Guild Wars 2

Neko.9021:

The same way ANet solves everything – RNG

As funny as this is… I can’t say I’d be very surprised.

Given the way silver league is shaping up, I would love to see a dev response to how the league will be decided in the event of a tie.

They’ve already stated that this change is coming in the spring when they add the overflow map.

frvwfrtwo.6109:

So some SBI guys ([DR] I believe, but could be wrong…) saw me outside SW Garrison on YBBL last night (reset night), and threw down some Arrow Cart Blueprints… What was that about?

You guys seem to go through them a lot faster than we do so we just thought we could even the fight out a bit by donating our spare blueprints.

but hey, that new temporary living kitten content is buckets of fun amirite?

Gulagman.9045:

Silas.8630:

Gulagman.9045:

So at YBBL Bay…did anyone’s screen just go black?

yup, me and half my guild…gg anet

Same, half of us are in queues also…this is disappointing…prob will have to wait for a 3 h queue now.

yup. beyond kitten ed right now.

Gulagman.9045:

So at YBBL Bay…did anyone’s screen just go black?

yup, me and half my guild…gg anet

akamon.2769:

David.4821:

I’ve spoked to Choo and they spoke to em but they continued doing what they were doing. I had no way of contacting anyone on SoR outside of who I was talking to set up the GvG rounds.

Silas.8630:

We were told that the Choo commander had asked them to kitten off and they were not complying.

then you guys did what you could. it just sucks to hear things like these happen. we allk nwo they aren’t easy to schedule. and collateral damage to bystanders is no fun either. : (((

ANet, hurry with the legit GvG options.

[edit: added 2nd quote]

Seconded for legit GvG. Again, apologies to your guys that got caught up and wiped in the confusion while just trying to enjoy a good GvG. We were having a great time fighting Choo as well, which is why it irritated us so much to have a few HIRE guys sour the experience.

akamon.2769:

there should be a rule of thumb – when dealing with trolls in game, always contact someone on that server whom you know and trust. in this example, you could have tried to talk to Choo commanders or whoever you were organizing it with. and have them try to deal with the trolls. i know, we all have bad apples.. and it’s frustrating. GvG’s take time to plan as well.. but better to take a time to figure things out than risking having misunderstandings.

it’s mentioned the “troll” ran back into the crowd, and we all know how cleave and AoE works in the game.. to go after that one troll in a crowd, who were simply spectating, could hardly be the best solution to the situation, no? not saying talking to Choo or better yet, the commanders from HIRE, would have magically fixed the problem.. but at least, you wouldn’t “accidentally” kitten off other people there who only expected good fights and a good show.

[edit: typo and clarified some stuff]

We were told that the Choo commander had asked them to kitten off and they were not complying.

Peetee.9406:

KcB.6890:

Peetee.9406:

No, sir.

Please understand I am referring to the 2 guilds that repeatedly ran us over for just watching. Not wanting to get an infraction I used SBI instead of those specific guild names, we’re not so petty as to hold you all responsible for the actions of those 2.

Some of your server mates were trolling(even spike building ballistas during matches) the GvG and quickly returning to the crowd. Our intention was to wipe the trolls. If you got caught in the crossfire then it was an accident. Sorry.

We were the ones that spike built the ballista after you wiped us 3 times for no reason. Only HIRE had interfered with your spectators (not the match) prior to that point and they did for so the same reason we did, you wiped them for no reason as well.

There were no trolls from SoR there, you guys were the ones being disrespectful. I hope in the future you can take losing a little more gracefully and not point fingers at innocent players just wanting to watch what was otherwise a good GvG.

“You wiped members of another guild for trolling your GvG, so we decided to further troll it.”
Sounds like a valid excuse to me….

There was a HIRE engineer throwing grenades from the stands into the middle of the match, which is why we went up to wipe the HIRE guys. Again, if you got caught in that crossfire we apologize, but we certainly were not targeting anyone without a HIRE tag until you built siege to troll even more.

Buffy.9246:

Sor plz go rough on sbi. Show them the power of a non bandwagon server!

You are aware that the t1 servers are the epitome of bandwagon servers, right?

Truearrow.3527:

Dear SBI, we couldnt leave the matchup without giving you a proper goodbye. Love Maguuma. To give an accurate account, there’s 50 of them

Could you make it a full map zerg next time? I have stock in omega golems…

Naztharius.7639:

Commisar.8695:

But you are bad, you just have lots of bad people which means you take lots of things…Wait sorry PPT=skill SBI #1NA

Your server was the one who brought up ppt at 4:20 am lol. You mag bro?

That’s the true beauty of a double standard. PPT doesn’t matter until they’re winning it.

iAmTheDuke.6201:

All 3 buttlust at carver ascent and still couldn’t kill us Abys!

Come on now.

At first I thought the emote spam was the classiest thing about this post. Then I noticed the names of your chat categories.

Mike.7320:

It was good.

Then ended with carnage.

Good job to both DDLG and VR.

Oh hey, that shiny-kitten ele just right of center in the first picture is me :-)

deathTouch.9706:

Silas.8630:

kerona.3465:

Silas.8630:

kerona.3465:

pic: pls not that is not the end of the blob that is the end of my draw distance
about perspective, right?

That is a very impressive blob, but you’re also running in EBG. Gotta expect the pugzerg when you’re running in their homeland. Just look at the diversity of guild tags in your screenie compared to mine.

This was more in response to the people saying they weren’t mindless blobbing.

SBI doesn’t realize yet how stacked SBI has become. Soon you will understand it better.

Also, if the commander we kept spam killing was you, hi.

Not sure who’s claiming they don’t blob, but that’s just silly. Everybody blobs, and the higher you go the bigger the blobs get. Especially considering the recent influx of people SBI has gotten, a huge percentage of them will just mindlessly follow the hat and try to ride the coattails to victory. The problem of mindless pugs following the hat just because it’s there is generally worse in EBG than the borderlands because if there’s only one tag up the pugs don’t know not to all stack on it.

Also the commander definitely wasn’t me, but I appreciate the hello :-)

More bags for us during primetime.

Leave it to this guy to take a serious and somewhat apologetic comment on the state of the meta and reply to it with a kitteny chest-thump.

kerona.3465:

Silas.8630:

kerona.3465:

pic: pls not that is not the end of the blob that is the end of my draw distance
about perspective, right?

That is a very impressive blob, but you’re also running in EBG. Gotta expect the pugzerg when you’re running in their homeland. Just look at the diversity of guild tags in your screenie compared to mine.

This was more in response to the people saying they weren’t mindless blobbing.

SBI doesn’t realize yet how stacked SBI has become. Soon you will understand it better.

Also, if the commander we kept spam killing was you, hi.

Not sure who’s claiming they don’t blob, but that’s just silly. Everybody blobs, and the higher you go the bigger the blobs get. Especially considering the recent influx of people SBI has gotten, a huge percentage of them will just mindlessly follow the hat and try to ride the coattails to victory. That problem is generally the more apparent in EBG than the borderlands because if there’s only one tag up the pugs don’t know any better than to all stack on it.

Also the commander definitely wasn’t me, but I appreciate the hello :-)

kerona.3465:

pic: pls not that is not the end of the blob that is the end of my draw distance
about perspective, right?

That is a very impressive blob, but you’re also running in EBG. Gotta expect the pugzerg when you’re running in their homeland. Just look at the diversity of guild tags in your screenie compared to mine.

Lenador.1436:

Silas.8630:

ITT:

Mag guy: SBI zergs too hard!
FA guy: Mag and SBI both zerg too hard!
SBI guy: Y’all just jealous of our zergz

keep it classy forum warriors, and remember…it’s all about perspective.

I like transfer dialog adds comic relief to the “piece” well done

haha yeah I debated blacking out the chat but thought it was funnier with it XD

ITT:

Mag guy: SBI zergs too hard!
FA guy: Mag and SBI both zerg too hard!
SBI guy: Y’all just jealous of our zergz

keep it classy forum warriors, and remember…it’s all about perspective.

Noein.7635:

SBI is ticking 500+ against FA/Mag. Perhaps they have t1 coverage? Which means gold league will now consist of 4 heavily stacked servers, TC, and FA.

I’m going to say 6 hours into reset of the first day is a little early to assume SBI has t1-level 24/7 coverage…so far we’ve really only seen their weekend NA force.

Sanduskel.1850:

Silas.8630:

Hey, run a few fractals, die a few times, break all your gear, maybe you’ll buy a couple Recovery Packages cough cough

I’d rather uninstall than do a few fractals.

I was kidding of course.

Not our fault that we don’t buy things for them. It’s more their fault that they aren’t in touch with the community enough to know what we really would want. I could think of a multitude of things I would buy if they were put in the gem store, the problem A-net just doesn’t know their community well enough to implement them.

Oh I’m not saying it’s our fault at all, Anet made their bed as far as our community is concerned and now they have to lie in as far as the lost profits are concerned. I’m simply pointing out that from their perspective we haven’t exactly demonstrated that we’re a community worth catering to. PvE players enjoy the game Anet puts in front of them and keep spending money on it, so Anet keeps doing it. However plenty of WvW players have expressed since alpha how much we dislike the game Anet made and the multitude of ways it could be made better. Unfortunately no matter how good these changes would be in the long run many of them would be costly and time consuming to implement, and they see no reason to spend the time fixing what we probably won’t like anyway when there’s a community of perfectly content wallets at the other end of the forums.

Sanduskel.1850:

This wouldn’t surprise me. When I’ve asked about why we can’t get the vial of essence for the ascended back piece in wvw, I was informed that Anet wants all of us to experience fractals because its good for us. I guess they all want us to experience Orr because its good for us too, lol.

It is quite clear to me that anet despises wvw, simply because they promised that all ascended items would quickly be available in wvw, and they aren’t.

Hey, run a few fractals, die a few times, break all your gear, maybe you’ll buy a couple Recovery Packages *cough cough*

Hexin.5603:

I bought my finisher. And likely will buy another… just read the tag line /supportinGvG

I’ve bought several finishers as well, unfortunately it may be too late at this point and we’re kind of stuck in a Mexican standoff. Anet isn’t willing to devote resources to fixing a game mode that isn’t profitable and WvW players aren’t willing to throw more money at a company that doesn’t support their game mode. Realistically, they have until Q2 2014 to decide if it’s worth trying to keep us around, and we are a rather fickle bunch…

Rama.6439:

Look Anet, if you are gonna nerf our income in WvW, then give us something else, we need something to make a living on there. You take it all from us and you will start to lose a lot of us, a lot of us only like WvW. But that doesn’t mean we don’t need gold.

First off, no one is making 50g an hour in Frostgorge unless they get really lucky, and it’s definitely not consistently that profitable, but that’s really irrelevant.

You’re completely missing the point. Anet doesn’t give a kitten about your drop rates if you’re not giving them money. The WvW community has shown very little interest in buying anything out of the gemshop and the only way they were making money off us was the constant server swapping shenanigans. It’s pretty clear that we’re all getting sick of that and lots were opting to grind the gold ingame anyway, refusing to pay for it with real money. Anet knows that probably won’t be a reliable source of income for much longer, with the upcoming leagues largely locking down server transfers for almost two months at a time, especially considering how many WvW guilds have outright quit or stated they’re only waiting around for ESO to come out next year.

The gemshop offerings such as finishers are likely Anet’s final attempt to turn the WvW game mode into a profitable portion of their business, and if it fails, there is literally no reason for them to continue supporting the game mode. The WvW servers cost a lot of money to operate and maintain, and the dev(s) responsible for WvW have salaries that need to be paid, which means that if WvW players don’t start buying things from the shop, Anet will do everything they can to drive us into a more profitable gametype, or at the very least out of the game altogether so we stop hogging server resources.

tl;dr you’re thinking like a player who wants loot, they’re thinking like a company that wants money.

Master of Timespace.2548:

Silas.8630:

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

Tinfoil hat? That is painfully obvious…

What I meant was that it was an (albeit failed) attempt at subtlety on their part to hide the motivation for cool finishers inside a new game mechanic most of didn’t really want. I honestly think they would have been much more successful if they had just come right out and said “look, we’re adding cool finishing moves to the shop, if enough of you buy them to support the development, we’ll add GvG.”

Also worth noting, is that a large portion of the PvE playerbase puts the cart before the horse, for them the shiny at the end of the grind is the whole point of the game, not a nice little addition. Those are the players who will run an excruciatingly boring champion farming train for hours, days, or weeks on end if it gives them more buying power and if you can charge them a few dollars to speed that process along they’re more likely to take the bait.

PvP players on the other hand tend to prefer PvP over PvE precisely because it’s not boring and repetitive. They prefer a dynamic and compelling fight against a living, thinking, reacting opponent instead a static encounter repeated over and over. The shiny you buy for a couple bucks is just a nice little addition to make you look cool while you’re playing the game, not the game itself. What this means is that PvE players are more likely to overlook flaws in the journey as long as the shiny at the end is shiny enough, because they’re playing for the shiny at the end. Anet is therefore free to spend less time polishing the game (because it’s difficult and requires complex balance and mechanics) and more time polishing the prize at the end (because it’s simple and can be churned out by the thousands)

What I mean to say by all this is that Anet may have already shot themselves in the foot with regards to PvP players because we’re here for the gameplay not the prize, and they failed to provide an engaging and balanced WvW experience before they tried to sell the cool armor in which to play it.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, obviously LoL is a great example of a game that monetizes PvP players extremely well. It just seems like Anet either hasn’t fully embraced the idea that we too have money to spend, or they haven’t quite figured out how to go about getting us to spend it. If nothing else, the new finishers are proof that they are trying to make our gameplay a viable part of their business model, and I honestly hope that enough people buy them to prove that our community is worth supporting in the same way as PvE. I just fear it might be too little, too late.

It’s not the “official” answer you’re looking for and I highly doubt you’re going to get any response from Anet, but I can give you my perception of why game companies tend not to cater to the PvP communities like they do to PvE players. The simple explanation is that we aren’t as easy to monetize as PvE players. Traditionally speaking, PvE players are motivated by aesthetics and the perceived social prestige that goes with always having the new cool thing ie: extrinsic rewards. They are far more likely to buy things from the gemshop like mini pets and exclusive armor skins, as these items are visual proof that they are good at PvE (read: good at having lots of money.) This gives Anet the ability to charge real-world money as a shortcut to obtaining the rewards with ingame gold/grinding.

WvW/PvP players on the other hand tend to be motivated more by glory, or the thrill of the fight ie: intrinsic rewards that are hard to quantify and near impossible to charge money for. Most of us tend to care more about whether or not we won the fight than what we looked like while doing it or what mini pet followed us into battle. Basically, PvE players like rewards that are purchased and Anet would love to sell those to them, PvP players mostly appreciate rewards that are earned and without a subscription fee Anet has a hard time making money off that.

I’m not sure I’ve noticed the decrease in drop rates in WvW, but granted I haven’t been playing as much lately, as this week’s matchup is a blowout and we’ve been having trouble finding enough opponents to fight. If there was such a nerf and I had to guess why, I’d say Anet is hoping that if they decrease our droprates to the point where we’re no longer able to sustain our gameplay (repair costs/consumables/siege) that we’ll be forced to buy gems to convert to gold in order to remain competitive.

tl;dr PvE players buy their crap, WvW/PvP players don’t.

EDIT: puts on tinfoil hat I have a suspicion that the extra points for stomping were added to the bloodlust buff in combination with the slew of new gemshop finishers in an attempt to combat the whole “WvW doesn’t make us any money” issue.

GuardianOMS.8067:

Yeah, people have been doing that for over a year. How you’ve never heard of it, I don’t know. But yeah, what Saiyr said.

Never said I’d never heard of it, just pointing out an exploiting player when I see one. And if you two can’t think of anything useful to do inside an enemy citadel, perhaps you’re the ones who haven’t been playing long enough. As for the fact that it’s not useful at the end of a match, an exploit is an exploit is an exploit, no matter when in the match it’s being used. The fact that it’s Friday is completely irrelevant.

Lord Sarok.4369:

What do you mean keep it classy? Can people not Rez other people.

Hear the whoosh? That was the point going right over your head.

GuardianOMS.8067:

How long have you been playing this game? That’s nothing new.

Oh right, exploits are nothing new to video games, so I guess they must be ok. Cool.

and how he’s getting rezzed?

…keep it classy

Anyone from Hawk care to explain how he got in here?

Shameless second bump. For the love of kitten can we please get a dev to stop making worthless temporary content long enough to admit that they have no idea how to code so we can all go back to capping objectives for 0 credit without waiting for something to be done about it?

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

DeadlySynz.3471:

Arrowcarts have no problems with it.. so treat every other character with AoE capabilities the exact same way. Same as arrowcart, just different animation, problem solved.

Arrowcarts don’t have a lot of the animations that much of our AoE does and I also don’t think their calculations are as complicated.

I’m no dev, but as far as I understand how most online games work, the animation is done on the client-side and has little-to-no effect on how much stress the server is under while it processes the underlying math.

Rednik.3809:

I agree with removing aoe cap if Anet also remove buff cap, make retal working from dot application and increase retal damage x2-3. Wanna win AoE fight? Be smart and remove buffs first, or lay AoE smartly. Wanna mindlessly spam AoE? Here is your instagib, happy respawn, l2p.

I’m not sure about increasing retal by such a huge amount, since it’s quite potent already and would be more so without the AoE cap. Small incremental changes to see how it plays out are the way to go. Buffs/nerfs of ±100% or more are stupid from a balance perspective, but historically speaking, Anet disagrees with me there. Either way, buff removal kinda goes without saying, as at this point any group worth their salt is already dropping boon strip when they engage and the removal of the AoE cap would only make that more effective at stripping the retal as well.

Virtute.8251:

This is appropriate, fair, and I’m glad that it is that way. The 10 deserve every “Finish Them” spike they get for thinking that they would stack up and confront the 100 head on.

Like I said, the scenario was simplified for the sake of easy math, I would never expect a group of 10 that attacked head-on to end up winning, but this right here is why the two sides of this discussion will never be able to agree. Poor players believe that a blob of 100 people should be invincible to everything but another 100-man blob, no matter how bad their tactics are, and Anet has provided a game that caters to this mentality.

Skilled players believe that they should be able to wreck a map-zerg with a small force, provided their tactics and gameplay are sufficiently superior, but the AoE cap prevents this. No matter how much you outplay the 100-man zerg, the inability to damage more than 5 at a time makes defeating them with anything other than another zerg of comparable size all but impossible.

And now it’s time for “fun with math: zerg edition”

This scenario will assume a 100v10 fight. For simplicity’s sake, each member of both forces will drop a single ranged AoE and both forces will be perfectly stacked on their respective commanders.

100-man zerg drops AoE on 10-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. Each member of 10-man force gets hit by 50 AoEs. (probably insta-melted despite AoE cap)

10-man zerg drops AoE on 100-man force, each AoE hits 5 targets. 10-man zerg hits at most 50 of the 100, realistically even fewer. Half of the force is left untouched, the other half is hit by a single AoE each. (damage output completely crippled due to AoE cap)

So tell me, who does the AoE cap really benefit? The force that couldn’t output any damage because the opposing force was so large the cap absorbed all the damage, or the force that took almost no damage, because the cap allowed to them stack and negate all the damage coming from the smaller force?

Virtute.8251:

Silas.8630:

The way you talk about the AoE assumes that the small team will be standing in the center of the full AoE spike, which, if they’re using a remotely decent stragety, won’t be the case.

I assume nothing of the sort. In 80 vs 10, the members of the 80 are individually limited to damaging a maximum of 5 per each of their attacks. In that, the 10 currently have an advantage of moving amongst the 80 briefly without instantly dying. This advantage is reduced for every additional target that you allow players to damage.

Again, you’re writing with the assumption that the small group is standing in the large group’s AoE. If they’ve set up a proper ambush (ie: using superior tactics) they aren’t being hit by a single AoE because the large group didn’t know they were there in time to react.

Bogey.5423:

Except that 80 player zerg does not move as single unit that is inside 400 range, it has a tail, a long tail. When small group drops AoE on point, rest drop AoE on small group. Best you get out is that you can kill those that do take the bait and even that relies on fact that they do not know how to dodge out of AoE.

It doesn’t matter if they move as a single unit, they move stacked enough that a small, organized group would be able to kill the majority of the force with a concentrated spike. Once you kill the commander and those stacked directly on him, the disorganized tail isn’t usually that much of a problem to mop up. Even if you fail to clean up the tail, wiping 60 with 20 is sufficiently punishing for the large unskilled force of 80, even if the remaining 20 run for the hills, since in the meantime your other 3 groups of 20 have been off taking objectives without an opposing force to challenge them.

And again, the entire point of removing the AoE cap is to force the zerg to spread out and use tactics rather than numbers. If the majority of the zerg wipes because they were stacked within 400 range of each other, it encourages players to split into multiple smaller groups and use flanks and muli-pronged attacks to avoid the AoE spike.

As for the assumption that they don’t know how to dodge out of AoE, remember I said we’re talking about a skilled and organized force. That implies that they would have dropped boon strip and CC immediately prior to the damage spike to prevent them from dodging out.

Chorazin.4107:

Silas.8630:

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Like say this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mI250gU4Ct8

Haha, exactly. Even when they wipe, they take a crap ton of Kzar with them.

Imagine the following scenario:

A small group of players finds a good hiding place, sets up an ambush, and sends 1 player out to bait a large zerg. The large zerg takes the bait and runs past the ambush point, the smaller force drops a full AoE spike on their stacked map-zerg. With the current AoE limit, the small force’s AoE hits 5 of the 80 players in the zerg, achieving nothing before the zerg then turns and annihilates the small force. Without an AoE cap the small force’s AoE would have hit the full zerg, killing most of them and punishing them for poor situational awareness and taking bait.

Virtute.8251:

Excuse me:

If the AOE cap is removed, then that applies to everyone. Larger army still wins. You just drop even faster… eventually, when the server CPUs finish calculating all the damage, and your client CPUs finish calculating the AND YOU’RE DEAD.

AOE cap of 5 characters (including mobs) actually benefits small teams in excess of 5, while also allowing lesser than 5 to damage up to 5.

Next.

Your post makes it pretty clear that you don’t understand what we mean when we talk about small teams with decent tactics. The way you talk about the AoE assumes that the small team will be standing in the center of the full AoE spike, which, if they’re using a remotely decent stragety, won’t be the case.

Bogey.5423:

Silas.8630:

If you stand in all their AoE like a kitten and let them roll over you, sure. But it would also allow a smaller zerg to use decent strategy to destroy a mindless map-zerg.

Why would bigger zerg then stand in AoE like a kitten? I have to admit that I do not quite follow this logic.

because enormous map-zergs are, by definition, unwieldy and not agile. It’s impossible for a map-zerg to NOT stand in the red.

If you stand in all their AoE like a kitten and let them roll over you, sure. But it would also allow a smaller zerg to use decent strategy to destroy a mindless map-zerg.

Fuzzion.2504:

I saw BG’s new recruitment AD

Is fighting 1000 vs 1 Hard? Transfer to BG today ! "Where fighting 1,000,0000 vs 1 is guaranteed

To be fair, RISE started the night with 10 guys looking for a fight. It’s not our fault no one could muster a force to face us and we tend to attract a lot of pugs as the night goes on.

Special thanks to the DB in DBBL

Yup, happens to me occasionally as well. Unacceptable at this point, considering how long the game’s been out.

SFShinigami.2015:

Ascii.9726:

SFShinigami.2015:

Highlight of tonight, watching SoR go unmanned cap BGBL Garrison right in BG’s face.

I’m assuming you mean outmanned, an unmanned take of BG garrison with BG inside would be scary :P

Nope, unmanned, I’m pretty sure all the SoR guys were botting! BG was that bad!

Also, ty for catching that, it made me LOL, I’m so freaking tired. >.<

While your botting programs were running roughshod over our borderland, RISE was hosting karaoke night in the BG teamspeak. Unfortunately our questionable renditions of Celine Dion did little to slow the assault.

Jahn.7019:

Good fights, good video. What music is that? Saw a lot of RISE and WM in there.

It’s “Slay It” by Cryptex