Guild Wars 2

fellyn.5083:

I’m confused. Are exotics not in the game anymore?

They don’t matter any more. Some people really care about best in slot gear regardless of whether it’s “required” or not. Depending on how many alts you have or how many builds you like to try (or if you’re unfortunate enough to be anything other than a staff ele or rifle engineer) you’re also falling further and further behind. But don’t worry guys, time gated grind progression bring prioritised over build variety and class variety is fun, isn’kitten

It might be interesting to see how many people with linked GW1 accounts don’t make charr characters vs how many people with just a GW2 account don’t make charr characters. I suspect they’d be the same simply because charr armour is consistently embarrassing, even the racial armour has clipping issues..

Or buy another account.

DevonCarver.5370:

Doing so would invalidate the time people spend acquiring that gear. I think the heart of your post is in the right place, but what we would rather do is make possible for people to get the gear by playing WvW with a sprinkling of PvE, rather than the other way around.

Actions speak louder than words. Since ascended gear was added almost a year ago very little has been done to make ascended gear equally available between both PvE and WvW. Guild Commendations are by far the best method to acquire ascended accessories, I don’t even think it’s possible to get an ascended back slot in WvW alone. Laurels are fine for both WvW and PvE although the price reduction when using badges hardly makes up for the fact that a WvW player will have to use laurels for rings as well as amulets (and accessories in addition to all that ecto I’m sure WvW players have stockpiled from all the great loot that drops there). I’ve gotten several ascended rings from daily fractal chests, I’ve never gotten one from a WvW chest and that was months ago.

Ascended crafting is an embarrassingly desperate attempt to flush resources out of the economy and will likely be more difficult for primarily WvW players to level up let alone acquire the weapons themselves.

When ascended rings were first added last year the devs commented on the forums thakittenwas a mistake to add it to the game without giving access to the rings from multiple formats. Since then they repeated their mistake with Guild Commendations and they never fixed the ascended back item issue. The shared resource to acquire most ascended trinkets (laurels) being a daily resource only further hurts the system.

I primarily PvE but I still don’t see the actions over the last year as reasonable attempts to make ascended items fairly available to WvW players. I don’t care what you’d like to do, I only care about what you actually do.

Roe.3679:

DevonCarver.5370:

The stat boost, while controversial, is there to give the buff meaning in the context of the general WvW battle. Providing boosts like %WXP, etc. don’t have impact in fights against other sides, they are just a nice bonus for you. The stat boost and the points for finishing players mean that not only do you want to have the buff, but you don’t want your opponents to have it.

That’s all well and good, but these buffs will benefit those with more numbers, making the strong stronger. That’s the biggest issue with the stat buffs.

The buff benefits players that have it. That’s not the same thing as those with more numbers. There are countless examples of where players with smaller numbers win against big zergs.

Brando.1374:

Wow….. sooo out of touch with the WvW community.
well might as well enjoy wvw while its still good.

So now you’re claiming WvW is good now? If it suited your argument you people would be moaning about the glory days of WvW before ability points.

Tellerion.8102:

Habib Loew.6239:

After a careful reevaluation of orbs of power we have decided to remove them from WvW in an upcoming build. As implemented, orbs tend to strengthen teams who are already winning and make it even more difficult for underdog teams to fight back. In addition, the current implementation seems to be irresistible to hackers/cheaters and will require significant modification to prevent cheaters from having an unfortunately large impact on the state of any given WvW game. Under the circumstances we believe that removing orbs completely is a better choice than attempting an in-place redesign/re-implementation as it will immediately put a stop to all orb hacking. It is likely that orbs, or some orb-like mechanic, will return at some point in the future, but only after we are confident that they will not exhibit the sorts of issues that we see with orbs today.

There you have it.

(Link: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Orbs-will-be-removed-from-WvW-in-an-upcoming-build/first#post608170)

For the supposed WvW elite you guys seem to have great difficulty comprehending the difference between a server wide buff that can be locked away in a fully upgraded keep stacked with siege and two gates to break down before you can get the orb or having to defend three points at all times with no defensive gates or walls, just terrain designed to raise the skill cap on combat.

I doubt it will turn the tide in battle for a losing server. What I expect it will do is it will give players something new and valuable to fight over. It will create new activities to do in WvW that will matter. Instead of having the option of joining the zerg, pointlessly roaming, scouting or flipping supply camps, you can now fight over the ruins. Open field combat, no walls or gates to knock down, lots of emphasis on terrain in combat and a guarantee that a zerg alone can’t replace you. The stat bonus from holding it means that you can feel like you are contributing to your server (honestly very few people will care about reduced damage from seige, especially on lower servers, a celestial buff is something most players can understand and care about).

In addition to this, the ability to score points with stomps means that roamers will contribute more to their server.

The orb buff and the ruins mechanic offers a lot of the WvW community. The fact that some other communities don’t like it doesn’t detract from its value to WvW.

The whining from the “GvG” community because their interests aren’t being placed ahead of WvW is getting really old.

You should just not do AC p2. It prioritises learning a unique mechanic over learning the game and group combat.

As a former Ascalonian my first character was a charr. I played him the most and I frequently get frustrated with how terrible medium armour looks on charr.

I did choose a charr but the number one factor driving me away from the race is that almost all armour was designed with humans in mind. I really wish the designers would come up with armour designs for charr and then retrofit them onto humans for once.

If we can’t get more racial armour (and charr racial armour looks like beginner armour, a lot of it is pretty bad) the least they could do is make the charr the number one consideration in more of the future armour concepts.

Every time I see trench coats I cringe.

Krakah.3582:

cubed.2853:

I like it. New content, new mechanic. Supporting small scale skirmish. That’s exactly what I missed a little bit. I’m so happy to get something like that.
Dear wvw team, please dont forget, the happy people mostly dont write something, because they are happy! I’m an exception :-)

This only rewards Zerg Blobs more. This will only get worse with the leagues once the top T1 servers are 24/7 blob stomping the everyone else. This in no way helps other servers that can’t compete in the coverage game.

The incentives are wrong.

The assumption here is that players in a wipe out match up will care about the score. At this point players in matches like SoS vs TC vs SoR don’t really care about PPT. The objective at that point is to find good fights where you can get them (or PvE for the week). I suspect fighting over the ruins is actually going to be one of the more popular activities in blow out match ups.

We are over a year into the game and no second dragon on the horizon. By my count we have Primordius, Kralkatorrik, Mordemoth, Jormag and the deep sea dragon. We have no idea when the next dragon conflict will be revisited by the Living Story (from what we’ve been told, we have to wade through more Scarlet filler first). Given the priority of underwater combat in development so far and the fact that he doesn’t even have a name yet, it’s not unreasonable to think it could be over a decade before the story ever gets onto him (assuming they keep up development for that long).

As far as it being a PvE only feature… it’s barely that with the direction the game has gone post launch.

One of the interesting things to note is that content seems to pile on in clumps of specific content instead of constant variety. We had the Crown Pavillion zerg farm, Scarlet invasion zerg farms, champion loot bag zerg farms and now Tequatl zerg content. All the large scale open world content is coming out at the same time. Then look at Dragon Bash followed by Aspect Arena, Southsun Survival and Sanctum Sprint. A couple months of heavy mini-games content. Around that time they had two months of Living Story based jumping puzzle achievements.

It’s like they unintentionally give us too much of the same thing at the same time. Too bad they didn’t give us “too much” dungeon content. That would have been nice.

I don’t like that you use Balthazar as an example. Yes he’s “hard” but he’s not complex. I don’t feel like it’s rewarding to defeat him. From what we’ve seen and heard, Tequatl will be a complex boss fight that emphasises an experience rather than just being hard.

I keep thinking to myself “this would be a cool mechanic to determine access to an elite area like the UW or FoW from GW1 instead of tieing it to PvP” then I remember how much I hate doing the CoF and CE opening events and how trivial it is to just guest on a server that has it.

It might be cool to have a mob like Tequatl that upon successful completion they give access only to people on that server a special map similair to Whimseyshire from Diablo 3 (not in terms of the non-canon aesthetic but in terms of how lucrative it is – like the mobs during the Jade Sea fractal or Southsun Cove with the setller buff but with more fun mechanics and events involved). An entire map that is locked or unlocked based on whether or not a raid-like boss is defeated. Obviously it would be very difficult to balance so as not to devalue playing in every other area of the game and so that lesser populated servers don’t get shut out from cool rewards (I suspect Tarnished Coast is probably the best server to be on right now if you want to defeat Tequatl early and often).

Currently event success and failure doesn’t seem to matter. Failure usually results in annoying inconveniences (no waypoints or NPCs) and success is a pittance of useless karma. That’s before you even look at story ramifications that are non existent (a dragon champion attacks, we didn’t loot pinata him well enough so he goes away).

Once I discovered that the laurels are essentially free for sPvP I rarely miss them unless I am really busy or simply don’t want to play. If there was a mechanic driving me away from GW2 the most it would be the rapid expansion of the daily. I hate being told how, where and when to play and I hate entire elements of the game locked behind real time gates.

It started with the inability to acquire guild mission ascended gear, but the recent insane expense of crafting (something I hate in GW2) to get weapons has finally broken me. I care about gear stats and build variety but ascended gear is just horribly unfun for me. All I can see when I look at how it was designed and implemented is a hamster wheel of daily repetition. The daily grind mechanic that they’ve hamfisted into the game has tanked my opinion of the quality of developers at ArenaNet these days. Gone are the days of the ideals of the manifesto and in its place is the worship of hamster wheel grinds from MMOs the manifesto dared to be different from, regardless of whether they are “necessary” or not.

Mad Rasputin.7809:

Underwater combat is not as broken as many would lead you to believe. They have just not invested the time or resources into becoming a better fighter under the water.

L2P

Are you going to say that same thing to a ranger running a trap build (all their armour, food buffs if PvE, and trait choices are tailored towards traps) only to find that their build flat out doesn’t exist once they hit water?

What is a trap ranger supposed to do when Raid on the Capricorn rolls around? Avoid water completely? What about a spirit ranger. Spirit can exist on both land and water but they can’t transition between the two. Often it feels like you can’t enter the water any time shortly after you summon your spirits because they will all die as soon as they enter it. There is definitely a balance/design issue with underwater combat. It’s not simply a case of L2P.

The Tranquility mechanic is poorly communicated. Most of the sPvP map mechanics are poorly communicated. How many people honestly know what all the buffs in Temple of the Silent Storm do? The tranquility one is even worse because it doesn’t appear for most of the match.

What about running the orb on the Spirit Watch? A lot of players won’t know the difference between running the orb to an enemy point, an uncontrolled point or a party controlled point. Unless you are watching the score UI or paying attention to a point’s capture status when you run an orb there, you wouldn’t know there was a difference. How many people will you see on the Skyhammer that have no idea why they keep getting hit by a giant laser?

They need to do more work on communicating the specific map mechanics. To some extent players should learn by doing, but some of these mechanics are really difficult to pick up on, especially if you are new to sPvP.

I don’t know if the announcer needs to be more pedantic with some announcements or if they need to better utilise the hint’s system in sPvP (not the ideal format for hints) or if a map specific tutorial needs to exist, but I think player awareness of map mechanics is a lot lower than it needs to be.

I will admit though, Tranquility is the worst offender.

Now this is going to sound like I’m dumping on the PvE content devs so I apologise in advance.

If the quality of content, the testing, the polish, the bug fixing and the balance, of PvE content that comes out with the Living Story was the quality of content for sPvP you guys would be running for LoL or WoW PvP faster than a D/D ele with the old RtL. The bar for what’s acceptable in a PvP environment (both in WvW and in sPvP) is far higher than what’s acceptable in a PvE environment.

Consider WvW for example. The new changes to the borderlands map are pretty dramatic. One of the things the devs mentioned was they wanted to be sure you can’t treb any of the keeps from those locations. That’s just one thing they have to consider. The entire format revolves around clever siege placement and knowledgeable use of your surroundings. My old guild used to have a map of WvW and ideal locations to place certain siege when defending or attacking based on what it could hit and what could hit it. The complexity of the map is astounding and poor considerations lead to poor player experiences. If the devs just chucked random things into the game and random maps ro game modes, all kinds of crazy imbalances would happen and the general experience would be far worse. Honestly, when I PvP, rarely does it matter which map I’m on (unless it’s Skyhammer or Raid on the Capricorn) because aside from an environment, the map doesn’t matter anywhere near as much as the meta, and for all the kittening sPvP players do about PvE favouritism, the sPvP meta is far more dynamic and central to balance patches each month than the PvE meta.

I pray each month that my favourite PvE class becomes abysmally weak in sPvP because that’s usually the only time real action is taken to address power level issues (no matter how dramatic they are in PvE). Take ranger spirits for example. They are absolutely pathetic in PvE (even the Frost Spirit is only used in speed clear groups and never for anything other than the 7% damage buff, in pugs it’s an awful skill) yet they are considered OP in sPvP. How likely is it that their PvE issues will be resolved any time soon as a result of this unfortunate development? To get balance action on an sPvP issue all you need to do is rate a bit above or below average in terms of power level. In PvE you can take off more than 25% health from one of the hardest bosses in the game with a single skill and nothing is done about it (Feedback on Lupicus). You can have a core mechanic which not only is often unhelpful, but actually makes content harder (ranger pet will often die to random AoE or cleaves but it will also trigger traps like blossoms in Twilight Arbor or the mines in Canache’s Layer but it will also be targeted by AoE skills which target all party members resulting in more damage to people who fail to dodge or are unfortunate enough to be near the pet and enemies which gain something when they land a hit can charge off of the pet).

All things considered, sPvP is very privileged in some ways. If you think getting another pumpkin to carve or snowman to build or the same puzzle to repeat because an achievement said so (or a new daily to do to get a new ring with slightly better stats), if you think that’s quality content you’ve set the bar very low.

For starters the thread title is a little inflammatory. It’s a great sensationalising headline, but it doesn’t fairly represent what Jon said about pet control during State of the Game.

My stance on this is that the ranger is the class with the AI companion. The AI is supposed to do a job, it’s supposed to be this thing you want to have with you. When I look at the ranger class as a game experience, I want to feel like the pet is my ally that helps me, not something which complicates how I access the same tools other classes have. To me it’s imperative that the pet remains an AI companion and that the core design focus of the pet is that it’s supposed to be an AI companion that creates an experience in the game that you never fight alone. Some control over the pet is necessary but too much control over the pet defeats the purpose of the pet.

As they mentioned in State of the Game, there is a bit of freedom with the power level of pet skills because they are not directly controlled by the ranger. Players who are attracted to the idea of controlling pet skills are sometimes not considering that if direct control was given to the ranger, these skills would possibly be in need of a power level reduction. Having access to the wolf’s knockdown on demand (more so than manipulating the current AI) could mean it gets a longer cooldown. A good ranger can currently manipulate the wolf AI to get a knockdown when they want it with the benefit of the current cool down. This player might actually be worse off if direct control is given but the cooldown is increased to compensate (I will point out this is all hypothetical).

As far as raising the ceiling in dungeons for rangers to earn their spot… from a game balance perspective, if the devs want to make it easier for rangers to get into groups pet control is probably one of the lowest priorities. Thinking about pet skills and which ones might be useful in a dungeon, the only ones which matter that can’t already be controlled (or pseudo controlled) in my mind would be the moa heal and the spider’s immobilise. Maybe the poison field and bear’s have a tank skill but I haven’t use a bear since launch. The drake blast finisher is easy to manipulate with pet swapping and the many interrupts are almost completely worthless due to defiant. More micro for pets in dungeons would raise the ceiling (ie: the need to cautiously manage their location at all times to keep them alive) but that’s already the case and quite often it’s simply not possible (I think pet’s need to be more self sufficient in dungeons). I don’t think access to pet skills on demand would change their situation, although I do appreciate the stated consideration for the ranger’s ability to get into groups.

At some point you have to accept that the pet is an AI. If it’s not, it’s essentially requiring the player to control two entities at the same time to reach the same power level of another class. There are advantages in that the pet can still act while the ranger is stunned (like using a wolf to save you from a warrior’s stun lock) but for the most part, full control of both (or lots of control of the pet) is something I don’t want to see. I admit it’s less of an issue in PvE (which has it’s own dramatic issues which are less obvious in PvP) but as a class, the ranger should be pushing the experience of having an ally in this other world. The pet AI should be a welcome presence, not something that’s so bad that people want to remove it and replace it with control. To me, that’s the wrong direction.

I suspect there are a number of factors we don’t see. The team doing the bug fixes on these kinds of runes probably have a list of bugs they have to fix. This rune is likely somewhere in the list and they haven’t gotten to it yet. It’s also possible that the rune has been fixed and they are waiting to push out the fix in an upcoming patch.

If I wanted a platformer I would have purchased a platformer, not an MMO. I’m fine with SAB in the game but in no way do I consider it end game. It’s a distraction. If you think finishing every dungeon explorable once and a temporary solo challenge(what does the MM in MMO stand for to you? – this applies to SAB as well)… well I think you have a dramatically different idea of what end game in an MMO is supposed to be.

Guild Wars 2 is very good at spewing out treadmill like content (achievements, daily lock out progression) but that’s not what people are looking for in end game.

You think it’s reasonable to delete all your characters just so you can play with your real life friends? The simple fact that you have to ignore an entire game type with your friends if you’re on the wrong server is alone enough of a reason to criticise the situation, especially given the crappy options to solve that situation.

I don’t understand why anyone is defending ArenaNet here. People are aware of the guest option, they are aware of the ability to throw 80g down the drain, many are even aware of wiping your entire account to transfer (a hilariously bad option) and they are aware of the ability to drop half the price of the game to transfer, they still find these options unreasonable. You’re free to disagree but that won’t change the reality that this situation is unworkable for a lot of current and returning players.

You could argue that poor support for a format can lead to its unpopularity with players. If the only problem with underwater combat is its balance, one would assume it would be balanced better.

I think the dramatic imbalance in underwater combat has led to a very hostile reception from the PvP crowd (although imbalance shouldn’t annoy WvW people too much, food buffs, numbers etc are all bigger concerns than any imbalances in underwater combat). Instead of balancing underwater combat (it’s insane that rangers are still so powerful in downed state in the water) the sPvP team (who seem to hold the reigns when it comes to class balance for all formats) are outright removing it.

The Superior Rune of Speed’s 6th stat was changed a few patches ago to provide +25% movement speed but while the text on the rune was changed, the actual rune itself does not provide a +25% movement speed buff, it appears to still be +5%.

Oxe.6142:

You’re complaining about an optional service you can even pay for by earning gold in game so no real money is required in an MMO that has no subscription.

Read that twice. Then apologize.

He played for 6-7 months. I seriously doubt he has 80g to blow on transferring servers. The no-subscription model doesn’t mean we get subscription-like game without a subscription, the game makes several large sacrifices and cuts to remove the subscription. Maybe you should realise you drank the Kool-Aid before you demand apologies from people frustrated that ArenaNet wants them to drop $20 to play with their friends.

My experience has been that end game PvE comes down to zerkers builds, line of sight exploitation and reflection. Dodging is only needed for specific encounters.

The thing I find frustrating about GW2 group content is that in organised groups, it’s trivially easy and involves almost no skill. You can build your way to zerker builds which break content to the point where you stand there and DPS until it’s dead with no dodging or engagement of the content at all. In WoW, even the easiest group content involved specific roles and some degree of engagement. ArenaNet have done a far worse job of balancing their content so that players can’t just break it through build wars. Without engaging players through traditional trinity gameplay, ArenaNet pushed themselves to enforce other mechanics to replace it (like the jellyfish, ghost eater or dredge fractal boss). Too bad most of that content is being broken by the DPS race (like groups defeating the destroyer boss in CoE in a single phase, avoiding any need to use the actual mechanics of the encounter).

Most content doesn’t even’t need class pull skills because line of sight AI exploitation is far more effective.

So a trend has been slowly creeping up on GW2 over the last year. I’m not talking about the ascended creep but the slowly phasing out of underwater combat. It’s most obvious when you see that Raid on the Capricorn was removed from both the team and solo queue rotations. In recent news, the big revamp to the WvW borderlands map is going to remove the vast majority of the underwater content in WvW (details: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Bloodlust-in-the-Borderlands-Details/first) and despite the opportunity to make one of the five capture points an underwater one for variety, they chose to make them all land combat. In another thread on the sPvP subforum a dev commented that the underwater combat is being removed from the Temple of the Silent Storm.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We have a lot on our plate but what you can expect to see soon is:

• Temple of the Silent Storm map layout re-work (took out the water)

You could also argue that underwater combat gets very little attention when it comes to skill balance (and build variety). Ranger spirits die when moving from land to water, trap builds are completely kitten in the water, downed rangers are outright broken and most classes have very limited build variety and skill choices when going into the water. At launch it was clearly incomplete (elementalists didn’t even have an underwater elite) and one year later it’s far behind other aspects of the game (and it certainly isn’t balanced). Jon Sharp mentioned that class balance becomes much more difficult when you change skills between formats, underwater combat certainly adds to that work load.

Aside from an appearance in the daily rotation (aquatic kills) underwater content has been completely absent from the Living Story over the last year. Even Southsun Cove, the perfect opportunity to have a large underwater component, was almost barren of underwater content (most of it is just empty space with nothing to do there).

So now we have:

• The underwater map removed from the sPvP tournament rotations.
• An underwater component of another map is going to be removed.
• The majority of the underwater areas of WvW are being replaced.
• Almost no support or content for underwater combat in the Living Story.
• Over a year since launch and the best water breather is a green with fixed stats and ascended armour on the horizon.

Does ArenaNet not believe in underwater combat any more? Do we care?

You’re all posting in the wrong forum. Jon Sharp does the class balance and he dramatically favours the sPvP forums. If you want balance issues to see action, you need to bring up the issue in the sPvP forum. Everywhere else it may as well be invisible.

That interview with Colin was incredibly disheartening. It sounds like they don’t even give a kitten.

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We have a lot on our plate but what you can expect to see soon is:

• Temple of the Silent Storm map layout re-work (took out the water)

The WvW team is taking out the majority of the lake (and underwater fighting) in the borderlands map and no new content from the Living Story team has involved water fights. Has ArenaNet lost faith in underwater combat and now phasing it out of all gameplay types?

Aleaf.8174:

Shiren.9532:

This argument makes it incredibly easy to dismiss your complaint. This isn’t the orb mechanic from launch, the buff is similair but the method of attaining and holding it isn’t. It’s much harder to acquire and hold this buff compared to the orb. You can’t zerg this buff, you have to win in at least three places at the same time to acquire it. You also have to prevent the enemy from being in three places at the same time to keep it. If any enemy server has five small teams at each point and you only defend three, they are getting two easy points and can hit the third hard (or act and react on the other three to pull defenders off or overwhelm them). All of this will involve open field combat (with large consideration for terrain) and puts a great deal of value on the side that can mobilise their forces strategically and quickly. This is dramatically different from an orb which can be acquired by a zerg and hidden behind a heavily fortified tower that favours the defender and allows the zerg to protect it. That’s a massive difference in these two mechanics and anyone who bases the premise of their criticism on “we had this orb mechanic before” is being outright ignorant.

Okay I’m sorry but I gotta address this.

People keep saying that this is fair because smaller servers can split up and contest multiple points at once which should beat the giant zerg blob larger servers have. This helps balance it against the lower coverage servers who aren’t as big.

I gotta ask: What is stopping the larger servers from splitting their big kitten zerg and kicking our teeth in at multiple points as well? Like seriously. Say it’s 30 SoS vs 60 SoR. SoS splits into 5 groups of 6 and contests all our points in our BL. What’s stopping SoR from splitting into 5 groups of 12 and wrecking us?

Nothing. I’m not claiming the mechanic will allow SoS to beat SoR or that it will eliminate the numbers advantage (it may lessen it – personal skill level matters more the smaller the fight is, so a 6 vs 12 is easier to win than a 30 vs 70). SoS is going to lose to SoR even after this mechanic is introduced (assuming the populations don’t change). What it will do is create open field fights. SoR is an extreme example for SoS because despite this week’s match up, the two shouldn’t be playing against each other. At the very least, this new mechanic will split the zerg up to acquire and hold it. That’s better than zerging being the easiest strategy for everything.

Istaf.1953:

Shiren.9532:

They are trying to make WvW better, not foster uses of the WvW maps which work against the central goals of WvW.

If so many people are using the WvW maps to do things other than what the developers intend WvW to be, are they really pushing it in the right direction? If the goal of WvW is PPT, they’ve missed the greatest part of WvW, the open field battles.

I don’t believe that many people are using the WvW maps to do things other than the intended uses, I believe the majority of people play WvW as intended. I believe the people who don’t are in the minority, and of those who do participate in this kind of thing, for most of them it’s a small fraction of their time. I think a lot of people would disagree that open field battles is the greatest part of WvW. Regardless, the buff helps shift the momentum in favour of open field battles, so people who like that kind of thing should be happy. And if they aren’t? There is a whole subforum dedicated to monetization of GW2 where I’m sure Crystin Cox would be happy to hear that a “huge” community of players is willing to buy custom arena tickets if she raises the player cap of a custom arena to 25.

AndrewSX.3794:

I think some ppl is missing the point of this complain/request.

Bloodlust as it is, with the old orbs buff, is not bad for GvG, roaming or fair fights only.

It’s bad for WvW as whole.
We had already Orbs back 1 year ago so it isn’t even speculation, we experienced it already: it just increase the strenght of the already winning server, leads to snowballing, and increases the gap in blowouts due to sheer coverage.

That’s why it should be changed.
Before any Gvg/roaming/fair fights complain.

This argument makes it incredibly easy to dismiss your complaint. This isn’t the orb mechanic from launch, the buff is similair but the method of attaining and holding it isn’t. It’s much harder to acquire and hold this buff compared to the orb. You can’t zerg this buff, you have to win in at least three places at the same time to acquire it. You also have to prevent the enemy from being in three places at the same time to keep it. If any enemy server has five small teams at each point and you only defend three, they are getting two easy points and can hit the third hard (or act and react on the other three to pull defenders off or overwhelm them). All of this will involve open field combat (with large consideration for terrain) and puts a great deal of value on the side that can mobilise their forces strategically and quickly. This is dramatically different from an orb which can be acquired by a zerg and hidden behind a heavily fortified tower that favours the defender and allows the zerg to protect it. That’s a massive difference in these two mechanics and anyone who bases the premise of their criticism on “we had this orb mechanic before” is being outright ignorant.

AndrewSX.3794:

If WvW scoring/winning was an actual test of PvP tactical and fighting skill, then there wouldn’t be even GvG as whole.
But WvW, as designed by Anet, is a coverage siege and blobbing war, where pvp can be nearly completely avoided, pvp skill is irrilevant and tactic is dumbed down to “where i’ll take the zoneblob next”.
That is how WvW is designed? Fine, but it’s boring, siege and numbers are too much more important than pvp skill and as whole the mode is being ignored for too much time.

That’s why ppl started to do not care anymore of score, PPT, siege and objectives and focusing on fights, more balanced the better. That’s why GvG and roaming are so popular. That’s why having those getting gutted by Bloodlust is another blow to WvW – which as whole will suffer this newly introduced unbalance.

If you want balanced PvP that prioritises skill go to sPvP. You can have up to 8 (or is it 10?) people on a map. Buy a custom arena and have your zerg clashes there or choose an empty arena and play in that one. Even sPvP has siege, that doesn’t remove the need for skill.

So many of you talk about how normal WvW play is reduced to zerg blobs running around snoozing through content, for crying out loud most of you are on different servers from each other. How is it you’re all experience the same lack of challenge when zerging? Are you deliberately avoiding other guilds or are you conveniently claiming that the times you lose are because of numbers?

Every time the “GvG” crowd show up the discourse often degenerates into people stubbornly sticking their fingers in their ears and criticising other parts of WvW simply because they want something else. The arguments follow along the lines of “this isn’t GvG, it must be kitten and I’m going to say so”. It’s fine to say that the orb buff harms players who choose to play outside of the intended goals of the arena, that is correct. Groups of players who take up map slots so they can zerg into each other with an attempt to minimise imbalances within the zerg, they will sometimes have the orb buff interfering with that. Those players aren’t using the WvW maps for what they are designed for.

Just because it’s not good for organised large scale scrimmages does not mean it’s bad for WvW. It’s very possible that the bloodlust buff and ruins capping and defending will be very good for WvW. Remember, according to you (and a lot of the people complaining about the buff) WvW gameplay currently amounts to "a coverage siege and blobbing war, where pvp can be nearly completely avoided, pvp skill is irrilevant and tactic is dumbed down to “where i’ll take the zoneblob next”.". It looks to me like the bar is set pretty low, if Bloodlust in the Borderlands creates more compelling gameplay than that quote, I expect you’ll come back after it’s introduced and talk about how good it was for the format. It makes complete sense that the devs wouldn’t design against the interests of WvW by allowing people to dismiss the buff. They are trying to make WvW better, not foster uses of the WvW maps which work against the central goals of WvW.

Sizzle Hint.1820:

Yea i agree i think i will have lots of fun with the new borderlands. Thank you Anet

The only thing i really dont like abt the update is the bloodlust buff… a stat buff takes any competition out of it… lame

They had to make the buff desirable. There has to be a reason to care about obtaining the buff on one or multiple maps. I don’t know that the 50 stat point bonus is the best way to that but it’s obviously desirable and fulfills the objective of making this mechanic relevant. People didn’t care about the quaggans because, for the most part, they didn’t matter. I’m willing to wait and see if the 50 stat point buff is fine as is or if it’s too powerful and promotes snowballing.

The design of the ruins favours lots of skirmishing and less zergy fighting. Unlike the orb mechanic, you won’t have the luxury of fully upgraded keeps protecting your orb, you have five vulnerable points on the map (and running from one to another looks like it was designed to be less convenient so you will have to spread out to capture and hold them). I think people are underestimating how difficult it will be to hold all points on the map and the orb buff at the same time. Even if it still doesn’t solve the coverage wins problem, it’s a less zergy mechanic. To capture or defend a buff you need to protect at least three points on the map, I doubt that’s going to be as easy as people claim it to be.

At the very least I expect the ruins to create a new dynamic in WvW, different gameplay which caters to players who want to do something other than zerg. The emphasis on split tactics to capture and hold the buff as well as the increased value of small ops stomping will be a new dynamic in the point scoring for WvW.

With leagues ensuring you play against every server in your league, you’re guaranteed to have matches like this in the future. I don’t know what things are like in EU but in NA, the coverage and number advantages are just too big to have real competition when match ups like this occur.

But can they do that while defending their towers and keeps on the map? If you are aggressively going after the ruins it means you aren’t defending a tower or keep.

I hope you don’t think that guy accurately represents your community because the part of the audio you linked to was… very dramatic. The victim complex that guy portrayed was off the charts.

The concentration camp/execution bit was something special.

A supply camp will give you 5 points if you hold it at the time the score is calculated (every 15 minutes). With one bloodlust buff a stomp will give you one point. With two buffs you get two points per stomp and with three buffs you get three points. Controlling all three buffs will probably be unlikely for most servers (unlike orbs you can’t hide the buff away in a fully upgraded keep filled with supply and siege, they are fairly vulnerable and out in the open requiring defence of at least three points) but if you do, a stomp will be worth three points which is a lot.

I suspect most of the time servers will only hold one maybe two buffs at a time so the point advantage will be negligible because they are all getting it. It’s only going to matter when a server can reliable obtain and hold multiple buffs, which opens up opportunities for a server without the buff to attack places that aren’t being defended. It’s going to be a lot harder to protect three ruins than it will be to protect an orb behind keep walls, and if you are protecting the ruins it means your forces can’t all stack in defence of a tower or keep.

It’s not out yet but it looks a lot better than the old orb mechanic (it’s easier to get the buff than it is to get an orb) and it might create really interesting priorities for servers resulting in different strategies being used.

I can get behind a push to find more ways to reward players for playing WvW to bring it in line with PvE but a league system isn’t the way to do that. It rewards server stacking and select servers, not WvW participation. WvW isn’t balanced and competition is very one sided (especially in NA). Many players are going to be left out regardless of how they play simply because they are on the wrong server. That’s the wrong way to reward people.

If they wanted to reward people for WvW, the primary rewards should be for completing WvW daily objectives (capture supply camps, capture keeps, capture towers, gain bloodlust etc) that players can do competitively across any server rather than requiring them to be on the most stacked server with the best coverage. WvW rewards should be for everyone, not for the most stacked and the conveniently placed 13th/14th ranked servers.

The point value of a stomp is equal to 1/5th of holding a supply camp at the 15 minute mark. That’s a pretty big deal. If you can stomp more than 5 people every 15 minutes you’ve done more for your score than holding that supply camp at that time.

Big zergs wiping each other won’t make much a difference with this one – most of their kills are from AoE and auto-attacks, but smaller groups roaming and fighting over supply camps or trying to ninja camps (or even roamers) will matter a lot more. The people fighting for control of the ruins will probably get a fair few points from this alone.

Towers and keeps would be almost pointless if it affected every kill instead of only stomps. I actually think the added dynamic of to stomp or not to stomp is a good one. It also adds another dimension to playing for score (something I personally don’t care about but it’s good to see more diversity in it).

Johje Holan.4607:

Shiren.9532:

I’m considering moving to a new server. My current server’s rank means it will be guaranteed not to finish in the top three of either NA league. The knowledge that simply by being on the wrong server I will be missing out on rewards and loot is very disheartening to me. I don’t see WvW as balanced or competitive enough to justify giving out rewards for people who stack on servers with better coverage – this is something they should never do in such an imbalanced competition which ideally wants to encourage players spreading across servers not stacking on the same ones.

I’m personally sick of the tier one meta but with the new changes to the Bloodlust mechanic emphasising the need to have coverage on multiple maps and rewards for stacking on one server (lower rank servers will likely see far less relevance with this mechanic due to an inability to competitively compete for multiple points on three different maps) in addition to the fact that all servers in a league will play each other, so uber stacked servers will play against rank 12 servers leading to several weeks of guaranteed blowouts. This whole thing is a disaster and the wrong direction for the format. I was hoping the devs would actively design more content to encourage players to spread across servers but everything they have done and are doing in the last year seems to make higher ranked servers snowball in desirability. They are moving in a direction which further favours server stacking, not one which equalises the experience for all servers.

If you’re in NA and not on SoR or BG now, it’s probably time to consider transferring there. If not, you will likely get stomped over the next few weeks and have close to zero chance of getting good league rewards.

That makes no sense. You realize that you’re going to lose money by transferring right? You also realize that you have you have to complete the meta-events to qualify for the season chest – so you can’t just log in once to WvW and get the chest.

No one should transfer because of this tournament – except of course high tier people who want to even out the population for some fun fights

It’s a one time transfer. The current WvW system is setting up dynastys. The top servers are mostly stable, I doubt we will see SoR or BG drop out of the top three in the next year so and with 7 week seasons, I suspect you will get multiple wins by transferring. We aren’t talking a single season worth of rewards, we are talking several seasons of rewards. It’s true that if you had to transfer every season to stay on top it wouldn’t make sense, but I doubt that’s the case. Currently WvW heavily favours stacking, with the orb mechanic this will likely become worse as it creates snowballing (we will see how it plays out) and rewarding the most stacked servers will further promote stacking.

All of that is assuming that the WvW league rewards are generic. What if they are special skins or unique items that can’t be obtained anywhere else? Already you get a unique finisher, it’s possible you could be missing out on even more. Even if the unique finisher is the only reward and a generic loot chest is the only other reward, it’s a single transfer to a stacked server that solves a lot of the problems of being on a lower ranked server. They are actively creating more reasons not to be on a lower ranked server (unless you are lucky number 13, in which case there is a good chance you be unlucky number 12 in the next season) and further reinforcing the benefits of being on a stable highly ranked server.

Ragnar.4257:

Was it made clear if the points-on-stomp are actually for a stand-still-and-interact stomp, or just killing a downed player?

I believe he did make that distinction. He wasn’t pedantic with his wording, but he was specific about saying stomp as opposed to auto-attack. You only get the point/s if you stomp them.

Levetty.1279:

What happened to that guy who just listed a bunch of questions instead of talking to the guy like the other class reps and then laughed at his own Power Ranger joke while nobody else did?

Battosai did fine. It was actually Jonathon Sharp who encouraged him to list off his questions instead of have a back and forth conversation. I don’t blame Battosai for how that went down.

I laughed at the Power Rangers joke.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

nagymbear.5280:

this

He failed to adapt. This is like a lot of rangers. He could of recovered at almost any point. Being skill at parkour could of helped but I think he fail at conception of the plan. Not taking into consideration the wet surface or planting himself at the start are other points to consider.

He failed to react.

I want the Kool-Aid you’ve been drinking.

I actually think it’s an interesting mechanic and I look forward to seeing how it plays out. The one area of the game I’m always amazed by inventiveness of the players is in WvW. The environments look great (especially the Orchard) and the complexity of the terrain will be very interesting to play in compared to the open field nature of most maps. I don’t look forward to increasing the power level of mesmers and thieves though. Blink and shadow step skills are going to be too powerful here.

I do have a few concerns though.

If interacting with one of the five capture points (either neutralising or capturing) doesn’t reward WvW exp, normal exp, karma or gold, doesn’t this punish players who prioritise helping out their server by capturing the points instead of joining the karma train?

Some servers don’t have the numbers to fill two maps let alone field a competitive force across all four maps. Isn’t this mechanic going to dramatically favour servers with larger numbers? It looks like this mechanic won’t be as exciting in lower tiers with less players and spotty coverage. Have you considered how this change could favour high population servers and further reinforce the idea that you need to transfer to a higher ranked server to experience WvW fully?

I’m considering moving to a new server. My current server’s rank means it will be guaranteed not to finish in the top three of either NA league. The knowledge that simply by being on the wrong server I will be missing out on rewards and loot is very disheartening to me. I don’t see WvW as balanced or competitive enough to justify giving out rewards for people who stack on servers with better coverage – this is something they should never do in such an imbalanced competition which ideally wants to encourage players spreading across servers not stacking on the same ones.

I’m personally sick of the tier one meta but with the new changes to the Bloodlust mechanic emphasising the need to have coverage on multiple maps and rewards for stacking on one server (lower rank servers will likely see far less relevance with this mechanic due to an inability to competitively compete for multiple points on three different maps) in addition to the fact that all servers in a league will play each other, so uber stacked servers will play against rank 12 servers leading to several weeks of guaranteed blowouts. This whole thing is a disaster and the wrong direction for the format. I was hoping the devs would actively design more content to encourage players to spread across servers but everything they have done and are doing in the last year seems to make higher ranked servers snowball in desirability. They are moving in a direction which further favours server stacking, not one which equalises the experience for all servers.

If you’re in NA and not on SoR or BG now, it’s probably time to consider transferring there. If not, you will likely get stomped over the next few weeks and have close to zero chance of getting good league rewards.

So Hugh previewed more details about Bloodlust in the Borderlands, the orb replacement mechanic, in a live stream recently.

A brief summary from what I recall. The lake in the middle of the borderlands map has mostly been filled in and new objectives have been added.

The capture points:

• There are four new capture points placed on the corners of the lake and one at the north of the ruins (five points total, of equal worth).
• Southern point is Temple of Lost Prayers and it’s located at the northern tip of the existing ruins.
• South West point is Battle’s Hollow. It’s has an arena type layout with two tunnel entrances.
• North West point is Bauer’s Estate. It’s a fairly open space and it’s connected to the Battle’s Hollow by pillars you can jump from for faster travel between the two (compared to if you run along the ground/swim).
• North East point is Orchard Overlook and you can blink/shadow step from the cap point to the cannon which allows unique play from the other points. Multiple pathways to the cannon location emphasises terrain combat (this is the case for all the points form what I can see).
• South East point is Carver’s Ascent and it’s a high location. Lots of open edges to knock people off. Emphasises stability and knock-backs, there is also some kind of tunnel underneath.
• Each point is slightly different in its terrain and different strategies can be used for each, such as fighting at elevations (use stability and knock-backs), using blink skills to traverse up terrain quickly, wide open points versus more crowded points.
• To capture a point you have to stand inside the square (similair to PvP or capping a tower) with no enemies inside of it.
• Multiple players will not capture faster.
• Once captured, the capture status will decay slowly over time if no-one is inside of it.
• Point status shows up on the map with the colour of the server that controls it (white if neutral) in addition to a light above the point which is visible from normal view.
• Enemy players can neutralise by standing in an unprotected point, neutralising is faster than capturing.
• Capturing or neutralising the points will not provide you with normal event credit or WvW experience. The only intended reward is the actual buff (I may have misunderstood this).
• Each capture point has a cannon (the same as tower/keep cannons that benefits from masteries) that can be built with 10 supply.
• You may also build additional siege inside and around the capture points, although it’s not intended to be able to treb a keep from any of these points.

The buff:

• To obtain the bloodlust on the borderlands buff you need to capture at least three different ruins on that map. Once you hold at least three at the same time you need to hold them for two minutes to obtain the buff which is given to every player on your server across all WvW maps.
• To lose the buff an enemy server has to obtain it. They have to cap at least three ruins and hold them for two minutes, neutralising alone won’t do it.
• The buff gives your server one point for every stomp made while under it. It also gives +50 to power, precision, toughness, vitality, healing power and condition damage.
• The buff stacks so you can hold three borderland buffs and get three points per stomp. Only one player can get stomp credit. Killing without stomping won’t provide points.
• Some system is in place to prevent trolls from allowing enemy servers to stomp them repeatedly for points.

Miscellaneous:

• The quaggan and the krait have been removed completely. There are random yellow (only hostile if provoked) NPCs that roam the area. I noticed a red ooze among other things so this will help complete daily kill variety in WvW.
• There are two new sentries in the new area.

Ram Mastery:

• Tier 1 gives the player Iron Hide. This is a 50% damage reduction buff.
• Tier 2 gives Flame Blast (ram skill two) the ability to apply structural vulnerability. This increases damage taken by 1% per stack.
• Tier 3 reduces ram skill recharges.
• Tier 4 causes knock-back to people behind the gate disrupting repairs.
• Tier 5 gives a support skill which applies Iron Hide to nearby allies.

Another Livestream will be out next Friday. I can’t remember if he mentioned the release date for any of this stuff although I think ram mastery is in the next patch.

swiftpaw.6397:

Shiren.9532:

colesy.8490:

“Being efficient shouldn’t be viable!”

Whatever.

It’s not efficient, it’s cheesing the content. You literally stand there and spam auto attack.

oooh, so like open world content.

Technically open world group content requires more effort than a lot of line of sight strategies. It’s a lot of work making sure you tag as many mobs as possible.

I don’t understand your point, are you saying that open world content is auto-attack easy or are you saying that dungeon content should be auto-attack easy because open world content is?

colesy.8490:

“Being efficient shouldn’t be viable!”

Whatever.

It’s not efficient, it’s cheesing the content. You literally stand there and spam auto attack. Every time you use line of sight it essentially boils down to auto attack. That’s not how group content should be.

Stooperdale.3560:

Fighting a mob in a single spot where it can never hit you is an exploit. These exploits are generally taken out of the game much faster than any bugs that work against players. Fights where you can move a little and use auto-attacks are badly designed (I’m thinking of you Jellyfish). Fights where players can huddle up and share defensive skills to mitigate damage are legal. That’s fine for trash but boss fights should require more active defense (dodge) or deeper tactics.

I don’t care if it’s legal, it simply shouldn’t be viable. Stacking to kill the spider in AC is terrible game design.

I can agree that to some extent the Living Story issues that some people (including myself) comes down to patience, but how much patience is needed?

We’ve been following these plots since January/February (unless you want to go back to Southsun/Halloween) and the Aetherblades and Scarlet aren’t much different from Team Rocket. I don’t have a reason to care about either of them – they pop up to attack for the sake of attacking and their motivations are non-existent, shallow or unknown (it doesn’t matter which because after this long all three are the same).

We have a world threatened by dragons and we are spending month after month blasting off the Aetherblades. The story has given me no reason to care about Scarlet or the Aetherblades (and I still don’t understand what the Molten Alliance are supposed to be about other than a convenient army).

The boring or shallow characters (I can understand this is, to a certain extent, subjective) don’t help things, but the story itself isn’t very engaging. When I was watching Lost there were mysteries in every single episode, unexplained events and seemingly unconnected things which often came together in an exciting way. The thing that’s different about Lost compared to the Living Story is that I cared about and was invested in the show, the characters and the plot the entire time. I didn’t have to wait for the season finale for the show to give me something engaging, to give me a reason to care about what was happening, it was there all the time, the big reveals and the moments of clarity were the pay off, but the show was usually engaging without them.

One of the things about GW2 is that it’s an entire world we can explore, it’s not a TV show with selected scenes and full control over what the audience sees (so if the game is the entire island, we can explore most of it, with the TV you can hide the others and the tail end survivors, in Lost the MMO you can’t). You can’t tell the same story in an MMO that you can in a TV show. MMOs are whole worlds, we can explore the Flame Legion territory when the story deals with them, we can visit their part of the world and see what they are up to. When a big situation like the Molten Alliance arises, it feels shallow when the rest of the world is business as usual (and the “Living World” doesn’t quite feel alive). When Scarlet has some supposed back story involving all these masters, it’s surprising that no-one has ever mentioned her prior to now, and few (if none) of her masters even mention her in the game.

When Winds of Change was happening in GW1, entire maps changed. Zones had new mobs which represented the old conflicts in the story being resolved, but also new conflicts arriving. As you progressed through the story, NPCs around the world had special dialogue which uncovered new parts of the mystery. A lot of the back story of Reiko, Miku and Ashu was told in random NPC conversations (hint: you could have done this with Scarlet’s background), it was a mystery you could follow with each update and it helped sell the idea that this conflict involved the Canthan people and the idea that the world was alive and changing based on the events that occured. There was also a much stronger focus on mission sized quests which carried the core parts of the story, something I don’t think the Living Story does very much of. The face of Cantha changed significantly in a similair period of time to what has passed for the Living Story this year. Aside from quality of life changes and tonnes of mini-games, the Tyria of August 2013 is almost identical to the Tyria of August 2012. The world doesn’t feel very alive, part of the problem is the temporary content, part of the problem is that the bulk of updates seems to be mini-games and part of the problem is that the story isn’t giving us much to care about. I cared about Zei Ri very early on. I don’t care about a lot of the Living Story protagonists (given how little has happened so far, there are probably too many of them already) and I certainly don’t care about Scarlet.

Before the recent patch the karma NPC Lightbringer Surefoot sold Wayfairer trinkets (with an MF stat on them). After the removal of the MF stat she no longer sells trinkets. All the other temple vendors sell trinkets but this one has had hers removed and they were never replaced.

Shemsu.8721:

What he means is that there is no reason to make it even EASIER for a character to hit lvl 80 without doing anything but the tutorial

Crafting to 80 in this economy is a terrible idea.