Guild Wars 2

OriOri.8724:

Brown Fang Thump.9482:

What I’d like most in WvW are rewards scaled to opposition faced. For example, if a solo player engages 3 enemies and wins, that player’s loot should be greater than that of one of the 3 enemies if they win.

I think a single player who can capturer a map objective such as a camp or tower should be rewarded more than a player who is simply following a zerg of 30+ players who can’t help but win against undefended objectives. This kind of reward system would encourage players to approach the territory capture aspect of the game with more strategy without completely ruining the zerg experience for those who enjoy that sort of thing.

As an aside, I love that this type of feedback is being used to improve the game. Of course, I think the poll should be in the game (as they were during beta), where the maximum number of players can vote. There is a large population of players who don’t watch the forums; but, are interested in helping improve the game.

I think this is a really cool idea.

Obvious potential for abuse and conflict though..

“Hey you, stop following us, our loot sucks because of you”.

briggah.7910:

lil devils x.6071:

The problem with this is the suggestions for scoring improvement do not necessarily reflect what the WvW community want to see happen to scoring. SCoring improvements need to happen, just not the changes ANet is suggesting. If you focus scoring on PPK instead of PPT and stop rewarding PvE, PvD kill NPC get rewarded system and instead make it so the score is more based on PPK while fighting over objectives you solve numerous problems at once rather than make more. People who play outside of " prime time" timeszones should not have their efforts devalued, instead the scoring should be based on PPK while fighting over objectives without the use of siege and it will balance itself instead since there are obviously less players to PPK during the off hours and still the same number of PvE objectives.

It is the PvE objectives that are throwing off the score, remove that from the score to solve the primary issue. Make is so the better fighters win instead of reward lazy game play.

The current system rewards dying as fast as you can so you can run back and PvD something undefended or get a whole zerg to sit in a keep and siege hump instead of fighting over objectives with a fun fight IS the problem with scoring. Make it so the teams that do that will lose and the players actually using their characters to fight over objectives win instead. That is what it will take to make players see the system as fair and worth keeping score on. Players do not care about the score due to it being based on such lame game play. If you make it right and base it on PvP game play in a PvP game mode and people will start to care again.

What needs to be on the poll is :

• Make scoring based on PPK over objectives rather than rewarding PvE game play in a PvP game mode, and I do not see that option there.

The thing is players WANT these things fixed, they just may not want them the way you think they need fixed. In fact some of the proposed ideas may make most the players who do not play prime time leave the game all together, and if that is the case, you are doing it wrong again. It very well may be the opposite of what you think should happen. What players have asked for from the beginning is for the score to be able PvP and rewarding the better fighters rather than reward the lazy people instead.

No thank you for a PPK focused score.. That will make the zergs even bigger than the ones we have running around right now.. Players need to split up more if you ask me and this is one way to not make players split up.

Agreed there. But PPT in and of itself doesn’t really promote splitting up either. Megablobs are way too effective at capping stuff.

So maybe having PPK + PPT isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because some PPK prevents that servers just PvD to victory, since enemies will attack them.

Mightybird.6034:

Sirendor.1394:

Mightybird.6034:

Obviously the class you play is the class that takes the most skill.

Nope cause I suck on elementalist, and I still think it requires high mechanical knowledge and skill.

It hurts my head too. :p

noseminer.7034:

Suggestions
1. Add a temporary buff to wvw reward track gain when joining / playing outnumbered.
2. Change the wvw icon at the top of the screen when your team has an outnumbered matchup so people know to get in there!
3. Make a reward at the end of the week for 1st, 2nd, and 3rd that gets scaled by your participation over the week so that people want to win!

Hey nose. Those are really good suggestions. Not sure which ones I like more.

Draxjon.1790:

Build Templates?, anyone… ?huu ? nooh ??

That’s more of a game-wide QoL feature. So not really something that the WvW team would be working on. That of course doesn’t change I would really love Build templates.

Nice!! /15 characters

Meh, moa on core mesmer is fine, leave it alone. I nearly always take mass invisibility over moa because of the huge cooldown on moa.

I’ll repeat: the problem is with double moa; i.e. Continuum Split + Elites.

I appreciate the effort you’ve done ronpierce, and I do think that your suggestions are on the right track… however they are not enough.

For example: thief getting stolen skills twice… honestly that will not bring them at the same level as daredevil. And just because mesmer gets Distort and chrono doesn’t, chrono will still be stronger overall. Same applies for Berserker not getting the normal burst skills, but only his berserker burst skills.

- So if I say it’s not enough, what needs to be done to make it enough?

In this thread and many other threads there have been suggestions of making the ‘base class’ trait line LOCKED for elite specialisations. That way they don’t have access to it, so they give up stuff for picking their elite specialisations. Elite specialisations have too much synergy with the base class trait lines.

For example trickery is an awesome trait line, so is daredevil, makes sense that daredevil loses it. Same applies for all the other classes.

Mightybird.6034:

Obviously the class you play is the class that takes the most skill.

Nope cause I suck on elementalist, and I still think it requires high mechanical knowledge and skill.

Ravenmoon.5318:

I don’t get the complaint about HoT builds being overtuned, on the video you basically implode anyone with a mind wack xD

TBH, the enemy players he showed us were trash, and he knows his bursts.

Great video btw. I commented, liked and subbed.

Jong.5937:

Sirendor.1394:

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Alpine Borderlands will be rotated back in with the next release (not hotfix.)

Will ABL and DBL be on a time rotation? That would really be the best. Some people prefer the one, others prefer the other, so it would probably be fine if you swapped between them every few weeks (month at the most?).

Anet have said there will be a rotation. They have suggested borders may be swapped every 3 months, but that is not finally decided yet. Personally I’d prefer a much more frequent swap, even random each week, but we will have to see.

Okay thanks for the reply. Yeah I’d rather see frequent swaps too.

Trigr.6481:

Adding a cast time on a shatter is a pretty ludicrous thing to ask for. Shatter by design should always be instant. There are plenty of ways to fix moa without gutting the functionality of cs because of one elite.

Ideas N Stuff

- Reduce the duration of moa, “I suggested by half in my thread”
- Make it stun breakable “a little heavy handed but just throwing out ideas”

Gravity well and time warp are lethal sure, however there really isn’t a comparison between the three in terms of a turn around once the attack successfully lands.

Countless

The problem is not moa, so don’t nerf moa. The problem is with CS basically giving you a reset of the fight and the ability to use certain skills twice.

As someone else said, CS is inherently unbalanced, because it has the crazy timeshift and it doesn’t have to give anything up compared to core mesmer.

Jong.5937:

I’m not sure the maps are too big now, tbh. The routes just take a bit of learning, as they did in ABls back in the day.

The simple fact is ANet have never worked out what to do with the middle of the borders. Everything they have tried has (largely) failed. Sure the ruins had some admirers but they were still largely neglected except when there was a daily! Actually the shrines in DBl, although admittedly placed differently, are far more popular for the buffs they provide.

Anet definitely need a rethink about the middle of ABl and DBl. maybe 4th time will be a charm.

A good point. Maybe there could be some sort of recreative combat zone there? An arena?

vana.5467:

I think it was fully warranted. It should have been accompanied by 50 other nerfs, though.
For True Shot specifically, it had a 2.5 damage modifier (to put that in perspective, backstab is 2.4). The current 2.0 is much more reasonable, but honestly still quite high by pre-HoT standards.

These new easy-to-land, super high damaging skills on short cooldowns are a disgusting violation of the game (yes, I’m brine-level salty about this).

Yep. Too easy, too high damage, too low cooldown. The game should be less about a spamfest of whoever gets off the most high damaging skills, it should be about timing your attacks (like it was to a high degree before HoT).

gennyt.3428:

Anybody else really annoyed by fire keep’s layout ? Just a sprawling, underground mess to navigate.

Agreed there. I like the Air keep a lot more, though I still dislike all the verticality going on there. It’s still too much.

briggah.7910:

zengara.8301:

Second……It is amazingly wrong in every way to tell a player how to play a game……no matter the subject…..Not saying casual game, casual players……but yeah game promotes casual gaming, so forcing players to do your version of gameplay based on whatever abnormal mindset you got for that game……really does not matter……

Pretty sure anet just forced a whole bunch of people to play a different way.. Zerg here .. Zerg there.. Zerg everywhere

Not necessarily. I know there are more zergs now than before; I was on vabbi, most people a zerg ever had was 20 there. But I am still doing roaming/small scale whenever I can. Had some nice fights on riverside border yday evening, wasn’t more than 10 people fighting per side.

I r8 gr8 m8, sorry I’m l8.

1. Replace ‘Distort’ with ‘Continuum Split’ when you take Chronomancer specialisation
2. Continuum Split no longer affects Elite skills
3. Continuum Split gets a cast time which can be interrupted
4. ???
5. Balanced

Crrrystal.6845:

You’re literally the worst kind of player in this game. Go to EotM or a desert map if you can’t handle people actually engaging in fights that don’t focus on map objectives.

This exactly.

Lacuda.8543:

They made the Obsidian Sanctum Arena explicitly for duelers. Come on guys, the EBG queue is through the roof on most servers right now. It really is becoming a matter of griefing if one of the reasons the queue is so high is because of the mass amount of players detrimentally dueling in mid-map locations.

We run all our zergs with a kill on sight rule of thumb for duelers. If you guys wanna do it, go to OS. That, or go to the wonderfully unused Oasis sections of the BL maps. Nobody, not even zergs go there.

Hahaha, sorry what?

I don’t care if duelers fight on EB. Everyone is free to play the way they want. By all means try to kill the duelers, I bet they’ll take of few of “your zerglings” down with them.

I got 1 weapon chest and 1 armor chest, bought a greatsword and heavy leg armour with them. Converted to Zojja in mystic forge… profit. Also made 4 other armour pieces with armoursmithing, which is quite doable if you play some PvE once in a while (fractals and whatnot).

Tyler Bearce.3427:

Alpine Borderlands will be rotated back in with the next release (not hotfix.)

Will ABL and DBL be on a time rotation? That would really be the best. Some people prefer the one, others prefer the other, so it would probably be fine if you swapped between them every few weeks (month at the most?).

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

While Ele has a ton of skills, it just does not seem complex as opposed to just mastering rotations. Half the time I am fighting eles, I feel like they are just going through the motions.

I have seen some crazy good elementalists that did not run standard rotations through the skills. Zerk eles (S/F – S/D) arguably the hardest because they die so easily but when they get their bursts down… they’re amazing. Also there used to be some really good staff elementalists.

lmperdigao.2567:

I totally hated then before. Now they’re…uh, okay. Playable. I can have fun. But I still like ABL way more.

Yeah I also really prefer ABL all the way, even though DBL are playable now.

Kanebrake.6192:

I think the key is that the increased population makes it much more enjoyable but when that dips down again I don’t think it’s going to be any different than before.

I have the same opinion. It’s good when there’s people. Yesterday played there at 11pm and we didn’t really find any good fights.

Leaving all elite specs out of the picture for now..

I always thought engineer and elementalist required the most mechanical knowledge and skill.

Thief requires timing and a lot of awareness of map/battle, mesmer also does. Both these classes have high risk/reward, since they die easily but also can dish out big damage to show for it.

Regon Phoenix.8215:

Or, wait for it, wait for it, you support the game you play? How about it, buddy? You get core game for free, it wasn’t free a year ago, and you still dare to complain?
How about core game would once again become buy to play, together with heart of thorns? Don’t buy – don’t play at all. Would be way less whiners around here.

?
We bought core game mate. Free accounts can’t post on forums.

And it’s not about the money. It’s about PvP being balanced and diverse, which it isn’t.

Sarika.3756:

Yaksvil Rock.

Or short Yaksville. Only for swag yak.

The only cases where cannon manages to kill people is when those people are already in a fight with other people… and if they run into cannon range during a fight it’s their own fault.

Also inbe4 OP says “cannon camper fanbois”: I don’t sit on cannons, it’s not a reward, because you know what? Going out there and fighting is a lot more fun than sitting on a cannon.

Pros:

• More people to fight with and against
• WvW alive nearly all day (the eternal war is back in truth)

Cons:

• Queues: I expect them to diminish a lot
• Lag: no lag for me, but I heard others had it
• Server identity loss: genuine and probably the most important con
• Diversity: I still have a lot of chance to roam/small scale on Desolation, but it doesn’t seem this is the case on every server.

Balance:

• I think the balance is positive: having population currently outweighs any of the other ‘collateral damage’.
• I do think they can keep the world linking system AND reinstate some form of server identity.
• No hotfixes for queues and lag possible, but they are variable, so should not keep anyone out of WvW indefinitely.

joneirikb.7506:

Something I’ve suggested before in regards to “Server”.

To have a “/server” channel in the chat, this would be great for recruitment in WvW, to help people find players from the same server to join guilds etc, and not end up joining a new guild every time a Link is changed. Also good for calling for help in LA, or recruiting in PvE maps etc. It is still fully possible to disable it in chat options as normal.

A WvW home non combat map, similar to HotM map. Example pull out Citadel from Alpine and just make it into a small own stand alone map with all the features and functionality you would expect. Encourage people to use this as your “on call/demand city convenience” and encourage pve players to use it for TP, bank, crafting etc since it doesn’t affect queue’s on the actual WvW maps. This will give people a “home” place, a server specific place to recruit and look for people/guilds. And a place to Idle in WvW even during reset. Also good way for people to organize to run through portals at reset etc.

Cool ideas. Really some of the better ones I have seen so far.

Well written, on point analysis, and I think you’re right about 99%.

But even if all of this is indeed correct, the dilemma for the balancing team is: kitten off their broader HoT consumers who have gotten used to the damage, sustain and CC levels they are seeing; or kitten off those who think HoT needs nerf in order to balance the game.

marksman.6453:

T1 Also appreciates your co-operation in the following matters:

1. If you find duelers – interrupt and kill them. Remember If Its Red, Its Dead
2. Roaming groups now consist of 20-30. Get in line
3. Queues are just an excuse for you not to EotM. We need the supply! Do if for the realm!
4. If you see a Tactivator that is not on cooldown, USE IT! We all want to see amazing airship effects, and the WvW and Chill factor is just too good.
5. You have your own build and comp? We don’t need that. Run the most cancerous builds and don’t use TS. We want skillful play.

Enjoy your stay in T1. If you have any qualms, keep them to yourself.
Any issue will be handled by our staff. They will promptly carry your opinions to the shredder.

Thank you for your cooperation

FogLeg.9354:

You can still defend, use siege, roam, use tactics, fight in smaller groups if you want. I can. Not sure if someone, or something is stopping you.

Yep. I went in solo the last days since World Linking and no problems at all for roaming (my favorite playstyle).

I don’t do PPT though, so don’t know if it’s any different. I bet you could go for a tower or something and defend it with your guild?

Had another WvW trip today, about 2 hours playtime on EB Deso+Vabbi. A lot of fun. Our commander died, but he was doing a poor job anyways, and then we played without commander and held SM till we were attacked by both Riverside and Elona Reach (and we repelled them but Elona capped when we went to defend our keep from Riverside /cry).

Skill lagg hasn’t been an issue, neither was the fights being too blobby. We maintained a loose formation, with a little room for field fights. Pirate ship meta seems to be decreased slightly (pushes were possible), but CC/AoE still need some tweaking to make it more melee-viable.

I don’t think you can ‘transfer’ them from one player to another… aren’t they accountbound or something?

Another one that I kind of like.
Far Shiverpeaks + Underworld: Underpeaks (the deep dark caves under the peaks of tyria – sort of like ‘Moria’)

Most other worlds aren’t too easy to combine. See here my meagre attempts.

• Ring of Fire + Whiteside Ridge: ‘Ridge of Fire’, ‘Ring of White’ (feels like nonsense)
• Aurora Glade + Blacktide: ‘Aurora Tide’ (magic!), ‘Black Aurora (kitten)’
• Gandara + Ruins of Surmia: ‘Ruins of Gandara’ (makes some sense, Gandara is a fortress after all), ‘Gandurmia’ (Debbi #2)
• Augury Rock + Fort Ranik: ‘Fort Rock’ (sounds imposing), ‘Augory Fort’ (wut?), ‘Rock Ranik’ (is this a metal band?)
• Vizunah Square + Arborstone: ‘Arbor Square’ (a square with trees?), ‘Square of Stone’ (Stonehedge minus circle)
• Drakkar Lake + Miller’s Sound: ’Drakkar’s Sound’ (roar), ‘Miller Lake’, ‘Sound Lake’ (magic #2)

I’ve seen many valuable suggestions in this thread so far. I hope the devs keep an eye on this too. Thanks for keeping the discussion civilised!

Also, I think I speak for most of the WvW players when I say the point of identity is not so much tribalism but rather distinctiveness. The difference may seem moot, but I think we can find a couple of rather widespread examples of ‘distinctiveness’ versus. ‘negative tribalism’. For example, before there was talk of server merges, within each server there are many guilds. Often between the guilds there is a sense of competition while still belonging to the same side. Players of different guilds can and do mix on occasion, but usually they prefer to play with their guilds. But on a server view, these guilds all cooperate to beat the enemy. Even enemy servers aren’t necessarily viewed in any other way. There have been historic ‘enmities’ between servers, and people from both sides descending in flaming. However, many players from opposing servers respect eachother. The common place where you find this inter-server respect is the dueling culture.

I think if you try to incorporate this sense of ‘distinctiveness’ between the host and guest, it will reap more positive fruits than negative.
Some suggestions: Have Guest servers appear as ‘Allies’ in the WvW UI? Right now it doesn’t show very clearly that there even is a Guest server involved. There could be an undertitle in the WvW UI saying “Desolation – Reinforced by Vabbi” Another idea is having a server tag and or a different name colour for allied server and people of the same server.

(These ideas are based on what I read in this thread, and there are more elaborate suggestions to be found)

Erthor Skeven.1680:

Lord Kuru.3685:

Let me try:

snip

Wow, you must be really fun at parties!

What he said.

Lord kuru: such creative, much wow, so names

Nidome.1365:

Desolation + Vabbi = Vabbolation

FogLeg.9354:

Desolation + Vabbi = Debbi

Not sure which one I like more. Fog, you’re a genius. :p Let our foes cower in fear of the mighty Debbi!

+1 would definitely be a change that prevented a lot of cursing

Virtute.8251:

sionnach.5391:

Server pride is unique to this game mode.

Realm pride has always been a central feature of RvR. Server pride in WvW is as much a kittenization of realm pride as WvW is of RvR. This current form of it—the ever parroted “game mode”—is weakest in every one of the ways that would lend credibility to strongly held pride that approaches foolish patriotism.

sionnach.5391:

I think it’s especially strong on the lower tiers, where you develop really strong bonds over the years and have had to fight against wild odds and put up with a lot of guilds coming and going. So, I don’t think it’s misplaced at all – I think it’s important and it keeps us coming back to this particular game over others.

I agree in principle but not in fact. The facts of WvW design do not match the intent of your principle, and I believe that opinions to the contrary are foolish.

Jayne.9251:

Virtute.8251:

Essays aren’t changing the fact that stubborn small town pride is misplaced in this, here and now.

If anything, the responses here are a great indication the community ties and server identification are still incredibly important motivators as to why people still play.

Sure. It’s anthropologically interesting in the same way that any tribalism is.

Antropologically interesting… Virtute, will you please get off your high horse?
1. Low tier playstyle is just as good as high tier playstyle, it is just different.

2. Yes, we have strong bonds in low tier servers, and that is especially because we see the same few people in WvW from day to day. High tiers in that regard are by their nature less prone to become a joyful community.

3. In the lower tiers those players with the same mindset gathered, those who weren’t interested moved away. Most of my friends who did move to another server, moved after WvW became dead, which was the result of HoT.

Also, I really do not think the ‘world linking’ is as kittenome people say it is, but I do want to see some changes to preserve our own server’s identity.

We want to cooperate with the bigger server, but we don’t want to be part of the bigger server.

I am having a quite good time in ‘Vabbolation’ atm (some player even named his character Vabbolation, no joke).

There are zergs and there’s a big queue, it’s true, but so far nothing that bad. I have gotten enough opportunities at smaller fights and picking off stragglers in zerg fights was also pretty good.

Also shout-out to Deso roamers! Hoping to fight along you guys more in the future.

Well I have been thinking, what if the guest server players just unite themselves in one guild? That way they can still see who’s from their server community, and there doesn’t need to be a way to distinguish the players from the developer’s side.

Chris Barrett.3280:

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from.

Thanks for answering, FogLeg. That’s exactly correct. The biggest motivator for showing only the “host” world in enemy nameplates was to help identify enemies quicker. With only two other world names showing up in a given week, it’s easier to quickly figure out which color team they belong to. Since world linking supports any number of “guest” worlds linked to a single host, it would potentially get pretty confusing to see a big zerg of nameplates with any number of world names, and figure out the composition of one team versus another.

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

Thank you for the extensive answer!

I agree that it would start to get a bit confusing as to who belongs with who when there’s multiple server names. And I also agree that it is probably better to have people united between the host and guest servers.

However, I personally have always taken some pride in guild first, server second. Vabbi for example has long been a roamer paradise. FoW and UW for example are also known for their roaming and small guilds. Would be sad to just see that disintegrate into the ‘mighty zergs of the high tiers’.

If possible, there should be some way of distinguishing between the two servers, so the identity doesn’t just disappear and the low tier servers aren’t simply a ‘buffer’ or ‘reinforcement’ of the high tier server.

Also, this is my only concern for the moment. This situation is a lot better than the previous situation where some servers barely could muster forces.

Puck.9612:

Chris Barrett.3280:

As for not seeing an allied player’s guest (actual) world name anywhere, we wanted to be sure world linking wouldn’t create any avoidable friction between players. One of the major goals we have with GW2 is always making sure encounters with other players are positive experiences (my paraphrasing). So anything we could do to let guests blend in and only stand out if they felt like calling themselves out as such is likely to be a good thing toward that goal.
Plus, there actually just aren’t that many places in the UI where we show allied players’ world names, so this was an easy goal to keep for this side of things.

Helping maintain guest world pride is a little tougher. We could show each player their world’s name in more areas of the UI, regardless of if they’re on a guest world or not, but this may cause communication issues, with some maps and areas of maps being named after worlds.

I’m open to hearing any feedback people have on little ways we could improve the feeling of world linking, while maintaining unambiguous communication for players and avoiding any negative “tribalism.”

Anvil Yak.

Vabbilation.

FogLeg.9354:

They all show host server names. I was fighting against UW players today and they all had FSP tags now. I knew them only from their guild tags so, nothing will show which smaller server they from. In every aspect, it IS merger, just it would be possible to repair servers in the future (looks very unlikely to me unless there will be massively more WvW players to create new tiers again).

Ok, I was just curious. So in principle they are still seperate servers, but practically the guest server got swallowed up. Aww I will miss seeing Underworld and Fissure of Woe names, both used to be great servers.

For EU yeah, not yet for NA. See stickied post up top.

Are players whose server got merged with another still shown to enemy players as ’’[Guest server name] Invader" or are they now “[Host server name] Invader”?

MaximillianVonSchatten.6278:

Kayhel.5074:

Well for the first time in 2 years of play on the Underworld server there is now a huge 120+ queue, this is certainly a New experience. This may be the norm on some servers but it has a downside the more casual user ( like myself ) with limited hours of play seem to be faced with a dilemma .. wrong choice of words let me re-phrase , Zero chance of ever playing WvW. Am I missing something because I fail to spot how this is better?

You have a 120 queued on all 4 maps?

Most people prefer EB over borders, naturally.