The point I am making is that pve players don’t have to wait on dailies. Why do WvW players have to wait on dailies? Why can’t badges be the same as fractals? Why can’t the laurel system stay as it is, fractal gear requires fractal tokens and WvW gear requires badges. Why do we get stuck with currency that requires waiting for the next day?
Because PvE and WvW gear is the same.
The only solution (which I expect Anet to reach about 6 months from now) is to split PvE and WvW gear. That way each game mode has its acquisition track (and currency).
…
Nah, that won’t happen. It silly to consider you’d have to change clothes after you step through a portal into a borderlands or the like. Besides, if they did that, then people would have to now have at least two full sets of gear for every character. Anyone gearing alts would be quite not amused I think.
Once PvE and WvW gear is separated, gearing alts does not have to be a problem.
Anet can make getting WvW-only gear as hard or as easy as it needs to be. I don’t think people WvW to get the new shiney (unlike PvE dungeon runners), why would WvW-only gear have to have a punitive time gate?
Also, switching gear could be done like in GW1, where you had a toggle switch on your hero screen. Gear wouldn’t have to take up an inventory spot. Or it could just automatically switch like it does in sPvP.
And there is nothing conceptually wrong with different gear for different game modes. It is already done for sPvP. Skills are split too, so what’s the problem?
The point I am making is that pve players don’t have to wait on dailies. Why do WvW players have to wait on dailies? Why can’t badges be the same as fractals? Why can’t the laurel system stay as it is, fractal gear requires fractal tokens and WvW gear requires badges. Why do we get stuck with currency that requires waiting for the next day?
Because PvE and WvW gear is the same.
The only solution (which I expect Anet to reach about 6 months from now) is to split PvE and WvW gear. That way each game mode has its acquisition track (and currency).
This is what other modern games do that have both PvE and some form of RvR (LOTRO, SWTOR). It’s not an elegant solution, but it works in practice.
It does, however, block PvE casuals from competing on an even level in WvW. But that is the choice Anet has to make. Will they cater to dedicated WvW’ers, or casual WvW’ers?
Nope, my facts are correct.
Gear has to be separated, or PvE is going to be forever dictating the rate of gear acquisition in WvW. That is unacceptable to dedicated WvW’ers.
Also, tying gear acquisition to totally anonymous, bland daily quests is one of the worst mechanics I’ve ever seen in a game.
It is clear it was added in a panic to the original game, because it is so antithetical to the rich underlying event system. Why else would they would replace a dynamic, innovative system with a hackneyed, dumb one? They needed that gear treadmill fast.
If gear was separated, then Anet could go back to using events for gear acquisition in WvW. That would be far, far more fun.
We included the laurel cost to prevent the economy from suddenly being blown out and to not invalidate the ways PvE players can get ascended items already. This system means that it is faster to get them in WvW, especially for players who already have badges, without being so much faster that everyone only gets them in this manner. As for the difficulty of acquiring laurels in WvW, we have taken steps to address that, including the fact that there will always be 3 daily achievements that are WvW specific. Speaking personally, I’ve been able to achieve my dailies in WvW even without that change, but this should make it even easier.
You could’ve reduced the laurel cost by another 5-10 laurels and increase the badge cost by about 750 badges. Good luck to the PvE players trying to get ascended gear by using the ‘easy way,’ because they’d have to commit to WvW for a good duration to get that amount of badges. Us, on the other hand, are still stuck with many thousands of badges, always hoping they’ll actually be useful to buy valuable stuff.
Edit: You might as well have removed the badge cost completely, because by the time we’ve collected 20+ laurels we’ll have gotten a LOT more badges, as such only increasing the amount of this still fairly pointless currency in our bank.
The solution is to separate PvE and WvW gear, like most other modern games with RvR out there do (LOTRO, SWTOR etc.).
Laurels would buy PvE gear, and Badges would buy the WvW gear.
The fact that Anet is tying themselves in knots trying to make Laurels/Ascended work in WvW shows that:
1) Ascendeds were added very late in development pre-launch, or post-launch, when it became apparent they needed a gear treadmill to keep PvE customers. It’s been bolted on, completely unintegrated with what went before.
2) Anet perceives WvW as a casual game mode that supplements PvE.
The zergs have increased in size due to the AC buff .
Totally agree, arrow cart damage has single handedly increased the zerging in tier 1 to an even higher level.
It has made small/medium group ninja ops so much harder – so our mid sized group now has to follow a train.
I think the change was made to appease the tier 8 outmanned players – but little consideration was made to how it would impact tier 1.
On my thief I purchased +1 supply trait and now I am not going to get any +supply traits – I can’t use the extra supply because I die in the arrow cart fire while I am building.
It has to be one of the worst changes to WvW I’ve seen so far. It has made tier 1 WvW really boring. I was hoping for a reversion or a huge nerf but the devs have now come out and said they are “happy” with the player damage – despite the actual players telling them it is wrong. They nerfed the siege damage that arrow carts dish out but too bad the players trying to use that siege will die if they attempt to use it.
Our guild is dedicated to small group content, and we’ve basically left the game.
We’ve been scratching the itch with PvP/FPS games through Steam (Chivalry, Borderlands 2, Planetfall 2 etc.). The plan is to hold it together until ESO comes out.
When Anet fixed culling, I thought they were really intent on improving WvW. But the double-down on Ascended, and the emphasis on siege, was basically the last straw for us.
This is the only solution to the massive Ascended foul-up.
As the main WvW dev said in another thread, the format of WvW Ascended awards is being dictated by PvE, to avoid “devaluing” the efforts of PvE’ers. The end result of this is scr*wing gear acquisition for WvW’ers.
The time has come to stop treating WvW’ers as the 2nd class citizens of GW2. Separate the gear.
Personally, I never thought it would come to this. But it became necessary when Anet scr*wed the Manifesto by introducing a gear treadmill.
Most modern games with some form of RvR have RvR-specific gear or stats (e.g. SWTOR, LOTRO). I always hated that, but now I understand why. It’s not an elegant system, but it satisfies PvP’ers and PvE’ers enough to keep playing.
Separating gear will create a barrier for mainly PvE’ers entering WvW. But that is what Anet is going to have to do to keep dedicated WvW’ers in the game.
It’s their choice.
(edited by Thrumdi.9216)
I don’t get it. If people only WvW, and haven’t spent a single laurel. How the kitten do you not have 60-70+ saved up. Its been 4 months since laurels were introduced. Assuming even a 25% rate of daily completion, you would have atleast 40(monthly) +40(from dailies), 80 laurels. This just means that you really really suck at spending 5 mins to complete an easy quest.
Ectos are not exclusive to PvE, you can get them from WvW, and with the WvW chest we’ll know exactly how many.
Because dailies suck. They are essentially a 2nd job that you have to do every day. People play MMO’s to get away from stuff like chores.
Dailies might be marginally acceptable if you could do them strictly through killing people in WvW or completing WvW objectives. Gathering or spending karma are not WvW objectives.
Even then though dailies would probably distort WvW play for the worse. Playing the map, and strategy would be replaced by groups farming their dailies.
I’ve seen it happen in other games. I’m just surprised Anet introduced the same old hackneyed mechanics. The Manifesto lead us to expect differently.
Ahhhh….Guild Coms, laurels and Factal Relics are all account bound so your argument for ascended gear holds no water. I have never played a game where WvW/PvP ranks of any sort where account bound.
And as someone said, running through content again should be half the fun.
Ranks in Planetside 2 are account bound, but spending on skills is character bound (except for some shared trees).
It can be done in an RvR game.
Yep, agree 100%.
Like the AC buff, supply traps are a discouragement to small group play. It will depend though how common they become.
Coming soon to the cash shop…
Honestly though, the WXP system, like the Ascended system is at such odds with the original design of the game, a reset will probably cost gems. (Unlike traits which can be reset for a few sp).
I would love to be proved wrong though.
As a member of a small guild who does 99.9% wvw activites, we would like to thank Arena Net for giving us a reason to try and defend towers/keeps/forts. As previous DaoC players we appreciate what Epic wvw battles can be, and watching zergballs take keeps in under a minute is NOT it. Im sure there will be a vocal minority desperate for wvw exp who can only think of how they are inconvenienced by having to think, or use counter siege. But on behalf of the silent majority, I would like to say…. suck it up princess.
I would like to see the carts damage become immune on a keep door however as it seems silly that AC’s should take place of rams.
I appreciate the sentiment that small groups can now defend keeps. However, small groups taking keeps is now generally impossible if there is one person with an AC there built in an inaccessible place.
Also the general slowdown and stalemate of action the AC buff has introduced, has also made small group work tougher. Previously, the big enemy zergs were moving around, and you could avoid them. Now they tend to camp out near objectives, and that includes camps. You have to wait until people go to bed to do anything.
Also, moving power from player character skills to inanimate siege is a big problem. If Anet wanted to change play to this degree, they should have found some way to give actual classes that power (though in a gatedway, like AC’s, so it couldn’t be spammed).
If you are looking for small group WvW content with friendly people, please check us out at The Tarnished Coastguard.
The AC buff is as bad as culling. It honestly is that bad on its impact on the game.
Since they were introduced last week, gameplay has gone in the kittenter.
It is so difficult to do ninja sieges and small group work now, that it is once again favouring the zerg disproportionately. However, even the zerg guilds hate the AC buff because it takes their strategy out of playing their characters, and puts it into the hands of siege.
It is a truly miraculous patch that manages to kitten off two of the three groups that play PvP games. (The other beings soloers/duelists).
I’d like to shed some light on our thinking with this AC change as well as tell you all what we are doing right now to balance it.
Firstly, when siege weapons were originally creatped, they had the intent of being really good at some things and not so good at others. The arrow cart is intended to be the anti-personal siege weapon. It is intended that arrow carts are all about controlling an area through damage. If you remain in the area that is being hit by the arrow cart, you will die. You can however, move out of the space and/or find a new way to attack the intended target. That being said, they are not intended to be so good against other siege weapons and we are in the process of addressing that right now. We are also addressing their range when upgraded to be more in line with the range of ballistas.
Secondly, this change is going to require new tactics and those tactics include things like using ballista and catapults to destroy arrow carts. With that in mind, we’ve been looking more closely at the numbers of all the siege weapons and there are definitely some changes that need to be made to bring them in line with their intent. We are going to take a holistic pass at siege weapons in the coming months and drop a rebalance of all of them to get them to more closely align with what they should be doing.
Finally, the feedback you all provide is a very useful part of this whole process. WvW is a living, breathing game type and any changes we make have numerous consequences that don’t become fully visible until everyone starts interacting with them and devising new strategies. Our goal is to provide a complex combat space that rewards skill, tactics, and ingenuity and while we haven’t fully achieved that goal yet, I like to think we are getting there.
In the coming months, meanwhile you most of your most noteworthy wvw guilds will be looking for a new game to play.
Anet has kittening lost their mind.
There aren’t a lot of games that came bring what WvW brings to the table for pvp oriented guilds. Even if they continue to break it by doing other stupid stuff like turning arrowcarts into godcarts.
That is about to change. Elder Scrolls Online is launching sometime this year, and is on the radar of most PvP guilds, big and small. By all accounts, WvW is its major endgame.
Before culling was fixed, our guild was talking about ESO a lot. But with no culling, we were back to having good times in GW2. The arrow cart buff is pushing us back into the “no-fun” zone and we are following the ESO news again.
ESO is still an unknown quantity, but it does have the potential to be a serious challenger.
(And there is also Planetside 2 out there, which is a 3 faction MMOFPS. Its audience does overlap with some GW2 PvP guilds).
Are you seriously considering to even compare ESO to GW2? Oh man!
I think GW2 will be far better than ESO in most aspects (except perhaps the storyline).
However, the WvW is such a major focus of ESO that it could turn out to have more to offer in terms of gameplay. They will, for example, have unique WvW character advancement at launch, and the map is by all accounts huge and well-designed. And in the end gameplay is the major decider for PvP guilds and players.
GW2 has probably 6 months to polish WvW and get it right. The improvements Anet have made since launch in balance and removing culling have been really great, in my opinion. I just hope they devote the resources it needs going forward.
I’d like to shed some light on our thinking with this AC change as well as tell you all what we are doing right now to balance it.
Firstly, when siege weapons were originally created, they had the intent of being really good at some things and not so good at others. The arrow cart is intended to be the anti-personal siege weapon. It is intended that arrow carts are all about controlling an area through damage. If you remain in the area that is being hit by the arrow cart, you will die. You can however, move out of the space and/or find a new way to attack the intended target. That being said, they are not intended to be so good against other siege weapons and we are in the process of addressing that right now. We are also addressing their range when upgraded to be more in line with the range of ballistas.
Secondly, this change is going to require new tactics and those tactics include things like using ballista and catapults to destroy arrow carts. With that in mind, we’ve been looking more closely at the numbers of all the siege weapons and there are definitely some changes that need to be made to bring them in line with their intent. We are going to take a holistic pass at siege weapons in the coming months and drop a rebalance of all of them to get them to more closely align with what they should be doing.
Finally, the feedback you all provide is a very useful part of this whole process. WvW is a living, breathing game type and any changes we make have numerous consequences that don’t become fully visible until everyone starts interacting with them and devising new strategies. Our goal is to provide a complex combat space that rewards skill, tactics, and ingenuity and while we haven’t fully achieved that goal yet, I like to think we are getting there.
In the coming months, meanwhile you most of your most noteworthy wvw guilds will be looking for a new game to play.
Anet has kittening lost their mind.
There aren’t a lot of games that came bring what WvW brings to the table for pvp oriented guilds. Even if they continue to break it by doing other stupid stuff like turning arrowcarts into godcarts.
That is about to change. Elder Scrolls Online is launching sometime this year, and is on the radar of most PvP guilds, big and small. By all accounts, WvW is its major endgame.
Before culling was fixed, our guild was talking about ESO a lot. But with no culling, we were back to having good times in GW2. The arrow cart buff is pushing us back into the “no-fun” zone and we are following the ESO news again.
ESO is still an unknown quantity, but it does have the potential to be a serious challenger.
(And there is also Planetside 2 out there, which is a 3 faction MMOFPS. Its audience does overlap with some GW2 PvP guilds).
Hopefully they will add that in the future. In GW1 you could save builds and switch between them.
I doubt it’s a priority, but I’m sure it will come along at some point.
And a small grou kitten upposed to take a sieged up camp with arrow carts exactly how?
WvW is once again made not fun for small groups.
Before culling was removed, the game had become impossible for small groups in the upper tiers of WvW. Our guild was discussing moving to another game so we could keep playing together and have fun.
With arrow carts, we are back at that point again. You can only make changes like this so many times, before people lose faith.
(edited by Thrumdi.9216)
Anet nerfed Retaliation simply because there was too much of it WvW as a result of Light Fields + Blast = AoE Retaliation.
It wouldn’t surprise me if Water Fields get the same treatment at some point.
Still #1 here. The only possible challenge will be if ESO does WvW better, or maybe CU years down the line.
Watch what happens when the WvW Borderland maps are redesigned.
If the large central lakes are taken out, and replaced with EB-style ponds, that’s the signal underwater combat is in maintenance mode.
I hate how they nerfed confusion damage because of the stupidity of players running in and out of glamour fields while zerging.
The change affecting those small group players so much…making the build useless.
The problem with confusion was not because of the damage, but because of how it was applied. It could hit mass numbers with 1 skill.
Actually, the problem with Confusion is that it affects good players. It makes them stop attacking, which is why it has no place in an action MMO. This is why long duration crowd control does not exist in GW2.
It was obviously an OP gimmick build though, and everyone knows OP gimmick builds will eventually be nerfed. That is the risk you take when you gear one out.
Mesmers do need some kind of condition build though, it just shouldn’t be one that penalizes you for attacking.
We’ve been over this a million times in every thread QQ’ing about the nerf.
The problem with Confusion is not that it punishes bad players, but that it punishes good players. It makes them stop playing.
In an action MMO like GW2 you cannot have skills that make it so you can’t attack. This is why there is no long duration crowd control in the game.
Confusion shouldn’t have been in the sPvP or WvW side of the game in the first place. But Anet had the ideology of a “perfect game” where PvE and WvW were seamless, instead of one that worked in practice. Thankfully they are moving to the practical side of the ledger.
I was entirely willing to accept your argument and run with it (even though I disagreed and had a counter argument). But then you stated:
Confusion shouldn’t have been in the sPvP or WvW side of the game in the first place.
… and pretty much killed your entire argument with some insipid comment because the game doesn’t placate to your version of what you want things to be.
Not even worth continuing the argument with fragmented baseless logic like that.
Nope there’s nothing insipid about saying a mechanic like Confusion is bad for a PvP game.
Any mechanic that punishes you directly for using a skill has no place in one. It’s like the randomness in the Engineer skills. It looks great on paper, but when it comes to actual play, it drives people away from the class.
Retaliation is better because it punishes you directly for attacking a particular player, not for using your skills generally. The only real problem with Retaliation is in a zerg setting, where, if you are using AoE, you have less control over who you hit.
Confusion is in the category of long duration crowd control: retro MMO mechanic. (But hey! Maybe it will show up in Camelot Unchained…)
The problem with confusion is not that bad players attack through it. But that good players have to stop attacking.
In an action MMO, skills that make you not attack should be few and far between. That is why there is no long duration crowd control in GW2.
Confusion should be at the level where it doesn’t totally kill someone who attacks through it. Instead, it should be a risk factor where someone has to decide to attack, burn condition removal or withdraw.
The only question now is where is that level.
In today’s patch white swords on contested objectives will not show up for 30 seconds. Is this good or bad?
On the one hand, it will probably be good for small ninja groups. On the otherhand, it is going to require people to take on the unrewarding task of sentrying.
My prediction is the 30 seconds will have to be reduced at some point because of golem-rush QQ’ing.
Xfire stats (for what they’re worth) as of April 29, 2013.
Total (xfire enabled) players:
League of Legends 98,955
Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare 55,148
Call of Duty 2 30,310
World of Warcraft 21,965
World Of Tanks 9,730
Guild Wars 2 9,545
Minecraft 8,733
Dota 2 8,570
Battlefield 3 7,745
Star Wars: The Old Republic 6,158
By any definition, that’s a hit. Right between World of Tanks and Minecraft.
Recursive Kit.
A kit made up of other kits, made up of other kits, made up of other kits…
This kinda makes me want to spec my warrior for kill shot and get this boon hate trait and the trait that makes rifle shots piece. Can you imagine that big ol kill shot ripping through zergs stacked with boons? Would be too much fun.
stop giving stuff away >.< I want to abuse it first before it gets fixed, kitten
I have a warrior alt I don’t play much, but it seems to me it would make Longbow a lot more viable. LB boon-hate AoE’s should be devastating to a boon heavy zerg.
Nope, Confusion didn’t punish poor play.
It punished playing.
That’s why it had to be nerfed.
Nope, Confusion didn’t punish playing.
It punished mindless playing.
That’s why mindless people got their nerf.
Nope, you got it bass ackwards.
Mindless people kept playing. It was the smart people who stopped playing. And that was the problem.
It’s the same reason long duration crowd control doesn’t exist in GW2. It’s no fun not being able to attack.
One other point to make is that Anet’s approach to buffing will make it very difficult to actively prevent boon-hate effecting your group.
In other games, you have to actively buff people. Before battles the buff classes make their rounds buffing everyone who needs it. Anet explicitly said they didn’t want this, as it is kind of boring. Instead, they implemented buffs as the side effects of fighting (combo fields + finishers).
The problem with combo fields and finishers is that they just happen. Almost every weapon has a field and a finisher of some sort, and obviously a great proportion of these create boons. In addition, most AoE skills create fields, meaning it is almost impossible to avoid them in anything larger than a small WvW fight.
This means with boon-hate we will end up with a mechanic much like confusion (or retaliation): something that punishes you for just playing the game. Against boon-hate heavy builds the solution will be to stop attacking them with skills that have finishers, or stop using skills that make fields.
As always, it depends how wide-spread boon hate builds will become. But as we’ve seen with gimmick builds in the past, if they give a significant advantage, they will spread quickly.
Anet announced today in a State of the Game they will be reducing the power of confusion, perhaps to 50% of what it is, like in sPvP.
The thing is, yes, people complain about it, but Confusion is NOT overpowered. It’s a way to control the fight. Confusion does NOT DO ANY damage, unless the person activates it themselves. So it needs to be cleansed, or the player needs to take a step back and stop attacking. It’s a strategic condition. And the only time confusion hits in the thousands is the result of a large setup of skills that went off perfectly. Which rarely ever happens.
A Mesmer needs to utilize about 10 skills to set up a big confusion burst, which could be cleansed in an instant. Compare that to an instant, single button press, single hit, from stealth, sometimes unavoidable, Backstab for 10k . Which needs the nerf?
And right now, Confusion is one of the very few ways to actually break up a zerg in WvW.
It honestly seems like Anet WANTS massive zergs in WvW, since they keep destroying our tactics to break them up.
EDIT: Some people speak so much better than me:
That being said, I vehemently disagree with this change to confusion. People make the argument that confusion is balanced in spvp, but ignore the issue that it is in fact useless in spvp. The reason you see no confusion builds there is that confusion damage is so low that it’s completely ignorable. Now, they’ve made this the same in wvw. They completely destroyed one set of Mesmer builds, severely damaged the strength and viability of most Mesmer condition builds, and strongly decreased the possible auxiliary damage from Mesmer shatter builds (all while claiming mesmers are in a good place in the actual Mesmer portion).
I really can’t overemphasize how bad of a move this is. Confusion used to be one of the best mechanics in gw2, because it actually punished poor play. Now, it is once again irrelevant. No one needs to care about the purple swirly because the purple swirly won’t do any damage to them. This was a horrible change, and I’m monumentally disappointed in the dev team for rolling this change out.
Just goes to show how balancing on the small, vocal, and unskilled population of this game leads to poor choices.
Nope, Confusion didn’t punish poor play.
It punished playing.
That’s why it had to be nerfed.
I think everyone agrees Warriors need a buff for WvW. However, is boon hate the way to do it? (In the April 30 patch, Warriors will be able to spec +3% damage for every boon on an enemy).
There are so many AoE boons thrown off in WvW that I can’t see any downside to a Warrior speccing boon hate. In most situations (except perhaps very small groups) the Warriors will probably get their bonuses.
On top of that, there is the real danger that support builds will begin to be a detriment to their groups (especially in large encounters). It is not unreasonable to expect that most Warriors will have at least a +9-12% damage bonus in most of these fights due to the number of boons thrown off.
Cue boon-hating hammer Warrior shock troops, and people cursing out support builds for getting them killed.
I may be overstating the case, since we don’t have all the info yet. And an anti-boon counter is definitely legitimate against boon-heavy bunker builds. However, passives like these do run the risk of ending up too powerful. Active abilities like Necro boon corruption or Thief boon stealing are far better since they are situational and require active use.
(edited by Thrumdi.9216)
New reset time worked out super well on TC, at least for our guild and friends.
I am really quite worried about the direction Arenanet are trying to take WvW.
Me too. They might actually balance the kitten thing!
Personally, WvW is on the upswing.
Removing culling was the single biggest change since the launch of the game, and revitalized WvW. There is still a lot of work to do, but the foundation is solid now.
(It just remains to be seen if Anet commits the resources needed).
Even more confirmation that the downed state sucks in WvW.
This same point was made over and over when WXP was introduced, and I agree with you. It’s anti-alt. At the very least, the award of WXP should be account-bound, and the spending should be character-bound. That way you aren’t totally borked by playing an alt.
Doubt we’ll see a change though. WvW needs a treadmill, and WXP is it.
Very good! The responsiveness of the WvW continues to impress me. Maybe I’ve grown cynical, but I really stopped expecting MMO companies to be this accommodating. More reasons to recommit to GW2 for WvW.
So, now that the reset time has been changed, did WvW die on the NA servers? Or was it more or less as every other reset?
It was lame actually. Nothing close to the intensity and camaraderie of the old reset nights. It just felt like any other night in the Mists.
Like I said before, Anet just killed the golden goose: a special, entirely player-run weekend event that attracted everyone on the server.
I wouldn’t be surprised if in future weeks we see fewer and fewer people making a special effort to be on for the new reset.
If you are going to split the NA/EU resets anyways, why go ahead with the stop-gap measure that pleases no one?
On top of that, you are going to destroy the Reset Night event has been the highlight of many (if not most) guilds week on the NA servers.
This, its just ridiculous.
Talk about self centered, the entire EU player base complaining about reset times is self-centered, so they can play for those magical two hours between midnight and 2am at the expense of 75% of the NA/SA playerbase. Guess your shortsightedness can’t see beyond your own nose.
The EU players in my guild have said that the extra 2 hours barely makes a different to them anyway. Either way they have to stay up very late to play.
Yep, it is ridiculous to think an MMO company would cancel a hasty, ill-thought out decision they are going to reverse in the near future anyways. (After setting two halves of the player base against each other, and disrupting the most important guild event of the week).
But one can dream.
(edited by Thrumdi.9216)
We are in the process of working out how/if we can split the NA and EU resets. For now, this change is the way going forward. It’s my hope we will have an update about this soon as I’ve made it a priority.
If you are going to split the NA/EU resets anyways, why go ahead with the stop-gap measure that pleases no one?
On top of that, you are going to destroy the Reset Night event has been the highlight of many (if not most) guilds week on the NA servers.
Once those people begin to drift away and make other plans for Friday night (because once you miss the first chance to get in after reset, you’re queued for hours), it remains to be seen if they will come back.
In effect, Anet is killing a “golden goose” by doing this. Reset Night was completely player-organized, and created the “glue”, at least on our server, that kept people in the game and coming back. Other MMO’s would kill for something like that.
Yet, Anet is going to summarily destroy that for a temporary measure that by your own admission will later be reversed. Why? Why? Why?
Are you tired of the zerg? Do you want to be more than a face in the crowd?
If you answered yes to both of these questions, then The Tarnished Coastguard may be for you.
Formed at launch, The Tarnished Coastguard is dedicated to small group WvW skirmishing, raiding and objective-taking, first in the Borderlands and now in the Eternal Battlegrounds. Typically, we work in conjunction with the zerg on reset nights, pressuring our opponents by hitting them in their thirds. During the week, we continue to run small groups, looking for skirmishes, ninja sieges and other fights.
Other facts:
*50-slot voice server – We own a 50-slot voip server, but currently use the sever-wide mumble for communication.
*Require 100% WvW Rep – Repping other guilds for PvE or RP is okay.
*RP-friendly – TTC is a dedicated WvW guild that is also RP-friendly.
*Commander Tags – We tend to put them up only in the off-hours when the server needs leadership.
*Guild Steam Group – Members active in other games such as Minecraft, Planetside 2 and Saints Row 3.
*Located on the Tarnished Coast server.
If you think we are the right fit for you, please apply at thetarnished.com, or contact Kendrick Duskomen or Thrumdi in game.
(edited by Thrumdi.9216)
Here’s Anet’s blog post on the change:
We’re changing the time that the World vs World match resets to make it more convenient for players on both NA and EU servers. Beginning this week, WvW matches will now reset at 3PM PDT (22:00 UTC) on Friday.
I have to say that is a bit Orwellian.
In no way can a 3pm PST/6pm EST start time for NA be called “convenient”.
I love how their initial reaction to any game change that causes an uproar is to lock the post to keep people from commenting. They really need a PR person to advise them that doing things like that is not in their best interest.
It was rather smart of them to lock it though, since it was more or less only people flaming, no real discussion.
Step 1, EU servers complain about something that inconvininces them (Rightly so, btw)
Step 2, Anet decides EU has a point, and makes a band aid fix that doesnt actually fix the problem and screws over NA players
Step 3, NA players complain about being screwed over with short notice, and voice much hate for a kitten fix on Anets part, and no forethought planning to seperate reset time due to region
Step 4, Anet throws up their hands in frustration, lock/delete all threads that hint at the topic, and hope the issue magically goes awayPredicting Step 5, People start seeing that Anet isnt taking this stuff seriously, and start to seriously look at other games to play.
Our guild was really starting to drift away from GW2 earlier this year. We were looking for other games to play as a group to keep us together. But with the culling fix, we recommitted to the game, because it looked like Anet were themselves committed to making WvW better. (And no culling made small group work possible in the high tiers again).
Screwing NA reset, however, tells me that Anet does not understand their own game. For serious WvW guilds, Reset is the night around which all other things revolve. Guilds have to communicate the most then. That’s when you test out your strategies to see if they will work in the hardest environment. And it’s then you have to play at your best. The rest of the week feels like casual play until reset comes around again.
Anet, you take that away at your own peril.
Well I guess since the EU servers have been getting screwed for a while on reset times, it was bound to be NA’s time to get screwed on it.
There, that logic escapes me, so half of the base players were screwed and upset so now lets screw and upset the other half. How about coming up with a solution that actually benefits everyone? Ask for your players opinion, feedback and suggestions before making decisions that affects them.
Also, on the NA servers, a culture has developed around reset night that goes back 7 months. On my server at least (Tarnished Coast) the reset night push is what really brings all the WvW guilds together and creates intra-guild relationships.
Why Anet would want to destroy that, is beyond me. Study after study shows that it is social ties that keep people playing MMO’s. Destroying reset night on the NA servers will give people just one more reason to jump to another game, if one comes along.
No doubt guilds will continue working with each other, but I can’t see how it can be as good as what we had before.
We are looking into what it will take to split the times out on a per region basis and we’ll do everything we can to make that the case as soon as possible. In the meantime, this change will make things better for European players, who have been dealing with a very inconvenient time since launch.
But Devon, once this is done, you can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Once people get in the habit of not showing up for reset night, it is going to be hard for guilds to draw them back in. By the time you split EU/NA restarts, they will become set in new habits. The old momentum will be hard to recapture.
The reset night push is one of the very unique things about GW2 WvW. And let’s be honest, zerg vs zerg fighting in WvW sucks. It takes no skill, apart from some flanking awareness on the part of a commander. The virtue of reset night is that it added a very high level of strategic, intra-guild planning on top of the lame zerg vs zerg mechanics.
If the special reset night push is killed, GW2 is going to loose something that differentiates WvW from its competitors.
WvW guilds will all know about it, but it doesn’t leave a lot of time for guilds and servers to figure out an alternate course of action. Majority of the fun on reset night comes from coordinating that big initial push and taking the field with the rest of your guild/allies.
This new reset time is probably going to interfere with the plans of about 50% of the NA players who used to show up before.
And this coordination and planning is what is unique about WvW. On non-reset nights we get guild/pug zerging, with some opportunity for small group work.
As I always say in these threads when Anet does something dumb, ESO is releasing later this year…
It will probably be impossible to give Ascendeds for badges. Some people are sitting on hundreds or thousands, meaning they could purchase all Ascended items at once, and Anets wants it to be a treadmill extending over months or a year.
More likely is some kind of new WvW daily or event that awards laurels.
You do however assume that they work on Saturdays in the first place
What? no I don’t.
my point is that with the current reset time, someone at Anet is already working extra hours Friday evening. Two extra hours at the end of the day on Friday is the same cost as two extra hours Saturday afternoon.
These people will all be on salary anyways. I highly doubt Anet has to pay them overtime for working Friday late, or Saturday.
This is terrible. 3pm PST on a Friday is a kick in the teeth for West Coast NA players. It will also make it impossible for our guild to get on and player together for reset. The 5pm start was just possible for us.
The obvious solution is to have different reset times for NA and EU servers. Any change should be postponed until this ability is added technically.