Guild Wars 2

As mentioned yes the fact is they are doing far more than working together to flip any one point. What is happening is very deliberate manipulation of the overall score with an intent to make this last the entire season. You can check the forum and see even discussions about bringing this further to deliberately setting things up for the detriment of a specific server.

I am not mentioning names but those of you who are ARE in fact guilty of infractions so I would caution you. I expect criticism and even welcome it, but please keep all match-ups and server names out of the discussion thank you.

My point to make was that deliberately fixing multiple weeks certainly qualifies under their description of match manipulation and also under their website’s definition of PvP, as they say that World vs World is Player vs Player. This means in a strictly legal sense they are breaching the code of conduct and my point was to explain how that technically sets a precedent to breach other elements of conduct.

The forums are optional so I am not infringing on your right to enjoy the game by posting this but nice try tho.

The main point of this post was I wanted to see an honest discussion about the match-fixing problem and how Anet could actually go about fixing it. I’ve heard people say change up the leagues because only six servers doesn’t work so well for the format but they can’t really just add more servers that would only affect the lower leagues in probability. So do they merge leagues or seek some alternative solution?

ykyk.2740:

On topic: politics during seasons is nice to have, but the current implementation means that only 2 servers out of 6 can benefit. A certain server is almost helpless in that they must simply be the target for the entire duration of the season, which is really boring politics when you think about it. If politics is to be encouraged during tournament play (I think it adds an extra dimension to the 2-year old stacking and recruiting coverage meta), it should be open for everyone to take part.

This is a very good point. Certainly some problems had are that the target is helpless to beat the 2v1 since there is no way to band together with anyone else. In the three-tier leagues this is alleviated by a constant change in opponents since only one of the top tier servers can come in first, so therefore their alliance is forced to be broken up. With only two tiers however these politics can’t be done, as third and fourth will never possibly appear in the same tier to challenge first or second.

Yeah good luck getting that fixed. Your builds certainly helped me in the past and I’d hate to see you unable to get back into the game.

Okay I’ll take a deep breath here as I know I’m about to get a lot of vitriole for this but I saw a thread asking about the breach in code of conduct with 2v1ing in wvw. So honestly I don’t want to mention any specific match-ups or anything. (it’s against the forum rules anyways) I just wanted to point out how the continued existence of manipulating scores could be justified as a breach of the code of conduct and what ignoring it might mean.

The code of conduct clearly labels match manipulation as any action that manipulates the outcome of a match or ratings/rankings in a ladder. A fair argument could be made that this does both. I can show plenty of screenshots (though this would bring this topic into match up discussion which obviously I cannot do) of one zerg camping bodies while another from a different server captures the point, with no in-fighting at all. This is clearly 2v1ing. So the proof is obvious.

Is WvW PvP? Well according to Anet it is as stated on their Competitive Play page. So then that would mean WvW falls under those rules.

Is ganging up on one person with a friend a breach of conduct then? Well obviously no. You are both from the same server so it is not changing the nature of the game in anyway (certainly they could match you person for person with a flat cap) and more over it is not manipulating the score at the end of the week to rig it a certain and unnatural way. It’s playing the game as intended.

Also temporarily working together to take a keep or something would probably not breach the contract if it was simply a once-and-done action. After all this would not in any serious way affect the score at the end of the week. The real problem is just massive, around-the-clock manipulation of scores through very deliberate and obviously so cooperation.

What would ignoring this breach of contract mean? Well should anyone really be silly enough to waste time on a lawyer it would give them plausible cause to violate more aspects of the code of conduct without punishment as Anet would not have maintained the code in this incident. Certainly no one wants this.

I guess the best question is what could really be done about this? Certainly banning everyone from the servers participating in such action would be bad. There’s no arguing that. Even servers being 2v1ed don’t want to have zero competition. They want to play hard and be rewarded for it. Having all your competitors banned would be bad.

Blocking anyone caught 2v1ing in WvW from entering WvW for the remainder of the week would be a steep penalty as well though probably more reasonable than outright banning the account. So the question I pose is what could Anet actually do to rectify such a thing that would not be considered over-aggressive?

So I mentioned this in the correct thread (outfits) and also posted a bug report but since it hasn’t been fixed since the 15th just figured it might be worth having its own thread.

How come we can’t use the skin from the book of secret? There IS a skin for Koss on Koss so it seems a bit odd that the Book of Secrets would not unlock a skin too or unlock the same skin. I like my book back item and would love to use it on another character, but certainly not enough to try and make that book too. T6 mats aren’t cheap after all.

Hey glad to see your updated builds, you’re 2h dps build helped me start in PvP and I’ve slowly moved through all your builds. Really high quality stuff. I just recently switched off your control bunker build for one of the “standard” meta ones. I’m currently running Staff and Mace/Shield because that knockback can save some points.

Well the biggest thing is it’s more than standard outnumbering. Blackgate has around the clock support but this is a number issue that can’t be beaten. It’s two servers of players versus our one server. As there is a uniform population cap ( or at least I assume so or else it would be absurd) per server in WvW we can’t possibly match their numbers. I mean we would have the players it is Blackgate after all but the map caps prevent us from possibly matching them, though with two servers versus one it would always be this way.

The real annoying part about it is we know we are better. They do not deserve the win, before they started 2v1ing we were winning… and by a lot. But now there is literally nothing we can do unless Anet were to suddenly change the tournament structure (which I doubt) or raise our pop cap and not the other two, which would seem more than a little unfair to be honest.

Teon.5168:

I have done PvP all of twice. Just doesn’t ring my bell much. I like the PvE and WvW in this game….a lot. Especially getting a kick out of WvW lately…….makes me chuckle and smile a lot.

Yeh well I use to love those elements too but unfortunately I can’t make many of the world bosses because of their schedule and WvW is pointless for anyone in Blackgate. We are being camped by two zergs at our spawn basically. That simply isn’t fun and what makes it so infuriating is that we literally have nothing we can do. It’s out of our hands so what should we even try doing? We have no choice but to not play WvW.

As for dungeons I guess they are alright but they get old fast and the rewards are lackluster. Same with fractals for me.

Engineer is probably the best as tempting as it is to be a troll and say Guardian xD. Necromancer is fairly good as well as Ranger if you play them right. A spirit ranger with shortbow and sword and dagger can stack conditions really well. Maybe Mesmer too for the confusion?

Engineer uses the grenade kit though and that’s a bunch of fast stacks.

Yeah Eotm is alright too but it does get stale fairly fast, largely due to the fact that winning is basically pointless. Although the workshop and wurm tunnels make for some interesting WvWing.

I guess this is just ranting but honestly I’m feeling pretty fed up with this game lately, especially now that megaservers were just proudly announced to be on all PvE maps like Anet thinks we should all be excited about this, apparently oblivious to all the negative feedback. Not to mention I’m from Blackgate so there’s no reason to play WvW this basically leaves me with only PvP left in this game. Let me elaborate on this with some suggestions.

First and foremost why are you proudly announcing full Megaserver release when you guys said you would roll it out paying close attention to feedback? If you were paying close attention this roll out would have been a lot slower.

1) Why are cities megaservered? They would have been great places for WvW guilds to advertise without wasting battleground spots and honestly what could POSSIBLY be gained from merged cities? It ruins the experience for guild recruiters and RPers. And who gains something from this? Very few people I’d wager.
2)WvW either do it 1v1 every week or get rid of the swiss-style tournament. Maybe this sounds like bruised ego but what’s going on in WvW at the current time with Jade Quarry and Tarnished Coast is simply making this game aggravating and completely lacking of fun. It will kill WvW outside those two (we’ve already seen major WvW decreases in Blackgate even when we weren’t playing both) and that seems like a lose lose for you guys. The old season 1 system would have prevented this by constantly rotating teams but instead we have this broken system where a clearly dominant server (we stomped all competitors the first 2 weeks and then won again when they weren’t together so yeh it is true) is literally helpless. How could that be fun? We can’t win period. So why bother and why keep playing the game?
3) So every world boss dies in under a minute with the massive zerg fests going on and if I miss that Karka Queen by four seconds (as I did) I’m now out of luck for the next nine hours. Did that really sound like a good idea? And how did I miss the boss by four seconds? Because the loading screen took a solid minute or more to load in since now every server is packed full. Which also leads into…
4) Every map is laggy. I ran Tequatl with these specs on Blackgate primetime with no lag and at full settings. I now experience lag spikes in every single map particularly if I try to do any serious event. So why bother with PvE if it’s going to be frame by frame or look as good as a napkin doodle?

So some suggestions for me are:
1) 1v1 WvW every week, this way it is a fair and accurate representation of every server’s capabilities.
2) Megaservers should be optional. Maybe we can’t find anyone to do an event with us so we can go to the megaserver and experience the rest of the content. Otherwise we can stay in the main server and be able to play lag-free and enjoy immersive elements like the dynamic Orr maps where we can actually feel like our actions have some real effect.
3) Remove waypoint costs. You just shut down half or more (Seriously I have Plains of Ashford a bloody lvl 1 – 15 zone 80%+ complete on my charr and there is but a SINGLE waypoint I can use from outside the map) of all waypoints locked to people outside their maps so we have to waste time waypointing twice. If you MUST stick with this system then remove the cost.
4) Bring back Raid on the Capricorn! Okay this one is a bit of a joke but cmon my PvP guild and I loved our pirate ship battles.

To add to my previous complaints, Megaservers need to go. The jumping puzzle in Southsun is already crazy difficult without all this added lag now. I use to be able to do this with no problem but now it keeps lagging badly every fourth jump or so. Didn’t even have these problems with Tequatl back in the day.

whhhhhhhhhhhhhhy?!? What did Raid on the Capricorn ever do to you guys? I didn’t see that coming from a mile. I know aquatic combat was poorly optimized and didn’t really fit in pvp but my guild and I loved using that boat for 2v2 pirate ship battles on our custom server. I know it’s a minor gripe but that map was cool and I’m going to sincerely miss it. Made sense to keep it out of arenas but removing it all together strikes as giving up a little too much.

Outfits? What a joke. I wasted money on town clothes which were really cool especially dyed and mixed and matched and now they are replaced with this disgusting outfit system? I didn’t want to use them in combat I wanted to be able to toggle them on in cities where they fit in.

Also why does Koss on Koss unlock a skin but not my Book of Secrets? I know you guys hate zerker but seriously that book was hard to make we should get our skin from it.

Please why do we need to destroy main servers and all the pluses that came with them? First off Orr was awesome because it felt like a living breathing map where our actions mattered, i.e. being able to clear the Temple of Balthazar and affect the other maps. Or opening dungeon doors or doing bosses at our own server times.

Why can’t we just have the megaserver BE one of the main servers and then make it an OPT IN. Or to ensure it stays full, bring everyone to the megaserver by default but let them travel back to their main server if they prefer. Perhaps some people don’t like having to deal with a busy chat full of trolls? Or if you use a waypoint that is uncontested on your main server (but contestable in the megaserver) then you get dumped in the main map and can then choose to go to the megaserver if you want?

Personally I’m really looking forward to almost everything coming out on April 15th… except for megaservers and the new boss rotation and I’m going to try to articulate this the best way I can.

Over the past year and a half or more each server has slowly crafted its own community. Whether it’s Ehmry Bay doing something silly like an entire zerg standing on its LA lion statue to try and save it prior to the escape release (seriously guys that looked like it must have been fun) to the unifying competitive atmosphere of my home server of Blackgate. There was nothing like the wurm event and Lion’s Arch to bring the server community together as we were determined to succeed and many new friendships were made.

I feel this megaserver update is doomed to tear this community apart. No longer are we guaranteed to end up with the same people from our server. And this doesn’t even touch upon the bigger problems. I already voiced why I feel the new boss system is a terrible decision in that feedback forum, but if I get insanely lucky and the stars align for me to attend a Tequatl event, the unified servers greatly increases the chance that it will be wiped by having too many afkers or players looking for a free ride. What’s more is that I will then be MORE LIKELY to end up with these players again as described by the "placed with people you have played with before. "

I understand the intention is to get more players to do major events like Tequatl and the Triple Trouble Wurm on servers other than Blackgate but I feel what is instead going to happen is many people will only be able to do these events by being lucky enough to get in large guilds either due to poor boss attempts or simply not being able to attend those events like me.

The one and only thing I think could be good about this system is I pvp with people from other servers and it would be nice to be in the same heart of the mists without having to mess around with guesting. But other than that I feel this new system will be to the massive detriment of the well established server systems. I don’t see how making every server an overflow is going to solve the overflow “problem” which I did not see any problem to begin with. Sorry for the wordy post just wanted to put out my thoughts here.

Definitely do not like the new world bosses schedule. No one who plays this game has the same schedule. What this will guarantee is that say people who get out of work at 19:00 Eastern time will miss the event and will have absolutely no chance to do it again unless they get into a guild that lines up consumables for it. I’m already not a totally happy person about them breaking into megaservers because Blackgate I feel had developed a strong community which will now be exclusive to WvW. But changing the boss spawns to only three times a day? Guess I won’t be doing Tequatl anymore. Can’t possible make those times.

What everyone else seems to be saying too, and I completely agree with, locking contested waypoints is a terrible idea. If you must, absolutely must lock contested waypoints they you also must remove all waypoint costs. It could cost only 10-20 copper more to choose the splintered coast waypoint over the quaggan village waypoint. But if I have to use the quaggan one first I’m forced to double my costs. This is ridiculous.

There we go Blackgate, nice job guys.