Guild Wars 2

As the technology (web traffic and computer hardware) improved, I thought the gaming would improve. And, although some of the graphics have, I think it is safe to say that we have hit the limit on what they can send to us. Culling is a product of that, although I still think they should just send us all the information and let out own computers sort it out, instead of sending just bits and pieces.

The problem lies with Netflix, Amazon streaming, Youtube, etc. I think that the available bandwidth is just “gone”. Sure, there had been some improvements, but streaming content has set us back some.

Other countries, Korea is a prime example, have amazing internet speeds. The comparison I think was the slowest household in Korea is equal to the fastest connection in the US…or something like that.

I que’d up 10 minutes before a friend, both trying to get into TC BL. 2 hours later he got in. At the 3 hour mark I gave up. First Friday night reset I’ve missed in nearly 3 months.

The major issue I have with the “fix” doesn’t pertain to WvW. Sure, not seeing friendly players, or waiting long periods for NPC’s to load with other players around is annoying, but the PVE mobs not loading is pretty bad.

I’m guessing the system reporting treats friendly players, NPC’s and PvE mobs as the same type of “target”, and enemy players in WvW as the other. The dragons are a lagfest all the time, but now even in the middle of nowhere with maybe 1 or 2 players around, you can walk right up to mobs before they are reported to you. Not talking about their respawn, but them rendering in the same way zerg’s have been since launch.

For WvW, I haven’t had a chance to test it out this week, as apparently, we have a que each night.

This is why I don’t try and run from thieves. I may lure a bit, if I think friendlies are nearby, but mostly I run just far enough to get them to hit shortbow 5 twice…than I dump everything I have on them (marks, wells, pain inverter, etc). Sometimes I die (well, a lot actually) and sometimes they die…but, that is what WvW is for.

That sucks Tyaen. Best of luck on the recovery.

As for the FA folks reading, I expect a great matchup with you guys next week. You guys were great opponents and, imo, the only thing we had on you at the time was numbers across all maps. The maps we were even on, there were some great fights.

Game lag is the biggest cause of this for me. I hit the button and nothing, again…nothing. Realize how bad the game is lagging server side as no abilities are going off (dragons and WvW mostly here). Go to hit it again and get 2 of them quickly (on and off). Not much use in those cases.

I know the blue dot has always remained. Partied with friends, and when one leaves, it always shows the dot where they logged out while they are still in party. But, if that is now affecting (or maybe always has) the number of people the game thinks are still in a borderland, that would be HUGE. I hope A-net is reading this one.

I tried to get into TC BL again last night and got a que again. So, I decided to continue on with map completion on my guardian. 45 minutes later, I was still in que. So, I decided to get some real life work done and went to Lion’s Arch to bank and log off. In Lion’s, someone pointed out that they just left TC BL and there was maybe 20 folks, with about 10 standing around that anyone could find.

After reading other forum threads/posts, I am starting to wonder. I generally only play in TC BL with the occasional foray into EB. Yet, the past 4 nights when trying to get in, there has been a que. The first night was only 10 minutes and I got in. The others, I gave up at about 30 minutes twice and the 45ish last night.

So, it still doesn’t make sense that there are que times when people in the map/forum are saying the BL is mostly empty during those times.

For me, it’s 6-9pm central US time.

Reduce run speed based on how many people are nearby. So, if you “zerg” with 30+ people, you are essentially doing the walk animation. You are no longer a group, you are an army. And, in an era with trebs and cats, armies walked…slowly.

Small groups can still hit and run. Well, maybe not run, but jog…I mean, you should at least wait for your friends.

Syktek.7912:

Only a guardian will shout “Save yourselves!” and die for doing it.

(That was a terrifying experience ;;)

I love your tag. And, I have had this trouble as well.

Most wells/marks have a damage stat and than a condition stat. The damage number is based purely on power. The condition over time number is just condition damage.

Fire up the karma train, cause I dumped nearly 800k the last 2 weeks.

I do agree with the above though, it will likely contain karma stuff now that I spent most of it.

Now I just need to finish my engineer…so I can “Tiny Dunk”.

Guardian has the best tools to defend thieves, especially d/d ones. Thieves have no stability, just keep them on the ground and it’s over. Even when my guardian was level 30, I didn’t have any real trouble with d/d thieves. Granted, I couldn’t even kill the npc’s at that point, so no chance at killing the thief, but he couldn’t kill me either.

Trying to swim out to the new waypoint, but every time I get near it, the game errors out. When I log back in, it’s like the previous 2 to 3 minutes haven’t happened. This is 5 times in a row now. Last time crashed client completely.

This is gonna drive my wife nuts…since hell will freeze over before she misses a special event achievement. Especially, one she already did.

Iohanna.4863:

I don’t know who you are, or where you came from.

But my financial future is secured thanks to you, anonymous Sanctum of Rall Invader! Gracious thanks!

Wow, grats Amy. My best drop in WvW so far has been a green dagger, and I was just happy it was lvl 80.

Phantom had strike groups going all last night in TCBL. Lots of fun. We definitely kept it interesting.

Forget the golems, you never see people coming in WvW anyway. Well, guys nothing to worry about there is no one here…wait, when did I die. Oh, look, NOW the game tells me about the 40 people running by.

Renny.6571:

SoS/JQ/BG if the original thread isn’t locked or deleted. :P

I would have to agree with Renny…and it’s not even my fight.

Azaruil.3406:

Sexy-cute Asura score update.

My first thought looking at this picture was…“So, 4 thieves and and ele walk into a bar…”

Tooltip for signet of the locust still says 10% run speed increase in WvW zones. you do run 25% faster though.

I imagine they will remove the damage component to marks and leave us with the crappy condition damage only, and they will nerf wells at least 25% (timers should remain the same). It essentially kills necros that aren’t d/d. Our 1 staff skill only hits downed players, nothing moving for sure, so staff may get completely broken. 6 months later they may realize they went too far with the nerf.

They seem to be fine with having 2 or 3 overpowered combos for single target, but even mediocre aoe is too much, because people tend to not move when standing in stuff. Sadly, we are not one of the classes that has any strong single target abilities.

The 1 spam skill from warrior axe, hits harder than any ability we can equip…and they can spam it. We are resigned to condition damage and manning siege if they hose us with this nerf.

Duskfall.1296:

Wish we would stop using “zerg” so much. It sorta belittles us a bit. We are in T2 for Pete’s sake. The “zergs” in T2 are usually led by a commander on TSpeak or such. When is see a big group from TC with PINK guild tags scattered in it I don’t say "oh well another mindless “zerg” I say “holy crap that an army!”

At least in our chat you don’t see zerg a lot anymore. Usually it is something like 30+ Choo at X, or 10 SoR at X or running by X, 5 SBI at west Gods, etc. Or if you’re like me who sucks at typing fast, so like last night all I got out was ‘golems watergate’ than ran through the mob to get inside and on the door cat. Then once on siege, trying to get some numbers out like timer and # of golems, gate %, etc.

I wouldn’t take offense to the word zerg though. I have typed it in the past, just because it’s easy to type and usually just means a lot of people. Although numbers are more helpful.

Skysophrenic.6378:

So uh, how many Omega’s were on Bay in TC BL?

Looks like I went to bed too early. The golem gods will not be happy that I didn’t attend the service.

Skysophrenic.6378:

Ubi.4136:

Excellent manipulation of the culling issue in Longview. That tactic will hopefully serve you well in coming weeks.

If only you knew what we were doing – the main question was, why would you guys go onto the same ramp, 8-9 times in a row after wiping each time?

We were watching you guys over and over go back and forth from the roof, different people wanted to try different things, I think mostly to test the culling but some because we had nothing else to do.

Was fun though.

Excellent manipulation of the culling issue in Longview. That tactic will hopefully serve you well in coming weeks.

Scootabuser.4915:

Ruining my 7 kill streak against a blob of players :/

OK, that pic made my day.

I haven’t yet, fortunately when/if I do, I don’t play with sound enabled, that would drive me nuts.

I find almost all of it fun. What is even more fun is realizing there are 20 people at watergate with 2 omega golems, THAN realizing they have not removed the lower cannon yet. I was too busy shooting things to type what was on the gate…that was a good time.

Or, 3-way fun on reset night in Garrison. If you can get past the culling frustration, those are the best fight nights ever.

Ah, I keep forgetting about that as I rarely go to town. Thanks for the info.

May not be the right place to ask, but as people seemed to “understand” the way server populations work, does adding large groups to a “full” server risk putting that server over it’s limit. So, not just creating ques for a borderland, but ques to even get past the character selection screen to play – thinking back to Rift at launch not to mention a few others?

Isn’t Call of Duty what happens about an hour after reset, when you wish you hadn’t gone to Taco Bell on the way home and are in middle of a 3-way in TC Garr?

Speaking of which:
Only a WvW player would hear someone talking about a 3-way and wonder what borderland it was on.

I rolled a warrior on Friday night (Jan. 18th), and did the intro and a couple hearts in Queensdale and got to level 5. Didn’t actually plan on leveling another alt, just killing time.

On Saturday, my wife decided to actually work on her mesmer and do some zone completions, so I joined for a few. And just kept going.

Traits – early order as I spent them.
5 defense
5 strength
5 tactics
+5 defense
5 discipline
5 arms
+5 strength
after that I started playing around
currently at 20 str, 20 def, 10 disc, 4 tact

Weapons – axe warhorn / rifle
the run speed boost is nice and removes cripple, etc
axe hits like a truck
rifle for ranged
currently I am axe shield / rifle (just switched to shield at lvl 61)

Leveling
Finished Queensdale than did the map completions for every town including Lion’s Arch
Did every 1-15 zone
decided to craft on this toon (armorsmith/weaponsmith) both to 100
Moved to every 15-25 zone
more crafting – both to 200
Gandarran Fields
crafting – both to 250
WvW exploration – all of Red Map, 75% of green, 50% of Eternal (no blue cause we go blue next week)
Hirathi Hinterlands
Personal Story to the lvl 11 quest
crafting – armorsmith to 300 weaponsmith to 275
just started Fields of Ruin; next will be Lornar’s Pass

The above took me 4 days and got me to level 64.

Good thing was making armor and weapons I could use while I leveled.
Now wearing Knights gear with soldiers on them. With the exception of a few mobs, health rarely goes down much.

Side skills
Healing Signet – the regen is nice
Signet of Might
Shake it Off – knock off a condition helps with regen, usually only use it if bleed gets high or vulnerability
Dolyak Signet – stability if needed

Elite
Signet of Rage – most of the time
Rampage – I like the stability, but take a lot more damage in this form than normal

Axe hits multiple targets, so hitting 3-5 guys at once helps. Knockdown is really the only thing we have to worry about.

Can’t remember which traits I took, I’m at work, but I took one that basically is a free stability when something tries to knock you down or CC you – it helps some.

While I LOVED DAoC, and seriously miss Molvik, I really don’t want to see bard speed and AoE Mezz in this game. We sort of have the speed, but it’s not 110% of run speed, it’s 33%. The AoE mezz was just whoever hit theirs first and than the 1:10 wait to be killed if you had no CD available…kind of pointless.

Actual tactics should matter. Troop movements, supplies, etc.

No reason any realm should start with supply at reset, or be able to pick up 15 supply on one map and bring it to another. If you leave a map, then your supply is gone. This would help. Requires you to be on a map, establish a footing and keep the spice flowing.

AoE should not be limited to how many it can hit. I’m against the nerf for a number of reasons, but if it was toned down say 15% and than the 5 person limit was removed that would be a start.

Zergs rule by number, not skill. AoE is irrelevant with regards to the zerg winning. They will still steamroll their opponents with single target due to numbers. The biggest problem right now is zerging is the most effective tactic.
1. Culling – your enemy is dead before they know you are there – win
2. Culling – you can walk right past aoe and ground effects and kill your opponent because the game hasn’t told your client about traps and aoe (so no damage to you) – win
3. AoE is capped to 5 people – so just stack in a ball which makes a large group nearly invulnerable to damage and smaller groups – win
4. Siege doesn’t do crap for damage, despite having a cap of 50 players. So, the zerg just runs in and speed caps because it’s the fastest way to favor and badges – win

IF they can fix culling, then remove the AoE cap and make siege actually kill people (maybe not 1 shot – but you shouldn’t be able to stand under an arrow cart for 5 minutes not dying while disarming siege on walls or ramming), that would be a start.

As a whole, people just want to win. Not that I fault them for that, but humans tend to take the path of least resistance. Which in video games is, if you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.
So, an individual may want a “challenge”, two or three people together will bandwagon and prefer to stomp everything with little effort.

One guy in the jump puzzle will wave, you wave…everyone is happy.
The second they have a friend show, you are dead.

[IMG]http://t4.imgchili.com/24426/24426407_gw122.jpg[/IMG]

Here is our zerg getting ready for another round in TC Garr.

This is what A-net has designed for us. They aren’t really interested in what we think…and since they can’t fix the culling issue for 50 people, there is no chance in a real RvR taking place (DAoC style). Until they make a real persistent 3 sided fight, each tier will have 1 server that totally dominates, and the other 2 to deal with attrition.

Paid server transfers come to late to an already broken system.

Sadly, there will be a lot of PVDoor this week for one team.

Alright, rocking the last week on the necro hoping they don’t make us useless.
Rolling with a new theme song:

Need to adjust the dates so people don’t get confused.

It’s good to be getting old :-)

Acelerion.6820:

Is anything really a problem? You stand in red you’re going to die. Whats insulting is that if enough people stand in the red everyone lives!

This times 1000. Someone please forward this to the devs.

I resisted the urge to Rick Roll here, but as the RP server, wouldn’t it be more like:

Possibly this:

Proumbro.1376:

Maladon.5760:

Rising Dusk.2408:

Man, we’re losing people left and right. I live in the EST timezone and during my 6PM-10PM period SBI is outmanned in every single map…

Nah, we’re fine…

Picture of the week goes to Maladon for his photo titled “I’ve got this guys, don’t worry”

Totally get my vote. In my head I was hearing “You Shall Not Pass!”

Oh, they’ll be in WvW, I have leveled the engineer to 40 and the guardian to 52 just in WvW, so for sure I’ll be there. Not one to give up regardless of the odds, was just thinking with them most likely completely breaking my necro soon with the nerf bat (and I really don’t want to go back to my thief or mesmer) that I should get on the engineer or guardian to get some levels in during the transition. They are also the best 2 classes at spamming skills through doors at incoming rams, so it may come in handy.

I have to admit, I love my necro, but flamethrowers through a door are a lot of fun. It’s what I did all last night at Hills.

I may have to finish leveling my engineer and guardian till the server shuffle settles down. Maybe I’ll roll a warrior and work on that since the pending aoe nerf is coming too.

Until they force players to log in to a server based on location, which would mean opening up servers for SEAsia/Oceanic players, there will never be balance. The mass exodus from good servers because the grass is greener elsewhere, just reinforces that people want to win everytime with no chance of losing, because a 10 or 20 to 1 fight means they will rank faster, always win, and sleep better at night.

I do not begrudge the guilds that have stuck it out on SoR all those weeks stuck behind BG (where everyone else bandwagoned to when they were outnumbering everyone in this tier – daily avg.), I have the greatest respect for them. They have fought long and hard, and I wish them the best of luck.

It’s just sad that A-net can’t see what they are doing to their own game.

Our 1 1/4 second fear only exists so thieves can steal it and use their now 4 second fear on us…that is all. Did I mention that the stealing itself does anywhere from 1 to 3k damage as well. Makes perfect sense.

I have 3100 power and my hardest hitting AoE is staff 4, the highest number I’ve seen is 1200. I get hit that hard by thieves just spamming short bow 1. I would almost bet they won’t address Hundred Blades being able to down me with 25k health or the thief 7k backstab.

Also, what are the odds they will look at the AoE of swords?