamped so much?! So they are more exclusive? Great so you will go the way – if you make it fast it will be easier you just punish new players that you want to encourage to play.

5. Secrets… – Like what I have to sit for months to find something out? Even if at first it made me curious it end with at most 2 weeks… So when after few months I hear what Molten Alliance was formed by Scarlet I was like “ok, I once even cared for that”. I really wondered about that, even more I hopped that story would be continued like after one episode you go to another. NOPE, there was nothing in there. Another story started and thats it.
When you say that there is something going on that makes Tequatl gain power and you leave it for more than month… – I don’t care anymore.

6. Over all story – I’m sorry but sucks in many parts. You really need to make continuous story out of important things. I love it when I meet Ellen Kiel in Southsun, then Dragon Bash, then Bazar, then Election it really was great to have something growing. When we saw Queens Jubelee Scarlet attacked and made invasions it was great, When each year Halloween story progresses it’s nice. SAB story is nice.
The problem are loose ends. Ellen Kiel is in council – it’s ended, great. Each Halloween or SAB feels complete in a way.
But Molten Alliance never ended, Tequatl, each Southsun and Consortium was kinda left behind with no real resolve. Scarlet went to TA with no real reason or intention that players could feel.
All those loose ends make players feel really bad and it makes us no invested into the story.

7. Episodes and completeness – Each story that I love hos some outcome and when you make another story on outcome of stories before it is great but it also has to have some outcome. We fought pirates in Dragon Bash and we got Mai in jail – great, we fought Scarlet in Queens Jublelee, Invasions even went after her into TA and what? Nothing some minor achievements but there is no outcome. Noone thank us for defending the world or making Scarlet run from her play house or even freeing TA from her meant nothing and ended like nothing. Lion Guard entered TA fought few pirates and left… Great work, nothing really changed.

8. 40+ people events are just bad. – The best example was Tequatl. People went, name their achievements and left for good. I hard of some guilds that make that fight but really. You wanted to give us a challenge and it was your success, but for average player you made -1 world boss to play. My server does Temples, Karka Queen few times a day and we have a lot of fun (except in Balthazar of course), other dragons and world bosse are fun and many people’s go for it. Tequatl is just left behind cause it takes too much from average player to complete it.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

The point of the initiative is definitely to discuss points as group, allowing us all to have a conversation about Living World in this case and share design philosophy that will certainly answer questions on both sides.

I will start with saying I really look forward to see our experience to make a change.

I have to say that you do a really good job in Living Story, but there areas and quite many that feel really bad.
Here is my experience in what we are currently lacking:

1. Scarlet – I hate this character. There is no real reason behind her. You made her as a random factor so she can be sticked to any idea you have. Even if it’s not like this in reality, I feel it like this. So when I hear Scarlet did something in TA my answer is: who cares, it won’t matter at all. Some people make speculations if she is involved in Tower of Nightmares and for me is like I don’t care. She is the worst thing in whole LS story so far, there is just nothing to back her up. Some very smart sivar and what? Suddenly she is godlike flame to start every race to back her up and make it so she is worse enemy that dragons that are about to destroy the world?! That sucks so hard… I’m sorry, it just does…

2. Is GW1 in here somewhere? – Guild Wars world has so much great lore, yet I don’t see any use of that. It’s like you try to make new game for people that love old one. I personally love old lore and there is so much in there that you don’t touch or scratch. You totally forget that I take huge part of this game population started GW2 because they loved GW1.
Don’t get me wrong in here it’s not bad to make something new, but make things also on GW1 base. You can introduce GW1 lore as easy as you introduce your new ideas.

3. Narration – It lacks a lot of lore. I want to hear some informations about what is the base of the story (in game not short story on the site. They are great but there is a need to have parts of that in game as a talk or book to read or any other way). Now its like we start at some point, we end in some point and there is just nothing before or after in each story. It really undermines the picture since I feel more like reading novels instead of living in a story that continues.
Great is introduction to Tower of Nightmares We should see more introduction like that, preferably for a month before and some NPCs that would spread lore about what could happen and base knowledge.

4. Being a hero – When I start another living story and I’m another nameless hero it makes me sad after 1 year of playing. In Halloween NPC suddenly remembered I was in Dragon bash… Thats great, way better than before, but it really sucks, noone really cares that we pushed back attacks in Divinitis Reach or whole (known) world invasions or any other story, you choose. After Scarlet made us her personal goal at the end of Queens story we got as much as gift and no word about it in TA, NO WORD…

Quarktastic.1027:

What you call fun, I call needless busy work. I like my waypoints just fine.

This.

You see, I agree with this thread, but I spent 1 year playing this game and I have world completion on few characters.

I’m sorry, but I don’t want to run pass again this beautiful Ascalonian wall ruins that I love as GW1 player. I enjoy graphics that are in game. I cry because we don’t get new maps/places to explore, It really pains me (maybe you read some of my topics) also I cry on low variety of monsters and monsters attacks.

Yet I really don’t want to be FORCED to run the same areas more that I’m already with Living Story in which devs just always reuse the same places: maps, JP, etc. It’s boring as it is now without running the same places over and over.

Basically If you want to enjoy scenery do it. I do it also from time to time, but don’t force people to it.

As for mounts If we could get them as non combat 50% movement speed (60% if you have +25% movement speed on you) it would be great, yet thats for devs to decide. WP aren’t bad and mounts could be used for variety.

Vayne.8563:

I’m pretty sure that Anet would ban if you have evidence that you were kicked at the last boss just to let a guildie in. That’s harrassment or at least griefing.

It would just mean that people will be more secret about it.
It happened to me like 2 months ago in fractals and I’m pretty sure ANet didn’t do a thing about it.

Proposition.
1: I think there should be a change in the mechanic like: after each 10min you would need 1 more person to agree on kick.
2: There should be a way to permanent disagree on kick not only the kittenist button so I kicked it by mistake in the fight some time before on one player :/.

Have No Faith In Me.1840:

I agree, it just isn’t viable for certain classes (Mesmer for one) to be rocking these speed increases without sacrifice. It is bad enough that rune of speed/traveller are already breaching the territory of game breaking.

Game is not broken with +25% speed and isn’t balanced now greatly.
I formed a topic like this like 3 months ago and in few weeks we saw revamp to runes and that rocks!

Here is why.

Dustfinger.9510:

when everyone has increase speed, no one has increase speed. might as well take all speed increase away.

But thats not true also, cause now everyone can have more speed but you have to pay for it.
By pay I didn’t mean gold but rather space/slot. If you have a signet it takes one utility slot and you could use it for something. When you sacrifice runes slot, you miss sometimes very nice mechanics for speed.

Speed bust is always a sacrifice and this is how it is supposed to be.
There is no really need for nothing more in the topic.

P.S.
I’m so glad I got traveler runes on all my non signet classes when they were 5g each. I think you should buy them as fast as you can cause 9g cap wont last for long. Everyone wants them so hurry.

For me its the best game I ever played and I love it also.

It was bad in some times and painful, but over all it is still the greatest game I saw in many years of playing.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

After a couple of days we will choose the number 1 topic in each area and then create the threads within the specific areas for us all to discuss, brainstorm and share our opinions on.

Chris

My choice is:

PvE

• New zones and more complete lore (not few hints and silence…)! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE!
• housing/guild halls//real home instance that reflects your achievements (not achievement points that are useless, I’m saying about real achievements)
• Alt-friendliness and Ascended items (like for example after crafting few, allowing re-crafting existing exotics to ascended so we wont need tons of mats and transmutation stones, again and again) – comes from 8 character player…

WvW

• Making WvW more stable (all buildings are waiting for zerg to be taken why other server sleeps)
• WvW progression account wide
• Can we make it more like field progression (instead of threating each target as separate thing)
  PvP
• Transfer look from PvE to PvP (make look not bound to PvP lvl) it stops me from focusing in on PvP
• New play styles / maps!

Since Halloween started I used several Black Lion Salvage Kit uses and they all return no globes of dark matter. At first I thought I’m unlucky but I almost drained one kit and there is not a chance that this isn’t a bug.

I’m not sure how it goes for other kits, but I used the rare one on only few items. No globes of Dark Matter either but I guess the test sample is too little to tell for sure.

It sucks since I need them for crafting :/…

When you enter the combat you get -50% of movement, but rune is still working. While I use my I still run faster than enemies that are in combat. Note that if you are in combat and some enemies are not in combat they will catch up to you untill first hit.

Test it out a bit. I could be wrong, but I don’t see a problem in there.

I just died several times in really stupid way.
I enter labyrinth and I want to join the zerg and just have some casual fun, but… You can’t.

I could do that easily in crown pavilion since there were bridges and you could even go with some jumping to get just inside the zerg.

In labyrinth you will get crippled, held and bunch of guys will just kill you without any effort, just because you are alone… Or you can wait with hope that zerg will finally move next to you so you can hop into the train.

This really needs to change… PLEASE.

Oh, right. I made a mistake.
I’m sorry for that, yet it still is a disappointing farm event…

Zaxares.5419:

To be fair, they can’t make it TOO cheap or it’d crash the market for 20 slot bags. (Although it’s worth noting that basically everybody used Fractal Relics to get their 20 slot bags anyway…) Still, I’d rather that the 20 slot bags were made easier to get (say, 1000 – 5000 candy corn, which is a hefty amount, but still doable), and then restricted to one per character (if 5000) or account (1000).

It could be OK for 1 per character (unique) for like 1k candies or even 2,5k, but lets make it real, no one will farm those candies without a reason and price will still be made by the TP, so making that obtainable for like 1k candies would make candy corn worth like 10c which is low but in the other hand players would not farm 1k corn per character, it could be nice way, but not something like we get it here…

Paul.4081:

ANet still not playing their own game?

Sadly looking at numbers it seems so.

So if anyone know Teq killing squad on EU servers, please let me know, catch me in game or just invite me based on my account name. I would give Teq another chance.

If not it will be my worst world event/update for a long time :/.