Guild Wars 2

I had another thread regarding this, but I can’t find it.

Don’t through each skill and adjust the noise level. It will never work, as “noise” is cumulative depending on the number of people. There have been times where the boss is completely obscured by skills because there are 40 players attacking it. This strategy to this real problem will never work.

Instead, give all skills a separate alpha channel. Any skill not your own would be affected by this alpha channel and would be adjustable in the options menu. On top of that, any skill that is a combo field, would have an alpha que, so that the current combo field is displayed fully with any combo field on top that is next in line is faded, but still seen.

Done.

OK, starting with the simple fixes. I see y’all brought back WPs to the side keeps. That’s a great thing. Now, what’s the deal with the very simple fix of bringing back reset to Friday night, NA?

I play frontline necro. Since HoT, I don’t have much of an issue soloing people, but there’s always someone better than you, or a build that will trump you. Condis usually wreck me. I’d change up a few skills for roaming, but I just don’t want to be bothered with another set of armor. There is no build that can win against everything.

The build you posted is waaaaaay to defensive. The role of a necro is dps. You don’t need nearly that much defvence, even in the front of a zerg. If you think you do, it really is a l2p issue. Roaming is all about dps, all about killing your enemy before they kill you. If you’re tanky, then you just won’t die as fast, but you will die, and you won’t be able to kill them.

Also, Vamperic Presence is a must for any WvW necro, unless you just never run in a group.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vRAQJAWRnMbCt0g10AebC0biFvBb6iFASAxJwIYFkqDECGUA-TlSBABUcIAMTJ4VK/8U9gIuAAEt/Ae6CwUFnFeAAAcEAIFQRatA-w

Runes of the reaper and trooper are also good, but you’ll need to swap some armor for zerk to make up for the loss of power/precision.

I also just want to re-iterate, the new maps are beautiful. It’s obvious that there has been a ton of attention to detail over every inch of the maps. Not just ascetically, but game design wise. I don’t want you developers to forget that, even though many of us are giving you a lot of criticism, and much of it negative, that we don’t appreciate the work that did go into this map.

I personally love the distinctions between the zones. I love that the scouts have little huts or lean-tos or whatever. I love that the camps have barns or are spawned out of thin air by Asuran technology. I love that each tower and keep is different.

I only hope that you will take much of the rational, and sensible criticism to heart and make the changes that are needed to keep WvW alive, otherwise, there will be few players left to enjoy this hard work.

Agree.

There is a huge wall between the center and air keep. This means that, if you don’t own it, one needs to approach it from either the north or south.

The map, in general is designed to be run in a circle with only a few spokes to the middle. There needs to be more points of entry to the center so that we can more easily get from point a to b, no matter where those points are.

Since they nerfed the heck out of barricades, the northern towers play no importance at all, except for 10 PPT.

The keeps are a bit too large. Each one has 3 outer gates and a ton of breakable walls. This means that there is far too much real estate to place defensive siege for outer. Also, by the time a scout actually finds where the attackers are, and the rest of the defenders arrive, outer is usually breached or about to. This means that inner is the only thing to spend time defending.

The northern keep can have treb placements to defend outer and inner gates. N and S gates at fire keep can not have defensive trebs. I haven’t spent too much time in air yet.

Turrets need to go. First off, we want to fight people, not the environment. Second, they are hugely unbalanced. The fire turrets are a minor annoyance, screw with our cleanses, and just prevent us from waypointing if need be. The air turrets actually kill people if knocked to their death. That’s a pretty big discrepancy. Get rid of em.

The oasis event needs to go. It’s just all around dumb. And I don’t mean for the pve aspect. Yes, there’s a lot of people who hate it for that, but I’m talking strategy and game mechanics.

First off, it’s overpowered. So much so, it’s one of the reasons people don’t care about defending anything. Second, it usually just favors whoever has the larger force. Third, it’s not a comeback system, it’s a defensive event. Here’s what I mean. If a loosing server happens to win the event, great! Now they can enter enemy stuff more easily. However, the same holds true for the winnng server. Sure, their stuff is borken, but now the second place servers stuff is broken too, so they can rush that and keep the 2nd place server down even more. That, or just repair their own stuff and let the 3rd place server take the 2nd place server’s stuff. Either way, whether they win the oasis event, or loose it, the first place server wins.

Oh, and spending the next 20 minutes repairing the gates, and the walls next to the gates, is really fun.

Bring back points per stomp and the ruins. There’s no reason you can’t have both ruins and shrines. It is one of the only things that leveled the playing field between a terrible blob server and a skilled fighting force.

Waypoints must be brought back. I’ve said this before, and predicted it in beta. The current maps encourage zerging for many reasons. One of the biggest is the time it takes to get from the southern towers to a keep, especially the North. Considering the north keep has the advantage of a waypoint, it heavily favors them for defending. This means you need to bring all your forces with you, to be sure to overwhelm, have as much supply as possible to blitz the gates and have offensive siege if need be, and to have people res if some die. The same holds true if you’re defending the side keeps. If you get close to wiped, it’s over. Without a waypoint, it’s just too long of a run back, and there’s no way to get into the lords room without getting stuck in a choke that the attackers are at. They should be part of the T3 upgrade. The same is true for the towers. There’s no reason why these structures should have a waypoint right away, except to facilitate travel. But the other reason for this is that it will give people something of value to fight for.

Along those lines, and this is not ubiquitous with the new map, but with HoT, auto upgrades have to go. Keep the good: the set upgrade path and supply not being tied to upgrading. Get rid of the bad: make upgrades dependent on yaks. No yaks = no upgrades. This gives an importance to camps and yaks, as well as something to work towards regarding the keeps and towers.

Without a sense of ownership, there is less motivation to fight over it.

Auto-upgrades promotes zergs. I don’t want to bother explaining this. It’s been explained in countless threads.

Guild halls promote zergs. Again, doesn’t need an explanation

Building a maze-like map does not break up zergs. Having multiple objectives that have importance and relative ease of access does and giving more power to small groups does. That way, zergs have to make a choice; either they can stay a blob and take one thing at a time, but loose in points because they are not split up to defend other objectives. This is the balance that the old boarderlands, and EB succeeded at.

Well, to the op, I partially call BS. I don’t see how you could have accomplished the clearing event to get the guild hall with 2 people. You have to have recruited some friends to help with that.

2nd, most of the guild missions require at least 3 people, so again, you and your wife are SOOL.

3rd, there’s more to just obtaining a guild hall to the game. WvW in particular is totally screwed, as our upgrades and buffs are directly tied to not only guild upgrades, but scribing, which is tied to guild upgrades. There’s no way a small guild can compete with large guilds considering the hundreds of gold worth of items and the massive amount of intagables you can not even buy with gold needed for upgrades.

Oh, and lets not forget the fact that many of us had guilds with everything unlocked for years, but it’s now all gone and will never be accessible.

So, yeah, some of us are allowed to complain and are perfectly justified in doing so.

Notsoperky.2348:

coglin.1867:

Random.4691:

coglin.1867:

Random.4691:

Why would I give useful info ? Useful info has been plastered all over the WvW forums some of which I have given. The thread topic is a question, I answered that question, providing any meaningful info at this point is moot, they will do whatever they want to do without regard of what the players are asking for or warning against. They proved this when they let none WvW players test the map because they were streamers over the people who could have actually given proper feedback on our behalf. But ya let’s let Doc Got Game and his casual minions who spend most of their time playing other games or PvE’ing test the WvW map because that will surely help provide real feedback.

I cannot speak to the others you personally attack but, I am a primary WvWer, and not a streamer. My guild only has 2 who stream, they do it for fun. 60 of us tested the map.

You are speaking about things that you know absolutely nothing about.

When you refuse to offer productive feedback, even when asked, all that suggest to me is that you do not honestly care about the game, it’s, state, or possibly improving it.

Re-read what I post, you and your friends were not the only ones there and judging by your posts in the past I have a hard time finding you would have given any productive feedback.

What does arenas and GvG have to do with WvW, see Chaba’s response. Lastly once again the topic is a question, the question was answered. If you don’t like my answer that is your prerogative but try to realize not everyone has a carbon copy answer that you will agree with which means all answers or opinions are valid.

I never mention taking umbridge with your answer to the direct question of the threads title. I simply corrected you on your misinformation you posted about who was or was not invited.

I’m glad we finally established that 60 people from your guild tested the map.

Now we know who to blame for the terrible map- or did your feedback get completely ignored like anyone else who said anything other than ‘my god, how great this map is for wvw’?

Perhaps therein lies the problem- they invited a huge guild to test the map without giving any thought to smaller worlds or smaller coverage.

Random has posted a lot of feedback, and the post before the one you highlighted detailed exactly what has happened.

No amount of ‘your opinion doesn’t matter’ and ‘your opinion doesn’t reflect the majority’ (who says? you? that’s just expressing a non-factual opinion at the same level) will cover up the bare fact, which is that for most servers (apart from yours, apparently, but then again you helped test it..) the new BL delivered the exact opposite of what attracted players to wvw, and as a result they are dead.

Trying to cover that up and make it seem like everything is fine when one person posts a video of a 5 man ‘raid’ in a BL just reeks of desperation.

Maybe your post is sarcasm. Hard to tell.

I participated in the betas, as did many of my guildies and many of the people in T1. If you go back and read the feedback, almost everyone predicted exactly what’s happening. Look at my post history; you will see. It doesn’t matter if you’re in a big guild or not, because big guilds don’t raid 24/7. We set up havocs during the afternoon or during off raid days.

This stuff isn’t rocket science, and all one needs to do is look at what the incentives are and you can see where people will go. The incentives were there in beta, but the devs didn’t listen. Well, sort of. Some do. We were there to test what they already made. The current system incentives fighting. This is something we all want, and asked for. However, that’s not what WvW is all about. It is more than just about fighting. After all, they gave us an arena in the OS and guild halls. If you just want to just fight, go there and GvG. WvW is about fighting AND objectives. Otherwise, why even have a score?

I think everyone agrees that the no gold cost and auto-path of the upgrades is a great thing that got rid of trolls. Having supply not tied to upgrades is also a good thing, and helped with troll situations. So take these 2 aspects and get rid of the bad: auto upgrades. Make yaks important again. If yaks don’t get in, structures don’t upgrade. That will make yaks and camps important again.

There are all kinds of issues that were predicted, some things, we were flat out lied to about, like with guild halls, but that’s just one example.

I used to roam, which usually turned into a small 5-10 man havoc squad about every other afternnoon. I haven’t done that once.

I stopped regular WvW for a very brief time due to the crashes, but the 64 bit client solved that.

I find I don’t play as much because the new BLs have turned into a ghost town, except for reset night. I can only PvD for so long. Usually an hour and a half is my limit. If we have gotten into fights, we’re usually outnumbered 2 to 1, so I end up going to EB for more even fights and closer objectives.

My passion for WvW is waning.

Clones and illusions don’t do damage to treasure mushrooms.

There are a lot of issues with WvW right now, but this one seems like an easy fix. It’s been a few weeks now. You’ve had your time to do whatever needed to be done. The 64 bit client is out, and is absolutely necessary for playing WvW. Thanks for that? Works great for me. So, do the simple, and right thing, and bring reset back to Friday night so we can have our WvW weekend back, please. What’s going on with it?

OK, now I see what people are complaining about. I started on the 2nd tier yesterday. It’s one more thing. Oh, and one more thing. One more. Just one more. So far, I must have dropped about 700 G worth of stuff. That’s whether I bought it, or what I had and is worth on the TP. And I still am not done. This is crazy. I wish I knew exactly what was going to be needed ahead of time so I could have just compared prices and said, screw this.

Like many posters have said, this was supposed to be a journey. It’s obviously a gold sink and a material sink for things like mithril and elder wood in order to take that stuff out of the economy.

Here’s an idea: have more than one type of metal or wood node in all the end zone maps. That will take out the rarity of these things, rather than punishing those of us who would like to craft something by using us as your tool. Because at the end of the day, when enough time passes, your’re going to still have the same problem.

I have no idea what it is, but whenever the center event spawns, there’s massive skill lag. I mean, skills don’t activate for 30 seconds. Everyone rubber bands. Massive. As soon as the event is over, back to “normal.” It doesn’t matter where you are on the map; doesn’t matter how many people are around you; it doesn’t matter if your in a fight or not.

You guys gotta look into this.

That’s pretty much it. Animation goes up slopes, but no damage. There’s a lot of slopes in the game. This needs to be fixed. Thanks

New update. Since I love WvW, I played again tonight. My guild is raiding. After 15 minutes got into a second fight, and crash; restart my computer. I hear TS and a couple other people crash. Seriously.

I look at the patch notes and there’s like 50 things related to fixing crashes. Why are you stopping the patches?

Wow, all you people complaining about the mats needed to craft precursors. Do you have any idea what’s needed to make a legendary?

Lord Kuru.3685:

Argos Helios.4965:

I’d just like to know if the numerous and very real problems that have been raised in the hundreds of threads over the last 2 weeks, and 2 years will ever get noticed by Anet. We all know what these problems are…

Please just say yes or no Anet…Stop stringing us on with that loose statement that the entire live dev team will work on WvW after HoT release. Will WvW get attention?

Just want to know so I can give up building for the future or not. Most of us were kinda expecting some kind of resolution with HoT release…not a bunch of changes to make things, much, much worse.

Think about this: Do you really even want them to focus their attention on WvW? Look at the damage they’ve to WvW with the limited amount of attention they have given it:

• failed bloodlust area,
• failed eotm,
• failed new BL,
• failed golem event (yes, this minor compared to the others, but is an example of how out of touch they are)

All failed because they refuse to acknowledge that their vision of WvW is completely different from their customers’ vision.

If they do put their full attention on WvW, are they going to completely change their vision? That’s really far fetched. More like they will continue their failed vision, except this time with the full force of the company behind them. Not a good thing.

I think bloodlust was a great addition to WvW.

WvW is dead for me until they fix the server performance, lower the population cap, and debug, or whatever combination is needed to make large scale fights playable again and stop a ton of people crashing. Can’t have too much of an opinion on the new maps when we can’t even play.

I see you’re making an effort to continue working on this.

I have no idea how feasible it is programming wise, but If there could be an option to only see your own attacks as well as whichever combo field is currently active, and get rid of everything else, that would probably be the bare bones of what’s needed. Perhaps there could be a second option to have the next combo field in the stack to be faded out to let the players know what is about to come next.

Another idea is to have some combination of the above but have all particle, or non combo field animations have their own alpha channel that can be set with a slider in the graphics options to let the players control how visible all the “noise” is to the important combo fields.

OK, so I see that the hammers get destroyed if you are too close to a structure. That makes sense and is probably inteneded. However, they also get destroyed on inclines, like hills or stairs. That’s broken and needs to be fixed.

2nd big fight, 1 server vs another, crashed about 10 seconds in. I’m in T1, and WvW is dead on the new maps because of this. Getting real old.

First kittening fight tonight, about 30 allies, froze my computer. GG

An update. Defeated Modinir again. I know I saw the trophy show up as a drop on the side, but it didn’t show up as an achievement completed on the side and it isn’t in my collection.

It’s obvious you guys raised the population cap.

It isn’t working.

Your servers can’t handle it. Anytime I’m in a very large fight, especially with 3 servers, but often just 2, I crash. It’s not just me, as reports in TS of many people crashing.

Enough! It’s been over a week. Lower the population cap or fix your servers. You just got a ton of money from the expansion.

I’m sick of it.

I’m on the first tier for my pre-cursor.

So far, “Research Destruction,” is bugged. The NPCs have no idea what they’re doing and stare endlessly at the enemy through a locked door, the one at the end of the hall with the turrets. I’ve tried it a few times. Hangs up here each time.

Did the whole event chain from the start for Modinir’s Ruin. The trophy didn’t drop from the chest.

Spent about 6 hours on the last map, did the event, wandered around for a few hours afterwards, couldn’t find one. It was reported in map chat that someone found one, but disappeared soon after. I don’t know if it was a troll, or if they are only present for a few minutes. If that’s the case, it will be nearly impossible to actively find one.

That’s pretty much it. Get on a full map, events looks like it’s going well, might actually win, and crash. kitten No event for you. Getting real old.

I do think a lot of you are too black and white on this issue. These nodes are brilliant and a great solution to multiple problems in WvW.

The biggest: it evens out the node distribution that was horrible on the old maps. For example, they had copper ores near your home BL spawn and they would progressively get better the farther south your go. However, the enemy received worse rewards the farther north they wen’t. What’s worse is that EB had the best nodes, lowering the value of playing on the BLs. This is a bad system, especially if any of your maps are full. Having all nodes be random is a brilliant solution. Anet deservers kudos for this.

Whether they should be inside or outside structures? Not sure on this one. This is where there’s some grey area. One one hand, as a commander, I hate them inside. Once we cap something, everyone has to take 2 minutes to mine. This is a collosal waste of time. However, I don’t have people squirreling after nodes when running from point A to B. One the other hand, if I just don’t care, this is awesome and gives me lots of mats. If I’m not commanding and mine, I’m kittening off the commander, and the team. It’s a good way to reward scouting.

One big issue, is when commanding, there are some players that are so OCD about this, that they go for the nodes asap, ignoring the enemy. These are seasoned WvWers too, but they are obsessed with the free loot.

I think a good solution would be a few things as far as inside/outside goes. Leave them inside keeps, but don’t put them all in one spot. Spread them around the keep. Keeps are what we really need scouts for, and the reward should still be there. But spreading them out will decrease the chances of people making a bee line for them rather than capping, defending, or assaulting the keep.

Take them out of towers and camps. Camps definitely don’t need scouts, and we don’t need the nodes slowing us down. scouts are useful in towers, but not that necessary, especially with sentries, and especially being close to a waypoint. Having them in towers again, slows us down. Instead, scatter them around the world.

One thing that does need to change, they shouldn’t be able to be mined twice. Regular nodes can only be mined once, unless you crit. This just seems like way too much of a reward, and is one of the big reasons why even seasoned WvWers find them so distracting. Maybe keep the keep nodes as double mined sources, but all others need to be changed to single.

ColinJohanson.2394:

Hey folks,

Lots of passionate feedback and discussion in here on either side, and a friendly reminder that constructive feedback helps us make better games (please do keep it constructive!) We don’t always get every detail perfect the first time, but I like to think one of our strengths is we’re always open to and listening to feedback from our community and making good decisions based on that feedback.

Ultimately, we’re thrilled with the parts of HoT everyone is enjoying. Your passion is awesome, and it’s part of why we all love creating this game. In particular, in game we’ve seen a really positive reaction to the game from folks who are busy playing, which has been really cool to see.

While we never like to rush and make snap decisions, in particular with a game that’s basically been out less than three days; I think there are some fair points in here for us to discuss. Much like other feedback about HoT, we’ll be discussing this as well!

Thanks again!

Thanks for checking in.

I’ve been doing nothing but playing all weekend since the minute of launch on a character that didn’t have full map completion. I’ve been concentrating mostly on hero points. I like to enjoy the game, and not rush, but I haven’t been dragging my heels on this. I’ve also done some WvW (as that is my main game mode), crafting, guild hall projects, Halloween events, and exploring other aspects of Hot.

I still don’t have my elite unlocked.

The biggest hold-ups are the mastery system and WvW issues.

Mastery system: right now, I’m trying to get to level 4 of the Izel (whatever) line where I can be in poison. There a a bunch of hero points gated behind this. While I have a birthday booster up all the time, Halloween food for the extra 5%, utility, and sometimes another xp booster, it is taking forever to gain this level. I’ve unlocked all the maps, but haven’t fully explored the last one. I’d rather have the story take me there (still gated behind mastery, even though you guys said you fixed it). Gaining this level is a real drag. I’ve been doing events and killing monsters left and right. It’s taking forever.

WvW is definately the faster way to go, at this point. Unfortunately a couple problems here. I was really looking forward to the reaper most, so I decided to start with that class. Unfortunately, this is not my commander; it’s very glassy. I don’t want to lead people, even on a k-train, in case we run into people, I want to command front line and not die (I’m also platinum, so I get sniped a lot). So, I can’t rally people, and I need other commanders to follow. There are none. I’m also on Blackgate, a T1 server. There’s no one on TS. The population is dead.

There are a few reasons for this. Everyone is also trying to level up one character with an elite spec, so everyone is in the new zones, like me. The other big issue is the new boarder land server performance. It sucks. Like the only thing you guys needed to get right is server performance. It doesn’t matter if we like or dislike the new maps, but we can’t even play on them. I was on for “reset” this weekend. It was awful. We all went to EB, and it wasn’t even qued. There was hardly any enemy to fight. EB! T1 server! Not qued a few hours into reset! So, anyway, it’s hard for me to earn hero points through WvW because I’m not leveling my commander character.

There are so many aspects of HoT that are great. Decent story so far. Absolutely gorgeous maps. Fun maps, imo, with lots going on and lots of places to explore. Precursor system. Guild halls are amazing. So much work went into that, thanks so much. These are the great things I paid for. I also paid for a new trait line and abilities, but I haven’t been able to enjoy them yet on one character after devoting about 35 hours towards it. Progression should be towards things like the new mastery system. Don’t hide hero points behind them, or at least not behind the very first level.

I’m talking 40 v v0 v 40 or more

So, played reset. In a large 2 way fight, the lag is pretty bad. In a 3 way, it is completely unplayable. I don’t exaggerate this stuff, and I usually don’t have as many lag issues as my fellow players. This reminds me of the original launch minus the culling. Massive rubberbanding, constant server catchups, tons of delayed skills. Gave it a shot for about an hour, and went to EB.

Goatjugsoup.8637:

ok a bit of misinformation there zoada if you have all of the main game hero points you only need 20 from the new areas. if you have none of the main game hero points you will need 40 from the jungle.

you might still see it as grindy but i just want to point out it is not all of x and all of y needed.

also i have to strongly disagree with comments about bad map design, i think they are coming from a place where people are not used to the maps, not used to thinking in terms of masteries (oh i could glide,mushroom jump/other over there) and in general just have not figured a lot of the stuff out yet.

its not even out of its first weekend of release yet so thats natural but i feel its important some perspective is put on it. i doubt very much the same kind of stuff will be said a couple months down the line

Correction, 200 if you have map completion, 400 if not. I know this for a fact because I have 2 characters with map completion, and they are only halfway through out of the box.

So, there are enough threads about how the grind for hero points is crazy. I myself posted to one of them, not even realizing there was a merged thread later on. I don’t want this to turn into another one of those

One thing I’d like to point out, though. There are a lot of people I know that have lots of characters, like 16, 20, etc. I myself have 9, and haven’t even started a revenant. Many people do this because they like to create unique looks. I myself, and others like me, do it to keep seperate builds on different characters. For example, I have two mesmers, one power based, one condi based. I don’t like having to retrait all the time and carry around a bunch of different armor and weapons clogging up my inventory.

With HoT, I was looking forward to making new characters as a dragon hunter and daredevil. This would mean that I’d have to purchase new character slots. Well, no more. The hero point grind is too much for that. This just negatively impacts gem sales, and the economy as a whole, as people will not be playing as many characters.

Levi M.7428:

Spurnshadow.3678:

I have to agree with this. So far, it is the only negative criticism I have with HoT. The new maps are gorgeous, and I’ve only just gotten to the 3rd. There are a ton of different events. Lots of new monsters with different fight mechanics and great looks. I like that there is a new progression system with masteries. Just so many great things to say.

But I was really holding off on buying this for a long time for fear that WvW will be ruined. The biggest selling point for me were the elite specs. It would breath a lot of fresh life into The classes I play.

However, I paid for these elite specs. I’ve spent maybe 20 hours so far on this and I’m not even half way through. Part of the issue is that one needs quite a bit of their masteries unlocked in order to access many of the hero points. This is fine and all for replayability of the map and progression in general, but really a drag just to play what I signed up for. Part of the issue is that hero points will not be a currency anymore if you max out your spec, so I understand that you’re trying to get the most bang out of all the hero points, but this was really poorly designed.

I can’t imagine going through all this again on a new character. The only saving grace is that I’ll have my masteries unlocked, so I’ll be able to get them quicker, but I won’t be having nearly as much fun in WvW, or anywhere else for that matter because right now, it’s just a grind to get the kitten mastery unlocked.

Anyway, again, loving everything else about HoT.

So your saying you want all the masteries mastered by the end of the expansion and the maps to be account wide so when you get done with the expansion you have nothing to do but say there’s no more content? I’m so confused as to what people want with a game. To beat it in a week??

What I’m saying is I want to play all this new content with my elite spec right out of the box. I’d love to really start going after all the different things to do for my precurosr, with my elite spec, but I can’t cause I have to grind the kitten out of the new maps in order to unlock my elite…. on one character. I’d love to WvW with my elite spec, but I can’t, cause I have to grind the kitten out of the new maps… for every character.

I hate rushing through new content. I like to savor it, explore, talk to npcs. But I don’t want to waste too much time because I’m in a hurry to unlock the god kitten elite spec.

I have to agree with this. So far, it is the only negative criticism I have with HoT. The new maps are gorgeous, and I’ve only just gotten to the 3rd. There are a ton of different events. Lots of new monsters with different fight mechanics and great looks. I like that there is a new progression system with masteries. Just so many great things to say.

But I was really holding off on buying this for a long time for fear that WvW will be ruined. The biggest selling point for me were the elite specs. It would breath a lot of fresh life into The classes I play.

However, I paid for these elite specs. I’ve spent maybe 20 hours so far on this and I’m not even half way through. Part of the issue is that one needs quite a bit of their masteries unlocked in order to access many of the hero points. This is fine and all for replayability of the map and progression in general, but really a drag just to play what I signed up for. Part of the issue is that hero points will not be a currency anymore if you max out your spec, so I understand that you’re trying to get the most bang out of all the hero points, but this was really poorly designed.

I can’t imagine going through all this again on a new character. The only saving grace is that I’ll have my masteries unlocked, so I’ll be able to get them quicker, but I won’t be having nearly as much fun in WvW, or anywhere else for that matter because right now, it’s just a grind to get the kitten mastery unlocked. I don’t want to spend the next 30 or so hours of game play just to unlock my new elite spec.

I want to have paid for an expansion that has a new trait line, and enjoy the new content “with” that new trait line, to it’s fullest extent. Sure, we can get away without having every trait unlocked in PvE, but in WvW? No. In WvW, you have to have the most optimized traits and gear for your guild, team, group, whatever. This means, I have to do this, or play WvW on an old spec for who knows how long and use the WvW upgrade system, and for every character, before I can spec into the new elites for WvW.

Anyway, again, loving everything else about HoT (haven’t been able to do WvW yet, so jury’s out on that).

A different icon matters because 1) it’s a small thing that can be hard to see and there are already 9 classes in the game, and 2) it gives an advantage to any enemy as they know that you are specced into at least 1 trait line.

I’d still like to know why there are different icons for elite specs.

Pink Ninja Man.4375:

There are a few ‘unwanted’ situations with this suggestion.

For example, if all servers are 100% on all maps and server A is winning in PPT they will be gaining a good score over the other two. Later in the same matchup all servers happen to have same numbers on every map but only 20% of max. Points are less worth it so if server B holds a PPT lead like server A held a full compacity for the same duration they will not catch up to server A.

This system could also promote people not come out to play WvW so the other server doesn’t get as many points when they have the population to hold everything easily.

Last point first:

On the flip side, it could promote people to play WvW so that war score is increased.

I can understand your first point. That is concerning. Just to simplify, that means that they would have to own 20% more real estate or hold the same real as the opposing server earlier in the match but for longer, or a combination of the two. I’d have to think about that a little more. Is that fair?

On one had, when all servers are full, and server A is ticking higher, aren’t they doing better than later in the match when there’s 20% less population and server B owns the same amount of real estate? Server A is playing against more enemies, so they are doing better in the face of tougher adversity. If later in the match, server B owns the same real estate, but the population is 20% less, that means a couple things. If server B has the larger population, then they should be doing better than holding the same real estate, therefore, they should tick less. If server B has the smaller population, they are doing really well, and should, and are being rewarded for it. If all server populations are even, then this is unfair.

Lets take this to the extreme. Lets say population across all servers is always even. Reset night hits, everyone is playing, the socre goes up to 20K a piece. After the first 24 hours, hardly anyone is playing for the next 6 days, but server A is consistantly winning. Would they ever be able to get enough PPT to catch up to the initial gain of reset night? Maybe, Maybe not. This may a flaw.

Solution: the original system I proposed was linear. Instead, have the score weighted on a population based on an S curve. While writing this, I know I’ve read this suggestion in the past. However, there should be another factor: relative population to each other.

If each server has 20 people, and will only have 20 people (give or take a few) for the next 8 hours, then it’s very unfair that their work will mean nothing compared to the prime time hours. So another weight needs to be placed on relative evenness of population. This whole proposal is to prevent run away score, so if all populations are even, then warscore should be at max.

Bleh, complicated issue.

dzeRnumbrd.6129:

Spurnshadow.3678:

Have war score directly tied to total population.

One of the key tenets of GW2 is social gaming. Nodes are instanced, loot is instanced, everything encourages cooperating and playing together (except the rally-from-player-death system which makes guilds hate on pugs).

Say JQ was ticking 600 in EU, the logical thing for BG to do would be to have everyone log off WvW to minimise the damage during EU timezone.

So your new system would encourage other players to tell people to log off WvW.

You’ll see things on map chat like: “Log off WvW we need to keep their tick as low as possible”.

This is anti-social gaming.

You would also get the scenario where BG builds up a 15k lead and tells everyone to log off so that JQ/YB can’t close the gap by reset.

Your system would be way too open to manipulation.

The real solution is to simply revert poorly thought out algorithm for detecting full servers back to the way it was originally done.

There are probably other ideas like rewarding outnumbered players with more points when they capture objectives but I haven’t thought through all the permutations of what could go wrong with that idea or adding a catch up system for servers that are trailing (to keep the match ups close/tight/fun).

I really don’t see this happening. The only way this would be an issue is if people were in WvW not doing anything. Since when in WvW, one is usually playing, you are contributing to your score in one way or another. When people are done playing, they log off or do something else. Even if people are hanging out at spawn, waiting to form up, the ppt gain/loss should be minimal. One thing would be for sure, if you’re loosing, the the loss would be much less than if there was no system like this and the enemy was ticking at its full amount.

SkyShroud.2865:

Spurnshadow.3678:

SkyShroud.2865:

This isn’t a solution but rather, deceiving oneself that the match is balanced which in reality, it will never be balanced, life is never fair.

This approach also delay servers in other tiers that might have superior coverage from climbing up the tier. So, the off hours population in those servers ended up have to ktrain longer periods just to climb up the tiers.

If the context of this approach is T1, then it will never be applicable to all tiers.

I don’t see how this would have any impact on a server being able to climb up or fall down a tier. War score itself has nothing really to do with glicko. Glicko is all based on how much you win or loose relative to the other servers in your current match. So, if a group of servers had 24/7 coverage, and the final match was 300,000 / 150,000 / 150,000, the glicko change would be equal if the same group of servers had half the population and a final score of 150,000 / 75,000 / 75,000.

Yes, this system does reward lower population servers slightly by not changing the non-structure points (that’s kinda the point), but if your server is overpopulating the other two buy a great degree, this shouldn’t be an issue, as you are also killing yaks, flipping sentries and getting stomps.

You have no idea what you are suggesting and how glicko works. Really.

I don’t think you have any idea how glicko works. Really.

coglin.1867:

This is neither easy, simple, and it certainly is no solution.

All this does, is reward server populations for having stacked prime time players. Why should they be rewarded for that bahavior?

This idea is clearly discrimination towards specific servers for simply having a spread out player population by having different rules for different players. I do not support a discriminating scoring system with clear bias.

It does the exact opposite. I don’t think you understood the system I proposed. It’s also very simple. It only requires a sampling of all 3 server populations on a regular basis in order to change the weights of structural PPT. Seems easy thing to do.

SkyShroud.2865:

This isn’t a solution but rather, deceiving oneself that the match is balanced which in reality, it will never be balanced, life is never fair.

This approach also delay servers in other tiers that might have superior coverage from climbing up the tier. So, the off hours population in those servers ended up have to ktrain longer periods just to climb up the tiers.

If the context of this approach is T1, then it will never be applicable to all tiers.

I don’t see how this would have any impact on a server being able to climb up or fall down a tier. War score itself has nothing really to do with glicko. Glicko is all based on how much you win or loose relative to the other servers in your current match. So, if a group of servers had 24/7 coverage, and the final match was 300,000 / 150,000 / 150,000, the glicko change would be equal if the same group of servers had half the population and a final score of 150,000 / 75,000 / 75,000.

Yes, this system does reward lower population servers slightly by not changing the non-structure points (that’s kinda the point), but if your server is overpopulating the other two buy a great degree, this shouldn’t be an issue, as you are also killing yaks, flipping sentries and getting stomps.

Dawdler.8521:

I have advocated this before by using something I call “WvW nighttime”.

Every hour, the game check total population (as in all 3 combined). If below a certain percentage, say 20% (still 200 players mind you), PPT max drops by 50% (700->350) and the score bar indicate its “night”. If population is above the threshold the next hour it check, it goes to “WvW daytime” with 100% gains. This day/night shift has nothing to do with real time, its pure server based on population.

Its simple, easily understood and would even the score curve instead of allowing nightcappers to stack too much points unopposed. It helps the issue without imposing any ridiculous multitude of rules. They can still nightcap sure, just not as effectivly in terms of PPT.

I also like the idea of dynamically closing borders based on population (freezing points there, limiting max PPT) but its far more complicated to implement.

I feel that a sample of total population should be taken every minute and averaged over the 15 minutes in order to determine a ticks population value. My proposition requires it to happen every tick.

One can not close borderlands, as that would unbalance the match. 3 borderlands are necessary as each server needs to have the opportunity to have each home base.

Chase.2798:

My problem with this has to do with the server i play on, kaineng…we are a very small server who never sees the outnumbered icon go away…why if we can rally and hold points should we be penalized for doing more with less…not to mention the fact that the most people i have seen on all 4 maps combined is about 60 people…matches in t6 and below would end within a few points because of the low ability to score points basically giving the win to whoever had the night

You wouldn’t be penalized at all. This system is relative, so you’d still be loosing by the same, relative amount. It just wouldn’t be a blowout. If you are outnumbered, winning, and still have a majority in PPT, you’d still be winning. Since the enemy has more players, you’d be earning more ppt. Remember, my proposition has to do with the total of all servers, not just yours. Also, it favors lower population servers, as my proposition makes non-sturctural ppt the same.

People have been complaining for years about off-peak population times, or “night capping.” I think after 3 years, Anets solution was to tie a servers full status to WvW. A good thing, imo since mega-server maps for PvE, PvP, and instances made this irrelevant. I think their goal was to fill the lower populated servers. However, a drawback to this is that servers who had a full status can not fill their dead timezones. For exmaple, we, on Blackgate, have no EU guilds (sorry RK). This means it is a time when almost all our stuff gets flipped, unless a lot of NA players rally very early.

Auto upgrades are a huge concern of mine with HoT. (I personally think this is going to be one of the things that kills WvW). Combine lack of coverage in certain time zones with auto-upgrades, and some servers will have a huge advantage, as it will be extremely difficult for havoc teams that might be playing to take down structures.

My solution:

This probably isn’t new, but I haven’t seen it mentioned, or if it has, not for a very long time. Have war score directly tied to total population.

What do i mean by this? As it currently stands, the total population all maps may have is 1080 (This is based on old information which has most likely changed, but is useful for my example). 80 players from each server for each BL and 120 for each server on EB. The highest tick one can achieve with war score is 695. Make it so that the only way that 695 can be reached is if every map is qued on every server. If the total population across all three servers is half that then the total war score that could be reached would be 348.

How does this affect server imbalance? Well, lets look at an off peak hour example. Lets say one server has 70 people total. They have some roamers on different maps flipping camps and a zerg of 40 running around flipping stuff. Lets say the other two servers only have 15 people across all maps. No one is organized. Maybe there’s a 5 man havoc squad trying to flip towers and a keep now and then.

The big problem with HoT is that the 5 man havoc squad will most likely always be hitting T2 or T3 objectives as everything auto upgrades. This will give the larger population server plenty of time to respond. I’m not saying the havoc squad will be able to do nothing, I just don’t see them making as much progress as they currently do. This means that larger population servers during off-peak hours will be able to dominate even more than they do now. Back to the example.

There’s a total of 100 people playing across all 4 maps. That’s about 9.26% of the total population. Apply this percentage to the total warscore tick of 695: The new total warscore would be 64. Now, lets say the higher population server is able to maintain half the objectives. That means that they would only be able to achieve 32 PPT.

Now, I do realize this is relative. The lower population servers are only going to be earning 16 PPT each, however, this would prevent the run away scores that happen during off-peak hours. One way to make this a bit less relative is to have warpoints gained from non-structures not be affected by this system. So, killing yaks, sentries, and points per stomp (if ever implemented with HoT) would still retain their current value.

While they can still K-train to their hearts content, under this system, a server would no longer be able to make up 10,000 – 20,000 war score overnight. Also, when more people log in from an off peak time zone, they will still have to face an uphill battle against an enemies upgraded structures, still giving them an advantage. Something like this must be implemented until we are allowed to recruit to fill our off peak time zones.

Warning to Devs:

Do not implement this in WvW. I spend 90% of my time in WvW, and this would be a terrible change. Yes, certain trait lines are not viable in WvW, but not every trait line is, regardless of if it’s a pet class or not. Some traits are designed for WvW, some aren’t. But here’s the big concern: statistical damage reduction.

What do I mean by this? If you have 5 players standing in an AoE circle, then all the players will take 100% of the damage. Now, lets say those 5 players are pet classes and each has 4 pets out, standing in an AoE cirlcle. Those players now have 80% damage reduction due to the statistical chance of them getting hit. This would make it the most powerful class of classes in the game.

Untill this issue is addressed, pets shouldn’t be buffed for WvW.

Thanks for implementing this for PvE

Thanks a ton for reducing the amount of “noise” around player skills.

Why are you keeping icons for the new profession specializations? I understand that they might have been necessary for beta, but with HoT, isn’t it just a profession with a particular trait line? I don’t understand why you’re keeping these icons. This will also give an unfair advantage to enemy players in PvP / WvW if they see a chronomancer icon for example. They will immediately know what to expect, as opposed to a more innocuous mesmer icon.

This seems like a great change and something we’ve been asking for. Not only will we be able to earn the hero points via WvW, but we’ll be able to buy superior siege. What’s more, this puts a system in place which could offer more consumables or weapons and armor. At least, that’s how I interpreted it.

OK, I’m not very good with multiple quotes, so let me try and get this right.

Gaile Gray.6029:

Simzani.4318:

I suggest that arenanet staff take a good look at their changes before hitting “implement” too.

Which they provably have done. For goodness sake! The need for the change has been explained by John, and the team considered suggestions in this very thread in making a possible alternation in plans (from evening to morning) but, based, again, on feedback, they’ve gone with what data supports, and with their initial plan. I think that’s a good thing.

I really don’t think they have. OK, well, there was never an initial reason given for the change, let alone, a “need” for it. Secondly, when we did get a post further explaining it, there was again, no “need” for it. It was done as something which he / Anet thought would be good. Look again at the post. He states in his first paragraph that there is no “need” whatsoever to change reset day.

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

There are a couple of reasons for the change to reset time. One is for the overall quality of the game. The last few years we have been careful to not disrupt the WvW reset time but this has at times made it difficult for our team to address issues during reset day. This change will give our team an extra day of the week that they can use to respond to issues that may occur with WvW or any other area of the game if it is necessary. In the early days we wanted reset to be during a weekday to ensure we had people available to monitor the game at reset time, but at this point we have seen the ongoing stability of World vs. World and resetting on a weekday is no longer necessary.

The following is also not a need, but an opinion about what is best for WvW. This is a developers opinion.

John Corpening.9847:

Another reason is the emergent gameplay that has come from reset. It has become one of the most exciting times for WvW and we would really love for more players to have the opportunity to experience it. We have many more players logging in on Saturday than on Friday which means with this change many more people will be available to experience the rush of claiming objectives for their world during reset.

However, given the concerns posted here we will be moving the Saturday reset to earlier in the day to give most players the majority of the day to enjoy the start of the new match. Immediately after launch the new time will be 11am PDT / 2pm EDT (6 pm UTC) for NA and 11am BST / 12 pm CEST (10 am UTC) for EU. Keep in mind that the following week with the end of Daylight Savings Time / Summer Time the reset times will be pushed even earlier to 10am PST/ 1pm EST and 10am GMT / 11am CET.

As mentioned so far, numerous times, this was even worse as no NA guilds will form up that early, and it alienates OCX/SEA players. It also gives the advantage to any NA server that has an EU guild with auto upgrades.

And now we get the truth:

John Corpening.9847:

Hello All,

Launching a game is an enormous undertaking and our teams need time to address any issues that come up. Therefore after launch we must move WvW reset to Saturday. We will keep resets on Saturday to address issues and once we are in the clear we will evaluate the best time for WvW reset both for us as a company as well as for our players.

So, this has absolutely nothing to do with wanting more players to experience reset. This has everything to do with you guys not wanting to deal with WvW while you implement hot fixes during the first 24 hours. As I’m sure there will be a plethora of hotfixes needed as the week goes on, will pushing WvW back 24 hours really make a difference to your staff? I don’t see how that possibly will. There will still be a huge backlash from the WvW community from all the resets anyway as I’m sure the whole week will be full of resets. Regarding the new map alone, I’m sure there will be a ton of hotfixes that just have to do with the new boarderlands maps. The number of fixes will not change based on rolling back reset by 24 hours.

John Corpening.9847:

Since it is clear that we cannot pick a time that will work for everyone, we will be maintaining our original plan of shifting reset by 24 hours, to Saturday evening. That time was based on data for when prime time occurs in each region.

Thank you,
John

OF COURSE YOU CAN PICK A TIME THAT WORKS FOR EVERYONE. Have you guys not read this thread? Leave reset time as it is. We all understand that you guys are rolling out a major expansion and a new map with all the bugs, exploits, and fixes that will come with it. I’m sure there are some major reasons that are justified with having the new map be released on Saturday. However, this should be a one time occurrence. The first week of WvW after HoT should be six days. Have reset go back to it’s usual time the week after. I think having a full week to work out the plethora of issues is a reasonable amount of time.

TPMN.1483:

Puck.9612:

swellercross.3974:

Just try these changes before QQ, im sure ANET doing it for some good reasons ,if all fails then we all make mass complains .

A lot of us can’t try it because we have responsibilities that prevent us from sitting around playing video games in the middle of the day, that’s the kittening problem.

Its always the middle of the day for some people, night for some, afternoon for others.

Well, if we’re talking about NA servers, then you have to look at it from that perspective. Sure, we have some EU, some OCX, some SEA, but as an NA server, the vast majority of players are NA. Therefore, the new reset time is in the morning. Most NA servers have poor EU coverage, as they have their own servers. The people truly screwed are the OCX players, as they are English speaking and don’t have their own servers, therefore, they play on NA.

briggah.7910:

Trajan.4953:

Nobody will be doing that at 11am on a Saturday.

Speak for yourself. tyvm

Do you honestly think we’re going to get 20-30 people or so ready to roll and spam the gate in LA at 11/10 AM Saturday? Please. Be realistic. Maybe you’ll be there, but not organized guilds.